British depredations in Rhode Island, 1775 463
Naval operations 463
The “Katy” and “Washington” 464
The “Washington” and “Spitfire” galleys 465
Organs of naval administration 466
Prize court and privateers 467
An attempted naval increase, 1777 468
Coöperation of Rhode Island with Congress, 1778-1779 468
The “Pigot” and the “Argo” 469
The “Rover” 470
Naval preparations in New York 471
New York’s naval establishment 472
Washington and the New York vessels 473
Services of the New York fleet 474
Additional facts about naval affairs in New York 475
New Hampshire and the Penobscot expedition 476
New Hampshire privateers and prize court 476
Naval suggestions of New Jersey 477
APPENDICES
A bibliography 481
A list of commissioned officers in the Continental Navy 506
A list of commissioned officers in the Continental Marine Corps 512
A list of armed vessels 516
PART I
THE CONTINENTAL NAVY
CHAPTER I
THE NAVAL COMMITTEE
The history of the Continental navy covers a period of ten years,
extending from 1775 to 1785. During this time the Continental
Congress made many experiments in naval legislation and devised
several organs of naval administration. The first of these organs,
with whose origin and work this chapter is concerned, was the Naval
Committee. It lasted for only a few months. Its lineal successors,
each of which will be duly considered, were the Marine Committee, the
Board of Admiralty, and the Agent of Marine. These four executive
organs, for the most part, administered the Continental navy.
Certain odds and ends of the naval business, however, fell to the
commander-in-chief of the army and his officers, and to the American
representatives in foreign countries. The second chapter will treat
of the fleets of the army, and the closing chapters of the narrative
of the Continental navy will consider the naval services of our
representatives in foreign lands.
In maritime countries the military service is generally ambidextrous.
Whether the army or navy is first brought into play at the opening
of a war depends upon various circumstances. The presence of a
British army at Boston, already on colonial soil, when the American
Resolution broke out early in 1775, naturally led to the immediate
organization of an army by the colonists. The need of a navy was at
this time not quite so insistent. Moreover, the building, or even the
purchase, of an armed fleet required more time than did the raising
of an army, which was rendered comparatively easy by the previous
training of the colonists in the local militia. Nevertheless, since
both countries engaged in the war were maritime, the creating of a
navy could not long be delayed.
The reader recollects that by the middle of 1775 the battles
of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill had been fought, a
Continental army had been organized, and Washington had been made
commander-in-chief. Outside of Congress the agitation in behalf
of a Continental navy had begun. That the first suggestions and
advances for a navy should come from New England, where the concrete
problems of the defence of her ports and coasts were being faced,
was to be expected. One of the first men to make such suggestions
was Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts. On July 11, 1775, he wrote to
John Adams in Philadelphia that the best method of securing the
coastwise navigation of the colonies was by row-galleys. He then
continued: “As the whole Continent is so firmly united, why not a
Number of Vessels of War be fitted out and judiciously stationed, so
as to intercept and prevent any supplies going to our Enemies; and
consequently, unless they can make an Impression inland, they must
leave the Country or starve.”[1] The first formal movement in behalf
of a Continental navy came from Rhode Island, which state was during
the summer of 1775 suffering serious annoyances from the British
ships. On August 26 her legislature instructed the Rhode Island
delegates to the Continental Congress to use their influence at the
ensuing session of Congress to obtain a fleet for the protection
of the colonies.[2] On September 2, 1775, Washington, in order to
prevent reinforcements from reaching the enemy at Boston, instructed
Nicholson Broughton to proceed in the schooner “Hannah” on a cruise
against the British transports.[3]
That the question of providing a Continental navy would come up
during the fall session of Congress was certain. The arguments in
its behalf, which were made almost unanimously later in the session,
must have been on the lips of several of the members when they
assembled in Philadelphia in September: an army had been organized,
why not a navy? The situation of the combatants, separated by the
great Atlantic highway; and their character, one a great naval and
commercial power, and the other with maritime interests by no means
inconsiderable, would necessarily make the impending struggle in
no small part a naval one. America had seacoasts and seaports to
be defended, a coastwise navigation to be secured, and above all
commercial and diplomatic communications with foreign powers to be
kept open. These communications were a jugular vein, whose severing
would mean death to the United Colonies. The urgent and specific
calls for armed vessels, which were being made, must be met at
once. Had not America conveniently at hand materials for ships, and
abundant men who had the “habit of the sea”?
In the early months of the session there certainly would arise
opposition to the new military project. The inertia and conservatism
of some of the members would set them against so great an innovation.
To others the fitting out of a fleet, at a time when the length,
seriousness, and meaning of the war with the motherland were but half
unveiled, would seem an unwise and hasty action.
The question of procuring a fleet of armed vessels was first brought
to the attention of Congress on October 3, 1775, when the Rhode
Island members presented their instructions, an account of which will
be given in a succeeding chapter.[4] It is sufficient for present
purposes to say that until December the Rhode Island instructions had
little other result beyond crystallizing and clarifying opinion on
naval affairs by means of the debates which they caused in Congress.
On October 5 sundry letters from London were laid before the Congress
and read. They conveyed the 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.” Congress at once saw the importance of
capturing these two vessels, in order both to deprive the British
of these stores and to obtain them for the Continental army around
Boston, which sorely needed all the munitions of war it could get. A
motion was therefore made that a committee of three be appointed to
prepare a plan for intercepting the two brigs, and that it “proceed
on this business immediately.”[5] John Adams in his autobiography
says that the opposition to this motion was “very loud and vehement,”
and included some of his own colleagues, and also especially Edward
Rutledge of South Carolina. It seems to have been recognized that the
carrying of the motion would be the initial step in the establishment
of a Continental navy. Such an undertaking its opponents declared,
with a greater display of rhetoric than judgment, was the “most
wild, visionary, mad project that ever had been imagined. It was an
infant taking a mad bull by his horns; and what was more profound
and remote, it was said it would ruin the character and corrupt the
morals of all our seamen. It would make them selfish, piratical,
mercenary, bent wholly upon plunder, etc., etc.” The friends of the
motion, in colors equally glowing, set forth “the great advantages of
distressing the enemy, supplying ourselves, and beginning a system
of maritime and naval operations.” On the taking of the vote the
motion passed in the affirmative; and according to John Adams’s
recollection, he, John Langdon of New Hampshire, and Silas Deane of
Connecticut, “three members who had expressed much zeal in favor of
the motion,” composed the committee.[6]
A little later on the same day this committee reported; and thereupon
Congress decided to write a letter to Washington directing him
to obtain from the Council of Massachusetts two of that state’s
cruisers, and to despatch them on the errand of intercepting the
two supply ships. It also directed that letters be written to the
governors of Connecticut and Rhode Island asking for the loan of some
of their armed vessels, which were to be sent on the same mission.
“The committee appointed to prepare a plan for intercepting the two
vessels bound to Canada” made another report on the 6th, which was
ordered to lie on the table “for the perusal of the members.”[7] This
report was acted upon on October 13, when Congress decided to fit
out two armed vessels, one of ten and the other of fourteen guns, to
cruise three months to the eastward for the purpose of intercepting
the enemy’s transports laden with warlike stores and other supplies.
A committee consisting of Silas Deane, John Langdon, and Christopher
Gadsden of South Carolina was appointed to estimate the expense which
would be incurred in fitting out the two vessels.[8]
In four days this new committee reported an estimate, which was
unsatisfactory and was recommitted.[9] When it again reported on
October 30, two more vessels, one to mount not more than twenty and
the other not more than thirty-six guns, were ordered to be prepared
for sea, and “to be employed in such manner, for the protection and
defence of the United Colonies, as the Congress shall direct.” It
should be noted that the two vessels for which provision was now made
were to engage in the defence of the colonies, and not merely in the
interception of transports, an indication of an advance in the naval
policy of Congress. Four additional members were now added to the
committee, Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island, Joseph Hewes of North
Carolina, R. H. Lee of Virginia, and John Adams of Massachusetts.[10]
This reconstituted committee composed of seven members was sometimes
called “the committee for fitting out armed vessels,” occasionally
the “Marine Committee,” but most frequently the “Naval Committee.”
It secured for its use a room in a public house in Philadelphia, and
in order that there should be no conflict between its meetings and
those of Congress, it fixed its hours from six in the evening until
the close of its business. Its sessions were sometimes pleasantly
continued, even until midnight, by conversational diversions, marked
by a rich flow of soul, history, poetry, wine, and Jamaica rum.
John Adams, who always wrote pungently, has left us a lively picture
of the Naval Committee. His description makes it clear that the
deliberations of this committee were not always marked by that
exalted seriousness and impassive dignity, which we too habitually
ascribe to the Revolutionary Fathers. “The pleasantest part of my
labors for the four years I spent in Congress from 1774 to 1778,”
he said, “was in this Naval Committee. Mr. Lee, Mr. Gadsden, were
sensible men, and very cheerful, but Governor Hopkins of Rhode
Island, above seventy years of age, kept us all alive. Upon
business, his experience and judgment were very useful. But when the
business of the evening was over, he kept us in conversation till
eleven, and sometimes twelve o’clock. His custom was to drink nothing
all day, nor till eight o’clock in the evening, and then his beverage
was Jamaica spirit and water. It gave him wit, humor, anecdotes,
science, and learning. He had read Greek, Roman, and British history,
and was familiar with English poetry, particularly Pope, Thomson, and
Milton, and the flow of his soul made all of his reading our own, and
seemed to bring to recollection in all of us, all we had ever read. I
could neither eat nor drink in these days. The other gentlemen were
very temperate. Hopkins never drank to excess, but all he drank was
immediately not only converted into wit, sense, knowledge, and good
humor, but inspired us with similar qualities.”[11]
The active life of the Naval Committee lasted from October, 1775,
until January, 1776, during which time it laid the foundations of the
navy. Its chairman in January, 1776, was Stephen Hopkins; whether
he was the first to fill this position is not known. His knowledge
of the business of shipping made him particularly useful to the
Committee.[12] The accounts of the Naval Committee were kept by
Joseph Hewes, who was settling them with the Board of Treasury in
September, 1776.[13] Early in December, 1775, John Adams returned
home, and by January only four members of the Committee were left to
transact its business.
In October Congress ordered the fitting out of four vessels, and
appointed the Naval Committee, but did nothing more. By the first
of November the sentiment of Congress was setting strongly towards
organizing a navy. In its debates on the State of Trade during the
latter half of October the necessity of having a navy in order both
to defend the colonial commerce and to carry on the war was generally
recognized.[14] The members from the South were as a rule now lining
up with those of the North in behalf of a naval armament. Events
had happened and were daily happening in New England which were
convincing the doubtful members of Congress. As a military necessity
for conducting the siege of Boston, and with no intention whatever to
create a navy, as such, Washington had obtained seven small cruisers,
and either had sent or was sending them to sea in pursuit of the
enemy’s transports. The logic of events had forced him, on his own
responsibility, to create a little fleet of his own.[15]
With the passage of each day, the gap between the mother-country and
her revolting subjects widened, and the feeling became stronger and
more general that an irrepressible war, which must be fought to a
just conclusion, had begun. What in October seemed chimerical, might
in November appear practicable.
Beginning with November the naval legislation of Congress moved
rapidly. The duty of preparing much of it naturally fell to the Naval
Committee. Its work in large part may be found in the Journals of the
Continental Congress for November and December, 1775, and January,
1776. A brief summary of the most important Congressional resolutions
for this period will be here presented.
On November 2, 1775, Congress voted $100,000 for the work of the
Naval Committee, and empowered it “to agree with such officers
and seamen as are proper to man and command” the four vessels
already ordered to be prepared for sea. Congress also fixed the
“encouragement” of the officers and seamen at “one-half of all
ships of war made prize of by them, and one-third of all transport
vessels.”[16]
On November 10 the first legislation relating to the Marine Corps
of the United States was passed. Two battalions, which were to be
called “the first and second battalions of American Marines,” were to
be raised, consisting of one colonel, two lieutenant-colonels, two
majors, and “other officers as usual in other regiments.” There is
some doubt whether Congress fully understood the duties of marines,
for it provided that “no persons be appointed to office, or inlisted
into said Battalions, but such as are good seamen, or so acquainted
with maritime affairs as to be able to serve to advantage by sea when
required.”[17] Such a requirement seems to overlook the fact that the
duties of marines are military in character, rather than naval.
The Naval Committee made what probably was its most important report
on November 23, when it laid before Congress “a draught of rules for
the government of the American navy, and articles to be signed by the
officers and men employed in that service.” On the 25th and 28th of
November, these were debated by paragraphs and after slight amendment
were adopted.[18] The rules, eight or ten pages in length, are
brevity itself as compared with the present rules and regulations of
the United States navy, which make a book of some six hundred pages.
More than one-half of the navy’s first rules are concerned with
the feeding, care, rights, duties, and punishments of the ordinary
sailor; while the present rules of the American navy in large part
apply to officers.
A few of the provisions of these old rules are worthy of notice. The
commanders of ships of the thirteen united colonies were “to take
care that divine service be performed twice a day on board, and a
sermon preached on Sundays, unless bad weather or other extraordinary
accidents prevent.” Sailors were to be punished for swearing by
the wearing of a wooden collar, “or some other shameful badge of
distinction.” Sailors were to be put in irons for drunkenness;
while officers guilty of the same offense forfeited two days’ pay.
The extreme punishment which an officer might inflict on a seaman
was “twelve lashes upon his bare back, with a cat of nine tails.”
In case a sailor deserved greater punishment, he must be tried by
a court-martial, which should consist of “at least three captains
and three first lieutenants, with three captains and three first
lieutenants of marines, if there shall be so many of the marines
then present, and the eldest captain shall preside.” A penal code
was established. A court-martial might inflict death for desertion,
mutiny, or murder.
Rations for the sailors were fixed by these old rules for each day of
the week. Saturday’s bill of fare, which consisted of “1 lb. bread,
1 lb. pork, half pint peas, and four ounces cheese,” may be taken as
a sample one. Each seaman was given a half-pint of rum a day, with a
“discretionary allowance on extra duty, and in time of engagement.”
