In June, 1780, Lewis was again in trouble and was writing to Congress. He conceived that the addition of members of Congress to the Board of Admiralty was principally intended to lay such information before Congress from time to time as the Board desired to give, to explain its reports, and in the absence, or during the sickness, of a commissioner to make a quorum. He said that, notwithstanding the attention which Madison and Ellery had been disposed to give, their necessary attendance on Congress did not admit of their being daily and constantly present at the sessions of the Board; that Ellery had been superseded in Congress; and that at present there was no Board for lack of a quorum.[237] Congress once more came to the rescue of Lewis and his Board by appointing Ellery and Thomas Woodford as commissioners.[238] Ellery at once accepted, but Woodford for some reason declined the appointment. Congress never obtained a third commissioner. In the fall of 1780 Daniel Huntington of Connecticut and Whitmill Hill of North Carolina were the Congressional members of the Board. On their being supplanted in November, 1780, by new delegates to Congress from their respective states, it took the urgent solicitation of Lewis to get Congress to fill the vacancies.[239] When the Board was discontinued in July, 1781, it had but one Congressional member, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer of Maryland.
To all intents and purposes Lewis and Ellery were the Board of Admiralty; and in many respects they were well qualified for their positions. Both were able men, though not brilliant. Both had passed the meridian of life; Lewis was in his sixty-seventh year, and Ellery in his fifty-second. Both had taken prominent parts in the Revolutionary counsels in their respective states; both had been members of the Continental Congress and of the Marine Committee. Both were among the immortal Signers of the Declaration of Independence. Lewis had amassed a fortune as an importing merchant in New York, and had served in the French and Indian war. Ellery had been a merchant, and later a lawyer in Newport, Rhode Island. Both men were interested in naval affairs, and had rendered good service on the Marine Committee. Lewis’s work on the Board of Admiralty exceeded that of Ellery.
From the first the Board of Admiralty was more dependent on Congress than the Marine Committee had been. Congress, always jealous of its prerogatives, naturally permitted a freer exercise of power to a committee of its own members, than to a mixed board, whose work was almost entirely that of commissioners selected outside the membership of Congress. To the Board’s dependence on Congress for its organization was added that for means to carry out its naval program. The frequency with which it went to Congress asking for quorums and money indicates its helplessness and weakness.
The work of the Board of Admiralty was, generally speaking, that of the Marine Committee under a change of name. It managed the dwindling business of the navy from December, 1779, until July, 1781. It was served by the Navy Boards and naval agents of its predecessor, the Marine Committee. Immediately after its organization, the Board of Admiralty, in compliance with the resolutions of Congress, urged the Navy Boards and naval agents to transmit to it accurate accounts of their transactions up to December 31, 1779. Owing to the loose methods of business which obtained during the Revolution, the agents of the Board found it in most cases impossible to make such statements.
The failure of the agents properly to report their accounts, together with a diminution in the naval business of Congress, now led to some decrease in naval machinery. In August, 1780, the Board recommended that the two Philadelphia prize agents be discharged, since it had not been able to induce them by means of its repeated written and verbal requests to exhibit their accounts. Congress now discontinued their office and gave their work to the Board of Admiralty.[240] In the winter of 1780-81 the resignations of Winder and Wharton, as commissioners of the Navy Board at Philadelphia, were accepted by Congress, and the duties of this Board were vested in its remaining member, James Read.[241] On May 7, 1781, Congress accepted the resignation of Deshon of the Navy Board at Boston.[242] The work of the Navy Boards and naval agents had now greatly diminished. Already the settling of naval accounts was becoming one of their principal tasks. After 1779 there were few Continental prizes to libel. Upon the resignation of the naval agents at Philadelphia, those at Boston, Portsmouth, and New London were the only ones of consequence.
The Board of Admiralty was called to act upon divers letters, petitions, and memorials, differing little from the similar communications which Congress referred to the Marine Committee. It also fell to its lot to prepare and report not a little important legislation. The reports of the Board, which were in writing, were chiefly the work of Lewis and Ellery, and were presented to Congress by the Congressional members of the Board. Congress usually referred these reports to a committee, before it discussed them or took final action upon them. Not a few of the reports of the Board were, however, pigeon-holed by Congress, and no action was taken upon them. The naval legislation of Congress during the incumbency of the Board of Admiralty was in part rendered necessary by the decline of the navy. Certain other legislation was caused by the putting into effect of the Articles of Confederation on March 1, 1781; and a few Congressional resolutions on naval affairs may be attributed to the special legislative activity and enterprise of the Board of Admiralty.
In January, 1780, Congress on the recommendation of the Board of Admiralty passed a resolution which was no doubt in harmony with administrative economy and thrift, but which pressed hard upon many naval officers. The pay of all officers in the navy not in actual service was at once to cease. Their commissions were to be deposited with the most convenient Navy Board, until the officers should be again called into service; each officer was to retain his rank.[243] This was merely a courteous way of disestablishing the larger part of the navy. Owing to the capture and destruction of many Continental vessels, most of the naval officers were not in actual service. The number of commissioned officers in actual service in both navy and marine corps at this time was about twenty. It is clear that the Continental Congress was unfriendly to the theory that an employee of a government has a vested right in his office.
On July 11, 1780, naval salaries, subsistence money, and bounties were ordered to be paid in specie; forty Continental dollars were considered equal to one of specie. On the same day, in order that the depleted crews might perchance be recruited, Congress voted a bounty of twenty dollars to able, and ten dollars to ordinary seamen who should enlist in the navy for twelve months.[244] On August 7 it provided that officers who had served aboard vessels of twenty guns or upwards, and who should afterwards be detailed to vessels of less armament, should suffer no diminution in pay.[245] These provisions all indicate a declining government and navy.
On February 8, 1780, the Board of Admiralty secured the re-enaction of the resolutions of May 6, 1778, concerning the holding of courts of enquiry and courts-martial.[246] The most important provision of these resolutions, it is recalled, lessened the requirements for the membership of courts-martial as fixed by Adams’s rules. On the partial disestablishment of the navy in January it became increasingly difficult to assemble courts-martial composed entirely of naval officers. The only naval captain cashiered by a court-martial held under the direction of the Board of Admiralty was the eccentric Peter Landais.[247]
On May 4, 1780, the Board of Admiralty reported and Congress adopted the following device for a seal: “The arms, thirteen bars mutually supporting each other, alternate red and white, in a blue field, and surmounted by an anchor proper. The crest a ship under sail. The motto, sustentans et sustentatus. Legend, U. S. A. Sigil. Naval.”[248] The anchor and ship under sail are still a part of the seal of the Department of the Navy. Instead of the arms, motto, and former legend, there now appear an eagle with outstretched wings, and the words “Navy Department, United States of America.”