The most successful capture of the enemy’s transports was made in the spring of 1779. In order to protect the trade of the Southern states, depredations upon which were most frequent and destructive, the Marine Committee in February of that year, ordered the Navy Board at Boston to send certain of the Continental vessels to sweep the coast from Cape May to the bar of South Carolina. This detail of the armed vessels was made partly to satisfy the merchants of Baltimore, who had complained to Congress that their interests were being neglected. On March 13 a fleet consisting of the “Warren,” 32, Captain J. B. Hopkins, as commodore, the “Queen of France,” 28, Captain Joseph Olney, and the “Ranger,” 18, Captain Thomas Simpson, sailed from Boston, for the coast of the Southern states. On April 7 they captured the privateer schooner, “Hibernia.” This vessel told them of the sailing of a fleet of transports from New York, bound for Brigadier-General Campbell’s army in Georgia, and laden with stores and supplies. The next day fifteen leagues off Cape Henry, Hopkins fell in with the fleet; and meeting with a trifling resistance, he made prizes of seven out of its nine vessels. These prizes were all sent to New England. On April 22, the “Queen of France” arrived in Boston with the ship “Maria,” 16, carrying eighty-four men, the schooner “Hibernia,” 8, also carrying eighty-four men, and the brigs “John,” 200 tons, “Batchelor,” 120 tons, and “Prince Frederick,” 160 tons. Another prize, His Majesty’s ship “Jason,” 16, with one hundred men, also reached Boston. The “Ranger” put into Portsmouth with the schooner “Chance” and a brig. The Marine Committee wrote to Captain Hopkins congratulating him and his fellow captains on the fortunate outcome of their cruise.[210]
The most important objective of the Marine Committee in its naval operations was the capture of England’s commerce in transit at sea. The Committee planned to intercept her sugar ships of the West Indies, her Newfoundland fishing craft, her Hudson bay fleet laden with skins and peltries, her Guineamen with cargoes of ivory and slaves, and her Mississippi trade with its lumber and furs. The Committee’s agents and the naval officers abroad hoped to ensnare the enemy’s Baltic trade, the Irish linen ships, the Brazil whaling fleet, and homeward bound East Indiamen. The sending of frigates to the Coromandel Coast to intercept the enemy’s China ships and the trade of India was seriously considered. On one occasion the Committee designed to attack English vessels bound for Canada with cargoes of “Indian goods.” But generally the blows were aimed at the fleets of rich merchantmen returning to England, for their many vessels were like honey-laden bees flying homeward to their hives.
The British fishing fleet on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and the homeward bound West Indiamen were found most vulnerable. It is not practicable for a combatant to prey upon commerce far from his base of operations. The frequent manning of prizes depletes his crews and compels him to make an early return home. The chance of prizes being retaken is increased with the distance they must travel to reach safe ports. The operations of the Continental vessels in European waters were made possible by their use of French ports as naval stations. In attacking England’s commerce the Marine Committee found most promise of substantial reward by directing its vessels to cruise during the summer or the early fall some leagues to the eastward of the Bermudas in the track of the homeward bound West Indiamen, laden with rum, sugar, cotton, coffee, and other Colonial products. These fleets sometimes consisted of as many as 200 merchantmen under the convoy of a few ships of war. Skilful seamanship found it comparatively easy to cut out a few sail. In three instances Continental vessels made captures which netted them more than one million dollars each.
Two of these fortunate cruises were made while the fleet was under the direction of the Marine Committee. On May 4, 1779, the Committee wrote to the Navy Board at Boston that it desired that the “Confederacy,” “Warren,” “Queen of France,” “Hanger,” “Jason,” “Hibernia,” and two of the lately built packets as tenders, and the “Deane,” which it should send from Philadelphia, should be joined together and sail in company to the southward and attack the sea force of the enemy on the coast of Georgia. After routing the enemy there, the fleet was to throw itself in the way of the West India ships, bound to England. A fortnight later the Committee wrote that it had reason to lay aside the expedition to Georgia, and that it was their intention to place the collected naval force in such manner as to accomplish the double purpose of intercepting the enemy’s transports, coming to and going from New York, and of attacking her homeward bound West India ships.
In accordance with the latter plan of the Committee, sometime during the summer a fleet was sent to sea from Boston, consisting of the “Providence”, 28, Captain Abraham Whipple, commodore of the fleet, the “Queen of France,” 28, Captain John P. Rathburn, and the “Ranger,” 18, Captain Thomas Simpson. In August the American vessels fell in with the Jamaica fleet, bound for London, and convoyed by a 32-gun frigate and three other armed vessels. The Americans succeeded in cutting out from the fleet ten large merchantmen, heavily laden with rum and sugar. Of the ten vessels, seven arrived at Boston and one at Cape Ann. The names of these eight ships, whose average burden was 285 tons, were as follows: “Holderness,” “Dawes,” “George,” “Friendship,” “Blenheim,” “Thetis,” “Fort William,” and “Neptune.” This was one of the richest captures which the Continental fleet made during the Revolution. The ships with their cargoes sold for more than one million dollars.[211] Early in the year the ship “General Gates” and the sloop “Providence” sent prizes into Boston which sold for £240,000.[212]
The Marine Committee threatened and attacked the enemy’s coasts and towns in the British Isles, Canada, and the West Indies. Two Continental vessels visited the mouth of the Senegal river on the west coast of Africa. An attack on the shipping of the Bermudas was ordered to be made, if it was found practicable. Nassau, New Providence, was twice captured by Continental vessels, and a third time by a Spanish fleet and a ship of war of the South Carolina navy. Robert Morris, when vice-president of the Marine Committee, planned to send a fleet of five vessels against the British possessions in the West Indies and the Floridas. The movements of Captains Wickes, Conyngham, and Jones in attacking and alarming the British Isles are well known.[213] Those expeditions against British coasts, towns, and dependencies had several objects in view. One, of course, was the capture of booty. To the extent that the expeditions were directed against the shipping and commerce of the attacked ports, their object was similar to that of fleets which cruised against shipping and commerce at sea. Another object is discovered in the thought of Morris when he planned to attack England in the West Indies. Such a move Morris believed would force the enemy to withdraw part of his fleet from the coasts of the United States for the defence of his attacked colonies; and to the extent that he did so, the states would be relieved. The cruises made in the waters around the British Isles had in view the lessening of the prestige of Great Britain, the shaking of her credit, the alarming of her inhabitants, and the raising of her marine insurance; and also the impressing of Europe with the power and courage of the new American nation, and perchance, creating a diversion in its favor. Both a psychological and a political element entered into the purpose of the cruises in British waters. They realized to both Britain and the Continent the existence of a new flag and a new state in the family of nations.
The naval plan devised by Morris, as vice-president of the Marine Committee, deserves additional notice. It was to be put into operation by John Paul Jones, with a fleet composed of the “Alfred,” “Columbus,” “Cabot,” “Hampden,” and sloop “Providence.” Jones was first to proceed to St. Christopher in the West Indies, which island was almost defenceless, capture the cannon, stores, and merchandise there deposited, and then sail for Pensacola, Florida. Morris thought Jones might find it best to pass along the south side of Hispaniola, and alarm Jamaica by putting in to some of its ports. Arriving at Pensacola, he would find it defended by two or three sloops of war, which could be easily silenced, and the town would fall into his hands with its munitions of war, including one hundred pieces of artillery. Having reduced Pensacola, Jones was to send a brigantine and sloop to cruise at the mouth of the Mississippi, in order to waylay the British merchantmen leaving there in March and April with cargoes of indigo, rice, tobacco, skins, and furs, to the value of £100,000 sterling. Returning from the Gulf, he might alarm St. Augustine, and finally he might refit in Georgia, or South or North Carolina. He was directed to carry as many marines as possible for his operations on shore.
Morris’s object in this expedition involved a nice bit of naval policy. He purposed not so much the taking of booty, as the alarming of the whole British nation, and the forcing of the enemy to withdraw some of her naval forces from the coast of the United States. “It has long been clear to me,” he said, “that our infant fleet cannot protect our coasts; and the only effectual relief it can afford us, is to attack the enemy’s defenceless places, and thereby oblige them to station more of their own ships in their own countries, or to keep them employed in following ours, and either way we are relieved so far as they do it.” Morris proposed his plan as a substitute for one of Jones, which contemplated a descent on the west coast of Africa; and to the carrying out of which the Marine Committee had given its consent. Morris thought that the same results as Jones sought could be obtained with less risk by “cruizing Windward of Barbadoes as all their Guinea Men fall in there.”[214]
The Marine Committee naturally planned and carried out naval enterprises which had in view two or more forms of secondary operations. Sometimes it ordered its vessels to take stations at sea where they would be in position to intercept both the West India trade, and the enemy’s transports plying between New York and England. Often it left the specific object of a cruise to the Navy Board at Boston, or to the commander of a ship, and issued merely the general order to proceed to sea and cruise against the enemy. Any plan of the Committee which was directed towards meeting an immediate emergency was rarely carried out. The movements of the vessels were rendered uncertain by reason of depleted crews, deficient equipments, and the position of the British fleets. The Committee was often in the dark as to the exact state of a vessel in New England with reference to its preparation for sea. Consequently it made many plans and gave many orders which could not be put into operation. The telegraph, cable, and rapid postal services have revolutionized the direction of naval movements.
In prize-getting the Marine Committee’s most successful years were 1776 and 1779. Beginning with 1776 the number of prizes taken by the Continental vessels for each year of the Committee’s incumbency was, respectively, sixty, twenty, twenty, and fifty. The fifty prizes captured in 1779 were probably more valuable than the one hundred taken in the other three years. As regards the number of Continental vessels lost, the years 1776 and 1779, when the fleet was decreased by but three ships, again prove to be the most fortunate years. In 1777 and 1778 twenty-six vessels, ten of which were frigates, were lost.[215] With the memory of the misfortunes of the past two years in mind, well might the Marine Committee write, towards the end of 1778, of “the bad success that hath hitherto attended our Navy.” In May, 1778, it wrote to the Navy Board at Boston, that the “Committee are entirely of Opinion with you that it will be proper to send out a Collected force to Cruise against our enemies that we recover the injured reputation of our Navy and the losses we have sustained.”[216]