The Navy of the American Revolution

by Charles Oscar Paullin

At Warwick, on the James, a few miles below Richmond, the state built and operated a rope-walk. The state owned a manufactory of sail-duck and a foundry. In July, 1776, four naval magazines were established, one each for the James, York, Rappahannock, and Potomac rivers. For each magazine one or two agents were appointed to collect and issue provisions, ships’ supplies, and naval stores.[513] For the location of the magazine on the Potomac the General Assembly authorized the Navy Board to purchase an acre of land at the head of “Potomack Creek.”[514] In January, 1777, the Navy Board appointed James Maxwell, Naval Agent, to superintend the shipyards, and the building, rigging, equipping, and repairing of the naval vessels. He was to follow the instructions of the Board, and keep it informed on the state of the navy.[515] Maxwell’s annual salary was £300, payable quarterly. He lived at the Chickahominy shipyard.

Virginia had a naval staff consisting of pay masters, muster masters, surgeons, and chaplains. The captains and recruiting officers enlisted seamen. Their task was rendered difficult, not so much because of the superior attractions of privateering, as in New England, as because of the small number of seamen resident in the state. The first commodore of the Virginia navy was John Henry Boucher. He was serving as lieutenant in the Maryland navy, when, in March, 1776, Virginia called him to the command of her Potomac fleet, and soon promoted him to the head of her navy.[516] He served as commodore for only a few months, resigning in November, 1776. Walter Brooke was commodore from April, 1777, until September, 1778. Brooke’s successor, James Barron, was not appointed until July, 1780; he served until the end of the war. The commodore of the navy made his headquarters regularly at or about Hampton, and superintended the armed vessels in that part of the state.[517]

In Virginia, as in the other states and in the Continental Congress, naval enthusiasm and interest was at its height in 1776. In the fall the Navy Board contracted for the building of twenty-four small transports.[518] The General Assembly in its October session authorized the Navy Board to construct two frigates of thirty-two guns each, and four large galleys, adapted “for river or sea service.” For manning these galleys and those already building, the Navy Board was empowered to raise thirteen hundred men, exclusive of officers, to serve three years from March 3, 1777. It was to recommend proper officers to the Governor and Council. Having been commissioned by the Governor, the officers were to enlist the crews for their respective galleys. Since to secure a sufficient number of experienced seamen would be impossible, it was provided that each crew should consist of three classes of men: able seamen, at a daily wage of 3s.; ordinary seamen, at 2s.; and common landsmen, at 1s., 6d. As the men in the second and third classes became proficient, they were to be promoted. Every recruit was given a bounty of $20.[519]

The Provincial Convention, in its December session in 1775, erected a Court of Admiralty, consisting of three judges, to enforce the Continental Association against trading with England. In its May session in 1776, it gave this court jurisdiction over all captures of the enemy’s vessels. The General Assembly, at its October session in 1776, superseded all previous admiralty legislation by an “Act for Establishing a Court of Admiralty.” Such court was to consist of three judges, elected by joint ballot of the two houses of the General Assembly. The judges were to hold their offices “for so long time as they shall demean themselves well therein.” The court, which was to be held at some place to be fixed by the General Assembly, was to have cognizance of “all causes heretofore of admiralty jurisdiction in this country.” Its proceedings and decisions were to be governed by the regulations of the Continental Congress, the acts of the General Assembly of Virginia, the English statutes prior to the fourth year of the reign of James, and by the laws of Oleron and the Rhodian and Imperial laws, so far as they have been heretofore observed in the English courts of admiralty. In cases which related to captures from a public enemy with whom the United States should be at war, and in which a conflict should arise between the regulations of Congress and the acts of the General Assembly, the regulations of Congress should take precedence; in all other cases of conflict, the acts of Virginia were to prevail. This provision is of particular interest. It is one of the first instances in which a state recognized the superiority of federal law when in conflict with state law. Virginia was liberal in granting appeals to Congress, as she permitted them in all cases of the capture of the enemy’s vessels.[520]

The Admiralty Court of Virginia tried few prize cases. Governor Thomas Jefferson in writing to the President of Congress in June, 1779, no doubt understates the truth when he says that “a British prize would be a more rare phenomenon here than a comet, because one has been seen, but the other never was.” His state, he said, had long suffered from a lack of blank letters of marque, and he wished fifty to be sent to him.[521] Virginia did not establish state privateering, but followed the regulations of Congress on the subject. Because of the lack of seamen and the continual presence of the enemy’s vessels at the mouths of the Virginia rivers, the privateering interest was not important in this state.

