Barney disguised himself as a fisherman and safely joined the smack as pilot and seaman. They put to sea past the fleet of British war vessels off Plymouth, and stood for the French coast. Alas, a Guernsey privateer overhauled them in the Channel and insisted upon searching the smack. Barney played a desperate game by throwing off his fisherman’s great coat and revealing the uniform of a British officer. He declared that he was bound for France on a secret and urgent business of an official nature and demanded that he be suffered to proceed on his course. The skipper of the privateer was suspicious and stubborn, however, and the upshot of it was that the smack was ordered back to Plymouth.
Making the best of the perilous situation, Barney insisted that he be taken aboard the flagship of Admiral Digby, where “his captor would find cause to repent of his rash enterprise.” Once in Plymouth harbor, however, the American officer escaped to shore and after wandering far and wide amid hairbreadth escapes from recapture found a haven in the heavily wooded grounds of Lord Edgecomb’s estate. From this hiding place he managed to return to the home of the clergyman whence he had set out. Three days later, in another kind of disguise he took a post chaise to Exeter, and from there fled by stage to Bristol, and so to London, France and Holland.
In Holland Lieutenant Barney secured passage in the private armed ship South Carolina, bound to Bilboa. In his diary, John Trumbull, the famous American painter, pays a fine tribute to the seamanship of Joshua Barney. The South Carolina was caught in a terrific storm which strewed the English Channel with shattered shipping. The vessel was driving onto the coast of Heligoland, and almost helpless. “The ship became unmanageable,” writes Trumbull, “the officers lost their self-possession, and the crew all confidence in them, while for a few moments all was confusion and dismay. Happily for us Commodore Barney was among the passengers—he had just escaped from Mill Prison. Hearing the increased tumult aloft, and feeling the ungoverned motion of the ship, he flew upon deck, saw the danger, assumed command, the men obeyed, and he soon had her again under control.”
Shortly after reaching America, Lieutenant Barney was offered command of the Hyder Ally, a ship commissioned by the Pennsylvania Legislature, mounting sixteen six-pounders and carrying one hundred and twenty men. In this converted merchantman, hastily manned and equipped, Barney won one of the most brilliant naval victories of the Revolution against the General Monk off the Capes of the Delaware.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] From manuscripts in the possession of the Essex Institute, Salem.
[13] The commitment proceedings in the case of William Russell were conducted by two justices, and their findings read in part as follows:
“For as much as appears unto James Young and Ralph Mitchell, two of the Justices of our Lord the King, assigned to keep the Peace within the said county (of Devon) on the examination of William Russell, Mariner late of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay in North America, a Prisoner brought before us, charged with being found in Arms and Rebellion on the High Seas on board the Jason ship American Privateer, sailed out of Boston in North America, and commissioned by the North American Congress, which was taken by the Surprise, English Frigate;
“That the said William Russell was taken at Sea in the High Treason Act committed on the High Seas, out of the Realm on the 29th day of September last, being then and there found in Arms levying War, in Rebellion and aiding the King’s Enemies, and was landed in Dartmouth in the County of Devon, and the said William Russell now brought before in the Parish of Stock Demereall aforesaid, charged with and to be committed for the said offense to the Old Mill Prison in the Borough of Plymouth.”
[14] In his “History of Prisons,” published in 1792, John Howard, the philanthropist, mentions in an account of a visit to Forton Prison near Portsmouth during the Revolution: