Congress was slow to take action of any kind.  In January, 1791, Maclay noted that a committee had decided that the Mediterranean trade could not be preserved without an armed force to protect it, and that a navy should be established as soon as the Treasury was in a position to bear the expense.  Meanwhile the President began fresh negotiations, which were attended by singular fatality.  Thomas Barclay, who had some diplomatic experience, was commissioned to go to the Emperor of Morocco.  When Barclay reached Gibraltar, he was taken ill, and, after being removed to Lisbon, he died.  Admiral John Paul Jones was then appointed special commissioner to arrange for the ransom of the captives.  As he had then left the Russian service and was living in Paris, it was supposed that his services would be available, but he died before the commission could reach him.  The delay caused by these events was made so much worse by the slow transmission of intelligence that two years elapsed before a fresh start was made by placing the conduct of matters in the hands of Colonel David Humphreys, then Minister to Portugal.  Humphreys had gone as far as Gibraltar on his mission when he learned that a truce had been suddenly arranged between Portugal and Algiers.  This was alarming news, since it meant that the Algerines could now pass into the Atlantic from which they had been excluded by Portuguese war-vessels stationed in the strait of Gibraltar.  “I have not slept since the receipt of the news of this the hellish plot,” wrote Edward Church, the United States consul at Lisbon.  Church was energetic in spreading the intelligence, which fortunately reached some American shipmasters in time to save them.  In October, 1793, as thirteen American vessels were in the port of Lisbon afraid to venture out, Church pleaded their case so vigorously that the Portuguese government agreed to give them an armed convoy.  Nevertheless the Algerines found plenty of game among American ships then at sea, for they captured ten vessels and added one hundred and five more Americans to the stock of slaves in Algiers.  “They are in a distressed and naked situation,” wrote Captain O’Brien, who had himself then been eight years in captivity.

Humphreys made arrangements by which they received clothing and a money allowance ranging from twelve cents a day for a seaman up to eight dollars a month for a captain.  Nothing, however, could be done in the way of peace negotiations.  One of Humphreys’ agents reported that the Dey could not make peace even if he really wanted to do so.  “He declared to me that his interest does not permit him to accept your offers, Sir, even were you to lavish millions upon him, ‘because,’ said he, ’if I were to make peace with everybody, what should I do with my Corsairs?  What should I do with my soldiers?  They would take off my head, for want of other prizes.’”