1831.] 
Additional instructions. 
19 
sailed on the 9th of August ; while new and additional orders 
were issued from the navy department, which totally changed the 
intended course of the Potomac, and sent her round the southern 
cape of the opposite continent. 
On the 4th of August the United States frigate Hudson, Cap- 
tain Cassin, arrived in New-York from Rio Janeiro, via Bahia, 
having left the latter place on the 2d of July. There were now 
three commanders' pennants floating over the waters of this porf ; 
viz. the blue of Commodore Chauncey, who commanded the station; 
the red of Commodore Downes, who commanded the Potomac ; 
and the white of Commodore Cassin, who commanded the Hud- 
son ; — blue, red, and white being the order of the navy. 
About the middle of July information was received in the 
United States of the piratical attack which had been made upon 
the ship Friendship, of Salem, on the coast of Sumatra, in the 
month of February preceding ; the Malays having treacherously 
seized that vessel, and massacred part of her crew, who were 
receiving on board a cargo of pepper. The particulars of this 
unparalleled outrage on the United States flag and the lives and 
property of her citizens, will be given in detail in its proper place, 
where a chapter shall be devoted exclusively to the subject. 
The public were unanimous in calling for a redress of such an 
atrocious grievance, and the Potomac was now designated by 
government to perform that service instead of proceeding directly 
to her original destination. The route of the frigate to her station 
in the Pacific, as contemplated in the previous instructions, was 
therefore immediately Changed, that measures might be promptly 
and effectually taken to punish so otitrageous an act of piracy ;• 
Mr. Van Buren having, for this purpose, magnanimously relin- 
quished his purpose of taking passage in the frigate, as the land-* 
ing him in England would delay her arrival at the scene of this 
perfidious attack. 
Messrs. Silsbee, Pickman, and Stone, of Salem, addressed a 
letter to Washington, dated on the 20th July, 1831, requesting 
that measures might be adopted by government for the punish- 
ment of the offenders in the case of the Friendship ; but before 
this letter had reached Washington, arrangements for that purpose 
had been put in progress by the secretary of the navy on the 19th 
of that month, and a letter written to Salem on the subject on 
