The Navy of the American Revolution

by Charles Oscar Paullin

FOOTNOTES:

[185] Journals of Continental Congress, April 17, 1776.

[186] Ibid., March 29, 1777.

[187] Rhode Island Colonial Records, VIII, 53.

[188] Journals of Continental Congress, July 11, 1780.

[189] Ibid., August 5, 1776.

[190] In July, 1778, when a joint American and French attack on Newport was planned, the Navy Board at Boston inserted a notice in the Providence Gazette, requiring sailors who were enlisted to repair to their vessels, and calling for recruits. This call was in the following language: “All seamen now in America, who regard the Liberty of Mankind, or the Honor of the United States of America, as well as their own advantage, are now earnestly entreated to enter immediately on board some of the Continental Vessels, in order to afford all possible Aid and Assistance to His Most Christian Majesty’s Fleet, under the Command of the Count de Estaing, the Vice-Admiral of France, now in the American Seas, for the Purpose of assisting these American States in vanquishing a haughty and cruel Enemy, too long triumphant on these Seas. Now is the Time to secure to yourselves Safety in your future Voyages, and to avoid the cruelties which all those experience who have the Misfortune to be captured by the Britons; and now is the time to make your Fortunes.”—Providence Gazette, July 25, 1778. See also advertisement in Connecticut Gazette, March 7, 1777.

[191] A facsimile of a most interesting and rare broadside will be found in C. K. Bolton’s Private Soldier under Washington, page 46. This broadside was designed to attract recruits to the ship “Ranger,” Captain John Paul Jones, fitting out in the summer of 1777 at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to sail for France.

[192] Collections of New York Historical Society, Deane Papers, V, 466.

[193] For additional information and appropriate references concerning privateers, see Part II, State Navies.

[194] There is much evidence on this point. See especially Publications of Rhode Island Historical Society, VIII, 256, William Vernon, Commissioner of Navy Board at Boston, to John Adams, December 17, 1778; Force, American Archives, 5th, II, 1105, John Paul Jones to Robert Morris, October 17, 1776; Ibid., 599, Mrs. John Adams to John Adams, September 29, 1776; Ibid., 337 and 622; Ibid., 5th, III, 1513, Benjamin Rush to R. H. Lee, December 21, 1776; and C. K. Bolton, Private Soldier under Washington, 45, 46.

[195] In the case of Continental prizes the Navy Board at Boston discovered collusions which were detrimental to the government. Ordered to buy the Continental prize “Thorn,” it writes to the Marine Committee that the agents and captains interested in the prize refuse to let it have the “Thorn” at a price to be fixed by three disinterested appraisers; and that “taking our chance, in the purchase by auction, amongst such circles of men in combinations is a miserable one.” In the same letter the Board writes also concerning the “Thorn” that “bets run high that she will sell for two hundred thousand pounds.”—Records and Papers of Continental Congress, 37, pp. 145, 147.

[196] See Chapter IX, page 267; also Gomer Williams, Liverpool Privateers, Chapter IV, Privateers of the American War of Independence. From August, 1778, to April, 1779, Liverpool fitted out one hundred and twenty privateers.

[197] See Part II, State Navies.

[198] Journals of Continental Congress, March 23, 1776.

[199] Papers of Silas Deane in the Library of the Connecticut Historical Society.

[200] Clowes, Royal Navy, III, 328.

[201] Few of these vessels were ready for sea for lack of crews. The British also suffered greatly during the Revolution owing to the scarcity of seamen. This the First Lord of the Admiralty attributed to the loss of 18,000 American sailors, who had contributed to the manning of the British fleets in former wars.—Annual Register, 1778, 201.

[202] Boston Gazette, November 4, 1776.

[203] A battleship building in 1903 at the New York navy yard has a displacement of 16,000 tons.

[204] Manuscript list, in Division of Manuscripts, Library of Congress.

[205] Clowes, Royal Navy, III, 327.

CHAPTER VI
MOVEMENTS OF THE CONTINENTAL FLEET UNDER THE MARINE COMMITTEE

Many duties fell to the Marine Committee and its fleet which were not of a purely military character. The Committee was obliged to employ some of its vessels in keeping open the commercial and diplomatic communications of the United States with Europe and the West Indies; upon this intercourse with foreign countries largely depended the successful issue of the war. The Committee detailed vessels to carry abroad ambassadors, and foreign agents; letters and dispatches; tobacco, fish, flour, indigo, and such other colonial products as exchanged well for naval stores, clothing, and the munitions of war. Among the distinguished men who took passage on board the Continental vessels were John Adams, Lafayette, and Gerard, the first French minister to the United States. In this work it coöperated with other committees of Congress, and most especially with the Committee of Secret Correspondence, or its successor, the Committee of Foreign Affairs; and with the Secret Committee, or, as it was later called, the Committee of Commerce. Owing to the close connection of the work of the Marine Committee and the Committee of Commerce in exporting colonial products and in importing supplies, their accounts became inextricably confused. While running errands for the various administrative organs of Congress, the Marine Committee often at the same time ran errands of its own. A commander who had been selected to carry abroad a minister or foreign agent, might be ordered to pick up any prizes which fell in his way, or to cruise for a brief period in European waters while waiting for letters and packets from Paris addressed to Congress; or if on the other hand, it was a voyage in which dispatch was of the highest importance, he would be specifically forbidden to do these very things.

Turning now to the strictly military work of the Committee, one finds that clearness in presentation will be obtained by making a classification of naval operations. These will be divided into primary and secondary operations. A primary operation will be defined as one directed against the enemy’s naval vessels at sea. Any other naval operation whatsoever will be called a secondary one. Primary operations will be divided into major and minor operations. In major primary operations fleets of considerable size and force are matched against each other, as was the case at the battles of Santiago, Trafalgar, and Martinique. Minor primary operations are engagements between some two or three of the smaller vessels of the combatants. A good example of these is the fight between the “Bon Homme Richard” and the “Serapis.” Secondary operations are of several forms, chief of which is “commerce-destroying.” Continental vessels during a single cruise sometimes engaged in both primary and secondary operations.

In the light of the comparison which has been made showing the relative strength of the Continental and British navies, the reader does not need to be told that the Marine Committee did not engage its fleet in major primary operations. The very existence of the Continental vessels depended upon their success in keeping outside the range of the larger guns of the Royal Navy. The Marine Committee sometimes gave specific orders to its captains to avoid the British “two-deckers.” In the minor primary operations of the Revolution some thirty or thirty-five engagements may be counted. The honors here are upon the whole evenly divided. The Americans captured ten or twelve naval vessels of the enemy. With the exceptions of the frigate “Fox,” 26, captured by Captain John Manly between New England and Newfoundland; and the sloop “Drake,” 20, and the ships “Countess of Scarborough,” 20, and “Serapis,” 44, captured by Captain John Paul Jones in European waters, the prizes of the Americans were minor naval craft, averaging ten or twelve 4’s and 6’s. The British captured or destroyed about the same number of vessels as they lost, but their prizes on the average were larger and better armed vessels than were those of the Americans. Seven of them were frigates. On the other hand the British had no victory as brilliant as that of Jones off Flamborough Head.

The secondary operations of the Continental navy were more important than its primary operations. They mainly involved the protection of American commerce, the defence of certain Atlantic ports, the striking of the lines of communication of the British military forces, the attacking of the enemy’s commerce at sea, and the threatening and assailing of her unprotected coasts and ports both at home and in her outlying dependencies. Each of these forms of secondary operations will now be briefly considered.

