Respecting the international complications occasioned by the privateers, see the Diplom. Corresp. of the Rev. Capt. John Lee, of Marblehead, carried some prisoners taken from prizes, which he had sent home, into Bilbao in 1776, where he was put under arrest; but the news of the Declaration of Independence arriving at Madrid, he was discharged (George Sumner's Oration at Boston, July 4, 1859, p. 12; Dipl. Corresp., i. 53). The Grantham correspondence, copied in the Sparks MSS. (no. xxiii.), shows much on these complications. The histories of American diplomacy in Europe at this time necessarily cover these points; and the copies of the Lord Stormont and Sir Joseph Yorke Papers, among the Sparks MSS., show the complications which the ministers of England had to encounter in France and Holland. E. E. Hale's Franklin in France has a chapter on the American privateers sailing from Dunkirk. On the participancy of Franklin and Deane in the movements of the privateers, see Parton's Franklin, ii. 239. There were instances of privateers being retaken by their prisoners and carried into England (P. O. Hutchinson's Gov. Hutchinson, ii. 86).
III. The Rhode Island Campaign of 1778.—In 1776 all the entrances to Narragansett Bay had been fortified, except the westerly, or that one lying between Conanicut Island and the western shore of the bay; and accordingly, in December of that year, Sir Peter Parker with a British fleet entered by this passage, and, passing round the northern end of Conanicut, landed Sir Henry Clinton and a force of British and Hessians on Rhode Island, and occupied Newport (New Hampshire State Papers, viii. 411, 431; Bancroft, ix. 200, 357. Cf. G. C. Mason on the English fleet in R. I. in the R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., vii. 301). The Journals of Congress, ii. 233, show a proposition to send fire-ships against the British in August, 1777. The Americans, under the direction of a French engineer, Malmedy, completed at once the defences of all vulnerable points round the bay, and the chart of the bay, made by the English engineer Blaskowitz in 1777, shows what some of these points were. The American as well as the British defences are enumerated in Gen. George W. Cullum's Historical sketch of the fortification defences of Narragansett Bay (Washington, 1884). Cf. also his paper in Mag. of Amer. Hist., June, 1884. A section of Blaskowitz's map of the bay, 1777, given in E. M. Stone's French Allies, shows the defences of Providence.
CAPTAIN PEARSON.
D'Estaing, by reason of the draft of his heavier ships, had declined to risk entering New York harbor (Sparks, Corresp. of the Rev., ii. 155; Mag. of Amer. Hist., iii. 387). A sketch in the Montresor Papers (N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1881, p. 505) gives the positions of the English and French fleets, July 22, 1778, respectively, within and without Sandy Hook. When D'Estaing sailed to Newport, it was in pursuance of a plan contrived with Washington for the capture of that place and the British forces there. On July 29, 1778, D'Estaing anchored near Point Judith. Sullivan was now in command of about ten thousand men, largely militia, and under him were Greene and Lafayette commanding divisions, and they all were gathered about the head of the bay. Copies of Lafayette's letters during this campaign, made by him for Sparks, are in the Sparks MSS. no. lxxxiv. There were about 6,000 men under Maj.-Gen. Pigot in the Newport defences. On Newport in the hands of the British, see Hist. Mag., iv. 1, 34, 69, 105, 133, 172, and the Journal in Narragansett Hist. Reg., i. 28, 91, 167, 277. There was a small British fleet, mostly of thirty-two guns each, protecting their water-front. When on August 5 D'Estaing began to send his ships in, the British burned or sunk their ships. The plan agreed upon by the joint forces was to attack the British on August 10; but Sullivan had crossed his troops over to the island earlier than D'Estaing expected, since he found that Pigot was drawing in his troops from the northern end of the island, and massing them nearer Newport, while the French troops had not yet landed so as to be ready to act in concert. This was the condition, when one morning, as the fog lifted, the English fleet of Howe was seen off the entrance of the bay. Some of the French ships were outside and exposed, and so D'Estaing promptly passed out to keep his fleet together and present his strongest front. Howe declined battle, because the French had the weather-gauge. A gale coming on, both fleets sought sea-room and were widely scattered, so that little fighting took place except as opposing vessels chanced to come together. The storm damaged both fleets equally, and each commander sought a harbor as best he could; Howe at New York, and D'Estaing at Newport.
COUNT D'ESTAING.
After a copperplate engraving of a picture by Bonneville.
The movements of the British fleet are followed in a Candid and impartial narrative of the transactions of the fleet under Lord Howe (London, 1779). Cf. also Sir John Barrow's Life of Richard, Earl Howe (London, 1838). In the Third report of the Hist. MSS. Commission, p. 124, there is noted a diary on the fleet, July 29-Aug. 31, 1778. There is an account of a participant on the French fleet, given in Moore's Diary, ii. 85. Paul Revere speaks of the storm as being of unexampled severity (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xiii. 251).
