and important naval trials were held. Captain Thomas Thompson in 1778
and Captain Dudley Saltonstall in 1779 were broken by courts-martial.
Other captains who lost their vessels were tried, but escaped so
severe a punishment. The cases growing out of Commodore Hopkins’s
expedition to New Providence, his engagement with the “Glasgow,” and
the immediately succeeding events of his fleet in the spring of 1776
deserve more extended notice. During the summer of 1776 the Marine
Committee ordered Commodore Hopkins and Captains Dudley Saltonstall
and Abraham Whipple to leave the fleet, which was then stationed in
Rhode Island, and to come to Philadelphia for trial. After calling
before it the inferior officers of the “Alfred” and “Columbus,” and
hearing their complaints against the two captains, the Committee
reported to Congress on July 11 that the charge against Captain
Saltonstall was not well founded, and that the charge against Captain
Whipple “amounts to nothing more than a rough, indelicate mode of
behaviour to his marine officers.” Congress ordered the two captains
to repair to their commands, and recommended Captain Whipple “to
cultivate harmony with his officers.”[174]
Commodore Hopkins was not to get off so easily. His whole
conduct since he left Philadelphia early in January, 1776, was
investigated. The principal charge against him was the disobeying
of the instructions of the Naval Committee of January 5, 1776, to
attack the forces of the enemy in the region of Virginia and the
Carolinas. Hopkins based his defence on the statement that the enemy
in that region had become too strong to attack by the time his
fleet had sailed on February 17, and also on a certain clause in
his instructions granting him discretionary powers.[175] After the
Marine Committee had investigated the case, and reported upon it,
Congress, on August 12, took into consideration the “instructions
given to Commodore Hopkins, his examination and answers to the Marine
Committee, and the report of the Marine Committee thereupon; also,
the farther defence by him made, and the testimony of the witnesses.”
On the 15th, Congress came to the resolution: “That the said
commodore Hopkins, during his cruise to the southward, did not pay
due regard to the tenor of his instructions ... and, that his reasons
for not going from Providence immediately to the Carolinas, are by no
means satisfactory.” The next day Congress resolved, “that the said
conduct of commodore Hopkins deserves the censure of this house, and
this house does accordingly censure him.”[176]
This action seems more severe than the facts justify. John Adams,
who defended Hopkins, had with difficulty prevented Congress from
cashiering the Commodore. According to Adams’s view, Hopkins was
“pursued and persecuted by that anti-New-England spirit which haunted
Congress in many other of their proceedings, as well as in this
case.”[177] The action of Congress may be interpreted differently.
Hopkins had not met the expectations of Congress or the Marine
Committee. As the head of the fleet, blame naturally fell upon him,
whether he deserved it or not. He had his shortcomings as a naval
officer, and failure magnified them. By placing the blame upon him,
the skirts of Congress, of the Marine Committee, and of the other
naval officers were cleared, and the hopes of a few self-interested
men were brightened.
Commodore Hopkins’s failure to carry out the plans of the Marine
Committee during the fall of 1776, together with the partial
inaction of the fleet under his command, increased his disfavor with
Congress and the Marine Committee. His praiseworthy endeavors to man
and prepare his fleet for sea won for him the enmity of the owners
of privateers at Providence, for his success would mean the taking
of men and materials sorely needed by the privateersmen. Hopkins’s
intemperate language, lack of tact, and naval misfortunes bred a
spirit of discontent, and gave an excuse for insubordination among
his inferior officers. Encouraged by the discontented privateersmen
of Providence, ten of the inferior officers of the “Warren,”
the Commodore’s flagship, signed a petition and certain letters
containing complaints and charges against Hopkins, and sent their
documents to the Marine Committee. They were taken to Philadelphia by
the chief “conspirator,” Captain John Grannis of the marines. These
documents asserted that Hopkins had called the members of the Marine
Committee and of Congress “ignorant fellows-lawyers, clerks-persons
who don’t know how to govern men;” that he was “remarkably addicted
to profane swearing;” that he had “treated prisoners in a most
inhuman and barbarous manner;” that he was a “hindrance to the proper
manning of the fleet;” and that “his conversation is at times so wild
and orders so unsteady that I have sometimes thought he was not in
his right mind.” Besides these accusations, there were a few others
of even less substantial character.[178]
On March 25, 1777, the Marine Committee laid before Congress the
complaints and charges against Commodore Hopkins, and on the next
day Congress took them into consideration; whereupon it resolved
that “Esek Hopkins be immediately, and he is hereby, suspended from
his command in the American navy.”[179] Hopkins remained suspended
until January 2, 1778. The Journals of Congress for this date contain
the following entry: “Congress having no farther occasion for the
service of Esek Hopkins, esq. who, on the 22nd of December, 1775, was
appointed commander in chief of the fleet fitted out by the naval
committee, Resolved, That the said Esek Hopkins, esq. be dismissed
from the service of the United States.”[180]
Hopkins’s suspension and removal did not in any way improve the navy.
Indeed, it was far less fortunate in 1777, than it had been in 1776.
That its chief officer should have been suspended without a hearing,
on flimsy charges, offered by a small number of inferior officers
whose leader was guilty of insubordination, convicts Congress of
acting with undue haste and of doing a possible injustice, and
arouses the suspicion that it was not actuated wholly by a calm
and unbiased judgment. The wording of Hopkins’s dismissal seems
needlessly curt, and harsh. Since Hopkins had lost the confidence
of Congress, the Marine Committee, and many of his countrymen, his
removal from the office of commander-in-chief to that of a captain
might have been justified.