The following provision, for keeping the eatables sweet and
palatable, is noted: “The captain is frequently to order the proper
officers to inspect the condition of the provisions, and if the bread
proves damp, to have it aired upon the quarter deck or poop, and also
examine the flesh cask, and if any of the pickle be leaked out, to
have new made and put in, and the cask made tight and secure.”
The following naval offices were established; the first two only
were commissioned: captain, lieutenant, master, master’s mate,
boatswain, boatswain’s first mate, boatswain’s second mate, gunner,
gunner’s mate, surgeon, surgeon’s mate, carpenter, carpenter’s mate,
cooper, captain’s clerk, steward, and chaplain. Five marine offices
were established; the highest was that of captain. A pay-table was
provided, according to which the monthly wage ranged form $32 for
captains, to $6.67 for able seamen and marines. According to the form
of a contract of enlistment which accompanied the rules, a bounty of
$400 was to be deducted from the proceeds of prizes and to be paid to
the commander, in all cases where he lost a limb in the engagement,
or was incapacitated from earning a livelihood; if the commander was
killed, an equal sum was to be paid to his widow. Minor officers
under the same circumstances received proportionately smaller sums.
The man who first discovered a vessel that was afterwards captured
was rewarded with a double share of prize money; he who first boarded
a prize was entitled to a treble share. Ten shares of every prize
were set aside “to be given to such inferior officers, seamen and
marines, as shall be adjudged best to deserve them by the superior
officers.”
These rules, which were in force throughout the Revolution, and
which were readopted for the government of the new navy under the
Constitution,[19] were drawn up by John Adams, and “examined,
discussed, and corrected” by the Naval Committee. They are an
abridgment and adaptation of parts of the British naval statutes
and regulations in force in 1775. That part of Adams’s rules which
constitutes the penal code of the navy, he obtained from the Naval
Discipline Act passed by the British Parliament in 1749.[20] In
adapting the British code, however, he made it less stringent. The
British also found it advisable in 1779 to lessen the severity of
their code. The rest of Adams’s rules are, with verbal changes and
omissions, chiefly taken from the King’s Regulations and Admiralty
Instructions of 1772. An extract from the King’s regulations
followed by the corresponding one from Adams’s rules will illustrate
the closeness of the parallelism: “No Commander shall inflict any
punishment upon a Seaman, beyond Twelve Lashes upon his bare Back
with a Cat of Nine Tails, according to the ancient Practice of the
Sea.”[21] “No commander shall inflict any punishment upon a seaman
beyond twelve lashes upon his bare back, with a cat of nine tails.”
An additional example of the influence of the British upon the
American navy is found in the fact that the naval offices as given
above were already established in the navy of the Stuarts, indeed,
many of them in the navy of Elizabeth. The Americans were still
British at the time of the Revolution, and they intuitively went
home, so to speak, for the naval models with which they were familiar.
On November 25, 1775, Congress enacted some very important naval
legislation, which in John Adams’s opinion was “the true origin and
foundation of the American navy,” and in producing which he “had
at least as great a share ... as any man living.”[22] The occasion
of this legislation was certain recommendations of Washington. On
October 5 he requested the “determination of Congress, as to the
property and disposal of such vessels and cargoes, as are designed
for the supply of the enemy, and may fall into our hands.” On
November 8 he pointed out the necessity of establishing proper
admiralty courts. On November 11 he recommended to Congress the
establishment of an admiralty court for the trial of prize cases
arising from Continental captures.[23] A report of a committee
of seven members, which had been appointed on the 17th to take
Washington’s request of November 8 into consideration, was, on
the 23rd, laid on the table “for the perusal of the members,” and
was debated and agreed to by paragraphs on the 24th and 25th.[24]
Congress now took the decisive step of authorizing the capture of
all British vessels employed against the United Colonies, either as
armed vessels of war, transports, or supply ships. Provision for
privateering was made in part. It was recommended to the legislatures
of the several colonies to establish courts for the trial of prize
cases. In all cases appeals to Congress were to be allowed, when
made in accordance with certain prescribed rules. Prosecutions in
prize cases must commence in the court of that colony in which the
capture was made, but if the capture took place on the open sea the
captor had the privilege of selecting the most convenient court.
Congress fixed the shares of the proceeds of prizes. In the case of
privateers the whole of the proceeds of captures went to the captors.
In the case of vessels fitted out by a colony, or by Congress,
two-thirds were to go in the first instance to the colony, and in
the second, to Congress; and one-third was to go to the captors:
provided that, if the prize should be a vessel of war, the captor’s
share should be increased to one-half, and the government’s share
correspondingly decreased.
On December 2, 1775, Congress authorized the Naval Committee to
employ two additional vessels, and also to “prepare a proper
commission for the captains or commanders of the ships of war in the
service of the United Colonies.”[25] On the report of the committee
on recaptures, Congress on December 5 fixed the compensation of
recaptors, which varied from one-eighth to the whole of the value of
the vessel and cargo, depending on the time which elapsed between
the capture and recapture.[26] On December 9 the following new naval
offices were established: midshipman, armorer, sailmaker, yeoman,
quarter-master, quarter-gunner, cook, and coxswain.[27] On December
13 the wages of able-bodied seamen were raised to $8 a month; and on
the 22nd the salary of the commander-in-chief of the navy was fixed
at $125 a month.[28]
In accordance with the direction of Congress, the Naval Committee,
on January 6, 1776, reported on the division of the captor’s share
of prizes, among officers, seamen, and marines; whereupon, Congress
divided the captor’s share into twenty parts, and allotted them
equitably between the officers and men. The commander-in-chief
received one-twentieth, and the captains of the fleet making the
capture, two-twentieths. After the officers had been provided for,
the remaining eight and one-half parts were allotted to the seamen,
“share and share alike.”[29]
Meanwhile, the Naval Committee had been busy purchasing, fitting for
sea, and officering a fleet. About the first of November John Adams
was writing from Philadelphia to James Warren in Massachusetts,
inquiring whether naval vessels might be purchased or built in
Massachusetts, and whether suitable officers could be procured
there; and also at the same time to Samuel Chase in Baltimore, in
regard to the purchase of certain vessels in that city.[30] On
November 17 the Committee ordered Silas Deane to go to New York and
to purchase a 20-gun ship and a 10-gun Bermudan-built sloop.[31]
Under the authorizations of Congress of October 13 and October 30,
the Naval Committee purchased four vessels, the “Alfred,” “Columbus,”
“Cabot,” and “Andrew Doria;” named, respectively, for the founder
of the English navy, the discoverer of America, the first English
explorer of America, and the great Genoese Admiral.[32] The first
vessel to be bought was the “Alfred,” a ship of two hundred tons
burden. The “Alfred” was originally the “Black Prince,” and belonged
to John Nixon, the well-known Philadelphia merchant of Revolutionary
times.[33]
On November 5 the Naval Committee appointed Esek Hopkins, of Rhode
Island, commander-in-chief of the fleet.[34] The Committee may have
created this office as analogous to Washington’s position in the
army. It is more probable that the office was borrowed from the
British navy, in which the commander-in-chief was the chief admiral
of a port or station, who held command over all other admirals within
his jurisdiction.[35] The first and only commander-in-chief of the
American navy was at the time of his appointment fifty-seven years
of age. He was a member of an influential Rhode Island family, and a
brother of Stephen Hopkins, of the Naval Committee. About 1745 Esek
Hopkins was a sea captain and merchant adventurer. In the French and
Indian War he had commanded a privateer.[36] At the breaking out of
the Revolution he received the appointment of captain and then of
brigadier-general in the Rhode Island forces. Deliberate in action
and irascible in temper, Hopkins was at the same time industrious,
steadfast, and veracious. The following description was written by
Henry Knox to his wife, probably in April, 1776: “I have been on
board Admiral Hopkins’ ship, and in company with his gallant son, who
was wounded in the engagement with the ‘Glasgow.’ The admiral is an
antiquated figure. He brought to my mind Van Tromp, the famous Dutch
admiral. Though antiquated in figure, he is shrewd and sensible. I,
whom you think not a little enthusiastic, should have taken him for
an angel, only he swore now and then.”[37] The choice of Hopkins as
head of the navy was, at the time, as promising as could have been
made.
On December 7, 1775, a commission was given to John Paul Jones,
an energetic and capable young man, twenty-eight years old, whose
brilliant career was still unforeseen.[38] On December 22 the Naval
Committee laid before Congress a “list of the officers by them
appointed.”[39] It included, besides Hopkins and Jones, the names of
four captains, four first-lieutenants, five second-lieutenants, and
three third-lieutenants. The little roll of captains was headed by
Dudley Saltonstall, who owed his appointment to his brother-in-law,
Silas Deane, a member of the Committee; and was ended by John
Burroughs Hopkins, a son of the commander-in-chief. Immediately above
J. B. Hopkins in rank was Nicholas Biddle, a young Philadelphian,
twenty-five years old, and very promising material for a naval
officer. He had entered the British navy in 1770, and had served as
midshipman on board the same vessel with Lord Nelson. In the summer
of 1775 he was appointed commander of the “Franklin” galley of the
Pennsylvania navy. The fourth captain was Abraham Whipple, the
commodore of the Rhode Island navy.
In these first appointments of the Committee it takes no eagle eye
to discern the workings of nepotism and sectional influences. Of
the five largest naval plums, New England plucked four. This may
have been, however, right enough, as the South was credited with the
commander-in-chief of the army, and New England greatly exceeded the
Middle and Southern states in the number of men who were experienced
in maritime affairs.
In December, 1775, the Naval Committee was preparing a fleet for sea,
which was to make the first naval essay of the new government. The
Pennsylvania Committee of Safety was contributing arms, ammunition,
and sailors. Commodore Hopkins enlisted for the service of his fleet
more than one hundred seamen in Rhode Island, whom Whipple brought
to Philadelphia in the “Katy.” On December 3, 1775, John Paul Jones
hoisted the Continental flag on board the “Alfred,” Hopkins’s
flagship, the first Continental vessel to fly the colors of the new
nation.[40] By the end of January, 1776, the Committee had added
four other small vessels to the navy, the sloops “Providence,” and
“Hornet,” and the schooners, “Wasp,” and “Fly.”[41] The “Providence”
had been the “Katy” of the Rhode Island navy. The “Hornet” and the
“Wasp” were obtained in Baltimore.
On January 5, 1776, the Naval Committee issued sailing orders to the
commander-in-chief. He was ordered, “if Winds and Weather possibly
admit of it, to proceed directly for Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.”
Here he was to strike the enemy’s fleet under Lord Dunmore,
unless it was found to be greatly superior to his own. If he was
so fortunate as to execute this business successfully, he was to
continue southward and master the British forces off the coast of the
Carolinas, and from thence he was to sail northward directly to Rhode
Island and “attack, take, and destroy all the enemy’s naval force
that you may find there.”[42] This program seems rather ambitious,
when one considers the motley assemblage of officers, seamen, and
cruisers, that composed this fleet of made-over merchantmen.
The ice in the Delaware greatly delayed the expedition. Early in
February, 1776, the fleet was assembling at Cape Henlopen. It then
consisted of the flagship “Alfred,” 24, Captain Dudley Saltonstall;
the ship “Columbus,” 20, Captain Abraham Whipple; the brigs “Andrew
Doria,” 14, Captain Nicholas Biddle, and “Cabot,” 14, Captain J.
B. Hopkins; the sloop “Providence,” 12; and the schooner “Fly,” 8.
On February 15 the sloop “Hornet,” 10, and the schooner “Wasp,” 8,
joined the fleet from Baltimore.[43] On the 17th the fleet sailed
outside the Capes into the broad Atlantic. A new nation in whose
veins flowed the blood of a long line of seafaring and sea-fighting
ancestors was about to put to the initial test its skill in naval
warfare, and under conditions far from auspicious. If the doughty
Admiral should get all his queer craft once more into a safe harbor
he would be doing well.
Hopkins had apparently concluded that his Armada might prove vincible
on the stormy coasts of Virginia. Indeed, the enemy must have heard
of his intended coming, and awaited it. Not only discretion, but
good military judgment advised him to abandon for the present the
visitation to the Chesapeake.[44] Before sailing on February 17
he had determined to make a descent on Nassau, New Providence, and
accordingly he gave orders to his captains and commanders to keep in
company, if possible, but if not, to make for the island of Abaco,
one of the Bahamas, where the fleet would next rendezvous.[45]
On the 3rd and 4th of March Nassau was taken after a slight
resistance and without bloodshed, by a landing party consisting of
two hundred marines under one of their officers, Captain Samuel
Nichols, and fifty sailors under Lieutenant Weaver of the “Cabot.”
Eighty-eight cannon, fifteen mortars, a large quantity of shot
and shell besides other munitions of war were captured. Since the
governor of the island succeeded the night before the landing was
effected in removing the gunpowder to a safe hiding place, the
expedition failed of its chief object.[46]
On March 17, having loaded his vessels and a borrowed sloop with
the warlike stores, Hopkins set sail for Rhode Island, taking with
him as prisoners of war several important officials, including the
Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of New Providence. On April 4 the
squadron, having reached the eastward end of Long Island, captured
the British schooner “Hawk,” 6, and the bomb brig “Bolton,” 8. At 1
o’clock on the morning of the 6th the “Alfred,” “Cabot,” “Columbus,”
“Andrew Doria,” and “Providence” engaged His Majesty’s ship
“Glasgow,” 20, Captain Tyringham Howe. After a severe fight of about
three hours, the “Glasgow,” was permitted to escape, leaving her
tender with the Americans.[47] The loss of the enemy was four; that
of the Americans, twenty-four, of which number twenty-three were on
board the “Alfred” and “Cabot,” the two vessels which bore the brunt
of the encounter.[48] Each of these vessels had a lieutenant killed.
The American commanders in this engagement exhibited little skill in
tactics. A fleet permitted a single vessel of the enemy to escape.
Something can be said for them by way of extenuating circumstances.
It should also be said that they showed no lack of spirit. As was
natural, Commodore Hopkins was made the target for much adverse
criticism. Nations, it is said, are seldom just under disgrace,
imaginary or real.
