To Benjamin Franklin from Robert Willcocks et al.: Certificate, 3 November 1780
From Robert Willcocks et al.:5 Certificate
ADS: American Philosophical Society
Done in Forton Prison, Novemr. 3th. 1780
We the Subscribers American Officers Now Laying in Forton Prison, do Certify that Mr. Joseph Lunier, Was taken A passanger on Board, of the Makeral prise to the Brigg Noterdame, Belonging and Bound to the State of South Carolina and that he has Been Confined upwards of three Years in this place.6
Robert Willcocks
Josiah Arnold
Elias Porter
Samuel Hayward
[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]
5. The four signers appear in Kaminkow, Mariners, pp. 6, 87, 154, 207.
6. Lunier was plotting an escape when he asked these “four american officers my fellow sufferers” to write this certificate. He enclosed it in his letter to BF of Dec. 3, written from Le Havre: APS.