8. French and Spanish aid was in full swing by the autumn of 1776
In November, 1776, an American armed brig (a two-masted sailing vessel) arrived at the harbor of St. Eustatius. It was flying an up-to-then unseen flag in the Dutch port. The brig, Andrew Doria, was commanded by Isaiah Robinson, who ordered a salute to the Dutch colors flying over Fort Orange. Robinson’s thirteen-gun salute (one for each of the American states) was answered by eleven guns fired by the Dutch. It was the first international recognition of the flag of the newly declared independent United States. Andrew Doria then loaded supplies from the Dutch warehouses and returned to the United States to deliver them to American supporters of the Continental Army.
The ports of Spain and France, as well as those of the Dutch, crawled with British spies. The British were not long in learning of the trade-in armaments with the Dutch free port of St. Eustatius, though there was little they could do to stop it. Short of war, which Britain could ill afford, interference with trade between neutral nations was illegal. Britain, for all of its vaunted naval strength, was unable to interdict most of the shipping between the American states and the Dutch port. American captains simply flew the British flag, or an ensign of another neutral nation, while at sea. Even if they sailed under the new American flag, the British simply could not intercept them all.