On January 13, 1778, Hopkins brought a suit for libel against the
ten officers concerned in the “conspiracy,” fixing his damages at
£10,000. On July 30 Congress passed a resolution for defraying the
reasonable expenses of the ten officers in defending their suit.[181]
The case was tried before a jury in the Inferior Court of Common
Pleas of Rhode Island. The decision was unfavorable to Hopkins, as
the jury brought in a verdict for “the defendants and their costs.”
The victory of the opposition to the Commodore was complete. He had
not, however, lost the confidence of his fellow townsmen. He served
in the General Assembly of his state, representing North Providence
from 1777 until 1786, and he was from 1777 until the end of the
Revolution a member of the Rhode Island Council of War.[182] No one
who knew Hopkins intimately ever doubted his courage, his patriotism,
or his honesty of purpose.
The arrival off the Delaware Capes, on July 8, 1778, of twelve sail
of the line and four frigates under the command of Count D’Estaing,
Vice-Admiral of France, threw additional work upon the Naval
Department. No sooner did the Marine Committee learn of the presence
of the French, than it exerted itself to supply the table of its
naval guests with eatables and drinkables. Casks of fresh water,
several hundred barrels of bread and flour, and a small supply of
fresh provisions, were at once sent to the Count, and the Committee
ordered a commissary to collect for the use of the French fleet fifty
bullocks, seven hundred sheep, a number of poultry, and a quantity of
vegetables. After the ill-starred expedition against Rhode Island in
August, 1778, when the French fleet put into Boston for repairs, its
provisioning again became a care to the Naval Department. The Marine
Committee ordered three thousand barrels of flour to be sent on from
Albany for the use of the French.[183]
The distinction of having performed the first work of a consular
bureau in the United States belongs to the Marine Committee, since
it had charge of the publication and record of the first consular
appointments to this country. In accordance with the first commercial
treaty between the United States and France, Gerard, the French
minister, soon after his arrival in America in July, 1778, appointed
John Holker, consul for the port of Philadelphia, and in September
named a vice-consul for the same place. The latter appointment
Congress referred to the Marine Committee “in order that the same may
be made public.” A similar disposition was made of the appointments
of consuls for Maryland, South Carolina, and Boston, and of the
vice-consuls for Alexandria (Virginia), and Virginia. In the case of
the vice-consul for Virginia, Congress ordered the Marine Committee
to “cause the commission of Mr. d’Annemours to be recorded in the
book by them kept for that purpose, and his appointment made known
to all concerned.” The Committee was instrumental in obtaining the
settling of the powers and duties of consuls as regards the United
States and France. On August 2, 1779, the control of consular affairs
was removed from the Marine Committee and vested in the Secretary of
Congress.[184]
FOOTNOTES:
[131] Journals of Continental Congress, June 14, 1777.
[132] Journals of Continental Congress, June 14, 1777. Marine
Committee Letter Book, Committee to Navy Board at Boston, March 6,
1778.
[133] Publications of Rhode Island Historical Society, VIII, 208,
Instructions of Marine Committee to the Eastern Navy Board, July 10,
1777.
[134] Journals of Continental Congress, December 30, 1777. The
occasion of this grant of power by Congress was a letter complaining
of “disrespect and ill treatment” which a member of the Navy Board
of the Middle Department had received at the hands of John Barry,
commander of the frigate “Effingham.”
[135] Journals of Continental Congress, October 23, 1777.
[136] Records and papers of Continental Congress, 37, p. 217.
[137] Records and papers of Continental Congress, 37, p. 273.
[138] Journals of Continental Congress, August 4, 1778.
[139] In the transmission of foreign mail the Navy Board at Boston
acted as the agent of the Committee of Foreign Affairs. It both
purchased and hired packet boats.
[140] Marine Committee Letter Book Committee to Navy Board at Boston,
July 11, 1777; November 16, 1778.
[141] Sherburne, Life of John Paul Jones, ed. 1851, 30. Copies of the
regulations on uniforms will be found in John Paul Jones manuscripts,
Library of Congress.
[142] Clowes, Royal Navy, III, 347-50; IV, 182.
[143] Force, American Archives, 5th, II, 315.
[144] Journals of Continental Congress, September, 17, 1779.
[145] Ibid., December 7, 1778.
[146] Ibid., July 11, 1776.
[147] Ibid., June 16, 1778.
[148] Journals of Continental Congress, July 23, 24, 1777.
[149] Ibid., February 24, 1779.
[150] Ibid., August 7, 1776.
[151] Ibid., September 14, 23, 1778. The Marine Committee reported
and Congress agreed that “the eastern navy board be directed to
supply 400 dollars annually, in quarterly payments, for the support
of Captain Skimmer’s widow and nine youngest children, and that this
provision be continued three years.” This is the first instance of
the granting by the United States of a pension to the family of a
naval officer upon his death.
[152] Journals of Continental Congress, March 13, March 28, April 3,
April 14, 1776.
[153] Ibid., November 20, 1776.
[154] Journals of Continental Congress, January 23, March 15, 1777.
[155] Ibid., July 25, 1777.
[156] Journals of Continental Congress, June 25, October 10, 1776;
Scribner’s Magazine, XXIV, 29, Mahan, John Paul Jones in the
Revolution, quotes a member of Congress writing to Jones probably
in the fall of 1776: “You would be surprised to hear what a vast
number of applications are continually making for officers of the new
frigates, especially for the command.”
[157] Jones made a copy of the list of captains of the navy arranged
in accordance with their respective ranks, upon which copy he
commented: “Whereby No. 18 is superseded by ... 13 [men] ... altho
their superior Merits and Abilities are at best Presumptive, and not
one of them was in the service the 7th day of December, 1775, when
No. 18 was appointed Senior Lieut of the Navy.”—Jones Manuscripts,
Library of Congress.