The expedition to New Providence was the sole naval enterprise made
by the Continental vessels, while they were under the direction
of the Naval Committee. Early in 1776 this Committee, reduced in
membership, yielded its control of marine affairs to a new committee
with a fuller complement of members. It scarcely needs to be said
that the Naval Committee’s claim to distinction rests not upon its
military achievements, but upon its work of a civil character,
whereby it laid the foundations of the Revolutionary navy. It
acquired the first American fleet, selected its officers, and fitted
it for sea. It drafted the first civil and penal code of the navy,
and prepared not a little fundamental naval legislation.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Manuscript Letters of John Adams, lodged with the Massachusetts
Historical Society by Mr. Charles Francis Adams, who kindly permitted
the writer to see them.
[2] See Chapter III, The Organization of the Marine Committee.
[3] See Chapter II, The Fleets of Washington and Arnold. After a
thorough investigation and study of the sources of the early history
of the Continental navy, I am compelled to reject many of the
statements and conclusions found in Chapter II, Volume I, of Augustus
C. Buell’s book, Paul Jones, Founder of the American Navy.
[4] See Chapter III, The Organization of the Marine Committee.
[5] Journals of Continental Congress, October 5, 1775. Waite, H.
E., Origin of American Navy, 1-5, containing letters of John Adams,
Elbridge Gerry, and John Langdon, written in 1813.
[6] Works of John Adams, III, 7, 8. I have accepted the account of
this debate as found in John Adams’s autobiography, although it is
possible that writing many years after its occurrence Adams may
have confused it with the debate of October 7 on the Rhode Island
resolutions.—Works of John Adams, I, 187.
[7] Journals of Continental Congress, October 6, 1775.
[8] Journals of Continental Congress, October 13, 1775. The armament
of the second vessel was not determined until October 30, 1775.
[9] Ibid., October 17, 1775.
[10] Ibid., October 30, 1775. John Adams, in his Notes on Debates
for October 30, 1775, reports George Ross of Pennsylvania as saying:
“We can’t get seamen to man four vessels. We could not get seamen to
man our boats, our galleys.” Adams also tells us that three of the
Virginia members, Wythe, Nelson, and Lee, were “for fitting out four
ships.”—Works of John Adams, II, 484.
[11] Works of John Adams, III, 9, 12.
[12] Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography, III, 259.
[13] Journals of Continental Congress, September 19, 1776.
[14] Works of John Adams, II, 469-83. In one of these debates,
according to Adams, George Wythe of Virginia said: “Why should not
America have a navy? No maritime power near the seacoast can be
safe without it. It is no chimera. The Romans suddenly built one in
their Carthaginian war. Why may not we lay a foundation for it? We
abound with firs, iron ore, tar, pitch, turpentine; we have all the
materials for the construction of a navy.”—Works of John Adams, II,
479.
[15] See Chapter II, The Fleets of Washington and Arnold.
[16] Journals of Continental Congress, November 2, 1775.
[17] Ibid., November 10. Congress first ordered the marines to be
raised from the Continental army, but on the objecting of Washington
to such weakening of his forces, they were directed to be raised
independent of the army.—Journals, November 10, 30, 1775; Ford,
Writings of Washington, III, 225, 274.
[18] Journals of Continental Congress, November 23, 25, 28, 1775.
[19] Thomas Clark, Naval History of United States, II, 108.
[20] Pickering’s Statutes, 22, George II, chapter 33; title of act,
“An act for amending, explaining, and reducing into one Act of
Parliament, the laws relating to the government of his Majesty’s
ships, vessels, and forces by sea.”
[21] King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions of 1772.
[22] Works of John Adams, III, 11. Certain words of John Adams in a
letter dated, Philadelphia, April 28, 1776, have an interest in this
connection: “I have vanity enough to take to myself a share in the
merit of the American navy. It was always a measure that my heart was
much engaged in, and I pursued it for a long time against the wind
and tide, but at last obtained it.”—Force, American Archives, 4th, V,
1111.
[23] Ford, Writings of Washington, III, 165, 203-04, 213-14;
Washington to President of Congress, October 5, November 8, 11, 1775.
See Chapter II, page 67.
[24] Journals of Continental Congress, November 17, 23, 24, and 25.
The Journals for November 25 contain the resolutions.
[25] Journals of Continental Congress, December 2, 1775.
[26] Ibid., December 5, 1775. This legislation refers to American
vessels captured by the British and recaptured by the Americans.
[27] Ibid., December 9, 1775.
[28] Journals of Continental Congress, December 13 and 22, 1775.
[29] Ibid., January 6, 1776.
[30] Manuscript letters of John Adams, Massachusetts Historical
Society; Warren to Adams, November 14, 1775; Chase to Adams, November
16 and 25, 1775.
[31] Collections of New York Historical Society, Deane Papers, I,
91-92.
[32] Works of John Adams, III, 12.
[33] M. I. J. Griffin, Commodore John Barry, 19; Pennsylvania
Archives, 2nd, II, 668. In December, 1774, the “Black Prince”
belonged to Thomas Willing, Robert Morris, Thomas Morris, John
Wharton, and John Nixon.—Pa. Magazine of History and Biography,
October, 1904, 495.
[34] Edward Field’s Esek Hopkins, 78-9.
[35] British Marine Encyclopedia, in Hogg’s Naval Magazine for 1801.
[36] Edward Field, State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,
II, 422.
[37] Edward Field’s Esek Hopkins, 134, quotes from Drake’s Life of
Knox.
[38] Sands, Life and Correspondence of John Paul Jones, 32.
[39] Journals of Continental Congress, December 22, 1775.
[40] Force, American Archives, 4th, IV, 360; letter to Earl of
Dartmouth, dated Maryland, Dec. 20, 1775.
[41] Journals of Continental Congress, December 2, 1775, January 9
and 16, 1776. The Naval Committee spent $134,333 on the eight vessels
which they fitted out.—Journals of Continental Congress, September
19, 1776.
[42] Records and Papers of Continental Congress, 78, III, 239-40,
orders of Commodore Hopkins, signed by four members of the Naval
Committee.
[43] Force, American Archives, 4th, V, 823.
[44] Ford, Writings of Washington, III, 299-300, 319. Washington
wrote on January 4, 1776, to Joseph Reed: “I fear your fleet has
been so long in fitting, and the destination of it so well known,
that the end will be defeated, if the vessels escape.” In July,
1776, Dunmore’s fleet consisted of more than forty vessels, most of
which, however, were probably unarmed, being occupied by refugee
Tories.—Maryland Archives, XII, 24-25.
[45] Edward Field’s Esek Hopkins, 101; a copy of Hopkins’s orders is
given.
[46] Papers of Esek Hopkins, Rhode Island Historical Society, an
invoice of captured articles.
[47] Force, American Archives, 4th, V, 823, Hopkins to President of
Congress, April, 1776, giving an account of the expedition.
[48] W. L. Clowes, Royal Navy, IV, 3, 4; Connecticut Gazette, April
12, 1776.
CHAPTER II
THE FLEETS OF WASHINGTON AND ARNOLD[49]
The first armed vessels that sailed under Continental pay and control
were those that composed the little fleet fitted out by Washington
in the ports of Massachusetts in the fall of 1775. As these vessels
were manned by soldiers and were commanded by army officers, and
were designed to weaken the army of the enemy by capturing his
transports carrying supplies and troops, Washington was able to
derive his authority for procuring and fitting out the fleet from his
commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental army. The first
vessel employed in this service was the schooner “Hannah,” commanded
by Nicholson Broughton, a captain in the army. According to his
instructions, issued September 2, 1775, and signed by Washington,
Broughton was directed to proceed “immediately on a cruise against
such vessels as may be found on the high seas, or elsewhere, bound
inwards and outwards, to or from Boston, in the service of the
Ministerial Army, and to take and seize all such vessels, laden with
soldiers, arms, ammunition, or provisions, for or from said Army, or
which you shall have good reason to suspect are in such service.”
One-third of all captured cargoes were to be given to officers and
crews as an encouragement. The proportions according to which the
captors’ share was to be divided were fixed. The captain was to
receive six times as much as a private. Prizes were to be sent to the
“safest and nearest port to this camp.” Prisoners were to be treated
with kindness and humanity. Broughton was directed to be exceedingly
careful and frugal with his ammunition, and not to waste it in
salutes.[50]
Not until a month after the fitting out of the “Hannah” did
Washington begin to add to his naval force. On October 4 he appointed
Colonel John Glover and Stephen Moylan agents to equip two vessels
at Salem, Marblehead, or Newburyport, and they were directed
to name suitable men for prize agents in the leading ports of
Massachusetts.[51] When Washington received the letter of Congress
of October 5 directing him to obtain two vessels from Massachusetts
and to send them to the St. Lawrence river to intercept two British
transports bound from London for Quebec, he ordered on this service,
since Massachusetts at this time had no armed vessels, the schooners
“Lynch,” Captain Nicholson Broughton, and “Franklin,” Captain
John Selman, which had been or were being fitted out by Glover
and Moylan.[52] In October and November four other small vessels,
the schooners “Lee,” “Harrison,” and “Warren,” and the brigantine
“Washington” were fitted out and sent cruising against the enemy’s
transports. About the first of January, 1776, the schooner “Hancock”
was added. Washington had the entire management of his fleet.
Stephen Moylan, who was attached to his staff, conducted most of the
correspondence with the captains and naval agents while Washington
was at Cambridge.[53] Agents for fitting out the fleet and receiving
its prizes were established in Plymouth, Boston, Lynn, Salem,
Marblehead, Beverly, Newburyport, and Portsmouth, N. H. In January,
1776, Washington appointed John Manly commodore of the fleet. The
other commanders thereby became subject to Manly’s orders.
With the exception of Manly, Washington had a poor opinion of the
abilities of his commanders. On January 28 he wrote to Manly: “I
wish you could inspire the captains of the other armed schooners
under your command with some of your activity and industry.”[54] In
November, 1775, he had written: “Our rascally privateersmen go on at
the old rate, mutinying if they can not do as they please. Those at
Plymouth, Beverly, and Portsmouth have done nothing worth mentioning
in the prize way, and no account as yet received from those farther
eastward,” referring to the “Lynch” and “Franklin,” whose commanders
he feared “would not effect any good purpose.”[55] Early in December
Washington was still more emphatic: “The plague, trouble, and
vexation I have had with the crews of all the armed vessels, are
inexpressible. I do believe there is not on earth a more disorderly
set. Every time they come into port, we hear of nothing but mutinous
complaints. Manly’s success has lately, and but lately, quieted his
people. The crews of the Washington and Harrison have actually
deserted them; so that I have been under the necessity of ordering
the agent to lay the latter up, and get hands for the other on the
best terms he could.”[56]
Notwithstanding the Commander-in-chief’s unfavorable judgment, it
must be said that his fleet, upon the whole, was quite as successful
as were other fleets of equal size and force during the Revolution.
The vessels which composed it were small and lightly armed. Manly’s
first vessel, the “Lee,” with which he rendered effective service,
carried fifty men and four 4-pounders. The brigantine “Washington”
was somewhat larger, mounting ten guns. Altogether the fleet captured
some thirty-five prizes.[57] The first important capture, that of the
brigantine “Nancy,” was an exceedingly timely one, and was made by
Manly in the “Lee” on one of the last days of November, 1775. Among
other stores the “Nancy” had on board 2,000 muskets, 100,000 flints,
30,000 round shot, more than 30 tons of musket shot, 11 mortar beds,
and a brass mortar weighing 10,000 pounds. It would have taken the
Americans eighteen months to have manufactured a like quantity of
ordnance.[58] In June, 1776, the fleet, together with the “Defence”
of the Connecticut navy, captured four British transports, which had
on board besides a quantity of supplies upwards of three hundred and
twenty Scottish troops.[59]
Washington’s fleet cruised chiefly off the Massachusetts coast.
Broughton and Selman, whom Washington dispatched to the river St.
Lawrence to intercept the two British transports, did not enter the
river at all. After making several unauthorized captures, they turned
their attention to the island of St. Johns, now Prince Edward island.
Here they pillaged the defenceless inhabitants, and robbed the houses
of the Governor and Acting-Governor of plate, carpets, curtains,
mirrors, table linen, and wearing apparel. They made prisoners of
the Acting-Governor and two other leading men of the island, whose
families were left in great distress. Washington was highly indignant
at these unwarranted acts of his captains, and at once on their
arrival in Massachusetts he released their three prisoners.[60]
Moved by the need for a proper judicial tribunal to try the prize
cases arising from captures made by his vessels, Washington on
November 11, 1775, wrote to Congress on the subject. He enclosed in
his letter a copy of the Massachusetts law establishing admiralty
courts, and explained that this law did not apply to the captures
made by Continental vessels. “Should not a court,” he asked, “be
established by authority of Congress, to take cognizance of prizes
made by the Continental vessels? Whatever the mode is, which they
are pleased to adopt, there is an absolute necessity of its being
speedily determined on, for I can not spare time from military
affairs to give proper attention to these matters.” As early as
October 5 Washington had requested the “determination of Congress,
as to the property and disposal of such vessels and cargoes, as
are designed for the supply of the enemy, and may fall into our
hands.” On November 8 he called the attention of Congress to the
same subject. On December 4 and December 14 he again urged Congress
to establish a Continental prize court.[61] Finally, on December
20 Congress resolved that the several vessels heretofore carried
into Massachusetts by the armed vessels in the service of the United
Colonies should be “proceeded against by the rules of the law of
nations, and libelled in the courts of admiralty erected in said
colony.”[62] The method of procedure which Congress here established
was followed throughout the Revolution in all prize cases arising
from captures made by Continental vessels. Congress permitted the
states to exercise original jurisdiction in all Continental prize
cases, and reserved to itself appellate jurisdiction, so far as it
had power to do so.
It is recalled that Congress, on November 25, 1775, having under
consideration the report of a committee on Washington’s letter of
November 8, determined the kinds of British property which should
be subject to capture, fixed the shares of prizes, and established
certain forms of procedure in the trial of prize cases.[63] The lack
of correspondence between these resolutions and the Massachusetts
law of November 1, establishing admiralty courts, caused long
and serious delays in bringing the Continental prizes to trial.