The Committee defended American commerce by ordering its cruisers to “attack, take, burn, or destroy” the enemy’s privateers. One illustration of such orders will suffice. In November, 1778, the Committee wrote to the Navy Board at Boston that “at present we consider it an Object of importance to destroy the infamous Goodrich who has much infested our Coast, cruising with a squadron of 4, 5, or 6 armed Vessels, from 16 guns downwards, from Egg Harbour to Cape Fear in North Carolina.”[206] In its orders the Committee as a rule included the small naval ships of the enemy with the privateers. Of the three naval captains who lost their lives in the Continental service, two of them were killed in engagements with privateers. On March 4, 1778, the brigantine “Resistance,” Captain Samuel Chew, while cruising in the West India seas had a desperate and indecisive encounter with a letter of marque of 20 guns. Chew and his lieutenant, George Champlin, both of New London, were killed; Chew was a native of Virginia.[207] Late in the summer of 1778 the “General Gates,” 18, Captain John Skimmer, captured the brigantine “Montague” in an engagement in which Captain Skimmer lost his life.[208]

In addition to defending the American commerce by cruising against the privateers and small naval ships of the enemy, the Continental vessels often threw their protecting arm directly around the trade of the states. Vessels were often detailed to convoy to sea American merchantmen and packets. At times when the trade was bound for France, the Continental vessels accompanied it even as far as the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, but as a rule their services did not extend beyond a few leagues from the American coast. Sometimes the Continental vessels were ordered to cruise off the Delaware Bay, or similar channel, to guide and protect incoming shipping.

The Marine Committee coöperated with the army in the defence and in the attack of certain ports. In the campaigns around Philadelphia in 1777 and 1778 the Continental navy lost some ten vessels, including three of the thirteen original frigates; and at the siege of Charleston in 1780 it lost four vessels. The British occupation of New York caused the destruction of the two frigates built at Poughkeepsie. In 1779 a Continental vessel aided a Spanish expedition in capturing Mobile. Several times the Committee placed part of its fleet under the control of Washington and the Admiral of the French naval forces, when they were planning an attack upon some seaport held by the enemy.

In 1779 Gerard, the French minister, devised a plan which contemplated a joint expedition of the French and American fleets against the British colonies to the northward. Gerard’s purpose was “to give the King of France Halifax and Newfoundland.” In May, 1779, he consulted with Washington in his camp about the proposed expedition. By September Gerard’s plan, or a similar one, had so far matured that the Marine Committee ordered the Navy Board at Boston to prepare the Continental vessels for a three months’ cruise and to hold them ready to sail at a moment’s warning to join the French fleet, or to proceed to such other place as Washington or Count D’Estaing might direct. The Board was to provide a sufficient number of pilots for Newfoundland, Halifax, Rhode Island, and the Penobscot river. This expedition was not abandoned until November, 1779.[209]

The Committee struck at the enemy’s lines of communication between his army and navy in America, and the British Isles, Canada, the Bermudas, Florida, and the West Indies. After the transfer of the war to the Southern states in 1778 and 1779, transports running between New York and Savannah and Charleston were vulnerable craft. The capture of British transports laden with munitions of war, provisions, and troops had the advantage of obtaining for the Americans the very sinews of war, of which the enemy were deprived. When troops were captured, they could be exchanged for an equal number of American prisoners. The reader may recall that it was for the purpose of intercepting British transports that Congress fitted out the first Continental vessels in October, 1775.

The most successful capture of the enemy’s transports was made in the spring of 1779. In order to protect the trade of the Southern states, depredations upon which were most frequent and destructive, the Marine Committee in February of that year, ordered the Navy Board at Boston to send certain of the Continental vessels to sweep the coast from Cape May to the bar of South Carolina. This detail of the armed vessels was made partly to satisfy the merchants of Baltimore, who had complained to Congress that their interests were being neglected. On March 13 a fleet consisting of the “Warren,” 32, Captain J. B. Hopkins, as commodore, the “Queen of France,” 28, Captain Joseph Olney, and the “Ranger,” 18, Captain Thomas Simpson, sailed from Boston, for the coast of the Southern states. On April 7 they captured the privateer schooner, “Hibernia.” This vessel told them of the sailing of a fleet of transports from New York, bound for Brigadier-General Campbell’s army in Georgia, and laden with stores and supplies. The next day fifteen leagues off Cape Henry, Hopkins fell in with the fleet; and meeting with a trifling resistance, he made prizes of seven out of its nine vessels. These prizes were all sent to New England. On April 22, the “Queen of France” arrived in Boston with the ship “Maria,” 16, carrying eighty-four men, the schooner “Hibernia,” 8, also carrying eighty-four men, and the brigs “John,” 200 tons, “Batchelor,” 120 tons, and “Prince Frederick,” 160 tons. Another prize, His Majesty’s ship “Jason,” 16, with one hundred men, also reached Boston. The “Ranger” put into Portsmouth with the schooner “Chance” and a brig. The Marine Committee wrote to Captain Hopkins congratulating him and his fellow captains on the fortunate outcome of their cruise.[210]