[158] Nicholson, while at times displaying conspicuous bravery, was
less fortunate in his naval service than Hopkins. Two frigates under
his command were at different times captured by the enemy. On May 1,
1777, Congress suspended him from his command, “until he shall have
made such satisfaction as shall be accepted by the executive powers
of the state of Maryland, for the disrespectful and contemptuous
letter written by him to the governor of that state.”—Journals of
Continental Congress, May 1, 1777.
[159] Journals of Continental Congress, November 15, 1776.
[160] Journals of Continental Congress, March 23, 1776.
[161] Ibid., October 30, 1776.
[162] Journals of Continental Congress, April 2, April 3, 1776.
[163] Ibid., November 15, 1776.
[164] Ibid., July 25, 1777.
[165] Journals of Continental Congress, January 19, March 20, 1778.
[166] Ibid., November 14, 1778.
[167] See Chapter I, page 46.
[168] Journals of Continental Congress, August 26, 1776. This law
applied to both the army and the navy.
[169] Journals of Continental Congress, September 25, 1778.
[170] Harvard Historical Studies, X, L. C. Hatch, Administration of
American Revolutionary Army, Chapter V, Pay and Half-pay.
[171] See Chapter I, page 45.
[172] Journals of Continental Congress, May 6, 1778.
[173] Journals of Continental Congress, August 19, 1778.
[174] Journals of Continental Congress, July 11, 1776.
[175] Edward Field’s Esek Hopkins, 154-56, quotes words of Hopkins in
his own defence. Washington feared the plan of the Naval Committee
would fail as the enemy must know it, so long had the fleet been
fitting for sea.—Ford, Writings of Washington, III, 319.
[176] Journals of Continental Congress, August 12, 15, and 16, 1776.
[177] Quoted in Field’s Esek Hopkins, 158.
[178] Edward Field’s Esek Hopkins, Chapter VI, Conspiracy and
Dismissal, contains many original documents.
[179] Journals of Continental Congress, March 25, March 26, 1777.
[180] Ibid., January 2, 1778.
[181] Journals of Continental Congress, July 30, 1778.
[182] Edward Field’s Esek Hopkins, 237-38.
[183] Marine Committee Letter Book, Committee to Count D’Estaing,
July 12, July 17, 1778.
[184] Journals of Continental Congress, July 23, September 24,
October 27, November 4, 1778; January 21, June 7, 22, 23, July 30,
August 2, 1779.
CHAPTER V
THE CONDITIONS OF THE CONTINENTAL NAVAL SERVICE
The nineteenth century worked its marvels on sea as well as on land.
The progress of invention, the discovery of new sources of wealth and
power in nature and in man, and the development of powerful states,
have revolutionized transportation and communication by sea, maritime
pursuits, and naval science. Commerce has found fleeter wings; and
it no longer waits on the caprice of Aeolus. Countless steamships
with enormous tonnage and high rates of speed have in large measure
supplanted the small, snaillike sailing craft of our fathers. The
hazards of sea-going trade have been greatly reduced. Invention has
pacified Neptune’s fierce temper. The breed of pirates and corsairs
has been exterminated by the long muscular arm of the modern state.
The privations of ocean-travel which were distressing accompaniments
of the colonial period in America, were succeeded about the middle of
the last century by the comforts of the first steamships, and these
within the memory of young men have yielded to the luxuries of the
floating palaces of the sea.
Complementary to these transformations in commerce, navigation, and
travel by sea, have come improved methods of their defence. Modern
naval science in all of its aspects has been developed. Glancing for
a moment in retrospect at the long line of naval progress, one sees
it pass from the ancient row-galleys, to the sailing ship of the
early Modern Age, and from thence to the steamships of to-day. The
motive power has changed from human muscle to wind, and from wind to
steam. Placed beside the iron-clad battleships, the light, wooden
frigates of the Revolution look almost as antiquated as the Greek
galley with its figured prow. Smart, trim, beautiful vessels were
the Revolutionary craft, but how small, simple, and crude they now
appear. Indeed, a new type of poet, one who loves raw force first,
and the picturesque afterwards, has risen to sing the glories of new
navies and new seas.
Other naval changes have been made, as significant as those in
style of vessel and motive power. Ships of war now wear heavy
coats-of-mail. The “great guns” and the “long guns” of the Revolution
are neither great nor long beside modern cannon. A new type of
sea officer has been trained to meet the new conditions of naval
service. It would puzzle a modern officer to take a schooner from
Boston to Plymouth, for his seamanship is now fitted to steamships.
By over-study of modern armament, torpedo boats, and the latest
naval manœuvres, his “weather eye” has lost something of its skill
for reading in the skies the coming of storms or sunshine. Trim and
immaculate in their uniforms, the American naval officers of to-day,
who have entered the naval profession by the way of their technical
studies at Annapolis, little resemble their hardy prototypes in the
Continental navy, to whom clung the barnacles of their apprenticeship
aboard merchantmen.
Notwithstanding this revolution in naval science, a consideration
of the conditions of the Continental naval service and of the naval
policy of the Marine Committee has to-day a practical value for naval
experts. Certain fundamental principles in naval science do not
change. Captain Mahan, in his “Influence of Sea Power upon History,”
has pointed out that, while naval tactics vary with the improvements
in the motive power and armament of fleets, the basic principles of
naval strategy do not. They are as enduring as the order of nature.
For example, one cannot conceive that there will come a time when
an inversion will be made of the strategic principle, that an enemy
should be struck at his weak point. Captain Mahan even finds it worth
while, for the benefit of his fellow-experts, to set forth with some
detail the naval strategy of the Carthaginian wars.
