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.