The Navy of the American Revolution

by Charles Oscar Paullin

The navy of Maryland rendered miscellaneous services. It convoyed merchantmen, imported and distributed arms and provisions, transported troops, watched the fleet of the enemy to report its movements, and defended the trade and coasts of the state. Except when used for commercial purposes, Maryland’s vessels rarely passed outside the Capes at the mouth of the Chesapeake. Attempts which were made to bring about the coöperation of the Maryland and Virginia fleets did not often succeed. A few small prizes were taken, but none of them were of much value. In the fall of 1776 the “Defence,” Captain Cook, cruised as far southward as the West Indies, and captured five small prizes, laden with logwood, mahogany, indigo, rum, and sugar.[603] Several sharp encounters between the vessels of Maryland and the enemy took place in the Bay. As early as March, 1776, the “Defence,” 22, Captain James Nicholson, checked the advance up the Chesapeake of the British sloop-of-war “Otter,” 10, and recaptured several prizes.[604] Now and then attempts were made to dislodge the British from some of the islands in the Bay. So late as the latter part of March, 1783, the state sent a small schooner and two barges against a rendezvous of the British on Devil’s Island, one of the Tangiers.[605]

On November 30, 1782, the Battle of the Barges occurred near the Tangier islands. The mortality of the Americans in this engagement was relatively greater than in any other sea fight of the Revolution. In its carnage and in the bravery displayed by the Americans, this fight does not suffer from a comparison with that of Jones off Flamborough Head. The Maryland fleet, which had been joined by a volunteer Virginia barge, was commanded by Commodore Whaley of the barge “Protector.” The British fleet of barges was under the command of Captain Kidd of the “Kidnapper,” mounting 18-pounders. For one cause or another the “Protector” was the only American barge which engaged the British fleet. While the “Protector” inflicted much damage on the vessels of her adversary, she naturally was unable to fight long against such tremendous odds. An extract from the simple and pathetic narrative of the fight written by Colonel John Cropper, a volunteer Virginia officer on board the “Protector,” possesses interest: “Commodore Whaley was shot down a little before the enemy boarded, acting the part of a cool, intrepid, gallant officer. Captain Joseph Handy fell nigh the same time, nobly fighting with one arm, after the loss of the other. Captain Levin Handy was badly wounded. There went into action in the Protector sixty-five men, twenty-five of them were killed and drowned, twenty-nine were wounded, some of whom are since dead, and eleven only escaped being wounded, most of whom leaped into the water to save themselves from the explosion.” Colonel Cropper, to whom, on the death of Whaley, the command of the “Protector” fell, was wounded three times, “and after the surrender knocked down by a four-pound rammer.”[606]

During the last years of the war Maryland in her attempts to defend the Chesapeake, obtained as many as ten barges.[607] She had also in the naval service at this time a schooner, the “Flying Fish.” The end of her navy may be dated with the statute passed by her legislature in May, 1783, which authorized the Intendant to sell “the galley and the barges.”[608]

North Carolina’s initial step in procuring a naval armament was taken on December 21, 1775, when her Council of Safety resolved to fit out three armed vessels for the defence of the trade of the state. It appointed three Boards of Commissioners, each of which was to immediately purchase, arm, man, and victual a vessel. The board for Cape Fear was composed of five men; for Newbern, of eight; and for Edenton, of six.[609] Since it proved difficult to assemble a quorum of the Newbern Board, the Council of Safety in June, 1776, vested its powers in three of its members.[610] In May, 1776, the Provincial Congress fixed the monthly wages of officers, seamen, and marines. Captains were to be paid £10; lieutenants, masters, captains of marines, and doctors, £8 each; marines, £2, 13s., 4d.; “seamen complete,” £4; “seamen not complete,” £3.[611]

By October, 1776, the Cape Fear Board had fitted out the brigantine “Washington;” the Newbern Board, the brigantine “Pennsylvania Farmer;” and the Edenton Board, the brigantine “King Tammany.” The Council of Safety now ordered these three vessels to protect the trade of the state at Ocracoke Bar, and to proceed against the enemy’s Jamaicamen homeward bound from the West Indies. “It may be necessary to inform you,” it wrote on October 1 to Captain Joshua Hampstead of the “Pennsylvania Farmer,” “that the Jamaica fleet will sail for Europe about the middle of this month under the convoy of a twenty-gun ship only, from the best intelligence we can obtain.”[612]

