Having decided late in 1775 to make a naval defence, Congress early in 1776 took into consideration the establishing of one or more bases for naval operations.[198] There were needed one or more strongly fortified ports where the Continental fleet and its prizes would be comparatively secure from attack, and where the armed vessels could equip, man, and refit. The ports best adapted for naval stations were Boston, New York, Philadelphia, some point on or near the James river in Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina. Lesser towns had their advocates and their hopes. In February, 1776, Gurdon Saltonstall of Connecticut wrote to Silas Deane that New London would be “the Asylum of Cont. Navey,” for “one they must have of necessity.”[199] The Southern ports were not available for several reasons, but chiefly on account of their distance from the center of maritime interests in New England. New York was occupied by the British. Philadelphia had many points in its favor, not the least of which was the location there of Congress and the Marine Committee. Its occupation for a time by the enemy in 1777 and 1778, and the close watch which his armed vessels maintained at the mouth of Delaware Bay, greatly impaired its usefulness as a harbor of refuge for the Continental vessels. Boston was by far the most available port. After its abandonment by the British in March, 1776, and the shifting of the theater of the war first to the Middle and later to the Southern states, it was left comparatively free from British interference. It was the naval emporium of the Revolution, where naval stores, armament and equipment for vessels of war, seamen, and ships could be procured, if they were to be had at all.
The British had naval bases in America that left little to be desired. When they seized New York in September, 1776, they obtained not only a military point of the highest strategic value, but also a secure naval station for fitting out and refitting their privateers and naval ships. From New York, centrally situated with reference to the revolting colonies, their vessels proceeded along the Atlantic coast both northward and southward on the outlook for American merchantmen, privateers, and naval craft. Their favorite patrolling grounds were off the entrances of Delaware, Chesapeake, and Narragansett bays. British vessels were also to be found off Boston Bay, Ocracoke Inlet, Cape Fear, Charleston, and Savannah. The British occupation of Newport from 1776 to 1779, and of Savannah from 1778, and Charleston from 1780, to the end of the war, afforded other convenient stations for British operations against the shipping of the colonies. St. Augustine was a port of much importance in the movements of the enemy’s smaller ships. The naval stations at Halifax, Jamaica, and the Bermudas, while not so convenient as those enumerated, were sources of naval strength to the British. Halifax was a base for the naval operations against New England. It scarcely needs to be said that the ports mentioned were in a way secondary bases of operations, and that England’s center for ships, seamen, and supplies of all sorts was the British Isles.
From this account of the respective naval stations in America of the two combatants, one proceeds naturally to a comparison of their fleets. The rude naval craft of the Americans, two-thirds of which were made-over merchantmen, was outclassed by the vessels of the Royal Navy at every point. Disregarding the fleets of Washington and Arnold, there were during the Revolution fifty-six armed vessels in the American navy, mounting on the average about twenty guns. The vessels in the British navy when the Revolution opened in 1775 numbered 270, and when it closed, 468.[200] Of this latter number, 174 were ships of the line, each mounting between sixty and one hundred guns. The naval force of the Americans when it was at its maximum in the fall of 1776 consisted of 27 ships, mounting on the average twenty guns.[201] At the same time the British had on the American station, besides a number of small craft, 71 ships, which mounted on the average twenty-eight guns.[202] Of these, two were 64’s; one, a 60; seven, 50’s; and three, 44’s. The British vessels, being so much larger than the American, were naturally armed with much heavier guns. Very few 18-pounders were to be found in the Continental navy. The frigates were usually mounted with 12’s, 9’s, and 6’s; and many of the smaller craft with 6’s and 4’s. The guns on the larger British ships mounted 18’s, 24’s, 32’s, and 42’s.
An exhibition of figures showing the difference in size between one of the largest of the frigates built by the Marine Committee in 1776 and a typical 100-gun ship of the line of the Royal Navy is interesting not only by way of comparison, but also as giving a notion of the size of Revolutionary naval craft. The figures in feet for the American 32-gun frigate, “Hancock,” and for the British 100-gun ship, “Victory,” respectively, were as follows: Length of gun deck, 137 and 186; length of keel, 116 and 151; width of beam, 34 and 52; depth, 12 and 22. The tonnage of the “Hancock’s” companion frigate, the “Boston,” was 515 tons; of the “Alfred,” the first ship fitted out by Congress, 200 tons.[203] Continental naval craft, such as the “Cabot,” “Wasp,” and “Fly,” were smaller still than the “Alfred.”
The number of seamen and marines in the Continental navy is believed not to have exceeded at any time three thousand men. The exact number of commissioned officers in the Continental navy and marine corps may not as yet have been ascertained. Owing to the diffusion of the power of appointment, the Naval Department of the Revolution seems to have prepared no perfect list of its officers. The best list of commissioned officers, and one that in all probability needs few corrections was compiled in 1794 in the Auditor’s Office, Department of the Treasury.[204] This gives the names of 1 commander-in-chief, 45 captains, and 132 lieutenants, or 178 commissioned officers in all, in the navy proper; and 1 major, 31 captains, and 91 lieutenants, or 123 commissioned officers, in the marine corps. With the exception of the years 1776 and 1777, when the total number of officers in actual service was about one-half of the above figures, the number of officers at sea or attached to vessels in ports was much less than one-half. In 1902 the American navy consisted of 899 commissioned officers of the line, arranged in eight grades.
In 1775 the British navy contained 18,000 seamen and marines, and when the war closed in 1783 this number had risen to 110,000. The total “extra” and “ordinary” expenses of the Royal Navy from 1775 to 1783, as voted by Parliament, amounted to £8,386,000.[205]
Both Continental and state naval services suffered from the lack of esprit de corps, naval traditions, and a proper subordination and concert of action between officers and crews. Bravery is often a poor substitute for organization and naval experience and skill. Navies can be grown, but not created. The quality of the Continental naval officers, diluted it is true by the presence of a few “political skippers,” was upon the whole as high as the circumstances of their choice and the naval experience of the country admitted. Many of them were drawn from the merchant service, and a few had had some months’ experience in state navies. Six captains appointed by Washington entered the service of the Marine Committee.
The vessels of the Continental navy were procured and managed under several Continental auspices. The Marine Committee, with its predecessor and its successors in naval administration was the chief naval administrative organ of the Revolutionary government. We have already seen, however, that Washington fitted out one fleet in New England and another in New York; and that Arnold fought with still another fleet, one of the most important naval engagements of the Revolution. In a succeeding chapter we shall find that the American representatives in France, who were responsible to the Foreign Office of Congress, and the Continental agent at New Orleans, who worked chiefly under the Committee of Commerce, fitted out fleets, and were vested with important naval duties. At one and the same time three committees of Congress, the Marine Committee, the Committee of Foreign Affairs, and the Committee of Commerce, were fitting out armed vessels.
FOOTNOTES:
[185] Journals of Continental Congress, April 17, 1776.