The Navy of the American Revolution

by Charles Oscar Paullin

To escape their penury and distress some prisoners enlisted in the enemy’s navy, or joined the British whaling fleets. Others escaped from prison; some of these burrowed their way out, committing treason through His Majesty’s earth, to use a phrase of Captain Conyngham, who, with sixty companions, in this way escaped from Mill prison in November, 1779. These escaped prisoners gradually found their way into Holland, the seaports of France, or even Paris; and they often became a tax upon Franklin’s pity, and the Continental treasury in his keeping. Franklin was deeply moved by the sufferings of these men, whether confined in England or at liberty in France. His efforts in their behalf are an important part of his work and achievements in France.

A long correspondence directed towards securing an exchange of Englishmen captured by American vessels and confined in France for Americans confined in England was conducted by Franklin with his friend Hartley in England. Hartley was a noble-minded and humane Englishman, who was, at the time, a member of the House of Commons. The first letters on the exchanging of prisoners were written, however, by the American Commissioners, to Lord Stormont, the British Ambassador at Paris. The Commissioners stated that Captain Wickes, of the Continental cruiser “Reprisal,” had in his possession one hundred captured British seamen, and they wished to exchange them for an equal number of American seamen, prisoners in England. The first letter of the Commissioners Lord Stormont ignored. To the second letter, or possibly to the third, he replied in those well-known words: “The King’s Ambassador receives no applications from rebels, unless they come to implore His Majesty’s mercy.” The reply of the Commissioners was equally spirited: “In answer to a letter which concerns some of the most material interests of humanity, and of the two nations, Great Britain and the United States of America, now at war, we received the enclosed indecent paper, as coming from your Lordship, which we return for your Lordship’s more mature consideration.”[333]

Until after the treaties of February, 1778, between the United States and France, Great Britain resisted the exchange of naval prisoners, confined in England, on three grounds: that it involved the recognition of belligerent rights in the insurgents; that France being neutral, the Colonists would be compelled either to free captured British seamen taken in European waters, or else to take them to America; and that since British seamen were far more numerous than American, an exchange would tell more favorably for the Americans than for the British.[334] Not until France had entered into the war, did Britain take a broader and more generous position, and begin to listen to Franklin’s overtures for an exchange of prisoners. During 1778 the negotiations proceeded slowly and vexatiously, and it was not until March, 1779, that the first exchange was made. One hundred American prisoners from the Mill prison at Plymouth were then sent to France by the British government in the Milford cartel-ship; and in August one hundred more were exchanged.

In October, 1779, when Captain Jones terminated his famous cruise, he carried into the Texel, Holland, 472 prisoners; and Franklin had high hopes that at last considerable numbers of the unfortunate American prisoners would be released. Since the Texel was a neutral port, complications growing out of the laws of neutrality now arose. If Jones’s prisoners were to be exchanged for Americans, it was decided that they must first be brought to France. Rather than risk their recapture, Franklin agreed to permit them to be considered as the prisoners of France and to be exchanged for an equal number of Frenchmen imprisoned in England. In return, the French were to give Franklin 472 English prisoners confined in French prisons, which were to be exchanged for American prisoners. Franklin had difficulty in securing the Englishmen from France; after England had sent over one hundred prisoners, misunderstandings arose, and in May, 1780, she refused to exchange Americans except for Englishmen taken by American cruisers. One of the main objects of Jones’s famous cruise, the releasing of American prisoners in England, seems to have partly failed.[335] In March, 1782, Franklin considered a proposed plan for rescuing the American prisoners in Forton prison, and bringing them to France on smuggling vessels, but he concluded that the project was impracticable.[336]

After France and Spain entered into the war, the American Commissioners confined British prisoners in French and Spanish prisons. Before the French treaties, the Commissioners had no place, except in their own ships, to stow away their prisoners. The American captains were therefore forced to free many captives. They often exacted of a prisoner a pledge or parole that he would, on returning to England, be responsible for the release of an American prisoner; but of course the British government refused to take cognizance of such pledges, or to listen to the claims of the Commissioners that these released captives should be considered as returned prisoners. Beginning with 1778, the burden upon the Commissioners for the maintenance of English prisoners was considerable. In May, 1779, Franklin thought it would take more than 100,000 livres to pay all the accounts arising from expenditures in their behalf.[337] Could satisfactory and expeditious exchanges have been effected with England, this item of expense would have been greatly reduced. When the Revolution came to an end, there was still a considerable number of Americans in English prisons.

A number of alleged breaches of neutrality, said to have been made by American armed vessels, was brought to the attention of the American representatives at the Court of France. For example, in 1777 the French, Spanish, and Dutch governments complained that either their ships or their merchandise had been unlawfully captured. In 1778 the Spanish and Swedish Courts asserted that Captain Conyngham had violated the laws of neutrals. The Dutch found fault with Captain Jones for sending the brigantine “Berkenbosch” to America. In 1780 the Portuguese Ambassador at Paris presented Franklin with papers which alleged that the Massachusetts state cruiser “Mars” had illegally taken a Portuguese ship and had sent it to New England. The American representatives at Paris regularly disposed of such cases as the above by referring them to Congress, and to the American courts of admiralty. In the case of the Portuguese ship, Franklin wrote to Congress that he hoped that it would forward a speedy decision; and that it would give orders to the American cruisers not to meddle with neutral vessels, for this was a practice “apt to produce ill blood.” Complaints having been made of violences done by American armed vessels to neutral nations, the Commissioners, in November, 1777, issued a proclamation enjoining the American commanders to obey the laws of neutrality. In 1780, in view of the First Armed Neutrality which had been proposed by Catherine of Russia, and which was then being concerted by certain European nations, Franklin wrote to Congress, asking whether it would not be proper to confine American captures to the principle that “free ships shall make free goods,” since it was likely that this would become the law of nations.[338]

