Resolve to live and die
His participation in the destruction of the Gaspee has been already described. When the office of Major-General of the Rhode Island Colonial Forces was created his zeal and energy had so impressed his fellow members of the General Assembly that he was chosen to fill it. His tenure of office must have been brief. In 1776 he had been chosen Assistant (Assistants were elected by the vote of all the freemen of the Colony), but he did not present himself at many meetings of the Assembly. In fact so neglectful was he of his duties that a vote was passed requesting his reasons for absenting himself, and demanding his attendance at the next session. Undoubtedly the increased taxes had something to do with it. He was the wealthiest citizen of Bristol and one of the richest men in the Colony, and the possession of money was his chief delight. He could not bear to see it taken away from him even though the independence of the Colonies might thereby be assured. (One day a young nephew was talking with him and lamenting his apparent lack of success. “How, Captain Potter,” said he, “shall I go to work to make money?” “Make money,” said Potter, “make money! I would plow the ocean into pea porridge to make money.”)
In 1777 his name appears for the last time in the Colonial Records. At the Town Meeting held in Bristol in May of that year “Colonel Potter was chosen Moderator, but after the usual officers were elected he withdrew and refused to serve any longer.” A tax collector’s account was then presented showing that he had neglected to pay all his taxes. Three years later, May 10, 1780, it was voted in Town Meeting “That the Assessors make enquiry and make report to the town at the adjournment of the meeting, what part of Colonel Potter’s taxes remain unpaid, and that Mr. Smith, the collector, be desired to apply to the Assessors of the town of Swansey to know at what time said Potter began to pay taxes in said town, and what part of his personal estate has been rated from time to time in said town.” Although he still retained his household in Bristol he had taken up his residence in Swansey, where the rate of taxation was considerably less than that of Bristol. In that Massachusetts town he continued, nominally, to reside for the rest of his life. Notwithstanding his residence in another State he still continued a member of Saint Michael’s Church. In 1792 a vote of the Vestry was passed, thanking him for painting the church edifice, and for other benefactions, and in 1799 he presented a bell (with a French inscription) to the parish. His name headed the list of vestrymen from 1793 until his death. He died, at the age of eighty-six, February 20, 1806, leaving no children. His estate was by will divided among his nine sisters and their descendants. All the beneficiaries did not fare alike. He had his favorites and his strong prejudices. As is almost always the case popular estimate had exaggerated the value of his property. Instead of a quarter of a million, less than half that amount was divided among his heirs. The inventory showed that he had made a great many “wildcat” investments.
From his house on Thames Street the old captain was borne to his last resting place in the burying-ground upon the Common. It was the most impressive funeral the town had witnessed. All the people turned out to see the long procession, and to take part in it. The privateering exploits of his early life were again retold, the innumerable legal battles of his later days were again recounted. Full of strife and tumult were the centuries in which his life had been passed, stormy and passionate his own career had been. He was perhaps the last, he was certainly the most successful, of the old sea captains who, as English subjects, had sailed forth from Narragansett Bay to make war as privateersmen upon the foes of Great Britain. But among those who followed his corpse to its final resting place were men who in less than a decade were to sail out from Bristol harbor in a little private armed vessel whose success as a privateer was to surpass his wildest imaginings, a vessel that was to collect from English merchants a tribute many times exceeding that which he had exacted from the enemies of England. The story of that vessel will be told in the last chapter of this book.
Potter was most noted for his raid upon the coast of French Guiana of which an account follows. He was captain of a typical American privateer when Narragansett Bay was noted throughout the Colonies as a nursery of privateersmen. Rhode Island furnished more privately armed vessels for the service of the mother country during the eighteenth century than did any other American Colony. From the year 1700 to the Revolution at least one hundred and eighty such ships sailed out from its ports. They were long and narrow, crowded with seamen for their more speedy handling, and manœuvered with a skill that placed the slower ships of the French and Spaniards entirely at their mercy. They carried long guns which enabled them to disable their adversaries at a distance, thus preventing their enemies from inflicting any damage in return. Because built for speed they were of light construction. A broadside from a man-of-war would have gone crashing through their hulls and sent them at once to the bottom of the sea, but the seamanship of their captains always kept them out of reach of such a broadside. Their greatest danger was from the gales that drove them upon a rocky coast. Then no skill of their captains could save them. Their slight frames were quickly broken to pieces, sometimes with the loss of every man on board. The Prince Charles of Lorraine was wrecked upon the rocks of Seaconnet Point not long after the voyage herein described.
The kind of warfare in which they engaged would not now be regarded as honorable, yet it was then approved by all nations. Not only did they seek prizes upon the ocean; a descent upon the coast of the enemy, a plundering of a rich town especially if it was undefended, was an exploit from which they derived the liveliest satisfaction. They preferred that kind of an expedition, for, as was always the case with private armed ships, their aim was simply to acquire wealth for themselves, not to inflict unprofitable damage upon their adversaries. Privateering was only a species of legalized piracy as far as these raids were concerned. Happily the ruthless bloodshed and the outrages which characterized the raids of the buccaneers and other pirates were never charged against sailors on the legally commissioned private armed ships. Their trade was brutal but they carried it on with the approbation of their fellow men because it was a custom that had prevailed from time immemorial.