The most important objective of the Marine Committee in its naval operations was the capture of England’s commerce in transit at sea. The Committee planned to intercept her sugar ships of the West Indies, her Newfoundland fishing craft, her Hudson bay fleet laden with skins and peltries, her Guineamen with cargoes of ivory and slaves, and her Mississippi trade with its lumber and furs. The Committee’s agents and the naval officers abroad hoped to ensnare the enemy’s Baltic trade, the Irish linen ships, the Brazil whaling fleet, and homeward bound East Indiamen. The sending of frigates to the Coromandel Coast to intercept the enemy’s China ships and the trade of India was seriously considered. On one occasion the Committee designed to attack English vessels bound for Canada with cargoes of “Indian goods.” But generally the blows were aimed at the fleets of rich merchantmen returning to England, for their many vessels were like honey-laden bees flying homeward to their hives.

The British fishing fleet on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and the homeward bound West Indiamen were found most vulnerable. It is not practicable for a combatant to prey upon commerce far from his base of operations. The frequent manning of prizes depletes his crews and compels him to make an early return home. The chance of prizes being retaken is increased with the distance they must travel to reach safe ports. The operations of the Continental vessels in European waters were made possible by their use of French ports as naval stations. In attacking England’s commerce the Marine Committee found most promise of substantial reward by directing its vessels to cruise during the summer or the early fall some leagues to the eastward of the Bermudas in the track of the homeward bound West Indiamen, laden with rum, sugar, cotton, coffee, and other Colonial products. These fleets sometimes consisted of as many as 200 merchantmen under the convoy of a few ships of war. Skilful seamanship found it comparatively easy to cut out a few sail. In three instances Continental vessels made captures which netted them more than one million dollars each.

Two of these fortunate cruises were made while the fleet was under the direction of the Marine Committee. On May 4, 1779, the Committee wrote to the Navy Board at Boston that it desired that the “Confederacy,” “Warren,” “Queen of France,” “Hanger,” “Jason,” “Hibernia,” and two of the lately built packets as tenders, and the “Deane,” which it should send from Philadelphia, should be joined together and sail in company to the southward and attack the sea force of the enemy on the coast of Georgia. After routing the enemy there, the fleet was to throw itself in the way of the West India ships, bound to England. A fortnight later the Committee wrote that it had reason to lay aside the expedition to Georgia, and that it was their intention to place the collected naval force in such manner as to accomplish the double purpose of intercepting the enemy’s transports, coming to and going from New York, and of attacking her homeward bound West India ships.

In accordance with the latter plan of the Committee, sometime during the summer a fleet was sent to sea from Boston, consisting of the “Providence”, 28, Captain Abraham Whipple, commodore of the fleet, the “Queen of France,” 28, Captain John P. Rathburn, and the “Ranger,” 18, Captain Thomas Simpson. In August the American vessels fell in with the Jamaica fleet, bound for London, and convoyed by a 32-gun frigate and three other armed vessels. The Americans succeeded in cutting out from the fleet ten large merchantmen, heavily laden with rum and sugar. Of the ten vessels, seven arrived at Boston and one at Cape Ann. The names of these eight ships, whose average burden was 285 tons, were as follows: “Holderness,” “Dawes,” “George,” “Friendship,” “Blenheim,” “Thetis,” “Fort William,” and “Neptune.” This was one of the richest captures which the Continental fleet made during the Revolution. The ships with their cargoes sold for more than one million dollars.[211] Early in the year the ship “General Gates” and the sloop “Providence” sent prizes into Boston which sold for £240,000.[212]