Washington, on April 25, 1776, wrote from New York: “I have not yet
heard, that there has been any trial of the prizes carried into
Massachusetts Bay. This procrastination is attended with very bad
consequences. Some of the vessels I had fitted out are now laid up,
the crews being dissatisfied that they cannot get their prize money.
I have tired the Congress on this subject, but the importance of it
makes me again mention, that, if a summary way of proceeding is not
resolved on, it will be impossible to get our vessels manned.”[64]
On the evacuation of Boston by the British in March, 1776, Washington
soon removed his headquarters to New York. He left his fleet in
charge of General Artemas Ward, who reported its movements to him.
In February, 1777, the Marine Committee of Congress ordered the
Continental agent at Boston to pay off and discharge the fleet.[65]
In March the Marine Committee appointed three commissioners to settle
the accounts of Washington’s prize agents.[66] These commissioners
had not completed their task in April, 1778.[67]
In April, 1776, immediately upon Washington’s arrival in New York,
he began to equip a fleet similar to the one at Boston. He requested
from the New York Committee of Safety the loan of their state
vessels, which he wished to use in suppressing illicit trade with
the enemy. Some disagreement arose as to the terms of the loan.
Washington insisted that if he manned the “General Schuyler,” he
would expect to appoint her officers. In the end, the “General
Schuyler” was turned over to Washington, and the captain of the
“General Putnam” was directed to obey his orders.[68] Washington
now obtained from other sources the sloop “General Mifflin.” These
vessels, which cruised during the summer of 1776 chiefly in the
neighborhood of Long Island, and usually with the New York state
sloop “Montgomery,” captured several British vessels.[69] In
the summer of 1776 Washington was constructing some “gondolas,”
row-galleys, and fire-ships, for the defence of the Hudson. The
galley “Lady Washington,” which was manned and completed by the
summer of 1776, was still in service on the Hudson in June, 1777.[70]
In the significance of their results the operations of no other naval
armament of the Americans during the Revolution compare with those
of Arnold’s fleet on Lake Champlain in the fall of 1776. On May
31, 1775, the Continental Congress desired the New York Provincial
Congress “to take effectual care that a sufficient number of batteaus
be immediately provided for the lakes.”[71] Major-General Schuyler
commanded the Continental forces in this region, including the naval
armaments upon the Lakes. These last, in September, consisted of a
sloop, a schooner, two row-galleys, and ten “batteaus.”[72] About
the first of August the New York Provincial Congress sent James Smith
to Schuyler to take command of the sloop “Enterprise.”[73] Smith
either received or gave to himself the title of “Commodore on the
Lakes.” He did not long hold this title; for in March, 1776, the
Continental Congress appointed Major William Douglass of New York,
“Commodore on the Lakes,” a place for which General Schuyler had
recommended Captain Jacobus Wynkoop, of the same state.[74] In April
Wynkoop was enlisting seamen in New York City.[75] In May, since
Douglass did not enter upon his appointment, Schuyler, acting under
the orders of Congress, put the armed vessels under the command of
Wynkoop.[76]
About the first of July, 1776, the American forces were driven out of
Canada. They retreated southward as far as the forts on the Lakes.
The holding of Lakes Champlain and George, which were a strategic
part of the line of communication between Canada and the Hudson, now
became a matter of vital importance. Providing against a possible
failure in Canada, Congress, Washington, and Schuyler had, in May and
early June, been increasing the effectiveness of the naval armament
on the Lakes. On June 17 Congress ordered Schuyler to build “with
all expedition, as many galleys and armed vessels as, in the opinion
of himself and the general officer to be sent into Canada, shall be
sufficient to make us indisputable masters of the lakes Champlain
and George.” A master carpenter, acquainted with the construction of
the galleys used on the Delaware, other carpenters, and models of
galleys, if required, were to be sent on from Philadelphia.[77]
Towards the end of June, Brigadier-General Benedict Arnold,
recognizing the supreme importance of maintaining a naval superiority
on the Lakes, began to exert an influence in naval affairs. Arnold
was not without marine experience; as a resident of New Haven,
engaged in the West India trade, he had sometimes commanded his own
ships. On June 25, 1776, he wrote to Washington: “It now appears to
me of the utmost importance that the Lakes be immediately secured by
a large number (at least twenty or thirty) of gondolas, row-galleys,
and floating batteries.... I think it absolutely necessary that
three hundred carpenters be immediately employed.”[78] Towards the
end of July, General Gates appointed Arnold to command the naval
forces on the Lakes. Wynkoop, who held a similar command by virtue
of an appointment from Congress and Schuyler, refused to yield to
Arnold. He was thereupon arrested by Gates and sent as a prisoner to
Schuyler.[79]
During July and August, 1776, Skenesborough, at the head of Lake
Champlain, was the scene of the greatest naval activity. Requisitions
were made upon Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and
Massachusetts for carpenters. Naval stores and munitions of war of
all sorts, sail-cloth, cordage, anchors, cannon, and ammunition were
sent to the Lakes from the seaboard, especially from New York and
Connecticut. Seamen were hurried forward. On August 13 the Governor
and Council of Safety of Connecticut voted £180 to Captain Seth
Warner of Saybrook to enable him to raise a crew of forty seamen for
the naval service on the Lakes. These men were “to receive a bounty
of £6 for inlisting; and for finding themselves blankets, 12s; guns,
6s; and cartouch-box and belt and knapsack, 2s; and one month’s
wages being 48s advanced, according to proclamation.” On August 16
the Governor and Council of Safety authorized two other companies to
be raised.[80] In September Gates understood that two hundred seamen
had been enlisted in New York city.[81]
On July 24, 1776, Arnold wrote from Skenesborough to Gates: “I
arrived here last evening, and found three gondolas on the stocks;
two will be completed in five or six days, the row galley in eight
or ten days. Three other gondolas will be set up immediately, and
may be completed in ten days. A company of twenty-seven carpenters
from Middletown are cutting timber for a row-galley, on the Spanish
construction, to mount six heavy pieces of cannon. One hundred
carpenters from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts will be here this
evening. I shall employ them on another row-galley. In two or three
weeks, I think we shall have a formidable fleet. No canvass or
cordage is yet arrived, though much wanted.”[82] Through strenuous
exertions the American fleet on the Lakes was greatly increased and
strengthened. By October it consisted of one sloop, three schooners,
eight “gondolas,” and four galleys, mounting a total of 94 cannon,
2-pounders to 18-pounders. With a full complement, the fleet would
have carried 856 men. It probably numbered about 700 officers and
men, such as they were.[83] Arnold said that he had a “wretched
motley crew in the fleet; the marines the refuse of every regiment,
and the seamen few of them ever wet with salt water.” Many of his
seamen and marines were almost naked.[84]
During the first days of October the naval superiority on the Lakes
shifted to the British. General Sir Guy Carleton, the British
commander, drawing upon superior naval resources, had outbuilt
Arnold. Early in October Carleton’s fleet consisted of one ship,
two schooners, one “radeau,” one large “gondola,” twenty gunboats,
and four armed tenders. Some of these vessels and the material for
others he had brought from the St. Lawrence up the Richelieu. The
ship “Enterprise,” eighteen 12-pounders, 180 tons burden, whose
construction had been begun at Quebec, he thus transported in pieces.
She was set up at St. Johns, on the Richelieu, where the British
shipyard was situated. This vessel in size and armament greatly
exceeding any one craft of the Americans. A fleet of transports
and ships of war in the St. Lawrence furnished Carleton with seven
hundred experienced officers and seamen.[85]
The two fleets engaged each other on Lake Champlain on October 11,
12, and 13, 1776. Ten of the American vessels were captured or
destroyed. General Waterbury, second in command, and 110 prisoners,
were captured. In killed and wounded Arnold lost about eighty men;
and the British forty. The British were left in command of the Lake;
the Americans retreated to Ticonderoga.[86]
Although most decisively defeated in the battle upon the Lake,
Arnold had delayed the advance of the British some two or three
months, while they were obtaining a naval superiority. This delay had
far-reaching consequences. Carleton now found the season too late to
pursue his advantage, and to make, or attempt to make, a juncture
with Howe to the southward. He therefore soon returned to winter
quarters at Montreal. When Burgoyne, in 1777, repeated the attempt to
penetrate to the Hudson, Howe’s removal of his army to the Chesapeake
in his movement against Philadelphia, deprived Burgoyne’s army of
the support on the Hudson, which it might have had in the fall of
1776. It has been strikingly said, by Captain Mahan, that Arnold’s
and Carleton’s naval campaign on Lake Champlain was a “strife of
pigmies for the prize of a continent.” Although the American flotilla
was wiped out, “never had any force, big or small, lived to better
purpose, or died more gloriously; for it had saved the Lake for that
year.”[87]
FOOTNOTES:
[49] This chapter, which is presented here for chronological reasons,
is not closely related to the main narrative, which will be resumed
at the beginning of Chapter III.
[50] Force, American Archives, 4th, III, 633-34, Instructions to
Broughton.
[51] Force, American Archives, 4th, III, 946.
[52] See Chapter I, The Naval Committee, page 37; Ford, Writings of
Washington, III, 174-5.
[53] Moylan had been for some months a member of Washington’s
official household before he was appointed aide-de-camp in March,
1776.
[54] Ford, Writings of Washington, III, 382-83.
[55] Ibid., 231-32, Washington to Joseph Reed, November 20, 1775.
[56] Ford, Writings of Washington, III, 261-62, Washington to
President of Congress, December 4, 1775.
[57] This calculation is made chiefly from accounts of the vessels
found in Force’s American Archives and Ford’s Writings of Washington.
[58] Ford, Writings of Washington, III, 252 and note; Letters of John
Adams, Massachusetts Historical Society, William Tudor to John Adams,
December 3, 1775.
[59] Boston Gazette, July 6, 1776.
[60] Force, American Archives, 4th, IV, 451-52, Memorial of Philip
Callbeck and Thomas Wright; Ford, Writings of Washington, III, 175
and note, 261-62 and note. H. E. Waite, Origin of American Navy,
26-28. Report on Canadian Archives, 1895, Prince Edward Island,
15-16. The number of vessels captured by Broughton and Selman on
this cruise has been given by Elbridge Gerry as ten and by Selman as
seven. Both figures are probably too high.
[61] Ford, Writings of Washington, III, 165, 203-04, 213-214, 251-58,
274.
[62] Journals of Continental Congress, December 20, 1775.
[63] See Chapter I, The Naval Committee, page 48. It would seem
that Congress, by its resolutions of November 25, intended to give
colonial courts original jurisdiction in Continental prize cases.
Washington did not so understand these resolutions. See his letter of
December 14, 1775, to the President of Congress, and his letter of
December 26, 1775, to R. H. Lee.
[64] Ford, Writings of Washington, III, 404; IV, 44, 45.
[65] Marine Committee Letter Book, Robert Morris, Vice-President
of the Marine Committee, to John Bradford, Continental agent at
Boston, February 7, 1777. The “Lee,” Captain Skimmer, was still in
the Continental service in November, 1777, when the Navy Board was
ordered to discharge Skimmer, and to take the “Lee” into the regular
Continental navy, if she was adapted for it.—Marine Committee Letter
Book, Committee to Navy Board at Boston, November 22, 1777.
[66] Marine Committee Letter Book, Committee to the three
Commissioners, March 21, 1777.
[67] Journals of Continental Congress, April 9, 1778.
[68] Journals of New York Committee of Safety, April 24, May 10, 1776.
[69] The movements of these vessels may be followed in Force’s
American Archives, Ford’s Writings of Washington, and the Journals of
the New York Provincial Congress and Committee of Safety.
[70] Journals of Continental Congress, May 30, 1776; Force, American
Archives, 5th, I, 1263; Journals of New York Provincial Congress,
June 7, 1777.
[71] Journals of Continental Congress, May 31, 1775.
[72] Force, American Archives, 4th, III, 738.
[73] Ibid., 11, 14.
[74] Journals of Continental Congress, March 26, 1776; Journals of
New York Committee of Safety, March 18, 1776.
[75] Journals of New York Committee of Safety, April 24, 1776.
[76] Force, American Archives, 5th, I, 1186, 1277; Journals of New
York Provincial Congress, March 16, 1776; Journals of Continental
Congress, May 2, 1776.
[77] Journals of Continental Congress, May 22, May 25, June 17, 1776;
Ford, Writings of Washington, IV, 101.
[78] Force, American Archives, 4th, VI, 1107-08.
[79] Ibid., 5th, I, 1186-87.
[80] Colonial Records of Connecticut, XV, 500, 503. The rolls of
these three Connecticut companies, containing eighty-five names, will
be found in the Connecticut Historical Society Collections, VIII,
235-37.
[81] Force, American Archives, 5th, II, 186.
[82] Ibid., I, 563.
[83] Force, American Archives, 5th, II, 1039. One galley which was
fitting at Ticonderoga is not included in the above list. The exact
number of men in Arnold’s fleet is uncertain.
[84] Ibid., 481, 834.
[85] Force, American Archives, 5th, II, 1178-79; Clowes, Royal Navy,
III, 353-370, Chapter XXXI, written by Captain A. T. Mahan.
[86] Force, American Archives, 5th, II, 1079-80; Almon’s
Remembrancer, 1777, 356.
[87] Clowes, Royal Navy, III, 363, 368. In the campaign of Burgoyne,
in July, 1777, the British destroyed or captured a small American
flotilla at Skenesborough.—Winsor, Narrative and Critical History,
VI, 297.
CHAPTER III
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE MARINE COMMITTEE
In the years immediately preceding the Revolution the four New
England colonies were largely engaged in shipbuilding, fishing,
whaling, and commerce. The forests of Maine and New Hampshire
afforded incomparable oaks and white pines for ships. Indeed, not a
few of these trees were sealed for the use of the Royal Navy, and
their high quality authenticated, by the mark of the “King’s broad
arrow.” New England’s hardy dwellers on the seacoast had long engaged
in fishing on the Newfoundland banks, or in whaling in many seas, and
had bred a race of sailors. The Atlantic withheld few secrets from
the bold Yankee skippers. They were equally at home in the coastwise
navigation, reaching from Nova Scotia to Florida, in deep-sea voyages
to the motherland or the Continent, in skirting the Guinea coast in
quest of its dark-skinned trade, or in slipping down the trade winds
with canvas set for the sunny sugar islands of the West Indies or
the Spanish Main. In no other section of the revolting colonies was
the first formal movement for the building of a Continental navy so
likely to be made as in New England. Here were ships, sailors, and a
knowledge of the sea.