For one reason or another these three vessels accomplished very little. For a long time the “Washington,” Captain Edward Ingraham, could not obtain a crew. The “Pennsylvania Farmer,” Captain Joshua Hampstead, was idle during the summer of 1776, for lack of shot. James Davis, one of the Commissioners for fitting out this vessel, made serious accusations against his fellow Commissioners and the officers and crew of the vessel. As Davis had suffered real or supposed injuries at their hands, his words no doubt must be heavily discounted. In October, 1776, he wrote that the “Pennsylvania Farmer” lay in Newbern “with 110 men on board at the Expence of near Forty Pounds per day, upwards of six months; in the most inglorious, inactive, and dissolute state that perhaps was ever suffered in any Country.” The crew of the vessel consisted of “men of all nations and conditions, English, Irish, Scotch, Indians, Men of Wars Men, and the most abandoned sett of wretches ever collected together. Two of the officers broke open the Gun Room, and with a number of the men went off with the Boat, with Intent to join Lord Dunmore’s fleet, and actually reached Currituck County. They were apprehended, and are still at large on board. They have wasted near 100 pounds of powder in wantonly firing at and bringing to all Boats, Canoes, and Vessels of every sort, even Passengers in the Ferry Boat have been insulted. Capt. Thos. Shine of the Militia, with his Company on board coming up to the General Muster, was fired on and a ball passed within a few inches of his Arm.”[613] These are but few of the derelictions contained in Davis’s remarkable list. His overstatement of his case causes one to suspect that he was not entirely free from malice.

By December, 1777, the “Washington” was ordered to be sold; and commissioners had been appointed to load the other two vessels and send them on voyages to foreign ports. In April, 1778, the legislature decided to sell the “Pennsylvania Farmer.” On May 30 this vessel at a public sale in Edenton “was cried out by John Blackburn on Mr. Joseph Hewes, after which Mr. Hewes denied having bid the sum which she was cried out at.”[614]

No other subject of naval interest engaged the attention of North Carolina so much as the defence of Ocracoke Inlet. It is recalled that the waters of Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds are separated from the Atlantic by a long sandbar, which is only at a few points broken by inlets. These connect the waters of the Atlantic with the waters of the Sound. The most important inlet at the time of the Revolution was that of Ocracoke. The protecting and the keeping open of this entrance was a matter of importance not only to North Carolina, but to Virginia and the Continental Congress, as well. Most of the foreign trade of Newbern and Edenton, the two main ports of the state, passed through this inlet. In a similar way, the trade of Southern Virginia, outward or inward bound, found it convenient to use this channel. In the first years of the Revolution, especially in 1778, not a few goods coming from foreign marts, and destined for the Continental Army, rather than risk capture off the entrance to the Chesapeake or the Delaware Bay, entered Ocracoke, passed on through Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds into Chowan River, and thence by the branches of this river to the town of South Quay, in southern Virginia, near the confluence of the Nottaway and Blackwater rivers. From South Quay the goods were carried by wagons to Suffolk on the Nansemond, and thence by boat up the Nansemond into the James. This route constituted the southern division of the so-called “Inland Navigation.” It was along this road that North Carolina salt pork and beef, and shoes made by North Carolina Quakers, passed northward on their way to the “Grand Army.” In 1778 and 1779 South Quay and Suffolk were important entrepôts for Continental goods.

Since the keeping open of communication through Ocracoke Inlet was of importance to both North Carolina and Virginia, the two states concerted a joint naval armament for this purpose. On May 9, 1776, the North Carolina Provincial Congress appointed Allen and Thomas Jones to attend the Provincial Congress of Virginia, “for the purpose of recommending to them the expediency of fitting out two Armed Vessels at the expense of that Colony, to act in conjunction with the armed vessels already fitted out by this Colony for the protection of the trade at Ocracoke.”[615] As her part of the joint undertaking, Virginia agreed to construct at South Quay two galleys, to be employed in the defence of the Inlet.

Virginia carried out her promise, and built at the “South Quay ship yard” two ships, the “Caswell” and “Washington.”[616] North Carolina ordered her brigantines to defend Ocracoke; and she voted £2,000 towards the equipping of Virginia’s ships, and appointed commissioners to invest this money in anchors, guns, rigging, and canvas.[617] Finally, as we shall see, she maintained at her expense one of the Virginia ships on the station at Ocracoke for a considerable period. She did not, however, meet Virginia’s expectations, which state several times expressed the belief that North Carolina had not done her share in keeping up the joint establishment.[618]