When America, in these first years of the twentieth century, makes an
invoice of her resources, she counts first her great prairies of the
Mississippi basin, her rich mines of the Alleghanies and Rockies, and
her wealth of manufactories and their products. In 1775 her assets
were of a different sort. America then was a mere strip of seacoast,
cut into a series of peninsulas by the lower courses of a number of
navigable rivers. Her interests and her wealth then were much more
largely maritime than now. Attention has already been directed to
the wide pursuit of commerce, shipbuilding, fishing, and whaling in
New England. It remains, to be said that in the Middle and Southern
colonies commerce and shipbuilding were important industries. During
the Revolution Virginia put more naval ships afloat than any other
colony. In the colonial period communication between the towns of
the colonies was best by water. The inhabitants of America, during
this period, were amphibious. They have lost this quality, for
their character is now fixed by the “West,” and not by the Atlantic
seaboard. In 1775 America had, relatively, many more seamen than in
1898.
In the light of these facts it seems somewhat singular that the
Revolutionary navy was forced to spend most of its days in port,
vainly trying to enlist seamen for its depleted crews. To be sure the
lack of sufficient armament, naval stores, and provisions was felt,
but it was the lack of sailors that constituted the chief obstacle
to the success of the Continental navy. Those vessels that finally
weighed anchor were wanting as a rule in this prime naval requisite.
The same causes that prevented seamen from enlisting lowered the
quality of those that did enlist, and kept them from entering for
longer than a single cruise. A ship’s complement of sailors was often
ill-assorted. Seamen were improvised from landsmen; captured British
seamen were coaxed into service; and for one cause or another many
nationalities at times shipped side by side. These conditions made
for insubordination, and even mutiny. On one occasion seventy or
eighty British sailors, who were enlisted on board the Continental
frigate “Alliance,” bound for France, planned to mutiny and carry the
frigate into an English port. In order to obtain seamen many measures
were resorted to by Congress, the states, the Marine Committee, Navy
Boards, and commanders of vessels. Premiums for importing seamen
were given to foreigners;[185] wages were advanced to recruits;[186]
attempts were made to place embargoes upon privateers;[187]
bounties were paid to seamen enlisting for a year;[188] inducements
were offered to those captured from the enemy to get them to enter
the American service;[189] some seamen were impressed; glowing
advertisements were inserted in the public prints;[190] and
broadsides, which cleverly recited the many advantages of the
Continental service, were displayed in sundry taverns.[191]
All these efforts were defeated by the seductive allurements of
privateering. The Revolutionary Congress was poor and paid poor
wages. After its seamen had enlisted, they were toled away by
mercenary privateersmen. These same privateersmen were accused of
taking the naval stores and the artisans of Congress in order to fit
out their own ships. The owners and commanders of privateers, as they
received the whole of their captures, could afford to treat their
crews liberally. It was generally asserted that they paid higher
wages than did Congress or the states. Privateering was more popular,
more elastic, and more irregular than the other naval services.
When no one was looking, parts of cargoes could more readily be
appropriated for private use without waiting the tedious process
of the admiralty courts. Privateersmen could devote all their time
and energy to commerce-destroying, unfettered by the miscellaneous
duties which often fell to naval ships.
The backbone of the privateering interest was in New England. Silas
Deane said in 1785 that four out of every five of the privateers of
the Revolution came from the states north and east of the Delaware
river. This probably overstates the proportion in favor of the
northern states.[192] Pennsylvania and Maryland did considerable
business, but farther to the southward the industry was less
flourishing. The Virginia privateers did little. Massachusetts sent
out one-third of all the privateers. From 1777 until 1783, inclusive,
the Massachusetts Council issued 998 commissions. In 1779, 184 prizes
captured by privateers were libelled in the three admiralty courts
of this state. The average burden of these captured vessels was one
hundred tons. Rhode Island’s best year was probably in 1776, when
thirty-eight vessels were libelled at Providence. A list of 202
privateers has been made out for Connecticut. In 1779 twenty-nine
vessels taken from the British by privateers were libelled in the
Pennsylvania court of admiralty. During the last six years of the war
Maryland issued about 250 commissions. Boston was the chief center
for fitting out privateers and for selling their prizes, although
towns like Salem and Marblehead did a thriving business.[193]
Not a few of the failures and misfortunes of the Continental navy
are to be laid at the doors of the Yankee privateersmen, whose love
for Mammon exceeded that for their country.[194] A more patriotic
course was to have been expected of certain substantial merchants
who embarked in the business of commerce-destroying. But on the
other hand, one might easily be too severe on many bold, simple,
seafaring folk. The war, which deprived them of their gainful
pursuits at sea, now pointed the way, as a recompense, to a new and
attractive calling. Wives and babies were still to be fed, and plans
for sweethearts to be realized. The new trade was as alluring as a
lottery. Had not a neighbor drawn a competence sufficient for almost
a lifetime by a successful haul of the enemy’s rich West Indiamen?
It was true that another neighbor, who but recently sailed proudly
for sea with women-folk waving a last good-bye, now languished in
a prison-ship off New York, or was starving in the old Mill prison
at Plymouth, England. “But then a man must take his chances,” each
privateersman argued, “and it may be I, who by a fortunate cruise
shall bring home enough Jamaica rum to fairly float my schooner, and
every pint of it is as good as gold coin.”
Due credit must always be given to the hardy and venturesome
privateersmen for supplying the army and navy with the sinews of
war, which they captured. To be sure, if Congress or the states
wished their captured property, it was to be had by paying a good
round price for it in the open market. Even here the government’s
agents sometimes suspected collusions between the buyers and the
agents of the captors to run up prices to the disadvantage of the
government.[195] The privateersmen were engaged not in patriotic,
but business ventures. Could one-half of this irregular service have
been enlisted in the Continental and state navies, the other half
could not have been better employed than in its work of distressing
the enemy’s commerce, transports, and small letters of marque.
Zealous eulogists of the privateers have overrun the cup of their
merit. They have not always pointed out that the number of American
privateers, merchantmen, fishermen, and whalemen captured by British
privateers and small naval craft was comparable to the number of
similar British vessels taken by the American privateers. The prison
ships and naval prisons of the enemy at New York, in Canada, the
British West Indies, and England were at times crowded with Americans
captured at sea.[196] A few of these men England enlisted in her
navy; and with others she manned a whaling-fleet for the coast of
Brazil composed of seventeen vessels. It is, however, worthy of
note that the supplies captured from the British were often almost
indispensable to the colonists; while similar captures made by the
British had to the captors little value.
Another factor in the naval situation of the Americans was
the existence of state navies in Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North
Carolina, and South Carolina. The fleet of Massachusetts, comprising
sixteen armed vessels, was the most active and effective of the
state fleets. The Virginia navy numbering about fifty vessels, was
poorly equipped and rendered little service. These fleets were made
up of all sorts of naval craft; sailing vessels variously rigged,
fire-ships, floating batteries, barges, row-galleys with and without
sails, half-galleys, and boats of all sizes. Most of this craft was
designed for the defence of coasts, rivers, and towns. This was
especially true of the galleys, which were shallow vessels, some
seventy or eighty feet in length, carrying two or three cannon,
sometimes as large as 36’s or 42’s. Only some sixty of these vessels
of the state navies were well adapted for deep-sea navigation.[197]
To a limited extent both privateers and state vessels were placed at
the service of the Marine Committee. There were cruises, expeditions,
and defences of towns, in which two, or the three, services
participated. In such cases the senior Continental captain was
regularly the ranking officer, or the commodore of the fleet, as it
was then expressed. To the extent that state vessels and privateers
might be concerted with the Continental vessels, it would seem at
first blush that they undoubtedly were elements of naval strength
to the Marine Committee. This was by no means true. These concerted
expeditions proved disappointing, and when too late the Committee
became wary of them. Proper subordination, upon which naval success
so much depends, could not be obtained in these mixed fleets. The
commander of a state vessel or the master of a privateer, for aught
either could see, subtended as large an angle in maritime affairs, as
an officer of Congress, which body was to them nebulous, uncertain,
and irresolute.
If the location and physical form of colonial America with reference
to the sea tended to develop a maritime people, they also made most
difficult the problems of naval defence. As has been pointed out,
the territory of the revolting colonies comprised a narrow band of
seacoast divided into a number of peninsulas. All the large towns
were seaports. Had the peninsulas been islands, their defence against
the great sea-power of England would have been an impossibility. The
connections by land on the west side of the thirteen colonies gave
Washington a most valuable line of communications from Canada to
Florida. Had the revolting territory lain compactly, approaching a
square in shape, with a narrow frontage on the sea, its naval defence
would have been a simple problem.
Having decided late in 1775 to make a naval defence, Congress early
in 1776 took into consideration the establishing of one or more bases
for naval operations.[198] There were needed one or more strongly
fortified ports where the Continental fleet and its prizes would be
comparatively secure from attack, and where the armed vessels could
equip, man, and refit. The ports best adapted for naval stations were
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, some point on or near the James river
in Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina. Lesser towns had their
advocates and their hopes. In February, 1776, Gurdon Saltonstall of
Connecticut wrote to Silas Deane that New London would be “the Asylum
of Cont. Navey,” for “one they must have of necessity.”[199] The
Southern ports were not available for several reasons, but chiefly
on account of their distance from the center of maritime interests
in New England. New York was occupied by the British. Philadelphia
had many points in its favor, not the least of which was the location
there of Congress and the Marine Committee. Its occupation for a time
by the enemy in 1777 and 1778, and the close watch which his armed
vessels maintained at the mouth of Delaware Bay, greatly impaired
its usefulness as a harbor of refuge for the Continental vessels.
Boston was by far the most available port. After its abandonment
by the British in March, 1776, and the shifting of the theater of
the war first to the Middle and later to the Southern states, it
was left comparatively free from British interference. It was the
naval emporium of the Revolution, where naval stores, armament and
equipment for vessels of war, seamen, and ships could be procured, if
they were to be had at all.
The British had naval bases in America that left little to be
desired. When they seized New York in September, 1776, they obtained
not only a military point of the highest strategic value, but
also a secure naval station for fitting out and refitting their
privateers and naval ships. From New York, centrally situated with
reference to the revolting colonies, their vessels proceeded along
the Atlantic coast both northward and southward on the outlook for
American merchantmen, privateers, and naval craft. Their favorite
patrolling grounds were off the entrances of Delaware, Chesapeake,
and Narragansett bays. British vessels were also to be found off
Boston Bay, Ocracoke Inlet, Cape Fear, Charleston, and Savannah. The
British occupation of Newport from 1776 to 1779, and of Savannah
from 1778, and Charleston from 1780, to the end of the war, afforded
other convenient stations for British operations against the shipping
of the colonies. St. Augustine was a port of much importance in
the movements of the enemy’s smaller ships. The naval stations at
Halifax, Jamaica, and the Bermudas, while not so convenient as those
enumerated, were sources of naval strength to the British. Halifax
was a base for the naval operations against New England. It scarcely
needs to be said that the ports mentioned were in a way secondary
bases of operations, and that England’s center for ships, seamen, and
supplies of all sorts was the British Isles.
From this account of the respective naval stations in America of
the two combatants, one proceeds naturally to a comparison of their
fleets. The rude naval craft of the Americans, two-thirds of which
were made-over merchantmen, was outclassed by the vessels of the
Royal Navy at every point. Disregarding the fleets of Washington and
Arnold, there were during the Revolution fifty-six armed vessels
in the American navy, mounting on the average about twenty guns.