Very rarely have records of their raids been preserved, more rarely still accounts written by their victims. The one which follows was discovered and made public some three-quarters of a century ago by Bishop Kip of California. At the sale of a famous library in England he purchased a set of the “Letters of Jesuit Missionaries from 1650-1750,” bound in fifty or more volumes. In 1875 he published a volume containing translations of the letters relating especially to American history. From this volume, which has long been out of print, the following account is taken.
The owners of the Prince Charles of Lorraine were Sueton Grant, Peleg Brown and Nathaniel Coddington, Jr., of Newport. Simeon Potter of Bristol was her captain, and Daniel Brown of Newport was her lieutenant. Among the Bristol men on the privateer were Mark Anthony De Wolf (founder of the family destined to become most famous in the history of the town), clerk; Benjamin Munro, master; Michael Phillips, pilot; William Kipp and Jeffrey Potter, the last being probably an Indian slave of Potter. Upon her return from her cruise Captain Potter was summoned before an admiralty court, having been accused of certain high handed, not to say illegal proceedings. Among other things he was charged with having fired upon a Dutch vessel while his ship was lying at anchor in Surinam, Dutch Guiana. He proved to the satisfaction of the court that he had fired upon the Dutch ship at the request of the Captain of the Port, in order to “bring her to,” his own ship being between the vessel and the fort at the time and so preventing the fire of the fort. The admiralty judge decided that Potter had not been guilty of the offences charged, and that he had shown zeal and enterprise worthy of commendation and imitation. The trial proceedings combined with Father Fauque’s narrative give a complete history of the cruise.
The privateer sailed from Newport September 8, 1744, and arrived at “Wiopock, twelve leagues to the windward of Cyan,” October 28. Up to that time she had taken no prizes. Upon his arrival Potter took thirty-two men and made a descent upon the town. They reached it at midnight and were at once fired upon by its garrison, Captain Potter receiving a bullet in his left arm. Of course they took the fort; garrisons in the tropics were never equal to privateersmen as fighters. They took some twenty prisoners (the other defenders having promptly fled), six cannon and from sixty to seventy small arms. They remained at Wiapock twelve days while they sacked the town, taking from it everything of value. Some of the company were sent up the river to plunder plantations. All things taken were carried to Barbadoes and there condemned as French property, with the exception of some slaves detained at Surinam and some personal property which Potter sold at a “vandue” on his ship. Having stripped Wiapock (the name of the place was Oyapoc but American and English captains were never strong on spelling) to their hearts’ content, they sailed to “Cyann” (Cayenne) and dropped anchor at that place November 11. There they tarried four or five days, during which they sent plundering expeditions up the river. One of these came to grief on a shoal. The twelve men who manned the boat were attacked by one hundred and thirty soldiers, three of them were killed, four were wounded and the others carried to Cyann fort as prisoners. Thereupon Potter sent a flag of truce to propose an exchange of prisoners. The exchange was arranged and among those returned by the Americans was “a priest,” Father Fauque. Then the Prince Charles sailed to Surinam well satisfied with what had been accomplished. At Surinam Captain Potter gave an entertainment to two English merchants and some masters of ships that were at anchor in the port. Seamen of that day were not always total abstainers and after the banquet the “vandue” was had of which mention has already been made. The prices obtained for the plunder were doubtless satisfactory for the most part to the sellers, but not in all cases. The goods sold “to the value of thirty or forty pieces of eight.” They belonged to the “company” and the captain purchased many of them on his own account thereby furnishing cause for the suit brought against him on his return to Rhode Island, from which suit he came out triumphant. Immediately after the sale the seamen demanded their share of the proceeds. Captain Potter told them they were still in debt to the owners for advances made and as his arguments were enforced by a drawn sword they were admitted to be valid.
In his testimony before the admiralty court the Indian, Jeffrey Potter, was more specific as to the plunder secured at Wiapock than any other witness. He testified that they took seven Indians and three negroes, twenty large spoons or ladles, nine large ladles, one gold and one silver hilted sword, one gold and one silver watch, two bags of money, quantity uncertain; chests and trunks of goods, etc., gold rings, buckles and buttons, silver candlesticks, church plate both gold and silver, swords, four cannon, sixty small arms, ammunition, provisions, etc. But the wealth secured on this raid could not have been very great. French Guiana at the present time has a population of only 30,000, of whom 12,500 live at Cayenne. The number of people then living at Oyapoc was much smaller than the population of today. The town burned by the marauding expedition sent up the river contained not more than seventy houses, and anyone who has visited the countries lying along the north coast of South America knows that “the wealth of the tropics” is a wild figure of speech as far as the house furnishings are concerned.