From the copy at the Lenox Library.
Of the number sent, it is said that all but one proved to be manned by incapable officers or mutinous crews, which is not quite true, but the one, the schooner Lee, of eight small guns, Capt. John Manly, redeemed any failure of the rest by the capture of the brigantine Nancy, already noted. “This was an ordnance ship,” says Dodsley’s “Annual Register,” of London, for 1776. She “contained, besides a large mortar upon a new construction, several pieces of fine brass cannon, a large quantity of small arms and ammunition, with all manner of tools, utensils, and machines necessary for camps and artillery, in the greatest abundance. The loss of this ship was much resented in England.” As a matter of fact, she carried 2,000 muskets, 8,000 fusees, 31 tons of musket bullets, 3,000 solid shot for twelve-pounders, and two six-pounder cannon, besides gunpowder, etc. The mortar was of thirteen-inch calibre, and afterward exploded. She was brought into Cape Ann Roads on November 29, 1775. On December 8th the Lee took three more transports that were less valuable to the Americans, but the loss hurt the British rather more. For, insignificant as were the vessels captured when considered as a part of the whole fleet employed against the colonies, one need only glance at the state of affairs in Boston to understand why the loss of one ordnance ship was “resented in England,” and why the taking of three other transports was a still more serious matter. Boston was cut off from the back country. All supplies had to come from over the water. “Toward the end of the season Government went to a vast expense in sending out provisions and necessaries of all sorts,” says the British authority just quoted. “The want of fresh provisions had caused much sickness there. ... No less than 5,000 oxen, 14,000 of the largest and fattest sheep and a vast number of hogs were purchased and sent out alive.” They also sent out coal and even kindling wood, not to mention vegetables. But the winds were against them. The live stock died on board before they got away from the home coasts, “so that the channel was everywhere strowed with the carcasses of these animals.” The vegetables “fermented and perished.” On top of all these losses the capture of even such small vessels as schooners of a hundred tons was a serious loss, for the whole British force in Boston was hungry, while houses had to be torn down to supply fuel.
To add to the mortification of the enemy, some of the captures were made within sight of British frigates which, through the failure of the wind or the action of the tide, were unable to interfere. A British account of one of these audacious attacks that in the end was frustrated will illustrate the character of the Yankee privateer.
“On the 23d of November a small fleet of transports under convoy of the frigate Tartar arrived off Boston, and with the exception of two safely entered the port. The ship Hunter and a brig, owing to a shift in the wind, were obliged to anchor outside the harbor, which being observed by two American privateers that had been following the convoy, they in the most daring manner attacked and boarded them, setting them on fire. A signal was immediately made for the Raven to weigh anchor and go in chase, but Lieutenant John Bourmaster, who had been appointed to protect Boston Lighthouse, then under repair, and who was in command of an armed transport, on observing the privateers fire upon the Hunter, set sail and reached the transports in time to save them from destruction.”
Among the little cruisers that saw the most service was the Franklin schooner. Under Capt. John Selman she went with the Lynch to the St. Lawrence River to intercept the two transports mentioned in the report of the doings of the Congress on October 5, 1775, wherein it was resolved that “a letter be sent to General Washington to inform him that Congress having received certain intelligence of the sailing of two north country built brigs, of no force, from England on the 11th of August last, loaded with arms, powder and other stores, for Quebec, without convoy, which it being of importance to intercept,” etc., the general was to send two cruisers after them.
From the copy at the Lenox Library.
Captain Selman failed to find the brigs, but “missing them, they took ten other vessels and Governor Wright of St. John’s. All these vessels were released as we had waged a ministerial war and not one against our most gracious sovereign.”
They changed their tactics after their most gracious sovereign was pleased to send Hessians to crush them.