The Navy of the American Revolution

by Charles Oscar Paullin

On September 25, 1778, Congress extended the advantages of the law to all persons whose disabilities were acquired previous to August 26, 1776.[169] It is to be carefully noted that this was a pension for disabilities and not for service—a fundamental classification in pension law. An agitation for a service pension for life for the officers of the army was made in and out of Congress for a long time, until in 1780 it was at last successful.[170] Such emoluments were not at this time granted to naval officers; it was probably argued that their sharing in captured prizes offset the pensions of the army officers. Then, too, the army had ways of gaining the attention of Congress that the weak and insignificant navy did not possess.

Few more important duties fall to naval offices than the enforcing of discipline in the navy by means of naval courts. Adams’s rules of November 28, 1775, made provision for holding courts-martial, but not courts of enquiry, which are a sort of grand jury or inquest. They also provided that courts-martial should consist of at least six naval officers, with six officers of marines, if so many of the latter were convenient to the court.[171] The Committee and Navy Boards at times found it impossible to assemble so many officers. No definite procedure in investigating the loss of vessels was prescribed by Adams’s rules. Additional legislation was therefore demanded. On May 6, 1778, Congress adopted new regulations on naval courts, which were to be operative for one year.[172] They provided that, when a vessel of war was lost by capture or otherwise, a court of enquiry should be held, “consisting of that navy board which shall, by the marine committee of Congress, be directed to proceed therein, or any three persons that such navy board may appoint.” If the court of enquiry found that the loss of the vessel was caused by the negligence or malconduct of any commissioned officer, the Navy Board might suspend such officer pending his trial by a court-martial, which, in the event that six naval officers could not be assembled, was to consist of five men appointed by the Navy Board. The permitting of civilians to sit upon naval courts is the salient feature of these new resolutions, and is an anomaly in naval judicature. They also provided that in cases where one or more vessels out of a fleet were lost by capture or otherwise, the commanders of the escaping vessels were to be tried by a similar procedure. If a court-martial found that the loss of a vessel was caused by the cowardice or treachery of the commanding officer, it was directed to inflict the death penalty. On August 19, 1778, the procedure established on May 6 was extended to “all offences and misdemeanors in the marine department.”[173] The proceedings of courts-martial were forwarded to the Marine Committee, which laid them, together with its recommendations thereupon, before Congress for final action.

During the incumbency of the Marine Committee a number of interesting and important naval trials were held. Captain Thomas Thompson in 1778 and Captain Dudley Saltonstall in 1779 were broken by courts-martial. Other captains who lost their vessels were tried, but escaped so severe a punishment. The cases growing out of Commodore Hopkins’s expedition to New Providence, his engagement with the “Glasgow,” and the immediately succeeding events of his fleet in the spring of 1776 deserve more extended notice. During the summer of 1776 the Marine Committee ordered Commodore Hopkins and Captains Dudley Saltonstall and Abraham Whipple to leave the fleet, which was then stationed in Rhode Island, and to come to Philadelphia for trial. After calling before it the inferior officers of the “Alfred” and “Columbus,” and hearing their complaints against the two captains, the Committee reported to Congress on July 11 that the charge against Captain Saltonstall was not well founded, and that the charge against Captain Whipple “amounts to nothing more than a rough, indelicate mode of behaviour to his marine officers.” Congress ordered the two captains to repair to their commands, and recommended Captain Whipple “to cultivate harmony with his officers.”[174]

Commodore Hopkins was not to get off so easily. His whole conduct since he left Philadelphia early in January, 1776, was investigated. The principal charge against him was the disobeying of the instructions of the Naval Committee of January 5, 1776, to attack the forces of the enemy in the region of Virginia and the Carolinas. Hopkins based his defence on the statement that the enemy in that region had become too strong to attack by the time his fleet had sailed on February 17, and also on a certain clause in his instructions granting him discretionary powers.[175] After the Marine Committee had investigated the case, and reported upon it, Congress, on August 12, took into consideration the “instructions given to Commodore Hopkins, his examination and answers to the Marine Committee, and the report of the Marine Committee thereupon; also, the farther defence by him made, and the testimony of the witnesses.” On the 15th, Congress came to the resolution: “That the said commodore Hopkins, during his cruise to the southward, did not pay due regard to the tenor of his instructions ... and, that his reasons for not going from Providence immediately to the Carolinas, are by no means satisfactory.” The next day Congress resolved, “that the said conduct of commodore Hopkins deserves the censure of this house, and this house does accordingly censure him.”[176]

This action seems more severe than the facts justify. John Adams, who defended Hopkins, had with difficulty prevented Congress from cashiering the Commodore. According to Adams’s view, Hopkins was “pursued and persecuted by that anti-New-England spirit which haunted Congress in many other of their proceedings, as well as in this case.”[177] The action of Congress may be interpreted differently. Hopkins had not met the expectations of Congress or the Marine Committee. As the head of the fleet, blame naturally fell upon him, whether he deserved it or not. He had his shortcomings as a naval officer, and failure magnified them. By placing the blame upon him, the skirts of Congress, of the Marine Committee, and of the other naval officers were cleared, and the hopes of a few self-interested men were brightened.