Certainly not a whit behind the other three New England states
in nautical interests was little sea-cleft Rhode Island. In the
establishing of state navies she had moved first, and on June
15, 1775, had put two vessels in commission. On the same day her
Commodore Whipple captured an armed tender of the British frigate
“Rose”—the first authorized capture made by the Americans at sea
during the Revolution.[88] Already her coasts and her trade were
being annoyed by the enemy. It was then in keeping with her maritime
character, with her forwardness in naval enterprise, and with her
needs for defence, that her Assembly should have instructed her two
delegates to the Continental Congress, on August 26, 1775, “to use
their whole influence, at the ensuing Congress, for building at the
Continental expense, a Fleet of sufficient force for the protection
of these Colonies, and for employing them in such manner and places
as will most effectually annoy our enemies, and contribute to the
common defence of these Colonies.” The Assembly was persuaded that
an American fleet “would greatly and essentially conduce to the
preservation of the lives, liberty, and property of the good people
of these Colonies.”[89]
The naval situation in Congress during the fall of 1775 and the
winter of 1775-76 should be clearly understood. The debates and
legislation of Congress concerning naval affairs are attached, as it
were, to two threads. One thread, beginning with the appointment of
a committee, on October 5, 1775, to prepare a plan for intercepting
two British transports, has already been unraveled. The other, which
had its origin in the introduction in Congress of the Rhode Island
instructions, will now be followed.
The delegates of Rhode Island to the Congress in the fall of 1775
were two sterling patriots, Samuel Ward and Stephen Hopkins. Each
had been governor of Rhode Island, and each had grown old in the
public service. Once bitter political rivals, they were now yoked
together in the common cause of their state and country. On October
3, 1775, one of the Rhode Island delegates, presumably Samuel Ward,
laid before Congress the instructions of his state in behalf of a
Continental fleet. On this day the consideration of the instructions
went over until the 6th, and on the 6th until the 7th.[90]
When the Rhode Island instructions came up on October 7, a debate
ensued, a synopsis of which has been left us by John Adams.[91] The
discussion was participated in by Robert Treat Paine, Samuel Adams,
and John Adams of Massachusetts, John Rutledge and Christopher
Gadsden of South Carolina, Samuel Chase of Maryland, Stephen Hopkins
of Rhode Island, Dr. John J. Zubly of Georgia, Eliphalet Dyer and
Silas Deane of Connecticut, and Peyton Randolph of Virginia. When the
debate took place, the consideration of the Rhode Island instructions
had been postponed until the 16th, and the motion before the Congress
was to appoint a committee “to consider the whole subject.”
The establishing of a navy naturally found least favor among the
members coming from the agricultural South, and most support from
those of maritime New England. Chase, of Maryland, declared, “It is
the maddest idea in the world to think of building an American fleet;
its latitude is wonderful; we should mortgage the whole continent.”
He added, however: “We should provide, for gaining intelligence,
two swift sailing vessels.” Zubly, of Georgia, said: “If the plans
of some gentlemen are to take place, an American fleet must be a
part of it, extravagant as it is.” Gadsden, of South Carolina,
temperately favored the procuring of armed vessels, thinking that it
was “absolutely necessary that some plan of defence, by sea, should
be adopted.” He was opposed to the “extensiveness of the Rhode Island
plan,” although he thought that it should be considered. The friends
of the navy acted on the defensive. They probably realized that their
cause might well bide its time. Its opponents, to use John Adams’s
phrase, were “lightly skirmishing.” In the end the motion was lost,
and consideration of the instructions was deferred until the 16th.
On October 16, and again on November 16, the Rhode Island
instructions were postponed.[92] Samuel Ward had hopes for a
favorable action on the latter day. On November 16 he wrote from
Philadelphia to his brother in Rhode Island: “Our instruction for
an American fleet has been long upon the table. When it was first
presented, it was looked upon as perfectly chimerical; but gentlemen
now consider it in a very different light. It is this day to be
taken into consideration, and I have great hopes of carrying it. Dr.
Franklin, Colonel Lee, the two Adamses, and many others, will support
it. If it succeeds, I shall remember your ideas of our building two
of the ships.”[93]
The several postponements of the Rhode Island instructions make
it clear that Congress was slow to reach the conclusion that the
“building of a fleet” was desirable or feasible. It was one thing to
fit out a few small vessels for intercepting British transports, and
quite another to build a fleet of frigates. It is not surprising that
under the circumstances Congress hesitated to embark on the larger
undertaking. The difference in the presentation to Congress of the
two propositions, both of which involved the procuring of a naval
armament, is worthy of note, for it had its influence on legislation.
The appointment of a committee to prepare a plan for intercepting
transports, put the question in a softened, more veiled, and less
direct form. It pointed the wedge of naval legislation by a tactful
presentation, and drove it home with an exigency.
In Chapter I the increase of sentiment in favor of a naval armament
during the latter part of October and during November has been
shown, and the important naval legislation of November has been
presented. It was now only a question of time until Congress would
heed the recommendations of Rhode Island. On December 9, 1775,
the Rhode Island instructions once more came up, and a day for
their consideration was fixed, Monday, December 11.[94] On the
11th, “agreeable to the order of the day, the Congress took into
consideration the instructions given to the delegates of Rhode
Island;” whereupon a committee of twelve was appointed to devise ways
and means for furnishing these colonies with a naval armament.[95]
This committee performed its work with commendable celerity, and
brought in, on December 13, one of the most important reports in
the history of the naval affairs under the Revolution, for by its
acceptance Congress committed itself to the establishment of a
considerable naval force. Congress determined to build thirteen
frigates, five of 32, five of 28, and three of 24 guns, to be
distributed, as regards the place of their construction, among the
states as follows: New Hampshire, one; Massachusetts, two; Rhode
Island, two; Connecticut, one; New York, two; Pennsylvania, four;
and Maryland, one. It was estimated that these ships would cost on
the average $66,666.67 each, and that their whole cost would amount
to $866,666.67. All the materials for fitting them for sea would be
procured in America except canvas and gunpowder.[96]
On December 14 a committee consisting of one member from each colony
was chosen by ballot to take charge of the building and fitting
out of these vessels. The members chosen with their states were as
follows: Josiah Bartlett, New Hampshire; John Hancock, Massachusetts;
Stephen Hopkins, Rhode Island; Silas Deane, Connecticut; Francis
Lewis, New York; Stephen Crane, New Jersey; Robert Morris,
Pennsylvania; George Read, Delaware; Samuel Chase, Maryland; R. H.
Lee, Virginia; Joseph Hewes, North Carolina; Christopher Gadsden,
South Carolina; John Houston, Georgia.[97] This committee was
substantially the same as that which reported the naval increase on
the 13th; the only changes were in the members from Massachusetts and
Maryland, and in the addition of a member from Georgia. The committee
was a very able one, comprising several of the foremost men of the
Revolution. Hancock, Morris, Hopkins, and Hewes were especially
interested in naval and maritime affairs. The absence of the name
of John Adams is probably accounted for by his return home early in
December.
This new committee was soon designated as the Marine Committee, by
which name it was referred to throughout the Revolution. Larger, and,
with its engrossing work of building and fitting out the thirteen
frigates, more active than the Naval Committee, it soon overshadowed
and finally absorbed its colleague. This absorption was facilitated
no doubt by the fact that the four members of the Naval Committee
remaining in January, 1776, also belonged to the new committee. With
the exception of the rendering of its accounts, the duties of the
Naval Committee came to an end with the sailing of Hopkins’s fleet in
February, 1776.[98] The Marine Committee now acquired a firm grasp
of the naval business of the colonies, and from this time until
December, 1779, it was the recognized and responsible head of the
Naval Department, and as such, during the period that saw the rise
and partial decline of the Continental navy, its history is of prime
importance.
The Marine Committee like the Naval Committee had at Philadelphia
an office of its own, and held its sessions in the evening. Its
officers consisted of a chairman or president, a vice-president, and
a secretary.[99] Its clerical force comprised one or more clerks.
On June 6, 1777, Congress resolved that five of its members—which
number thereafter constituted a quorum—should form a “board” for
the transaction of business.[100] Each of the thirteen states had
one member on the Committee. Rarely did more than one-half of
the Committee’s members attend its sessions. Its personnel was
continually changing. This was necessitated in part by a similar
change in the membership of Congress; as the old members retired, the
new ones filled their places. The members of the Marine Committee
received no pay for their naval services as such. Each state of
course paid its member of the Committee for his services as a
delegate to the Continental Congress. The wages of the secretary of
the Committee and of its clerical force varied. On June 16, 1778, the
Committee was permitted to raise the wages of its clerks to $100 a
month.[101] The secretary was paid at the rate of $8,000 a year after
November 2, 1778.[102] During 1778 and 1779 Congress was raising the
salaries of its executive employees because of the depreciation of
the currency.
The most responsible duties of the Committee naturally fell to the
four or five members oldest in its service. From this class it drew
its chairmen. Three out of the five men who are known to have filled
this office were on the first list of the Committee’s members.
During possibly all of 1776, and for a part of 1777, courtly John
Hancock presided over the Marine Committee, while at the same time he
dignified the chair of the President of Congress. In December, 1777,
Henry Laurens of South Carolina had succeeded to both of Hancock’s
positions.[103] In 1778 and 1779 the mantles of the first leaders in
naval administration, whether they exactly fitted or not, were worn
by Richard Henry Lee, “one of the fine fellows from Virginia”; Samuel
Adams of Massachusetts; and William Whipple of New Hampshire. Lee
was chairman in the summer of 1778. Probably before December of that
year, certainly by that time, Adams had succeeded him.[104] Adams
in turn yielded in June, 1779, to Whipple, who continued to fill the
office until the Committee was superseded by a Board of Admiralty in
December, 1779.
There were other members besides the chairmen upon whose shoulders
rested the burden of the naval business. Morris, Hewes, and Hopkins
have been previously mentioned as members who were deeply interested
in naval affairs. Morris was for a time vice-president of the
Committee. During the winter of 1776-77, while Congress was at
Baltimore, he remained in Philadelphia, and, for a time, practically
without assistance from the Committee, administered the naval affairs
of the colonies. William Ellery of Rhode Island, who on October 13,
1776, succeeded Hopkins, showed zeal in the business of the navy.
The work of Francis Lewis of New York deserves mention. No doubt
there were other members whose naval services were considerable.
Unfortunately, time has been careless with many of the records of the
Marine Committee.
In carrying out the resolutions of Congress of December 13, 1775,
authorizing the building of thirteen frigates, the Marine Committee
employed agents to superintend the work. These agents, who were
variously designated, were residents of the colonies in which they
were employed, and their selection was usually determined by local
advice and influence. The New Hampshire frigate, the “Raleigh,”
32, was built at Portsmouth under the direction of John Langdon,
formerly a member of the Naval Committee, but now Continental agent
at Portsmouth. He employed three master-builders, who completed
the frigate within less than sixty days after raising it.[105] The
Massachusetts frigates, the “Hancock,” 32, and the “Boston,” 24,
were built at Salisbury and Newburyport, under the direction of an
agent.[106]
The Rhode Island vessels, the “Warren,” 32, and the “Providence,”
28, were constructed at Providence, under the superintendence of a
committee of twelve influential men of that city, who were appointed
by Stephen Hopkins, the Rhode Island member of the Marine Committee.
Certain complaints were lodged with the Marine Committee against the
committee at Providence. One of these was made by Commodore Hopkins,
who charged that the “Providence” and the “Warren” had cost twice as
much as their contract price, “owing to some of the very committee
that built the ships taking the workmen and the stock agreed for off
to work and fit their privateers, and even threatening the workmen
if they did not work for them.”[107] When in the fall of 1776 the
Marine Committee wrote to the committee, blaming its members for some
of their proceedings, they relinquished their authority over the two
vessels to Stephen Hopkins.[108]
The “Trumbull” was built under the direction of agents at Chatham
on the Connecticut river.[109] Two other frigates were begun in
Connecticut in 1777, the “Confederacy,” 36, on the Thames river
between Norwich and New London, and the “Bourbon,” 28, at Chatham
on the Connecticut. Each of these two frigates was constructed
under a superintendent responsible to Governor Jonathan Trumbull
and the Connecticut Council of Safety.[110] Two Commissioners at
Poughkeepsie, New York, had charge of the work on the “Montgomery,”
28, and “Congress,” 24. The Marine Committee kept fairly well in
its own hands the direction of the building at Philadelphia of the
Pennsylvania frigates, the “Randolph,” 32, the “Washington,” 32, the
“Effingham,” 28, and the “Delaware,” 24. The “Virginia,” 28, was
built at Baltimore, Maryland, with the assistance of the Baltimore
Committee of Observation.[111] When under the resolves of Congress of
November 20, 1776, two frigates were begun at the Gosport navy-yard
in Virginia, the work was placed in charge of two commissioners and a
master-builder. Richard Henry Lee, the Virginia member of the Marine
Committee, made the contract with the master-builder.[112]
The need of some one to receive and dispose of prizes soon led to
the appointment of “agents for prizes” in the leading seaports of
the colonies. On April 23, 1776, Congress, on the recommendation
of the Marine Committee, appointed prize agents as follows: One
at Boston; one at Providence; one at New London, Connecticut;
one at New York; two at Philadelphia; one at Baltimore; one at
Williamsburg, Virginia; and one each at Wilmington, Newbern, and
Edenton, North Carolina.[113] On June 25, 1776, Congress appointed
an agent at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.[114] In November, 1776, the
Marine Committee selected two prize agents for South Carolina and
one for Georgia.[115] This list was not completed until September
1, 1779, when Congress appointed a prize agent for New Jersey.[116]
These agents had charge of all Continental prizes sent into their
respective states. By far the most important agency was that of
John Bradford at Boston. It may be estimated that one-half of all
the prizes captured by the Continental vessels in American waters
were ordered to Boston. The naval port second in importance was
Philadelphia.
