St. Pierre, Martinique.
From an old engraving.
Another West India fight was still more to the glory of the young American navy, even though the enemy was not captured. The American brig Reprisal sailed for Martinique early in the summer of 1776, and on the way captured and sent home a number of prizes. But when just outside of the port to which she was bound she fell in with the British sloop-of-war Shark, of sixteen guns. Not only was the Shark the larger vessel; the Reprisal, because of the number of prizes sent home, was short-handed. Nevertheless, when the Shark ranged up alongside of the Yankee and opened fire the Yankee fought back. The firing of the great guns brought the people of the port by hundreds to the heights overlooking the sea. And it was a spectacle well worth their coming, too, for the vigor of the Yankee defence compelled the Shark to haul off for repairs.
The Reprisal, during this cruise, was commanded by Capt. Lambert Wickes. As will appear further on, it was he who first flaunted the American flag in British waters and took British ships within sight of the British coasts.
The Shark afterward came into port and demanded of the authorities that the Reprisal be surrendered as a pirate. Of course the authorities (they were Frenchmen) refused.
How valuable all the prizes that have been mentioned were to the struggling colonists cannot be told here, but the reader will remember that at this time the American forces were wholly dependent on foreign sources for both powder and great guns. The Congress had, indeed, taken steps to manufacture muskets of “three-quarters of an inch bore, and of good substance at the breech, the barrel to be three feet eight inches long, the bayonet to be 18 inches in the blade.” But there was no factory for making these weapons, and the individual gunsmiths employed could do very little toward supplying an army. There was, in short, no sort of military supplies that was not lacking among the American forces and no sort that these captures of the Yankee naval vessels did not to a greater or less extent supply.
And what was of equal importance to the American success was the injury done to the enemy. During the year 1776 the Yankees captured 342 vessels, all told, “of which forty-two were recaptured, eighteen released, and five burned.”
But the story of the fortunes of the navy during the first year of its existence is not yet completed. The early adventures of John Paul Jones are yet to be told.
It is to the credit of Commodore Hopkins that at the end of the cruise of his fleet he appreciated and admired the first lieutenant of the service. As already told, he ordered Lieutenant Jones to the command of the twelve-gun brig Providence on May 10, 1776. Having no blank commissions, Commodore Hopkins wrote the new commission on the back of the old one that Jones had received as a lieutenant from the Congress.