The vessels in the British navy when the Revolution opened in 1775
numbered 270, and when it closed, 468.[200] Of this latter number,
174 were ships of the line, each mounting between sixty and one
hundred guns. The naval force of the Americans when it was at its
maximum in the fall of 1776 consisted of 27 ships, mounting on the
average twenty guns.[201] At the same time the British had on the
American station, besides a number of small craft, 71 ships, which
mounted on the average twenty-eight guns.[202] Of these, two were
64’s; one, a 60; seven, 50’s; and three, 44’s. The British vessels,
being so much larger than the American, were naturally armed with
much heavier guns. Very few 18-pounders were to be found in the
Continental navy. The frigates were usually mounted with 12’s, 9’s,
and 6’s; and many of the smaller craft with 6’s and 4’s. The guns on
the larger British ships mounted 18’s, 24’s, 32’s, and 42’s.
An exhibition of figures showing the difference in size between
one of the largest of the frigates built by the Marine Committee
in 1776 and a typical 100-gun ship of the line of the Royal Navy
is interesting not only by way of comparison, but also as giving
a notion of the size of Revolutionary naval craft. The figures in
feet for the American 32-gun frigate, “Hancock,” and for the British
100-gun ship, “Victory,” respectively, were as follows: Length of gun
deck, 137 and 186; length of keel, 116 and 151; width of beam, 34
and 52; depth, 12 and 22. The tonnage of the “Hancock’s” companion
frigate, the “Boston,” was 515 tons; of the “Alfred,” the first ship
fitted out by Congress, 200 tons.[203] Continental naval craft,
such as the “Cabot,” “Wasp,” and “Fly,” were smaller still than the
“Alfred.”
The number of seamen and marines in the Continental navy is believed
not to have exceeded at any time three thousand men. The exact number
of commissioned officers in the Continental navy and marine corps
may not as yet have been ascertained. Owing to the diffusion of the
power of appointment, the Naval Department of the Revolution seems
to have prepared no perfect list of its officers. The best list of
commissioned officers, and one that in all probability needs few
corrections was compiled in 1794 in the Auditor’s Office, Department
of the Treasury.[204] This gives the names of 1 commander-in-chief,
45 captains, and 132 lieutenants, or 178 commissioned officers
in all, in the navy proper; and 1 major, 31 captains, and 91
lieutenants, or 123 commissioned officers, in the marine corps. With
the exception of the years 1776 and 1777, when the total number of
officers in actual service was about one-half of the above figures,
the number of officers at sea or attached to vessels in ports was
much less than one-half. In 1902 the American navy consisted of 899
commissioned officers of the line, arranged in eight grades.
In 1775 the British navy contained 18,000 seamen and marines, and
when the war closed in 1783 this number had risen to 110,000. The
total “extra” and “ordinary” expenses of the Royal Navy from 1775 to
1783, as voted by Parliament, amounted to £8,386,000.[205]
Both Continental and state naval services suffered from the lack of
_esprit de corps_, naval traditions, and a proper subordination and
concert of action between officers and crews. Bravery is often a poor
substitute for organization and naval experience and skill. Navies
can be grown, but not created. The quality of the Continental naval
officers, diluted it is true by the presence of a few “political
skippers,” was upon the whole as high as the circumstances of their
choice and the naval experience of the country admitted. Many of them
were drawn from the merchant service, and a few had had some months’
experience in state navies. Six captains appointed by Washington
entered the service of the Marine Committee.
The vessels of the Continental navy were procured and managed
under several Continental auspices. The Marine Committee, with its
predecessor and its successors in naval administration was the chief
naval administrative organ of the Revolutionary government. We have
already seen, however, that Washington fitted out one fleet in New
England and another in New York; and that Arnold fought with still
another fleet, one of the most important naval engagements of the
Revolution. In a succeeding chapter we shall find that the American
representatives in France, who were responsible to the Foreign Office
of Congress, and the Continental agent at New Orleans, who worked
chiefly under the Committee of Commerce, fitted out fleets, and
were vested with important naval duties. At one and the same time
three committees of Congress, the Marine Committee, the Committee
of Foreign Affairs, and the Committee of Commerce, were fitting out
armed vessels.
FOOTNOTES:
[185] Journals of Continental Congress, April 17, 1776.
[186] Ibid., March 29, 1777.
[187] Rhode Island Colonial Records, VIII, 53.
[188] Journals of Continental Congress, July 11, 1780.
[189] Ibid., August 5, 1776.
[190] In July, 1778, when a joint American and French attack on
Newport was planned, the Navy Board at Boston inserted a notice
in the Providence Gazette, requiring sailors who were enlisted to
repair to their vessels, and calling for recruits. This call was in
the following language: “All seamen now in America, who regard the
Liberty of Mankind, or the Honor of the United States of America, as
well as their own advantage, are now earnestly entreated to enter
immediately on board some of the Continental Vessels, in order
to afford all possible Aid and Assistance to His Most Christian
Majesty’s Fleet, under the Command of the Count de Estaing, the
Vice-Admiral of France, now in the American Seas, for the Purpose
of assisting these American States in vanquishing a haughty and
cruel Enemy, too long triumphant on these Seas. Now is the Time to
secure to yourselves Safety in your future Voyages, and to avoid
the cruelties which all those experience who have the Misfortune
to be captured by the Britons; and now is the time to make your
Fortunes.”—Providence Gazette, July 25, 1778. See also advertisement
in Connecticut Gazette, March 7, 1777.
[191] A facsimile of a most interesting and rare broadside will be
found in C. K. Bolton’s Private Soldier under Washington, page 46.
