[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] He was reared to mercantile pursuits, and according to all accounts was, like his father, a shrewd and successful man of affairs. From old official documents it appears that he was his father's trusted and active lieutenant in the conduct of delicate transactions with the piratical skippers of the Indian Ocean. Notorious as were the rela >f«f THE ARISTOCRATIC FAMILIES 257 tions which Philipse and others sustained with the pirates, it was of course not safe for the pirate ships to attempt to deliver their cargoes at New York, or even to rendezvous within too close prox-imity to that port. It was the custom to dispatch from New York vessels to meet them at more or less distant points along-the coast, which vessels, after receiving their valuable merchandise, would either return to the vicinity of New York and await opportunity to smuggle the stuff in, or sail to Europe and dispose of it there. Adolph was the discreet representative of the house of Philipse in the man-agement of these important details. In a memorable report of the British Board of Trade, October 19, 1698, on the connections sub-sisting between the New York merchants and the pirates, the opera-tions of the clever Adolph in one instance are explicitly described. A ship or sloop called the " Frederick," belonging to Frederick Philipse, at that time " one of his Majesty's Council of New York," was, " upon expectation of a vessel from Madagascar," sent out under the con-duct of Adolph Philipse.