The Navy of the American Revolution

by Charles Oscar Paullin

[310] Ibid., 28, pp. 213, 225-27, Reports of Committees.

[311] Journals of Continental Congress, June 3, 1785.

[312] Records and Papers of Continental Congress, 140, II, 45, Board of Treasury to President of Congress, August 5, 1785; M. I. J. Griffin, Commodore John Barry, 258-59.

[313] Journals of Continental Congress, September 16, 1783.

CHAPTER IX
NAVAL DUTIES OF AMERICAN REPRESENTATIVES IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES

On the outbreak of the war between the Colonies and the mother-country, Congress turned with true political insight to France for aid. The self-interest of no other country in Europe gave so good a basis for friendship and alliance with America. To France, the success of the revolting British Colonies meant the humbling of a victorious rival, the turning of a part of Britain’s valuable colonial trade into French channels, and probably a reopening of the trial at arms of the Seven Years’ War and a reversal of some of its humiliating decisions. Common interests led the two countries to coöperate in achieving and furthering their objects and ambitions; and this led to the establishing of intimate diplomatic, commercial, and naval relations between them. Many of the duties that grew out of these three classes of relations had to be transacted in France, and they therefore necessitated the appointment of American representatives to be resident in that country. The naval duties of these representatives were numerous and important. They involved the renting, purchase, and building of naval vessels; the officering, manning, and fitting out of vessels; the directing of cruises; the purchase of naval supplies; the disciplining of officers; the paying of officers and crews; the disposing of prizes; the devising of naval plans; the commissioning of privateers; the caring for naval prisoners and the negotiating for their exchange; and the disseminating of naval intelligence. The vesting of these duties in the American representatives in France virtually constituted the establishment of a Brandi Naval Office at Paris.[314]

Besides the above duties, which may be considered strictly naval in character, the American representatives had other business closely related to their admiralty work, but which was also intimately connected with their diplomatic and commercial work. For instance, dealings with breaches of neutrality committed by American ships had to do equally with diplomatic and naval affairs. The selling of colonial products which the Commercial Committee of the Continental Congress exported to France, and the buying of French manufactures which the American representatives shipped to America, were of course commercial duties. These transactions, however, came into contact with naval affairs when the goods purchased in France happened to be naval stores, or when naval ships carried the goods or convoyed the merchantmen which carried them. For the sake of obtaining a complete view of the admiralty work of the American representatives in France, this chapter will touch upon naval duties of all sorts even though their diplomatic and commercial aspects stand out the most prominently.

The first naval business of the Colonies in France fell to Silas Deane, a political and commercial agent of the Continental Congress, who arrived at Paris in July, 1776. In December, 1776, Deane was succeeded by three American commissioners to the Court of France, Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee. These three men shared the naval duties of their office until the spring of 1778, when Deane was superseded by John Adams. In February, 1779, Franklin, who had been chosen Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of France, fell heir along with the other duties of the commissioners to those of a naval character; and he continued in this office until the end of the Revolution. Of the first three commissioners Silas Deane had the most to do with the naval business. He says that the management of the Continental ships of war and of their prizes which was a “most complicated and embarrassing part of our affairs” fell entirely upon himself.[315] When Deane was superseded, it would seem that his naval duties fell to Franklin rather than to Adams. Franklin had at all times the chief part of the work of exchanging naval prisoners with Great Britain; and Adams excelled the other commissioners in transmitting to the home government naval intelligence.

The headquarters of the Naval Office were of course situated at Paris, several hundred miles from the ports frequented by the Continental vessels. This was a great disadvantage, as it caused delays in communicating with the naval officers and naval agents, besides other inconveniences. The Office gave its orders as a rule by letter, but now and then when its officers and agents visited Paris, it communicated with them by word of mouth. Its official correspondence with the home government was carried on almost exclusively with the “Foreign Office” at Philadelphia—that is, at first with the Committee of Secret Correspondence, then with the Committee of Foreign Affairs, and finally with the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. A few letters passed between the Naval Office at Paris and the Naval Department in America. The secretary and the clerks, first of the Commissioners, and later of the Minister at the Court of France, assisted in transacting the naval business.

The American representatives at Paris employed agents in a number of the chief Atlantic ports of France to transact their naval and commercial business. The principal agencies were at Nantes, L’Orient, Bordeaux, Brest, and Dunkirk. There were also agencies at Bilbao, and Coruña, Spain; and in Holland. It is difficult to separate the naval and commercial duties of these agencies, as they were vested in the same men. The whole subject is exceedingly complicated. For transacting naval business, Nantes was the most important agency, although L’Orient was not far behind it. At Nantes in 1777 within a comparatively short period of time one finds Thomas Morris, a half-brother of Robert Morris, William Lee, a brother of Richard Henry Lee, Jonathan Williams, a nephew of Franklin, John Ross, a Philadelphia merchant, and a certain German merchant by the name of Schweighauser exercising similar duties. William Lee was for a time commercial agent for all of France, and his authority of course came in contact with that of the Commissioners at Paris.[316] Such divisions and duplications of powers resulted in much contention, misunderstanding, and jealousy. John Adams tells us that when he arrived in France in the spring of 1778 he found in some places two or three persons claiming the character of American agents; and that at one port, three agents had been appointed, one by the Commissioners at Paris, another by the commercial agent of France, and a third by the Commercial Committee of Congress. “We have such abuses and irregularities every day occurring as are very alarming. Agents of various sorts are drawing bills upon us, and the commanders of vessels of war are drawing upon us for expenses and supplies which we never ordered.” Moved by the reformatory zeal that so often characterizes the new appointee to public office, Adams attempted to reduce the business of Congress in France to some system.[317]