The duties of the prize agents were to libel all of the Continental
prizes sent into their jurisdiction, see that the prizes were tried
by the proper admiralty court; and after they had been legally
condemned, to sell them, and make an equitable distribution of the
proceeds, in accordance with the resolutions of Congress governing
the sharing of prizes. The prize agents were directed by the Marine
Committee to render to it a quarterly statement showing the prizes
received, sales effected, and distributions of the proceeds made.[117]
The same men who were prize agents were also as a rule “Continental
agents,” in which latter capacity they served the various
administrative organs of Congress, including the Marine Committee.
They assisted the Committee and commander-in-chief of the fleet in
purchasing, refitting, provisioning, and manning the armed vessels.
The naval services of some of these men, both as prize agents and as
Continental agents, were so considerable as to render their names
worthy of mention. Most conspicuous among the several naval agents
were John Bradford of Boston, John Nixon and John Maxwell Nesbit of
Philadelphia, John Langdon of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Nathaniel
Shaw, jr., of New London, and Daniel Tillinghast of Providence.
The governors and legislatures of the colonies and other local
governmental authorities often aided the Committee in its work. The
work of Governor Trumbull and the Connecticut Council of Safety in
the building of the Continental frigates in that state has already
been noted. In the latter part of 1776 the New York Convention
attempted in behalf of the Marine Committee to secure the two
Continental frigates at Poughkeepsie from the British when they
occupied the lower Hudson. Such illustrations could be multiplied.
In two services so closely connected as the navy and the army, the
officers and agents of one were naturally now and then called upon to
serve the other. They borrowed from and lent to each other cannon,
ammunition, and military stores. The Commissaries of one and the
Navy Boards of the other had mutual dealings. The Commissary-General
of Prisoners of the Army had much to do with the care of the marine
prisoners.
Towards the close of 1776 the unsatisfactory state of the naval
business, together with its increase and its growing complexity,
forced home upon the Committee the necessity of providing
some permanent force to take charge of the details of naval
administration. Accordingly, on November 6, 1776, Congress at the
instance of the Marine Committee resolved “that three persons,
well skilled in maritime affairs, be immediately appointed to
execute the business of the navy, under the direction of the marine
committee.”[118] Later in the same month John Nixon, John Wharton,
and Francis Hopkinson were selected as suitable persons for this
work, all three living within or near Philadelphia.
Nixon with his experience as a shipping merchant was probably best
fitted for his task. Fancy may discern a poetic fitness in his
choice, since he had been the owner of the “Alfred,” the first vessel
of the American navy. Nixon also had the distinction of being the
first man to read publicly the Declaration of Independence. Wharton
belonged to the distinguished Philadelphia family of that name. Of
the three men, Hopkinson probably had the widest culture. At the
outbreak of the Revolution he was practicing law at Bordentown,
New Jersey. He was one of the Signers of the Declaration of
Independence. From 1779 to 1789 he was judge of the Admiralty Court
of Pennsylvania. He is best known, however, not for his substantial
services, but as the author of the humorous ballad, the “Battle of
the Kegs.”
On April 19, 1777, Congress on the motion of John Adams decided to
form a similar board for the New England states, the members of which
were to “reside at or in the neighborhood of Boston, in the state
of Massachusetts Bay, with a power to adjourn to any part of New
England; who shall have the superintendence of all naval and marine
affairs of these United States within the four eastern states, under
the direction of the marine committee.”[119] Adams secured the
filling of this board with some difficulty owing to the indifference
of Congress to its establishment. Finally, nine men were nominated,
and on May 6 three of these were chosen commissioners, James Warren
of Plymouth, Massachusetts; William Vernon of Providence, Rhode
Island; and John Deshon of New London, Connecticut.[120]
Foremost of the three Commissioners was Warren, an eminent patriot,
who had been President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and
also of the Massachusetts Board of War. He was an intimate friend of
John and Samuel Adams, and, it is said, much resembled the latter
in character. Vernon, who served as President of the Navy Board,
was a most distinguished Newport merchant and one of the most
self-sacrificing of patriots. During the Revolution he advanced large
sums of money to the government, which were only in part repaid.
Before the war his trade extended to all the maritime nations of
Europe and to the West Indies and Africa.[121] Deshon was of Huguenot
descent. He was conspicuous in the Revolutionary party of New London,
and was a captain in his state’s military forces. He rendered much
assistance in fitting out the Connecticut navy.
These two boards were variously designated in the official documents
of the time. The one was most frequently called the Navy Board of the
Middle Department or District, or the Navy Board at Philadelphia,
Bordentown, or Baltimore, according to its location; and the other,
the Navy Board of the Eastern Department or District, or the Navy
Board at Boston. The Navy Board at Philadelphia was at first referred
to as the Continental Navy Board, or the Board of Assistants. These
two names indicate that when the board at Philadelphia was formed,
the establishing of a second board was not in contemplation. The
Navy Board at Philadelphia seems to have taken little or no part in
the naval affairs in New England. It was hardly settled in its work
before the Navy Board at Boston was created. Attention should be
called to the fact that the offices of Navy Board and of Commissioner
of the Navy had long been established in the British navy. The
British offices served in some degree as models to Congress and the
Marine Committee.[122]
Each board had a secretary, treasurer, and paymaster; but one person
sometimes served in two, or even the three, capacities. Each board
had one, and sometimes two clerks. A clerkship was at times joined
with one of the other offices. The boards as a rule selected their
own employees. Any two members of the Navy Board at Boston were
empowered by Congress on October 23, 1777, to form a quorum.[123]
With the exception of the resignation of Deshon in May, 1781, the
Navy Board at Boston did not change in personnel. Its headquarters
remained continually at Boston. On the other hand, the membership
of the Navy Board at Philadelphia made several changes. On May 9,
1778, William Smith of Baltimore was elected in the place of John
Nixon, who had resigned.[124] On August 19, Hopkinson and Smith
having resigned, Captain Nathaniel Falconer and James Searle, both of
Pennsylvania, were appointed.[125] Falconer declined the appointment;
Searle accepted, but resigned on September 26.[126] Meanwhile,
Wharton had resigned, and the three commissionerships were vacant.
On November 4, 1778, the vacancies were filled by the reappointment
of Wharton, and the selection of James Read of Delaware, the clerk
and paymaster of the Board, and William Winder,[127] a captain in the
military forces of Maryland and a judge of the court of appeals of
Somerset county in that state. When in December, 1776, Philadelphia
seemed to be in danger from the enemy, Congress and the Board
retreated to Baltimore, where they spent the winter of 1776-1777. The
fortunes of war compelled the Board in the fall of 1777 to retreat to
Bordentown, New Jersey; and after the American fleet in the Delaware
was destroyed, the Marine Committee early in 1778 ordered it to
Baltimore,[128] where it was situated for a few months. In the summer
of 1778 it returned permanently to Philadelphia.
The salary of a commissioner of the navy was first fixed at $1,500
a year. On October 31, 1778, “in consideration of the extensive
business of their departments,” this salary was raised to $3,000,
and on November 12, 1779, on the depreciation of the currency, to
$12,000. It was reduced on September 25, 1780, to $1,500, and was
now paid quarterly in specie or its equivalent. The salaries of the
employees of the Navy Boards underwent like variations. Beginning
with $500, they advanced in some instances as high as $2,000 a year.
On August 4, 1778, the clerk of the Navy Board at Boston was made
a special allowance of $500, “in consideration of the great and
constant business,” in which he had been engaged.[129]
To recapitulate, the chief agents of the Marine Committee were these:
the Navy-Boards, the prize agents, the Continental agents, and the
agents for building vessels. After the creation of the Navy Boards,
the latter three classes served in part as their sub-agents; but by
no means entirely so, for the Marine Committee gave many orders over
the heads of the Boards.
The Marine Committee and its principal agents employed many minor
agents. One illustration, taken from the work of the Navy Boards as
purveyors of the navy, will suffice to show the subordinate character
of the services which these minor agents rendered. It is recorded
that the Navy Board at Boston had in its employ in New Hampshire “a
contractor of beef for the navy,” who in turn had in his employ a
single drover, that by September, 1779, had purchased more than one
thousand head of cattle for the use of the Navy Board at Boston.[130]
FOOTNOTES:
[88] See Chapter XVII, The Minor Navies of the Northern States.
[89] Force, American Archives, 4th, III, 231; Sparks, American
Biography, 2nd, IX, 314-15.
[90] Journals of Continental Congress, October 3, 1775; Force,
American Archives 4th, III, 1888-91; Works of John Adams, II, 462.
[91] Works of John Adams, II, 463-4.
[92] Journals of Continental Congress, October 16, November 16, 1775.
[93] Gammell, Life of Samuel Ward, in Sparks’s American Biography,
2nd, IX, 316.
[94] Journals of Continental Congress, December 9, 1775.
[95] Ibid., December 11, 1775.
[96] Ibid., December 13, 1775.
[97] Journals of Continental Congress, December 14, 1775.
[98] Journals of Continental Congress. January 25, September 19,
1776. See Ford’s new edition of the Journals.
[99] The Secretary of the Marine Committee was John Brown.
[100] Journals of Continental Congress, June 6, 1777.
[101] Ibid., June 16, 1778.
[102] Ibid., January 27, 1780.
[103] Journals of Continental Congress, December 27, 1777.
[104] Lee, however, signed a letter as chairman in March, 1779.
Relative to Samuel Adams’s work in the Marine Committee, these words
of his biographer possess interest: “Upon his arrival in Congress
[May 21, 1778], he was added to the Marine Committee, of which
important Board he was made chairman, and continued to direct its
duties, for the next two years. In this arduous position, judged
from the great number of reports and the multiplicity of business
submitted to it, Adams might fairly have claimed exemption from all
other employments.”—Wells, Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams,
III, 13. Mr. Wells exaggerates the length of the naval services of
Adams, who left Philadelphia about June 20, 1779; whereupon William
Whipple succeeded him as chairman of the Marine Committee.
[105] New Hampshire Gazette, June 1, 1776.
[106] Probably put upon the stocks at Salisbury and completed at
Newburyport.
[107] Edward Field, State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,
II, 423.
[108] Staples, Annals of Providence, 267-8; Marine Committee Letter
Book, Marine Committee to Stephen Hopkins, and Marine Committee
to Committee for Building the Continental Frigates at Providence,
October 9, 1776.
[109] Colonial Records of Connecticut, XV, 526.
[110] Records of State of Connecticut, I, 177.
[111] Force, American Archives, 5th, II, 350, 636, 989; III, 827.
[112] Marine Committee Letter Book, Marine Committee to David
Stodder, master-builder, April 11, 1778.
[113] Journals of Continental Congress, April 23, 1776.
[114] Ibid., June 25, 1776.
[115] Force, American Archives, 5th, III, 671, 739-40. The first
prize agents to be appointed, many of whom held their offices
throughout the greater part of the Revolution, were as follows: John
Langdon, Portsmouth; John Bradford, Boston; Daniel Tillinghast,
Providence; Nathaniel Shaw, jr., New London; Jacobus Vanzant, New
York; John Nixon and John Maxwell Nesbit, Philadelphia; William
Lux, Baltimore; John Tazewell, Williamsburg; Robert Smith, Edenton;
Richard Ellis, Newbern; Cornelius Harnet, Wilmington; Livinus
Clarkson and John Dorsius, Charleston; John Wereat, Savannah; and
Okey Hoaglandt, New Jersey.
[116] Journals of Continental Congress, September 1, 1779.
[117] Force, American Archives, 5th, II, 1113-14.
[118] Journals of Continental Congress, October 28, November 6, 1776.
[119] Journals of Continental Congress, April 19, 1777.
[120] On May 6, 1777, John Adams wrote to James Warren notifying him
of his appointment. He added a few words explaining the character
of the position: “You will have the building and fitting of all
ships, the appointment of officers, the establishment of arsenals
and magazines, which will take up your whole time; but it will be
honorable to be so capitally concerned in laying a foundation of a
great navy. The profit to you will be nothing; but the honor and the
virtue the greater. I almost envy you this employment.”—Works of
John Adams, IX, 465. On May 9, the Rhode Island member of the Marine
Committee notified William Vernon of his appointment.—Publications
of the Rhode Island Historical Society, VIII, 206. See also
Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 7th, II, 45.
[121] New England Historical and Genealogical Register, XXX, 316-18.
[122] When the Navy Board at Philadelphia was being established
and its commissioners appointed, William Ellery wrote to William
Vernon as follows: “I should be glad to know what is the Office
of Commissioners of the Navy, and that you would point it out
particularly; unless you can refer me to some Author who particularly
describes. The Conduct of the Affairs of a Navy as well as those of
an Army, We are yet to learn. We are still unacquainted with the
systematical management of them, although We have made considerable
Progress in the latter. It is the Duty of every Friend to his Country
to throw his Knowledge into the common Stock. I know you are well
skilled in Commerce and I believe you are acquainted with the System
of the British Navy, and I am sure of your Disposition to do every
Service to the Cause of Liberty in your Power.”—Publications of Rhode
Island Historical Society, VIII, 201, Papers of William Vernon and
the Navy Board.
[123] Journals of Continental Congress, October 23, 1777.
[124] Ibid., May 9, 1778.
[125] Ibid., August 19, 1778.
[126] Ibid., September 28, 1778.
[127] Ibid., November 4, 1778.
[128] Marine Committee Letter Book, Marine Committee to Navy Board
of Middle Department, January 22, 1778. The Philadelphia Board was
ordered on January 22 to remove to Baltimore, but it appears that it
did not go until April.
[129] For salaries of the Commissioners of the Navy and their
employees, see Journals of Continental Congress, November 7, 1776;
April 19, 1777; October 23, 1777; October 10, 1778; October 31, 1778;
November 12, 1779; January 28, 1780; and September 25, 1780.