This broadside was designed to attract recruits to the ship “Ranger,”
Captain John Paul Jones, fitting out in the summer of 1777 at
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to sail for France.
[192] Collections of New York Historical Society, Deane Papers, V,
466.
[193] For additional information and appropriate references
concerning privateers, see Part II, State Navies.
[194] There is much evidence on this point. See especially
Publications of Rhode Island Historical Society, VIII, 256, William
Vernon, Commissioner of Navy Board at Boston, to John Adams, December
17, 1778; Force, American Archives, 5th, II, 1105, John Paul Jones to
Robert Morris, October 17, 1776; Ibid., 599, Mrs. John Adams to John
Adams, September 29, 1776; Ibid., 337 and 622; Ibid., 5th, III, 1513,
Benjamin Rush to R. H. Lee, December 21, 1776; and C. K. Bolton,
Private Soldier under Washington, 45, 46.
[195] In the case of Continental prizes the Navy Board at Boston
discovered collusions which were detrimental to the government.
Ordered to buy the Continental prize “Thorn,” it writes to the
Marine Committee that the agents and captains interested in the
prize refuse to let it have the “Thorn” at a price to be fixed by
three disinterested appraisers; and that “taking our chance, in the
purchase by auction, amongst such circles of men in combinations is a
miserable one.” In the same letter the Board writes also concerning
the “Thorn” that “bets run high that she will sell for two hundred
thousand pounds.”—Records and Papers of Continental Congress, 37, pp.
145, 147.
[196] See Chapter IX, page 267; also Gomer Williams, Liverpool
Privateers, Chapter IV, Privateers of the American War of
Independence. From August, 1778, to April, 1779, Liverpool fitted out
one hundred and twenty privateers.
[197] See Part II, State Navies.
[198] Journals of Continental Congress, March 23, 1776.
[199] Papers of Silas Deane in the Library of the Connecticut
Historical Society.
[200] Clowes, Royal Navy, III, 328.
[201] Few of these vessels were ready for sea for lack of crews. The
British also suffered greatly during the Revolution owing to the
scarcity of seamen. This the First Lord of the Admiralty attributed
to the loss of 18,000 American sailors, who had contributed to the
manning of the British fleets in former wars.—Annual Register, 1778,
201.
[202] Boston Gazette, November 4, 1776.
[203] A battleship building in 1903 at the New York navy yard has a
displacement of 16,000 tons.
[204] Manuscript list, in Division of Manuscripts, Library of
Congress.
[205] Clowes, Royal Navy, III, 327.
CHAPTER VI
MOVEMENTS OF THE CONTINENTAL FLEET UNDER THE MARINE COMMITTEE
Many duties fell to the Marine Committee and its fleet which were not
of a purely military character. The Committee was obliged to employ
some of its vessels in keeping open the commercial and diplomatic
communications of the United States with Europe and the West Indies;
upon this intercourse with foreign countries largely depended the
successful issue of the war. The Committee detailed vessels to carry
abroad ambassadors, and foreign agents; letters and dispatches;
tobacco, fish, flour, indigo, and such other colonial products as
exchanged well for naval stores, clothing, and the munitions of war.
Among the distinguished men who took passage on board the Continental
vessels were John Adams, Lafayette, and Gerard, the first French
minister to the United States. In this work it coöperated with other
committees of Congress, and most especially with the Committee of
Secret Correspondence, or its successor, the Committee of Foreign
Affairs; and with the Secret Committee, or, as it was later called,
the Committee of Commerce. Owing to the close connection of the work
of the Marine Committee and the Committee of Commerce in exporting
colonial products and in importing supplies, their accounts became
inextricably confused. While running errands for the various
administrative organs of Congress, the Marine Committee often at the
same time ran errands of its own. A commander who had been selected
to carry abroad a minister or foreign agent, might be ordered to
pick up any prizes which fell in his way, or to cruise for a brief
period in European waters while waiting for letters and packets
from Paris addressed to Congress; or if on the other hand, it was a
voyage in which dispatch was of the highest importance, he would be
specifically forbidden to do these very things.
Turning now to the strictly military work of the Committee, one
finds that clearness in presentation will be obtained by making
a classification of naval operations. These will be divided into
primary and secondary operations. A primary operation will be defined
as one directed against the enemy’s naval vessels at sea. Any other
naval operation whatsoever will be called a secondary one. Primary
operations will be divided into major and minor operations. In major
primary operations fleets of considerable size and force are matched
against each other, as was the case at the battles of Santiago,
Trafalgar, and Martinique. Minor primary operations are engagements
between some two or three of the smaller vessels of the combatants.
A good example of these is the fight between the “Bon Homme Richard”
and the “Serapis.” Secondary operations are of several forms, chief
of which is “commerce-destroying.” Continental vessels during a
single cruise sometimes engaged in both primary and secondary
operations.
In the light of the comparison which has been made showing the
relative strength of the Continental and British navies, the reader
does not need to be told that the Marine Committee did not engage
its fleet in major primary operations. The very existence of the
Continental vessels depended upon their success in keeping outside
the range of the larger guns of the Royal Navy. The Marine Committee
sometimes gave specific orders to its captains to avoid the British
“two-deckers.” In the minor primary operations of the Revolution
some thirty or thirty-five engagements may be counted. The honors
here are upon the whole evenly divided. The Americans captured ten
or twelve naval vessels of the enemy. With the exceptions of the
frigate “Fox,” 26, captured by Captain John Manly between New
England and Newfoundland; and the sloop “Drake,” 20, and the ships
“Countess of Scarborough,” 20, and “Serapis,” 44, captured by Captain
John Paul Jones in European waters, the prizes of the Americans were
minor naval craft, averaging ten or twelve 4’s and 6’s. The British
captured or destroyed about the same number of vessels as they lost,
but their prizes on the average were larger and better armed vessels
than were those of the Americans. Seven of them were frigates. On the
other hand the British had no victory as brilliant as that of Jones
off Flamborough Head.