Many miscellaneous duties, more or less naval in character, fell to the Commissioners at Paris and to their successor, the American Minister. In August, 1778, the Commissioners offered a few observations on some regulations for prizes and prisoners, which Sartine, the French Minister of Marine, had prepared with a view of making uniform certain rules of France and the United States on these subjects.[339] In June, 1778, Franklin issued a curious passport in the form of a proclamation to all commanders of American armed vessels, not to attack a certain British vessel, which was bound to the Moravian mission on the coast of Labrador. “I do therefore hereby [inform you] that the sloop ‘Good Intent,’ burthen about 75 tons, Capt. Francis Mugford, carrying in the present voyage about 5000 bricks for building chimneys, with provisions and necessaries for the missionaries and their assistants, and some ironmongery and tin ware for the Indians—the crew consisting of the Captain, Mate, three men, and a boy, and the passengers one man and three women—is the vessel employed in the above service this year.”[340] Coming amid the cruelties, resentments, and misunderstandings of war, this document, which breathes a humane spirit and declares that the philanthropic interests of nations are inviolable, is indeed a most welcome one. In October, 1778, the Commissioners provided the Ambassador of Naples at the Court of France, whose country had lately opened its ports to American vessels, with a description of American flags. After describing the flag of the United States, they added: “Some of the States have vessels of war distinct from those of the United States. For example, the vessels of war of the state of Massachusetts Bay have sometimes a pine tree; and those of the state of South Carolina a rattlesnake in the middle of thirteen stripes. Merchant ships have only thirteen stripes, but the flag of the United States ordained by Congress is the thirteen stripes and the thirteen stars above described.”[341]

The Naval Office at Paris served as a channel for the communication of foreign naval intelligence; it also proposed to Congress several important naval plans. John Adams, while Commissioner, and later while on a diplomatic mission in Holland, wrote long letters to Congress on the armament of the foreign navies, the movements of the British, French, and Spanish fleets, and the captures made by these fleets. In November, 1776, Silas Deane, always fertile in schemes, proposed to the Committee of Secret Correspondence the sending of frigates against the Newfoundland fisheries; after destroying these, the frigates were to sail for the Baltic and cruise after the enemy’s ships bound for Russia. In the same letter he proposed a second project. A number of frigates with merchantmen under their convoy should be loaded with tobacco, rice, wheat, and other colonial products, and should sail for Bordeaux. After unloading their cargoes and refreshing their crews the frigates should strike a blow on the British coast which would “alarm and weaken Great Britain most effectually. The city of Glasgow might at any hour be destroyed by a single frigate capable of landing two hundred men.” After their descent on England the frigates should sail northward and intercept the Baltic ships, or else return to France and wait for a good opportunity to strike a second blow. Ships engaging in such expeditions could obtain any number of recruits in France. By issuing commissions, individuals would “join you in the adventure under your flag, with stout frigates, several of which are now building absolutely with the design, viz., the hopes of getting into the service of the United States of North America.”[342] Deane’s letters at this time are somewhat extravagant, nor are they always based on an accurate knowledge of the facts. “Would it not be well,” he asks, “to purchase at Leghorn five or six stout Frigates, which might at once transport some companies of Swiss and a quantity of stores and the whole be defended by the Swiss soldiers on their passage?”[343]

In May, 1777, the recommendations made by Deane in November, 1776, were in substance repeated by the Commissioners at Paris to the Committee of Foreign Affairs. These new recommendations were in all probability drafted by Deane. The Commissioners thought that a blow might be struck on the coast of England which would “alarm and shake Great Britain, and its credit, to the center.” The burning and plundering of Liverpool or Glasgow would do more essential service to the Colonies than a million of treasure and blood spent in America. It would raise our reputation to the highest pitch, and lessen in the same degree that of our enemy. The Commissioners were confident that the plan was practicable, and could be carried out with very little danger. They also recommended the sending of two or three Continental frigates with some small cruisers into the German ocean, where, about the middle of August, they might seize the greater part of the enemy’s Baltic and northern trade. One frigate, they said, would be sufficient to destroy the “Greenland whale fishery, or take the Hudson Bay ships returning.”[344]

In the fall of 1778 the Commissioners called the attention of both the Committee of Foreign Affairs and the French Minister of Marine to the ease with which a single frigate or privateer of twenty or twenty-four guns could capture the valuable whale fishery which the English maintained off the coast of Brazil. The seventeen vessels employed in this industry were manned and officered almost entirely by Americans belonging to Nantucket and Cape Cod. These men had been captured by Great Britain, and having been given their choice of entering the British naval service or the whale fishing industry, had chosen the latter. By their recapture four hundred and fifty of the best kind of American seamen would be added to the Continental service, and moreover the cargoes of oil which would be taken were very valuable.[345]