The career of Commodore Esek Hopkins as commander-in-chief of the American navy lasted for a year and ten days. If it was not a glorious career it was at least an instructive one, and the candid student is likely to conclude that, under the circumstances, it was creditable to his reputation. He was badly handicapped from the beginning in a variety of ways, but in spite of this he accomplished something.
As already noted, Commodore Hopkins received his appointment chiefly through the influence of John Adams, and because he was the brother of the capable Governor of Rhode Island. The student of American history should keep in mind that the colonists were still monarchists in 1775, and that they followed the monarchial system of appointing favorites to office. That is to say, the man who had the most influence, who had what politicians call a “pull,” got the appointment, regardless, usually, of his fitness for the place. Commodore Hopkins had been a brigadier-general in the Rhode Island militia by appointment of his brother. He had served in various capacities at sea, but it is likely that training had made him a soldier rather than a sailor, and no greater mistake can be made by executive authority than to appoint a soldier to do a sailorman’s work.
Further than this, the vessels under the command of Hopkins were all built for carrying cargoes and not for fighting—they were not as swift or as handy as fighting ships of the same size. Worse yet, they were manned by crews brought together for the first time—men who were not only unacquainted with each other, and therefore devoid of esprit de corps, but who were unaccustomed, for the most part, to the discipline necessary on a man-of-war and untrained in the use of great guns. When compared with the crews of the British warships they were more inferior in these two respects than were the raw militia around Boston when compared with the British regulars. The raw militia could at least shoot well.
A Letter from Esek Hopkins.
From the original at the Lenox Library.
With these facts in mind it is worth while comparing the American ships with the British naval forces on the coast. As said, Commodore Hopkins had eight vessels, of which two only were ships, and the others were brigs or smaller, and all were lubberly merchantmen. All told, this squadron mounted just 114 guns, of which the largest was a cannon that could throw a round cast-iron ball weighing nine pounds. Even of these there were less than fifty. And the powder to load them and the muskets with which the seamen had been armed were all borrowed from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Yet this puny squadron, “poor and contemptible, being for the greater part no better than whale boats,” as a British authority truly says, was to go to sea to make war—against what force does the reader suppose? A navy of 112 ships, carrying 3,714 guns, of which force no less than seventy-eight ships, carrying 2,078 guns, were either already on the American coast or under orders to go there.
A Corvette.