By the 13th of August 1771 – the same day John Montagu replaced Commodore Gambier as commander of the North American squadron – Sultana was at Philadelphia. She had spent a total of 113 days patrolling New York, making forty interceptions, for a daily rate of 0.35, only slightly higher than her Rhode Island rate. In May of 1769, Hood had written that the Customs Commissioners believed that a ‘sloop of war’ and a ‘King's schooner’ patrolling the approach to Philadelphia could increase the revenue collected in that city of merchants by ‘above twenty thousand pounds a year.’ It was now Sultana's turn to take up this station, relieving Gaspee, which was due for overhaul at Halifax.

John Inglis's hometown was, by this point, presenting similar problems to Customs enforcement to Newport and Boston. The collectors there had written letters complaining of collusion in the thwarting of two major seizures of illegally-imported wine on the first of April. The Surveyor of Customs, William Sheppard, was threatened with pistols and pelted with stones by a mob. He received a threatening letter, and when he went out, he was attacked by unknown assailants and suffered internal injuries. He soon left the city. The responses to incidents like this were always indicative of a division of power within British American ports, whether Benjamin Hallowell's Boston or John Inglis's Philadelphia, between those colluding in and encouraging such behavior, and those genuinely disturbed by it and determined to counteract it. Some merchants, and some officials, were on one side, some on the other, some conflicted. Some merchants and officials, including governors, played both sides, by doing the bare minimum to carry out their legal obligations while sympa¬thizing with those who flouted the law and the authority of the King's men. Naval officers like Inglis were consistent in doing their duty; the cooperation they received, or failed to receive, depended on where they were at the time and who wielded what power over whom at the time.