Notwithstanding this revolution in naval science, a consideration of the conditions of the Continental naval service and of the naval policy of the Marine Committee has to-day a practical value for naval experts. Certain fundamental principles in naval science do not change. Captain Mahan, in his “Influence of Sea Power upon History,” has pointed out that, while naval tactics vary with the improvements in the motive power and armament of fleets, the basic principles of naval strategy do not. They are as enduring as the order of nature. For example, one cannot conceive that there will come a time when an inversion will be made of the strategic principle, that an enemy should be struck at his weak point. Captain Mahan even finds it worth while, for the benefit of his fellow-experts, to set forth with some detail the naval strategy of the Carthaginian wars.
When America, in these first years of the twentieth century, makes an invoice of her resources, she counts first her great prairies of the Mississippi basin, her rich mines of the Alleghanies and Rockies, and her wealth of manufactories and their products. In 1775 her assets were of a different sort. America then was a mere strip of seacoast, cut into a series of peninsulas by the lower courses of a number of navigable rivers. Her interests and her wealth then were much more largely maritime than now. Attention has already been directed to the wide pursuit of commerce, shipbuilding, fishing, and whaling in New England. It remains, to be said that in the Middle and Southern colonies commerce and shipbuilding were important industries. During the Revolution Virginia put more naval ships afloat than any other colony. In the colonial period communication between the towns of the colonies was best by water. The inhabitants of America, during this period, were amphibious. They have lost this quality, for their character is now fixed by the “West,” and not by the Atlantic seaboard. In 1775 America had, relatively, many more seamen than in 1898.
In the light of these facts it seems somewhat singular that the Revolutionary navy was forced to spend most of its days in port, vainly trying to enlist seamen for its depleted crews. To be sure the lack of sufficient armament, naval stores, and provisions was felt, but it was the lack of sailors that constituted the chief obstacle to the success of the Continental navy. Those vessels that finally weighed anchor were wanting as a rule in this prime naval requisite. The same causes that prevented seamen from enlisting lowered the quality of those that did enlist, and kept them from entering for longer than a single cruise. A ship’s complement of sailors was often ill-assorted. Seamen were improvised from landsmen; captured British seamen were coaxed into service; and for one cause or another many nationalities at times shipped side by side. These conditions made for insubordination, and even mutiny. On one occasion seventy or eighty British sailors, who were enlisted on board the Continental frigate “Alliance,” bound for France, planned to mutiny and carry the frigate into an English port. In order to obtain seamen many measures were resorted to by Congress, the states, the Marine Committee, Navy Boards, and commanders of vessels. Premiums for importing seamen were given to foreigners;[185] wages were advanced to recruits;[186] attempts were made to place embargoes upon privateers;[187] bounties were paid to seamen enlisting for a year;[188] inducements were offered to those captured from the enemy to get them to enter the American service;[189] some seamen were impressed; glowing advertisements were inserted in the public prints;[190] and broadsides, which cleverly recited the many advantages of the Continental service, were displayed in sundry taverns.[191]
All these efforts were defeated by the seductive allurements of privateering. The Revolutionary Congress was poor and paid poor wages. After its seamen had enlisted, they were toled away by mercenary privateersmen. These same privateersmen were accused of taking the naval stores and the artisans of Congress in order to fit out their own ships. The owners and commanders of privateers, as they received the whole of their captures, could afford to treat their crews liberally. It was generally asserted that they paid higher wages than did Congress or the states. Privateering was more popular, more elastic, and more irregular than the other naval services. When no one was looking, parts of cargoes could more readily be appropriated for private use without waiting the tedious process of the admiralty courts. Privateersmen could devote all their time and energy to commerce-destroying, unfettered by the miscellaneous duties which often fell to naval ships.
