aid to the Americans. From Galvez, the revolutionaries received gunpowder and supplies for the George Rogers Clark expedition, and from Galvez' secret service fund came to the funds used by Colonel Clark for the capture of Kaskaskia and Vincennes. When Spain formally entered the war on the American side on June 21, 1779, Oliver Pollock—who suffered bankruptcy in funding the purchase of supplies for the cause of independence—rode as aide-de-camp to Galvez in the capture of Baton Rouge, Natchez, Mobile, and Pensacola. The Caribbean Another center of secret aid was St. Eustatia Island in the West Indies. A Dutch free port set in the midst of English, French, Danish and Spanish colonies, St. Eustatia (now Sint Eustatius) became—in the words of a British intelligence document of the period—"the rendezvous of everything and everybody meant to be clandestinely conveyed to America." It was a major source of gunpowder for the American cause, and perhaps the safest and quickest means of communications between American representatives and agents abroad and with the Congress and others at home. Covert action Bermuda In July 1775 Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris worked out a plan in collaboration with Colonel Henry Tucker, the head of a distinguished Bermuda family, to obtain the store of gunpowder in the Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda. To give Bermuda much-needed food in exchange for the powder, Congress resolved on July 15, 1775, to permit the exchange of food for guns and gunpowder brought by any vessel to an American port. On the night of August 14, 1775, two American ships kept a rendezvous with Colonel Tucker's men off the coast of Bermuda and sent a raiding party ashore. An American sailor was lowered into the arsenal through an opening in the roof and opened the doors. The barrels of gunpowder were rolled to wait for Bermudian whaleboats and transported to the American ships. Twelve days later half of the powder was delivered to Philadelphia and a half to American forces at Charleston. America's second covert action effort ended in failure. General Washington, hearing independently of the Bermuda powder, dispatched ships to purchase or seize it. Lacking a centralized intelligence authority, he was unaware of the previous success; when Washington's ships arrived in Bermuda in October 1775, the gunpowder had been gone for two months and British ships patrolled Bermuda waters. Canada On the basis of information received by the Secret Correspondence Committee,