The Marine Committee threatened and attacked the enemy’s coasts and towns in the British Isles, Canada, and the West Indies. Two Continental vessels visited the mouth of the Senegal river on the west coast of Africa. An attack on the shipping of the Bermudas was ordered to be made, if it was found practicable. Nassau, New Providence, was twice captured by Continental vessels, and a third time by a Spanish fleet and a ship of war of the South Carolina navy. Robert Morris, when vice-president of the Marine Committee, planned to send a fleet of five vessels against the British possessions in the West Indies and the Floridas. The movements of Captains Wickes, Conyngham, and Jones in attacking and alarming the British Isles are well known.[213] Those expeditions against British coasts, towns, and dependencies had several objects in view. One, of course, was the capture of booty. To the extent that the expeditions were directed against the shipping and commerce of the attacked ports, their object was similar to that of fleets which cruised against shipping and commerce at sea. Another object is discovered in the thought of Morris when he planned to attack England in the West Indies. Such a move Morris believed would force the enemy to withdraw part of his fleet from the coasts of the United States for the defence of his attacked colonies; and to the extent that he did so, the states would be relieved. The cruises made in the waters around the British Isles had in view the lessening of the prestige of Great Britain, the shaking of her credit, the alarming of her inhabitants, and the raising of her marine insurance; and also the impressing of Europe with the power and courage of the new American nation, and perchance, creating a diversion in its favor. Both a psychological and a political element entered into the purpose of the cruises in British waters. They realized to both Britain and the Continent the existence of a new flag and a new state in the family of nations.

The naval plan devised by Morris, as vice-president of the Marine Committee, deserves additional notice. It was to be put into operation by John Paul Jones, with a fleet composed of the “Alfred,” “Columbus,” “Cabot,” “Hampden,” and sloop “Providence.” Jones was first to proceed to St. Christopher in the West Indies, which island was almost defenceless, capture the cannon, stores, and merchandise there deposited, and then sail for Pensacola, Florida. Morris thought Jones might find it best to pass along the south side of Hispaniola, and alarm Jamaica by putting in to some of its ports. Arriving at Pensacola, he would find it defended by two or three sloops of war, which could be easily silenced, and the town would fall into his hands with its munitions of war, including one hundred pieces of artillery. Having reduced Pensacola, Jones was to send a brigantine and sloop to cruise at the mouth of the Mississippi, in order to waylay the British merchantmen leaving there in March and April with cargoes of indigo, rice, tobacco, skins, and furs, to the value of £100,000 sterling. Returning from the Gulf, he might alarm St. Augustine, and finally he might refit in Georgia, or South or North Carolina. He was directed to carry as many marines as possible for his operations on shore.

Morris’s object in this expedition involved a nice bit of naval policy. He purposed not so much the taking of booty, as the alarming of the whole British nation, and the forcing of the enemy to withdraw some of her naval forces from the coast of the United States. “It has long been clear to me,” he said, “that our infant fleet cannot protect our coasts; and the only effectual relief it can afford us, is to attack the enemy’s defenceless places, and thereby oblige them to station more of their own ships in their own countries, or to keep them employed in following ours, and either way we are relieved so far as they do it.” Morris proposed his plan as a substitute for one of Jones, which contemplated a descent on the west coast of Africa; and to the carrying out of which the Marine Committee had given its consent. Morris thought that the same results as Jones sought could be obtained with less risk by “cruizing Windward of Barbadoes as all their Guinea Men fall in there.”[214]