[130] Miscellaneous Manuscripts, Division of Manuscripts, Library of
Congress.
CHAPTER IV
THE WORK OF THE NAVY BOARDS AND THE MARINE COMMITTEE
There was a painful lack of system about the business methods of the
Naval Department of the Revolution. Then, official routine was not
settled as at present. Usage had had no opportunity to establish
fixed and orderly forms of procedure; and amid the distractions of
war, when some real or supposed emergency was continually inviting
one authority or another to disregard regularity and order, usage
could obtain but scant permission to begin its work. Wars are
famous for breaking through, not for forming a crust of official
precedent. The administrative machinery of armies and navies tends
to adapt itself to the conditions of peace—now the normal state of
nations. During long periods of partial stagnation this machinery
becomes complicated; its tension is weakened; and many of its
axles grow rusty from disuse. When war breaks out, the conditions
of administration are greatly changed. A thousand extra calls for
work to be done at once are loud and inexorable. Expedition must
be had at all hazards and costs. Rapid action of the administrative
machinery must be obtained, its tension screwed down, extra cog
wheels discarded, and efficient machinists substituted for the
dotards of peace. It is obvious that with this sort of difficulty
those who managed the naval affairs during the Revolution did not
have to contend, for the organ of naval administration was then
created from its foundation. Their difficulties sprang not from the
age, but from the newness of this organ. It lacked a nice correlation
of parts, the smooth action that comes from long service, and the
system that immemorial routine establishes.
The absence of system in the Naval Department was most conspicuous in
the appointment of naval officers, from the captain to the coxswain.
This work was shared by Congress, the Marine Committee, the Navy
Boards, the Continental agents, the Commander-in-chief of the navy,
the commanders of vessels, recruiting agents, the Commissioners at
Paris, and the commercial agents residing in foreign countries.
Appointments were sometimes actually determined by the governors
of states, “conspicuous citizens,” and local governmental bodies.
A good illustration of the way in which convenience was sometimes
consulted is found in the resolution of Congress of June 14, 1777,
which designated William Whipple, the New Hampshire member of the
Marine Committee, John Langdon, Continental agent at Portsmouth,
and John Paul Jones, the commander of the ship “Ranger,” to select
the commissioned and warrant officers of the “Ranger,” then at
Portsmouth.[131] In a new navy without _esprit de corps_, to permit a
commander to have a voice in choosing his own officers often made for
proper subordination.
It was a source of annoyance and confusion to the Navy Boards to
find through accidental sources of information, as they sometimes
did, that the Marine Committee had given orders to naval agents
to transact business, the immediate control of which was vested
in the Boards. Naval agents sometimes discovered that they were
serving in a single task two or three naval masters. Irregularities
were chargeable not alone to the Naval Department. The governor
of a state was known on his own authority, to the vexation of the
rightful executive, to take part in the direction of the cruises of
Continental vessels. Naval commanders were now and then guilty of
breaches of their orders. Congress had its share in the confusing
of business. On one occasion, making a display of its ignorance,
it suspended Captain John Roach from a command to which he had not
been appointed; Roach in fact was not an officer in the Continental
navy.[132] It sometimes made impracticable details of the armed
vessels. It also exercised its privilege of referring to special
committees bits of business that logically belonged to the Marine
Committee.
These irregularities, notwithstanding their number, were after all
exceptions. The very nature of business forces it to follow some
system, however imperfectly. Where there is a number of agents there
must be a division of labor. Without such arrangements chaos would
exist. It is therefore possible to set forth with some detail the
respective duties of the Marine Committee, the Navy Boards, and the
various naval agents. The work and duties of the naval agents have
already been treated with sufficient particularity. The work of the
Navy Boards and the Marine Committee will be considered in this
chapter.
The duties of the Navy Boards were of a varied character. Each Board
superintended the building, manning, fitting, provisioning, and
repairing of the armed vessels in its district. It kept a register
of the vessels which it built, showing the name, dimensions, burden,
number of guns, tackle, apparel, and furniture of each vessel. Each
Board had records of all the officers, sailors, and marines in its
district, and required the commanders to make returns of these items
upon the termination of their cruises. It was the duty of the Boards
to notify the Marine Committee of the arrivals and departures of
the Continental vessels. They were required to settle the naval
accounts and “to keep fair Books of all expenditures of Publick
Moneys.” The records of their transactions were to be open to the
inspection of Congress and the Marine Committee. They rendered to the
Committee annually, or oftener when required, an account of their
disbursements. The Boards paid the salaries of officers and seamen,
and audited the accounts of the prize agents.[133]
In the appointment of officers the Navy Board at Boston was given a
freer rein than was its colleague at Philadelphia. The share of the
Navy Boards in selecting officers and in enlisting seamen was about
as follows. The Boards superintended the appointing of petty officers
and the enlisting of seamen, both of which duties were chiefly
performed by the commanders of vessels and by recruiting agents. The
Boards generally selected the warrant officers, very frequently on
the recommendation of the commanders. If the one appointment to the
office of Commander-in-chief be disregarded, there existed but two
classes of commissioned officers in the Revolutionary navy, captains
and lieutenants. The Boards often chose the lieutenants; and they
generally recommended the captains to the Marine Committee. The
Committee furnished the Boards with blank warrants and commissions,
signed by the President of Congress. When one of these forms was
properly filled out by a navy board for an officer, the validity of
his title to his position and rank could not be questioned.
The Boards were empowered under certain circumstances, and in
accordance with the rules and regulations of the navy and the
resolutions of Congress, to order the holding of courts of enquiry
and courts-martial. They could administer oaths to the judges and
officials of these courts. A Board might suspend an officer of the
navy who treated it with “indecency and disrespect.”[134] On October
23, 1777, the Navy Board at Boston was given power to suspend a naval
officer, “until the pleasure of Congress shall be known.”[135] Not
always did the kindliest relations exist between the Navy Boards and
the commanders of the vessels. Officers who but yesterday tramped the
decks of their own merchantmen, giving commands but not receiving
them, chafed under the subordination that their position in the navy
exacted.
The Navy Boards made public the resolutions of Congress on naval
affairs, copies of which they lodged with the prize agents, the
commanders of vessels, and all interested persons. They distributed
among the naval captains the rules and regulations of the navy, the
sea-books, and the naval signals. The Boards acted in an advisory
capacity to the Marine Committee, which frequently called upon
them for information or opinions; when a revision of the rules and
regulations of the navy was under consideration their assistance
in the work was requested. Sometimes they volunteered important
suggestions looking to the betterment of the navy. They communicated
frequently with the Committee, giving in detail the state of the
naval business in their respective districts.
In the hiring, purchase, and building of vessels the Boards had to
do with craft of all sorts, freight-boats, fire-ships, galleys,
packets, brigs, schooners, sloops, ships, frigates, and men-of-war.
Measured by the standards of the time, the building of one of the
larger vessels was a work of some magnitude. A notion of the men
and materials requisite for such an undertaking may be gained from
an estimate, made early in 1780, of the sundries needed to complete
the 74-gun ship “America,” the largest of the Continental vessels
constructed during the Revolution. The construction of this ship had
been begun at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1777. It was computed
that one hundred and fifty workmen for an average period of eight
months would be required. Fifty carpenters, twenty ordinary laborers,
twenty caulkers, ten riggers, ten sailors, two master-builders, and
an uncertain number of blacksmiths, sailmakers, coopers, plumbers,
painters, glaziers, carvers, boat-builders, ship-copperers, tinners,
cabinet-makers, and tanners were demanded. Materials and provisions
were needed as follows: Seven hundred tons of timbers, one hundred
casks of naval stores, forty tons of iron, one thousand water-casks,
masts and spars of all sorts, sheets of lead, train oil, and
oakum; provisions for most of the above workmen, and lastly, an
indispensable lubricant for all naval services at this time, “rum,
one half pint per day, including extra hands, say for 150 hands, 8
months, 12 hhds, 1310 gallons.”[136] In building the armed vessels,
the Boards were greatly hampered by the difficulty of obtaining
artisans, owing to their being called out for military service, or to
their engaging in privateering. In providing armament and equipment,
they were embarrassed by the inexperience of the colonists in casting
cannon, and by the obstacles which they encountered in importing
canvas, cables, arms, and ammunition.
For the future use of the fleet the Navy Boards collected in due
season provisions and naval stores. In their work as purveyors for
the navy a knowledge of the baking of bread and the curing of meats
might not prove amiss. The kinds and quantities of provisions which
they bought may be judged from an estimate of the supplies that were
requisite to equip for sea and for a single cruise the 36-gun frigate
“Confederacy.” The names and quantities of the articles needed were
as follows: bread, 35,700 lbs.; beef, 15,300 lbs.; pork, 15,300 lbs.;
flour, 5,100 lbs.; potatoes, 10,000 lbs.; peas, 80 bus.; mutton,
2,500 lbs.; butter, 637 lbs.; rice, 2,550 lbs.; vinegar, 160 gals.;
and rum, 2,791 gals.[137] The Boards’ supplies of naval stores
consisted chiefly of canvas, sails, cordage, cables, tar, turpentine,
and ship chandlery.
The commissioners of each district made some division of their work
among themselves. For instance, the special task of Wharton of the
Philadelphia Board was the superintending of the accounting and the
naval finances of the Middle District. During 1778 Deshon of the
Boston Board spent much time in Connecticut attending to the naval
business in that state. This had to do chiefly with freeing the
“Trumbull” frigate from a sandbar upon which she had grounded. During
the same year Vernon was for a time at Providence endeavoring to
get to sea the Continental vessels which the British had blockaded
in that port. For a part of the year Warren alone attended to the
business of the Board at its headquarters at Boston. On August 4,
1778, Congress appropriated $365 to each of the commissioners of
the Navy Board at Boston to pay their traveling expenses during the
past year, since in the right discharge of their office they were
obliged “frequently to visit the different parts of their extensive
district.”[138]
In the extent of its powers and in the amount of its business the
Boston Board exceeded the one at Philadelphia.[139] This was largely
owing to the centering of naval affairs in New England after the
occupation of Philadelphia in September, 1777; and to the capture
or destruction in that year of a large part of the fleet to the
southward of New England. After 1776 all the new vessels added in
America to the navy, with the exception of two or three, were either
purchased or built in New England. The long distance of the Marine
Committee from Boston, with the consequent difficulties and delays in
communication, made it necessary for the Committee to grant to the
Boston Board larger powers than to the Philadelphia Board.
The most important work of a Naval Office is the directing of the
movements of the fleet, or in other words, the determining of the
cruises of the armed vessels. This power the Marine Committee
jealously guarded, and was loathe to yield any part of it. The
Committee was forced at times, however, to give to the Boston Board a
considerable discretion. In July, 1777, it ordered the Board to send
out the cruisers as fast as they could be got ready, “directing the
Commanders to such Latitudes as you shall think there will be the
greatest chance of success in intercepting the enemy’s Transports
and Merchant Ships”; and in November, 1778, to send the vessels
out, “either collectively, or singly, as you shall judge proper,
using your discretion as to the time for which their Cruises shall
continue, and your best judgment in directing the commanders to
such places and on such stations as you shall think will be for
the general benefit of the United States, and to annoy and distress
the Enemy.”[140] Such general orders were always subject to the
particular plans and directions of the Committee, which were by no
means few. The Committee itself determined the service of all vessels
that refitted at Philadelphia. As a consequence the duties of the
Navy Board of the Middle Department had to do chiefly with the minor
details of administration.
Turning now from the work of the Navy Boards to that of the Marine
Committee, one finds the significant fact to be the two-fold relation
that the Committee bore to the Continental Congress. By reason of the
union in Congress of both legislative and executive functions, the
Committee was at one and the same time an administrative organ of
Congress charged with executing the business of its Naval Department,
and its legislative committee on naval affairs. Naturally, there were
at points no lines of demarkation between these two functions; and it
is therefore not always easy, or even possible, to determine in which
capacity the Committee is acting. The Committee’s administrative
duties, _par excellence_, were the enforcing and the carrying out
by means of its agents of the various resolutions of Congress upon
naval affairs. Already much light has been thrown upon this phase
of the Committee’s work in the treatment of the Navy Boards and the
naval agents.
It was the duty of the Marine Committee to see that the resolutions
on naval affairs were brought to the attention of the proper
persons, officers, agents, and authorities. As the head of the Naval
Department, it issued its commands and orders to the Navy Boards,
the naval agents, and the commanders of vessels. This was done both
verbally and by letters. The Navy Board of the Middle Department,
the naval agents at Philadelphia, and often the naval officers in
that port, conferred with the Committee and received orders by word
of mouth. In the prosecution of its work outside of Philadelphia
the Committee conducted a large correspondence, chiefly with the
Navy Board at Boston, the naval agents at Portsmouth, Boston, New
London, and Baltimore, and the leading captains of the navy. It
addressed letters to the governors of most of the states and to many
of the local governmental authorities; to the Commander-in-chief
of the navy, Washington, General Heath, General Schuyler, the
Commissary-General of Prisoners, Commissary-General of Purchases
of the army, the merchants of Baltimore, Count D’Estaing, the
Commissioners in Paris, and most of the captains of the navy. This
list of correspondents well represents the range of the business of
the Committee.
Through its recommendations to Congress the Marine Committee
virtually selected almost all the captains of the navy and of the
marine corps, many lieutenants of both services, as a rule the
commissioners of the navy, the prize agents, and the advocates for
the trying of maritime causes. Appointments to these offices were
rarely made by Congress contrary to the recommendations of the
Committee, or on its own initiative independent of the Committee.
A few captains and lieutenants of the navy were appointed by
representatives of the United States residing abroad.
