Another very serious result of the mismanagement was in the effect on the common sailors. It was very difficult to get men for the national ships, because the life on the privateers was more to their liking, and the chances of getting prize money very much greater.
And all this is worth relating because the men of the navy won glory and were indispensable to the ultimate victory of a growing nation, in spite of it. The record of the naval men as a whole was as brilliant as the congressional management was inefficient, and that is a condition of affairs that has since been known in the navy.
To return to the American coast and give an account of the more interesting naval doings there during the time that the old flag was winning glory in Europe, it is found that considerable losses were sustained, though the story is not by any means wholly depressing.
For instance, there is the story of Capt. Nicholas Biddle. “Liberty never had a more intrepid defender” than Nicholas Biddle. It will be remembered that he was one of the original captains of the navy, and was appointed to the brig Andrea Doria, in which he gained reputation. So, when the first of the thirty-two-gun frigates, which Congress ordered in 1775, was completed, Captain Biddle was placed in command. She was called the Randolph, and she sailed from Philadelphia in February, 1777. Off Hatteras she sprung her masts in a gale, and put into Charleston for repairs. Then she sailed again, and within a week brought in six prizes, including a twenty-gun ship called the True Briton. Unfortunately, a blockading squadron appeared off Charleston at this time, and until March, 1778, he was held there.
MAP OF THE AMERICAN COAST,
Showing Principal Battles and Forts during the Revolutionary and French Wars.
Meantime, however, his success had fired the hearts of the South Carolinians, and while he was there he had the satisfaction of seeing them fit out four State cruisers carrying, all told, sixty-four guns. This work completed, Captain Biddle, with the State fleet as consorts, sailed out to look for the blockading squadron, but it had sailed away.
So Captain Biddle took his little squadron down along the Caribbean coasts. Here, east of the Barbadoes, they happened to fall in with the British ship-of-the-line Yarmouth, Captain Vincent.
To properly understand what followed, it must be known that a ship-of-the-line was built of such heavy timbers that nothing smaller than a twelve-pounder could seriously damage its hull. The only guns in Biddle’s squadron that could hope to penetrate her hull were Biddle’s own, and his ship had but thirty-two guns to the Yarmouth’s sixty-four, and they were smaller at that; so Captain Biddle signalled the State cruisers to run for it while he, in spite of the vast superiority of the enemy, sailed boldly up to her, broadside to broadside.