Commodore Hopkins’s failure to carry out the plans of the Marine Committee during the fall of 1776, together with the partial inaction of the fleet under his command, increased his disfavor with Congress and the Marine Committee. His praiseworthy endeavors to man and prepare his fleet for sea won for him the enmity of the owners of privateers at Providence, for his success would mean the taking of men and materials sorely needed by the privateersmen. Hopkins’s intemperate language, lack of tact, and naval misfortunes bred a spirit of discontent, and gave an excuse for insubordination among his inferior officers. Encouraged by the discontented privateersmen of Providence, ten of the inferior officers of the “Warren,” the Commodore’s flagship, signed a petition and certain letters containing complaints and charges against Hopkins, and sent their documents to the Marine Committee. They were taken to Philadelphia by the chief “conspirator,” Captain John Grannis of the marines. These documents asserted that Hopkins had called the members of the Marine Committee and of Congress “ignorant fellows-lawyers, clerks-persons who don’t know how to govern men;” that he was “remarkably addicted to profane swearing;” that he had “treated prisoners in a most inhuman and barbarous manner;” that he was a “hindrance to the proper manning of the fleet;” and that “his conversation is at times so wild and orders so unsteady that I have sometimes thought he was not in his right mind.” Besides these accusations, there were a few others of even less substantial character.[178]

On March 25, 1777, the Marine Committee laid before Congress the complaints and charges against Commodore Hopkins, and on the next day Congress took them into consideration; whereupon it resolved that “Esek Hopkins be immediately, and he is hereby, suspended from his command in the American navy.”[179] Hopkins remained suspended until January 2, 1778. The Journals of Congress for this date contain the following entry: “Congress having no farther occasion for the service of Esek Hopkins, esq. who, on the 22nd of December, 1775, was appointed commander in chief of the fleet fitted out by the naval committee, Resolved, That the said Esek Hopkins, esq. be dismissed from the service of the United States.”[180]

Hopkins’s suspension and removal did not in any way improve the navy. Indeed, it was far less fortunate in 1777, than it had been in 1776. That its chief officer should have been suspended without a hearing, on flimsy charges, offered by a small number of inferior officers whose leader was guilty of insubordination, convicts Congress of acting with undue haste and of doing a possible injustice, and arouses the suspicion that it was not actuated wholly by a calm and unbiased judgment. The wording of Hopkins’s dismissal seems needlessly curt, and harsh. Since Hopkins had lost the confidence of Congress, the Marine Committee, and many of his countrymen, his removal from the office of commander-in-chief to that of a captain might have been justified.

On January 13, 1778, Hopkins brought a suit for libel against the ten officers concerned in the “conspiracy,” fixing his damages at £10,000. On July 30 Congress passed a resolution for defraying the reasonable expenses of the ten officers in defending their suit.[181] The case was tried before a jury in the Inferior Court of Common Pleas of Rhode Island. The decision was unfavorable to Hopkins, as the jury brought in a verdict for “the defendants and their costs.” The victory of the opposition to the Commodore was complete. He had not, however, lost the confidence of his fellow townsmen. He served in the General Assembly of his state, representing North Providence from 1777 until 1786, and he was from 1777 until the end of the Revolution a member of the Rhode Island Council of War.[182] No one who knew Hopkins intimately ever doubted his courage, his patriotism, or his honesty of purpose.

The arrival off the Delaware Capes, on July 8, 1778, of twelve sail of the line and four frigates under the command of Count D’Estaing, Vice-Admiral of France, threw additional work upon the Naval Department. No sooner did the Marine Committee learn of the presence of the French, than it exerted itself to supply the table of its naval guests with eatables and drinkables. Casks of fresh water, several hundred barrels of bread and flour, and a small supply of fresh provisions, were at once sent to the Count, and the Committee ordered a commissary to collect for the use of the French fleet fifty bullocks, seven hundred sheep, a number of poultry, and a quantity of vegetables. After the ill-starred expedition against Rhode Island in August, 1778, when the French fleet put into Boston for repairs, its provisioning again became a care to the Naval Department. The Marine Committee ordered three thousand barrels of flour to be sent on from Albany for the use of the French.[183]