The Navy Board superintended both the trading and armed vessels of the state until April, 1777, when the trading vessels were placed in charge of William Aylett.[522] Writers on the Virginia navy have not, as a rule, distinguished one class of vessels from the other, nor is it always easy to do so. During 1776 seven vessels were employed chiefly in commerce.[523] In the fall, most of them were ordered to the West Indies with cargoes of flour and tobacco; one, the brig “Adventure,” was directed to proceed to Dunkirk, France. The armed fleet for 1776 consisted of sixteen small craft adapted chiefly for service in the rivers of Virginia and in Chesapeake Bay.[524] In 1777 the galleys “Accomac” and “Diligence” were built and stationed on the Eastern Shore; and the ships “Caswell” and “Washington” were built at South Quay on the Blackwater, for the defence of Ocracoke Inlet, which Virginia was undertaking jointly with North Carolina. Besides these four vessels, two brigs, one armed boat, and the ships “Gloucester,” “Protector,” “Dragon,” and “Tartar,” were this year added to the navy. In 1778 an armed boat and the ships “Tempest” and “Thetis” were built; and in 1779 two armed boats, the brig “Jefferson” and the ship “Virginia,” were added.[525]

This fleet is formidable only in its enumeration. It was poorly armed, incompletely manned, and in almost every respect ill fitted for service. But few of its vessels went beyond the Chesapeake Bay. It showed most activity during 1776 and the spring of 1777. From 1775 until 1779 fifteen small prizes were captured. In May, 1776, Captain Taylor seized four small merchantmen; in June, one of the Barrons brought up to Jamestown the transport “Oxford,” with 220 Highlanders on board; in the spring of 1777 the “Mosquito,” Captain Harris, carried into St. Pierre the ship “Noble,” valued at 75,000 livres; and a few months earlier the brig “Liberty” captured the ship “Jane,” whose cargo of West India goods was valued at £6,000. These were the most fortunate captures made by the Virginia navy.[526]

Virginia’s naval craft met with the usual misfortunes. During the first half of 1777 His Majesty’s ship “Ariadne” captured the “Mosquito.” About the same time the frigate “Phœnix” took the “Raleigh.” The British made two raids into Virginia which were destructive both to the shipping of the state and to private individuals. The first was ordered by Clinton in the spring of 1779; the troops were under the command of Matthews and Collier. At the Gosport shipyard they destroyed five uncompleted vessels, three of which were frigates, besides a large quantity of masts, yards, timber, plank, iron, and other ships’ stores. The shipyards on the Nansemond were looted; and twenty-two vessels with a considerable quantity of powder were taken or destroyed on the “South Branch of the navy.” Suffolk was burned, and upwards of two thousand barrels of Continental pork and fifteen hundred barrels of flour were destroyed. In all one hundred and thirty vessels were burned.[527] The raid of Arnold and Phillips will be considered later.

The General Assembly at its May session in 1779 discontinued the Navy Board, and vested its strictly naval duties with the newly created Board of War, consisting of five members. The Board of War was empowered to appoint a Naval Commissioner. A Board of Trade was now given charge of the trading vessels of the state, and of the state manufactories of military supplies.[528]

The General Assembly in its May session, 1780, “for the purpose of introducing oeconomy into all the various departments of government, and for conducting the publick business with the greatest expedition,” abolished the Boards of War and Trade, and authorized the Governor to appoint a Commissioner of War, a Commercial Agent, and coördinate with these two, a Commissioner of the Navy. This act is the outgrowth of the same movement for economy and efficiency in administration, which resulted in the establishment in January and February, 1781, of the single-headed executive departments of the Continental Congress. The salary of the Commissioner of the Navy was fixed at thirty thousand pounds of tobacco a year, and that of his clerk at ten thousand pounds.[529] The Commissioner was to be under the “controul and direction of the governour and council.” Governor Jefferson appointed James Maxwell, the naval agent under the Navy Board, Commissioner of the Navy.