TUCKER'S PAROLE, May 20, 1780.
From the Tucker Papers, in Harvard College library. He commanded the "Boston" when surrendered.
After the fall of Charleston, the principal vessels left in the national navy were the "Alliance", the "Hague", formerly the "Deane", the "Confederacy", the "Trumbull", the "Saratoga", and the "Ariel." In February, 1781, the "Alliance" crossed to France, and started to return with the "Marquis de Lafayette", a ship of forty guns, laden with a very valuable cargo of stores for the government. A few days after, she took the "Mars" and the "Minerva", heavily armed privateers, and then parted from her consort. The "Lafayette" was captured soon after, to the great distress of the American army, which needed her stores; but the "Alliance" completed her cruise, and, on the 28th of May, captured the "Atalanta" and the "Trepasy", two English cruisers. The "Atalanta", however, was subsequently taken by an English squadron. The "Confederacy", which was launched in 1778, was captured by the English in the West Indies, on the 22d of June. Captain Nicholson, in the "Trumbull", after a romantic series of adventures, surrendered to the "Iris" and the "Monk" in August of the same year. The "Congress" in September captured the sloop-of-war "Savage." In the next year, which was the last of the war, the "Alliance" made a cruise in which she maintained her reputation. The "Hague", the only frigate which remained to the nation, having been given to Manly, whose success in the beginning of the war gave such joy to Washington and his army, "this officer in a manner closed it", as Fenimore Cooper says, "with a very brilliant cruise in the West Indies."
The signal success of Count de Grasse in blocking up Lord Cornwallis in the Chesapeake, and the history of his engagements with Rodney and others, belong more properly to another chapter of this history.[1254]
It is a misfortune for the history of this country that no intelligent man in New England interested himself in the systematic history of the privateer enterprises of the United States in the Revolution while the seamen lived who engaged in them. But no such person undertook this historical work, and the materials do not now exist from which it could be thoroughly done. Some details noticed by authors of the time excite attention and surprise as they reveal the magnitude and number of the prizes made by the privateers. Such is the statement, cited above, that the prizes sent in by Whipple in one cruise exceeded one million dollars in value. Hutchinson, in his diary, reports the belief that seventy thousand New Englanders were engaged in privateering at one time. This was probably an overestimate at that moment. But it is certain that, as the war went on, many more than seventy thousand Americans fought their enemy upon the sea. On the other hand, the reader knows that there was no time when seventy thousand men were enrolled in the armies of the United States on shore.[1255]
In the year 1781 the privateer fleet of the port of Salem alone consisted of fifty-nine vessels, which carried nearly four thousand men, and mounted seven hundred and forty-six guns. In 1780 the Admiralty Court of the Essex district of Massachusetts, which was the largest of the three admiralty districts, had condemned 818 prizes. It must not be supposed that other districts were insignificant. In the single month of May, 1779, eighteen prizes were brought into New London.
As has been said, there seems to be no method of making any complete computation of the magnitude of the privateer fleet at any one time. But an incomplete list in the Massachusetts Archives of those commissioned in that State gives us the names of two hundred and seventy-six vessels. As the reader has seen, the fleets from Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Philadelphia were also large. It would probably be fair to say that between the beginning and end of the war more than five hundred privateers were commissioned by different States. The magnitude of the injury inflicted upon the English trade by these vessels may be judged by such a comparison as is in our power of the respective forces. In the year 1777 the whole number of officers and men in the English navy was eighty-seven thousand. Although Hutchinson's estimate is probably an overestimate, it is to be remembered that, as the reader has seen, there were at the same time very considerable naval forces in the employ of the several States and of the United States government. This would seem to show that, man for man, the numerical forces engaged by the two parties were not very much unlike. In the Atlantic Ocean, the Americans seem to have outnumbered the English.
After the navy of the United States, which was officered and built or purchased by Congress, the largest separate force was that of the State of Massachusetts. So soon as O'Brien and his friends seized the "Margaretta", as has been told, the provincial government took her into its service, and christened her the "Liberty", keeping her at first under the care of O'Brien.
For the first five years of the war, Massachusetts was governed by a committee of the Council. Many of the members of this committee, from time to time, were Boston merchants, of large experience in maritime affairs. The State was acting as an independent sovereignty. It contributed to the resources of its allies, the other States in the confederation, but none the less did it carry on war against the common enemy. It would sometimes happen that the State needed to make a remittance to France in its purchase of military stores. If the market were favorable, the merchants on the council boards would arrange for the purchase or charter of a vessel on State account, and the State bought and sent to Europe the freight by which it made its payments to its agents. The naval archives of the commonwealth are therefore a curious mixture of warlike operations and of commercial adventure. It will sometimes happen that the vessel which appears in one month as a cruiser, officered and manned for war by the authority of the State, shall appear in another month as a merchantman, freighted for a foreign port and intended to bring home a cargo to be sold to the credit of the State. An interesting instance of the promptness of the government was its readiness in taking up and fitting for use a little brigantine which carried to Franklin, in Paris, the first news of Burgoyne's surrender. Paul Jones hoped, as has been seen, to carry out the same news in the "Ranger" from Philadelphia; but although his passage was but twenty days in length, he did not arrive at Bordeaux till the same day on which Austin, the messenger of Massachusetts, was telling the great news to Franklin and the commissioners at Passy.[1256]