From the beginning of 1781 until the close of the Revolution the duties of the Naval Office at Paris were comparatively light. Few armed vessels were sent from America to France; and those that were, remained only long enough to refit, load with supplies, and receive letters and despatches for America. Over such ships Franklin exercised little or no control. The Agent of Marine, not wishing his vessels to slip from his grasp when within the reach of orders from Paris, sometimes directed his captains who were about to sail for France to return home on a specified date. In May, 1782, he wrote disapprovingly to Congress concerning the “delays and exorbitant expenses which have accrued from the detention of public vessels in Europe.”[368] Acting under the direct orders of Morris, Captain Barry, in the “Alliance,” in February, 1782, left L’Orient and cruised without success for seventeen days. This was the last cruise in European waters which was made by a Continental vessel during the Revolution.
On July 10, 1781, Congress gave Thomas Barclay a commission as vice-consul to France in the place of William Palfrey, who had, in November, 1780, been appointed consul to France, and had gone down with the vessel on which he took passage.[369] In addition to his strictly consular duties, Barclay was authorized to “assist in directing our Naval affairs.”[370] When Barclay entered upon his duties in France, our naval business was narrowing to the settling of accounts. He was in time, however, to represent his country in the trial and sale of a few prizes, to assist in the shipping of some supplies, and to sell the Continental ship, “Duc de Lauzun.” In November, 1782, Congress appointed Barclay a commissioner for settling the Revolutionary accounts of the United States in Europe; and in December Morris gave him his instructions.[371] Barclay was directed to inquire into the accounts of the agents for fitting out armed vessels in Europe, and to make a settlement with the various prize agents into whose hands prizes or moneys derived from their sale had come. Barclay’s duties, both as consul and as commissioner, came to an end in the fall of 1785, when he was appointed to negotiate a treaty with Morocco.
Some of the duties of Barclay as commissioner for settling accounts were in December, 1783, vested in John Paul Jones. In accordance with a resolution of Congress, Franklin appointed Jones agent of the United States to solicit the payment of prize money, “in whose hands soever the money may be detained,” arising from prizes captured by vessels under Jones’s command in European waters.[372] Jones was engaged in this work during 1784 and 1785. Under the sanction of Thomas Jefferson, the American Minister at Paris, Jones in 1786 set out for Copenhagen, to settle a dispute with the Danish Court over three of his prizes. These ships had been captured, in 1779, by the fleet under his command, and had been sent into Bergen, Norway. The Danish government had restored them to the British. Jones’s journey was interrupted and he did not reach Copenhagen until 1788. The Danish government now transferred the settlement of the disputed claims to Paris, pleading that Jones had not sufficient authority to treat. By June, Jones had left Copenhagen, had accepted the commission of Vice-Admiral in the Russian navy, and was writing from his flagship “Wolodimer” to his friend Jefferson at Paris. The Revolutionary accounts in Europe possessed the usual vitality, not to say immortality, of government claims. Certain Revolutionary claims of South Carolina, growing out of expenses which that state incurred in Europe in connection with the ship “Indian,” are now pending before the government at Washington.
In the West Indies the chief naval station for the Continental vessels was St. Pierre, Martinique. Bound on commercial errands, our vessels occasionally visited St. Eustatius, until its capture by the British in February, 1781; Cape Francois, Hispaniola; and in the late years of the war, Havana. The United States had commercial agents at these three ports. But at Martinique our vessels were refitted, repaired, and provisioned whenever convenience suggested, or stress of weather compelled, the seeking of a friendly harbor in this part of the Atlantic. In June, 1776, William Bingham, who had been the secretary of the Committee of Secret Correspondence, went to Martinique as the commercial agent of Congress; and in March, 1780, he was succeeded by Parsons, Alston and Company.
The commercial agent at Martinique did a varied and lively business. He was employed in shipping supplies, obtaining convoys for his merchantmen, refitting privateers, and now and then Continental vessels, disposing of prizes, and forwarding to Congress naval intelligence concerning the West Indies and Europe. Congress at times sent despatches and supplies to France by the way of Martinique; and the American representatives and commercial agents in France, now and then, communicated with the United States through the same island. In October, 1777, Bingham wrote to Congress that, if France should declare war against Great Britain, many prizes would naturally be sent into Martinique, and that he wished to be directed about proper forms and methods for trying and selling them.[373] In December American prizes and privateers were being publicly received into the ports of Martinique, and Bingham was shipping arms to America on board American vessels under the convoy of a frigate which he had hired for that purpose. In January, 1778, the permitting of these favors was causing spirited letters between the “General” of Martinique and the Governor of the British island of Antigua.[374]
During 1779 three Continental vessels, the “Deane,” “General Gates,” and “Confederacy,” put into Martinique to refit, repair, and obtain provisions. The expense to which Bingham’s empty treasury was subjected caused him to complain to Congress. The only Continental armed vessel purchased at Martinique was the little schooner “Fame,” 7 guns. The commercial agent made this purchase on his own responsibility in February, 1781, in order to carry to Philadelphia the news of the capture of St. Eustatius by the British. But unfortunately, the “Fame” was forced to bequeath her errand to a better-fated conveyance, as the British carried her into Antigua.[375]
Our naval affairs on the Mississippi during the Revolution, although conducted on a small scale, are not devoid of interest; nor do they entirely escape the glamour of romance which seems to touch everything connected with the early history of this region. Oliver Pollock, originally a Pennsylvanian, and a man of ability, integrity, and patriotism, who freely spent his private fortune for his country, was the commercial agent at New Orleans during the Revolution, and to him fell sundry naval duties. Pollock was responsible to the Commercial Committee, the third committee of Congress that was simultaneously purchasing and arming vessels. He was intelligently and heartily assisted in his work at New Orleans by the Governor of Louisiana, Galvez, “that worthy Nobleman,” as Pollock called him, who “gave me the delightful assurance that he would go every possible length for the interest of Congress.”[376] It is refreshing to find for once American and Spanish officials acting in concert and inspiring mutual confidence and affection. Early in 1777, immediately after Galvez became governor, he, with slight limitations, opened the port of New Orleans to American vessels of war and their prizes. Galvez’s favors to Americans called down upon him the threats of the British at Pensacola to have his conduct brought to the attention of the Court at Madrid.
Pollock received from Congress blank commissions both for officers in the Continental navy and for privateers. One of the privateers which he commissioned, the “Reprisal,” Captain Calvert, sent into a safe port, in April, 1778, a prize whose cargo consisted of flour, sugar, coffee, and forty-eight slaves.[377] In March, 1778, Captain Willing and a small party of men arrived in New Orleans from Pennsylvania, having come by the way of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. They captured several prizes on the Mississippi, which were sold in New Orleans to the value of $37,500. One of these, the “Rebecca,” Pollock bought for Congress on his own responsibility. He obtained permission from Galvez to fit out his ship in a warlike manner; and he decided upon an armament, consisting of “16 six pounders upon one Deck, 2 Bow and 2 Stern Chacers, 8 four pounders upon her quarter Deck, with Swivels, Cohorns, &c.”[378] He intended to enlist one hundred and fifty men and send his ship against His Majesty’s sloop of war “Sylph,” which was defending Manchac on Lake Pontchartrain. Pollock planned to obtain most of his armament from Havana, but the Spanish authorities refused to permit its shipment even after Galvez had written to the Cuban government.[379]
By July, 1779, Pollock had succeeded in obtaining and mounting twenty-four guns on the decks of his ship, which he had now christened the “Morris” in honor of his well-known friend at Philadelphia. He had appointed a full quota of officers; and he had engaged seventy-six men, with “English deserters arriving daily” to swell the complement. The captain of the “Morris” was William Pickles, a man found to be “capable and steady to our Cause.” Pollock had now for some time been waiting for orders for his vessel from Philadelphia; and tired of delay he was on the point of sending the “Morris” cruising, when a severe hurricane swept over New Orleans doing great damage to the town and its shipping. The “Morris” was lost, and eleven of her crew were drowned; the rest were rescued nine miles below the city clinging to the wreckage of their vessel.
Governor Galvez’s heart was touched by the loss of the Americans. He now “spared” Pollock an armed schooner, which was soon fitted out, and by September Pickles was cruising on Lake Pontchartrain. On September 10 Pickles had a short, but hot, dispute with the British armed sloop “West Florida,” which was forced to surrender, although it lost but four men to Pickles’s eight. Pollock now fitted out the “West Florida,” and sent her cruising on the Lake. On September 21 Pickles captured a small British settlement on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. He made prisoners of all the inhabitants who refused to swear allegiance to the United States. This capitulation, Pollock wrote to Congress, gave them an undoubted right to that part of the colony of West Florida which lay along Lake Pontchartrain; and he conceived, in language that sounds familiarly like that of later expansionists, that the capitulation was “a proper Ground on which to claim (at any convenient period) the Sovereignty of the Soil and the Allegiance of the Inhabitants.”[380]