As is well known, all executive offices are called upon to
establish certain forms, rules, and regulations for the guidance
and government of their agents. Of this character was the fixing by
the Marine Committee of the naval signals, the forms for sea-books,
and the proper uniforms for the naval officers. The Committee’s
regulations on uniforms were dated September 5, 1776. For captains
they prescribed a blue coat “with red lappels, slash cuff, stand-up
collar, flat yellow buttons, blue britches, red waistcoat with
narrow lace.” The uniform of the officers of the marines was equally
resplendent in colors. It included a green coat, with white cuffs, a
silver epaulet on the shoulder, white waistcoat and breeches edged
with green, and black gaiters and garters. Green was the distinctive
color of the marines. The privates were to display this badge in the
form of green shirts, “if they can be procured.”[141] Not enough
information is accessible to the writer to determine what influence
the regulations prescribing the uniform of British officers had on
those adopted by the Marine Committee. Both required in the uniform
of captains, blue coats, standing-up collars, and flat buttons;
neither required epaulets, the wearing of which, as is well known,
originated in France.[142] It is probable that the prescribed uniform
was little worn by the Continental naval officers. Grim necessity
forced each officer to ransack whatever wardrobe Providence offered,
and it is somewhat inaccurate to call their miscellaneous garbs
“uniforms.”
As the Naval Office at Philadelphia developed, letters, memorials,
and petitions poured in upon it in increasing numbers. Many of
these communications were addressed to the President of Congress,
were read in Congress, and were formally referred to the Marine
Committee to be acted or reported upon. It was only infrequently that
Congress offered any suggestions as to their proper disposition.
These complaints and requests were of a varied character, and came
from many sources; not a few originated with that obsequious crowd,
with axes to grind, that always attends upon official bodies. The
wide range of these communications may be judged from the following
subjects selected at random:
New Hampshire and Massachusetts request that the frigates building
in those states be ordered to defend the New England coast.[143]
Governor Livingston of New Jersey asks for a naval office for a
relative, Musco Livingston.[144] Gerard, the minister of France
to the United States, wishes to know “the opinion of Congress
respecting his offering a premium to the owners of privateers that
shall intercept masts and spars belonging to the enemy, coming from
Halifax to New York and Rhode Island.”[145] John Macpherson asserts
that the position of commander-in-chief in the navy was promised
to him by Messrs. Randolph, Hopkins, and Rutledge, to whom he
communicated an important secret.[146] An affront has been offered
several French captains in Boston by the commander of the Continental
frigate “Warren.”[147] Twelve lieutenants, who had been dismissed
from the navy for combining in order to extort an increase of pay,
ask to be reinstated.[148] The ambassador of Naples at the Court of
France, whose king has opened his ports to the American vessels,
wishes “to know the colours of the flag, and form of the sea-papers
of the United States.”[149] Captain Biddle writes concerning the
cruel treatment inflicted by Lord Howe upon Lieutenant Josiah of the
Continental navy.[150] Captain Skimmer has been killed in an action
with the “Montague,” and has left eleven children, nine of whom are
unable to earn a livelihood. His widow asks for a pension.[151]
The Marine Committee made frequent reports to Congress, both in
response to previous orders therefrom, and of its own accord in
the course of its business. Occasionally parts of its reports were
recommitted by Congress to a limited number of the Committee’s
members, doubtless for the purpose of obtaining prompt and
expert action. The Committee sometimes assigned special business
to sub-committees, or to single members. The subjects which the
Committee considered, discussed, and reported upon ran the whole
gamut of naval activities and interests. The substance of many of
its reports may be found in the Journals of the Continental Congress
for the years 1776, 1777, 1778, and 1779. During this period the
Marine Committee prepared and reported the larger part of the
naval legislation of Congress. It is true that special committees
contributed something to this work, but these were composed in part
of members of the Marine Committee. Congress, as a body, originated
little, although occasionally it was moved to the passage of
resolutions on naval affairs by some real or supposed emergency,
the importunities of the self-seeking, or the whims of individual
members. It of course amended the reports of its committees.
The principal legislation of Congress relating to the navy which was
passed during the incumbency of the Marine Committee will now be
noted. No attempt will be made to separate those provisions that were
the special work of the Marine Committee from the whole legislative
output.
During 1776 and 1777 Congress authorized important naval increases.
It directed the Marine Committee in March and April, 1776, to
purchase “the armed vessel now in the river Delaware” and the ship
“Molly,” to fit out two armed cutters, and to build two galleys
“capable of carrying two 36 or 42 pounders.”[152] On November 20,
1776, Congress resolved to build immediately, one ship, 74, in New
Hampshire; two ships, 74 and 36, in Massachusetts; one ship, 74, a
brig, 18, and a packet boat, in Pennsylvania; two frigates, 36 each,
in Virginia; and two frigates, 36 each, in Maryland.[153] Later,
the size and armament of some of these vessels were reduced by the
Marine Committee, and some of them were never completed. Only three
of these ten vessels were armed, manned, and sent to sea as a part of
the forces of the Continental navy. They were the “Alliance,” 36, the
“General Gates,” 18, both built in Massachusetts, and the “Saratoga,”
16, built in Pennsylvania. The 74-gun ship “America,” constructed
at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was not launched until shortly before
the Revolution ended. On January 23, 1777, Congress ordered the
construction of two frigates, 36 and 28, in Connecticut. These two
ships were named respectively the “Confederacy” and “Bourbon.” On
March 15, 1777, the Marine Committee was ordered to purchase three
ships.[154] Congress gave directions for other naval increases,
but they were not fully carried out. In July, 1777, owing to the
“extravagant prices now demanded for all kinds of materials used
in shipbuilding, and the enormous wages required by tradesmen and
labourers,” Congress empowered the Committee to stop the building of
such of the Continental vessels as they should judge proper.[155]
During 1776 many important appointments and promotions in the navy
and the marine corps were made by the Marine Committee, and confirmed
by Congress. Samuel Nichols was placed at the head of the marines,
with the rank of major. Twenty captains of the navy were appointed.
Four of these had been appointed lieutenants on December 22, 1775,
and were promoted, but the remaining sixteen were new appointees.
John Manly was taken from Washington’s fleet. Nicholas Biddle, Thomas
Read, Charles Alexander, and James Josiah had seen service in the
Pennsylvania navy; and James Nicholson in the Maryland navy. During
this year there was a great scramble to obtain offices on board the
thirteen frigates, and amid the rivalries of politics, it is not
surprising that some candidates were successful that, unfortunately
for the navy, had tasted little salt water.[156]
In military services questions of promotion and rank are perennial
sources of heartburning and jealousy. The advancing of an officer on
any other principle than that of seniority in service rarely fails
to arouse feelings of injustice and suspicions of partiality, which
are only too often warranted. The discontent and insubordination
that such a promotion incites must always be weighed against
its beneficial results. When, on October 10, 1776, Congress, in
determining the rank of twenty-four captains and two lieutenants,
disregarded the dates of their commissions and appointments, it was
unable to defend its act on the usual, and under some circumstances,
tenable ground of the conspicuous services, marked talents, and
signal professional skill of those favored. Once more Southern
influences prevailed, and James Nicholson, of Maryland, commander
of the frigate “Virginia,” was made the senior captain of the navy.
This distinguishing of Nicholson, who was appointed captain on June
6, 1776, worked a hardship to the officers, and especially to the
four captains, appointed on December 22, 1775. John Paul Jones, who
stood fifth in rank in the list of December 22, and now found himself
eighteenth, smarted under the injustice which was done him.[157] It
is noteworthy that from March, 1777, when Esek Hopkins was suspended
from his position of commander-in-chief of the fleet, until the end
of the Revolution, the head of the Continental army and the ranking
officer of the navy came from adjoining Southern states.[158]
On November 15, 1776, Congress fixed the relative rank of army and
naval officers as follows:[159]
Admiral, with General.
Vice-Admiral, with Lieutenant-General.
Rear-Admiral, with Major-General.
Commodore, with Brigadier-General.
Captain of a ship of 40 guns and upwards, with Colonel.
Captain of a ship of 20 to 40 guns, with Lieutenant-Colonel.
Captain of a ship of 10 to 20 guns, with Major.
Lieutenant of the navy, with Captain.
In this legislation on rank once more the influence of British models
is apparent. The Committee was evidently building for the future, for
the four higher ranks were not established at this time, nor during
the Revolution. The present relative rank of army and naval officers
is based on the above table.
On March 23, 1776, Congress passed most important resolutions
supplementary to those of November 25, 1775, concerning captures
and the shares of prizes. The resolutions of November 25 legalized
the capture of the enemy’s vessels of war and transports. The new
resolutions permitted for the first time the capture of all ships
and cargoes, “belonging to any inhabitant, or inhabitants of Great
Britain, taken on the high seas, or between high and low water
mark,” by American privateers, vessels of the Continental navy,
or ships fitted out by any of the colonies. In brief, the new
resolutions legalized reprisals on British commerce. In the case of
Continental vessels, one-third of the prize went to the officers
and crew; in the case of privateers, the whole of the prize fell
to the owners and captors. Each colony was permitted to fix the
shares of the proceeds of merchantmen captured by its own ships of
war.[160] On October 30, 1776, the share of prizes taken by vessels
of the Continental navy was increased to one-half of merchantmen,
transports, and store ships; and to the whole of ships of war and
privateers.[161]
On April 2, 1776, Congress agreed to a form of commission for
privateers. On the next day it resolved to send blank commissions,
signed by the President of Congress, to the legislatures, provincial
congresses, and committees of safety of the United Colonies. These
were to be filled out and delivered to privateersmen. Blank bonds,
which were to be executed by the owners or masters of privateers,
were also sent. These bonds, which prescribed a penalty of five
or ten thousand dollars, according to the size of the ship, were
intended to discourage or prevent misconduct and unwarrantable acts
on the part of officers and crews. Congress also drafted a form of
instructions to the commanders of privateers.[162]
Congress on November 15, 1776, established a new pay-table. Officers
were now divided into three classes, those serving on board of
vessels of 20 guns and upwards, vessels of 10 to 20 guns, and vessels
below 10 guns. The vessels of the first two classes were commanded
by captains, and of the third class by lieutenants. The pay of
the higher officers, which the new table generally raised, varied
for each of the three classes, the commanding officers of which
received, respectively, $60, $48, and $30 a month. Seamen were now
paid a monthly wage of $8. The pay of officers below the captain
ranged from $30 to $8.34 a month. A bounty of $20 for every cannon
and $8 for every seaman captured on board a British ship of war was
now voted.[163] On July 25, 1777, the “subsistence” of officers
while in foreign or domestic ports was fixed.[164] On January 19,
1778, Congress resolved that officers not in actual service should
be allowed pay, but not rations. While prisoners of war, their
allowance for rations was to be diminished by the value of the
supplies which they received from the enemy.[165] Pursers for vessels
of 16 guns and upwards were authorized on November 14, 1778.[166]
Additional interest attaches to the initial legislation on pensions
of the American government because of the unprecedented liberality
which now marks its treatment of its veterans. The first legislation
on naval pensions dates from the adoption by Congress on November 28,
1775, of a form of naval contract according to which certain bounties
were granted officers, seamen, and marines disabled from earning
a livelihood.[167] These bounties were derived from the proceeds
of prizes captured by the aid of the beneficiaries. A more typical
pension law was passed on August 26, 1776.[168] It had, however, a
vital defect in that it was left to the enforcement of the individual
states. According to its provisions every naval officer, seaman, or
marine, “belonging to the United States of America, who shall lose
a limb in any engagement in which no prize shall be taken, or be
therein otherwise so disabled as to be rendered incapable of getting
a livelihood, shall receive during his life, or the continuance of
such disability, one half of his monthly pay.” When a prize was
captured at the time the disability was contracted, the disabled
person’s share of prize money was considered as a part of his
half-pay. If the disabled person was rendered incapable of serving in
the navy, although not totally disabled from earning a livelihood,
he received a monthly sum, judged to be adequate by the legislature
of the state in which he resided. Each state was to determine which
of its citizens were entitled to a pension under this law, to pay
such persons their half-pay or allowance, and to make a quarterly
report of its work to the secretary of Congress. The distinguishing
characteristic of the law lay in its dependence on the states for its
enforcement. As might be expected, it was very imperfectly carried
out.
On September 25, 1778, Congress extended the advantages of the law
to all persons whose disabilities were acquired previous to August
26, 1776.[169] It is to be carefully noted that this was a pension
for disabilities and not for service—a fundamental classification
in pension law. An agitation for a service pension for life for the
officers of the army was made in and out of Congress for a long time,
until in 1780 it was at last successful.[170] Such emoluments were
not at this time granted to naval officers; it was probably argued
that their sharing in captured prizes offset the pensions of the army
officers. Then, too, the army had ways of gaining the attention of
Congress that the weak and insignificant navy did not possess.
Few more important duties fall to naval offices than the enforcing
of discipline in the navy by means of naval courts. Adams’s rules of
November 28, 1775, made provision for holding courts-martial, but
not courts of enquiry, which are a sort of grand jury or inquest.
They also provided that courts-martial should consist of at least
six naval officers, with six officers of marines, if so many of the
latter were convenient to the court.[171] The Committee and Navy
Boards at times found it impossible to assemble so many officers.
No definite procedure in investigating the loss of vessels was
prescribed by Adams’s rules. Additional legislation was therefore
demanded. On May 6, 1778, Congress adopted new regulations on naval
courts, which were to be operative for one year.[172] They provided
that, when a vessel of war was lost by capture or otherwise, a
court of enquiry should be held, “consisting of that navy board
which shall, by the marine committee of Congress, be directed to
proceed therein, or any three persons that such navy board may
appoint.” If the court of enquiry found that the loss of the vessel
was caused by the negligence or malconduct of any commissioned
officer, the Navy Board might suspend such officer pending his trial
by a court-martial, which, in the event that six naval officers
could not be assembled, was to consist of five men appointed by the
Navy Board. The permitting of civilians to sit upon naval courts
is the salient feature of these new resolutions, and is an anomaly
in naval judicature. They also provided that in cases where one or
more vessels out of a fleet were lost by capture or otherwise, the
commanders of the escaping vessels were to be tried by a similar
procedure. If a court-martial found that the loss of a vessel was
caused by the cowardice or treachery of the commanding officer, it
was directed to inflict the death penalty. On August 19, 1778, the
procedure established on May 6 was extended to “all offences and
misdemeanors in the marine department.”[173] The proceedings of
courts-martial were forwarded to the Marine Committee, which laid
them, together with its recommendations thereupon, before Congress
for final action.