The backbone of the privateering interest was in New England. Silas Deane said in 1785 that four out of every five of the privateers of the Revolution came from the states north and east of the Delaware river. This probably overstates the proportion in favor of the northern states.[192] Pennsylvania and Maryland did considerable business, but farther to the southward the industry was less flourishing. The Virginia privateers did little. Massachusetts sent out one-third of all the privateers. From 1777 until 1783, inclusive, the Massachusetts Council issued 998 commissions. In 1779, 184 prizes captured by privateers were libelled in the three admiralty courts of this state. The average burden of these captured vessels was one hundred tons. Rhode Island’s best year was probably in 1776, when thirty-eight vessels were libelled at Providence. A list of 202 privateers has been made out for Connecticut. In 1779 twenty-nine vessels taken from the British by privateers were libelled in the Pennsylvania court of admiralty. During the last six years of the war Maryland issued about 250 commissions. Boston was the chief center for fitting out privateers and for selling their prizes, although towns like Salem and Marblehead did a thriving business.[193]
Not a few of the failures and misfortunes of the Continental navy are to be laid at the doors of the Yankee privateersmen, whose love for Mammon exceeded that for their country.[194] A more patriotic course was to have been expected of certain substantial merchants who embarked in the business of commerce-destroying. But on the other hand, one might easily be too severe on many bold, simple, seafaring folk. The war, which deprived them of their gainful pursuits at sea, now pointed the way, as a recompense, to a new and attractive calling. Wives and babies were still to be fed, and plans for sweethearts to be realized. The new trade was as alluring as a lottery. Had not a neighbor drawn a competence sufficient for almost a lifetime by a successful haul of the enemy’s rich West Indiamen? It was true that another neighbor, who but recently sailed proudly for sea with women-folk waving a last good-bye, now languished in a prison-ship off New York, or was starving in the old Mill prison at Plymouth, England. “But then a man must take his chances,” each privateersman argued, “and it may be I, who by a fortunate cruise shall bring home enough Jamaica rum to fairly float my schooner, and every pint of it is as good as gold coin.”
Due credit must always be given to the hardy and venturesome privateersmen for supplying the army and navy with the sinews of war, which they captured. To be sure, if Congress or the states wished their captured property, it was to be had by paying a good round price for it in the open market. Even here the government’s agents sometimes suspected collusions between the buyers and the agents of the captors to run up prices to the disadvantage of the government.[195] The privateersmen were engaged not in patriotic, but business ventures. Could one-half of this irregular service have been enlisted in the Continental and state navies, the other half could not have been better employed than in its work of distressing the enemy’s commerce, transports, and small letters of marque. Zealous eulogists of the privateers have overrun the cup of their merit. They have not always pointed out that the number of American privateers, merchantmen, fishermen, and whalemen captured by British privateers and small naval craft was comparable to the number of similar British vessels taken by the American privateers. The prison ships and naval prisons of the enemy at New York, in Canada, the British West Indies, and England were at times crowded with Americans captured at sea.[196] A few of these men England enlisted in her navy; and with others she manned a whaling-fleet for the coast of Brazil composed of seventeen vessels. It is, however, worthy of note that the supplies captured from the British were often almost indispensable to the colonists; while similar captures made by the British had to the captors little value.
Another factor in the naval situation of the Americans was the existence of state navies in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The fleet of Massachusetts, comprising sixteen armed vessels, was the most active and effective of the state fleets. The Virginia navy numbering about fifty vessels, was poorly equipped and rendered little service. These fleets were made up of all sorts of naval craft; sailing vessels variously rigged, fire-ships, floating batteries, barges, row-galleys with and without sails, half-galleys, and boats of all sizes. Most of this craft was designed for the defence of coasts, rivers, and towns. This was especially true of the galleys, which were shallow vessels, some seventy or eighty feet in length, carrying two or three cannon, sometimes as large as 36’s or 42’s. Only some sixty of these vessels of the state navies were well adapted for deep-sea navigation.[197]
To a limited extent both privateers and state vessels were placed at the service of the Marine Committee. There were cruises, expeditions, and defences of towns, in which two, or the three, services participated. In such cases the senior Continental captain was regularly the ranking officer, or the commodore of the fleet, as it was then expressed. To the extent that state vessels and privateers might be concerted with the Continental vessels, it would seem at first blush that they undoubtedly were elements of naval strength to the Marine Committee. This was by no means true. These concerted expeditions proved disappointing, and when too late the Committee became wary of them. Proper subordination, upon which naval success so much depends, could not be obtained in these mixed fleets. The commander of a state vessel or the master of a privateer, for aught either could see, subtended as large an angle in maritime affairs, as an officer of Congress, which body was to them nebulous, uncertain, and irresolute.
If the location and physical form of colonial America with reference to the sea tended to develop a maritime people, they also made most difficult the problems of naval defence. As has been pointed out, the territory of the revolting colonies comprised a narrow band of seacoast divided into a number of peninsulas. All the large towns were seaports. Had the peninsulas been islands, their defence against the great sea-power of England would have been an impossibility. The connections by land on the west side of the thirteen colonies gave Washington a most valuable line of communications from Canada to Florida. Had the revolting territory lain compactly, approaching a square in shape, with a narrow frontage on the sea, its naval defence would have been a simple problem.