The Marine Committee naturally planned and carried out naval enterprises which had in view two or more forms of secondary operations. Sometimes it ordered its vessels to take stations at sea where they would be in position to intercept both the West India trade, and the enemy’s transports plying between New York and England. Often it left the specific object of a cruise to the Navy Board at Boston, or to the commander of a ship, and issued merely the general order to proceed to sea and cruise against the enemy. Any plan of the Committee which was directed towards meeting an immediate emergency was rarely carried out. The movements of the vessels were rendered uncertain by reason of depleted crews, deficient equipments, and the position of the British fleets. The Committee was often in the dark as to the exact state of a vessel in New England with reference to its preparation for sea. Consequently it made many plans and gave many orders which could not be put into operation. The telegraph, cable, and rapid postal services have revolutionized the direction of naval movements.

In prize-getting the Marine Committee’s most successful years were 1776 and 1779. Beginning with 1776 the number of prizes taken by the Continental vessels for each year of the Committee’s incumbency was, respectively, sixty, twenty, twenty, and fifty. The fifty prizes captured in 1779 were probably more valuable than the one hundred taken in the other three years. As regards the number of Continental vessels lost, the years 1776 and 1779, when the fleet was decreased by but three ships, again prove to be the most fortunate years. In 1777 and 1778 twenty-six vessels, ten of which were frigates, were lost.[215] With the memory of the misfortunes of the past two years in mind, well might the Marine Committee write, towards the end of 1778, of “the bad success that hath hitherto attended our Navy.” In May, 1778, it wrote to the Navy Board at Boston, that the “Committee are entirely of Opinion with you that it will be proper to send out a Collected force to Cruise against our enemies that we recover the injured reputation of our Navy and the losses we have sustained.”[216]

In 1779 the navy retrieved the bad effects of some of its disasters. Its changed fortunes can in part be easily accounted for. The transference of the scene of war to the Southern states late in 1778, removed a part of the British land and sea forces from the North, and thereby gave the Naval Department a freer hand in its operations, and rendered the movements of the fleet less perilous. The Department this year had larger success in manning and equipping its fleet. It was, therefore, able not only to send the armed vessels to sea more frequently, but also to send several of them cruising in company. Such little fleets had a decided advantage over single cruisers, both in defensive and offensive operations. No doubt, too, the experiences and past failures of the navy were now telling in a better understanding of naval tactics, and were bringing about a proper subordination and concert of action between officers and men. Possibly, something should be attributed to the Department’s increased experience in marine affairs.

The reader has probably already drawn parallels, far from fanciful, between the solutions of the naval problems of the Revolution made by the Marine Committee and those of the Spanish-American war made by the Naval Board of Strategy at Washington. The naval problems presented to the two bodies were in certain respects widely different. Equally striking similarities appear. In both wars the United States was fighting a European power with possessions in the West Indies and in the Asiatic seas. The attacks on Nassau and Morris’s proposed expedition against the British West Indies correspond to the movements of the American fleet in the West Indies during the late war. The operations of Wickes, Conyngham, and Jones off the coasts of the British Isles are matched by the proposed descent on the Spanish coast in 1898. The plan made in 1777 to send a fleet of frigates to Mauritius and from thence to operate against the English trade in the Indian seas looks singularly like Admiral Dewey’s movement from Hong Kong against Manila.

The hope is to be cherished that America will never again cross swords with her kin beyond seas, but if moved by some untoward fate she should, it is not too much to say that a Naval Board of Strategy at Washington will devise plans of naval attack and defence quite similar to those of the Marine Committee. The weak spots in a nation’s armor often prove to be its outlying dependencies, especially when they are situated near the enemy’s coast. The principles of naval strategy which led the Marine Committee either to attack, or to plan to attack, Canada, the Newfoundland fisheries, the Bermudas, and the British West Indies, are still operative, notwithstanding the vast changes which the past century and a quarter have witnessed in the methods of naval warfare, and in the distribution of the territory of the Western Hemisphere among nations, new as well as old. In a world of change the fundamental principles of naval strategy remain immutable.