The secondary operations of the Continental navy were more important
than its primary operations. They mainly involved the protection
of American commerce, the defence of certain Atlantic ports, the
striking of the lines of communication of the British military
forces, the attacking of the enemy’s commerce at sea, and the
threatening and assailing of her unprotected coasts and ports both
at home and in her outlying dependencies. Each of these forms of
secondary operations will now be briefly considered.
The Committee defended American commerce by ordering its cruisers
to “attack, take, burn, or destroy” the enemy’s privateers. One
illustration of such orders will suffice. In November, 1778, the
Committee wrote to the Navy Board at Boston that “at present we
consider it an Object of importance to destroy the infamous Goodrich
who has much infested our Coast, cruising with a squadron of 4, 5,
or 6 armed Vessels, from 16 guns downwards, from Egg Harbour to Cape
Fear in North Carolina.”[206] In its orders the Committee as a rule
included the small naval ships of the enemy with the privateers. Of
the three naval captains who lost their lives in the Continental
service, two of them were killed in engagements with privateers.
On March 4, 1778, the brigantine “Resistance,” Captain Samuel
Chew, while cruising in the West India seas had a desperate and
indecisive encounter with a letter of marque of 20 guns. Chew and
his lieutenant, George Champlin, both of New London, were killed;
Chew was a native of Virginia.[207] Late in the summer of 1778 the
“General Gates,” 18, Captain John Skimmer, captured the brigantine
“Montague” in an engagement in which Captain Skimmer lost his
life.[208]
In addition to defending the American commerce by cruising against
the privateers and small naval ships of the enemy, the Continental
vessels often threw their protecting arm directly around the trade
of the states. Vessels were often detailed to convoy to sea American
merchantmen and packets. At times when the trade was bound for
France, the Continental vessels accompanied it even as far as the
Grand Banks of Newfoundland, but as a rule their services did not
extend beyond a few leagues from the American coast. Sometimes the
Continental vessels were ordered to cruise off the Delaware Bay, or
similar channel, to guide and protect incoming shipping.
The Marine Committee coöperated with the army in the defence and in
the attack of certain ports. In the campaigns around Philadelphia
in 1777 and 1778 the Continental navy lost some ten vessels,
including three of the thirteen original frigates; and at the siege
of Charleston in 1780 it lost four vessels. The British occupation
of New York caused the destruction of the two frigates built at
Poughkeepsie. In 1779 a Continental vessel aided a Spanish expedition
in capturing Mobile. Several times the Committee placed part of its
fleet under the control of Washington and the Admiral of the French
naval forces, when they were planning an attack upon some seaport
held by the enemy.
In 1779 Gerard, the French minister, devised a plan which
contemplated a joint expedition of the French and American fleets
against the British colonies to the northward. Gerard’s purpose
was “to give the King of France Halifax and Newfoundland.” In May,
1779, he consulted with Washington in his camp about the proposed
expedition. By September Gerard’s plan, or a similar one, had so far
matured that the Marine Committee ordered the Navy Board at Boston
to prepare the Continental vessels for a three months’ cruise and
to hold them ready to sail at a moment’s warning to join the French
fleet, or to proceed to such other place as Washington or Count
D’Estaing might direct. The Board was to provide a sufficient number
of pilots for Newfoundland, Halifax, Rhode Island, and the Penobscot
river. This expedition was not abandoned until November, 1779.[209]
The Committee struck at the enemy’s lines of communication between
his army and navy in America, and the British Isles, Canada, the
Bermudas, Florida, and the West Indies. After the transfer of the
war to the Southern states in 1778 and 1779, transports running
between New York and Savannah and Charleston were vulnerable craft.
The capture of British transports laden with munitions of war,
provisions, and troops had the advantage of obtaining for the
Americans the very sinews of war, of which the enemy were deprived.
When troops were captured, they could be exchanged for an equal
number of American prisoners. The reader may recall that it was for
the purpose of intercepting British transports that Congress fitted
out the first Continental vessels in October, 1775.
The most successful capture of the enemy’s transports was made in
the spring of 1779. In order to protect the trade of the Southern
states, depredations upon which were most frequent and destructive,
the Marine Committee in February of that year, ordered the Navy
Board at Boston to send certain of the Continental vessels to sweep
the coast from Cape May to the bar of South Carolina. This detail
of the armed vessels was made partly to satisfy the merchants of
Baltimore, who had complained to Congress that their interests were
being neglected. On March 13 a fleet consisting of the “Warren,”
32, Captain J. B. Hopkins, as commodore, the “Queen of France,” 28,
Captain Joseph Olney, and the “Ranger,” 18, Captain Thomas Simpson,
sailed from Boston, for the coast of the Southern states. On April 7
they captured the privateer schooner, “Hibernia.” This vessel told
them of the sailing of a fleet of transports from New York, bound for
Brigadier-General Campbell’s army in Georgia, and laden with stores
and supplies. The next day fifteen leagues off Cape Henry, Hopkins
fell in with the fleet; and meeting with a trifling resistance, he
made prizes of seven out of its nine vessels. These prizes were all
sent to New England. On April 22, the “Queen of France” arrived in
Boston with the ship “Maria,” 16, carrying eighty-four men, the
schooner “Hibernia,” 8, also carrying eighty-four men, and the brigs
“John,” 200 tons, “Batchelor,” 120 tons, and “Prince Frederick,” 160
tons. Another prize, His Majesty’s ship “Jason,” 16, with one hundred
men, also reached Boston. The “Ranger” put into Portsmouth with the
schooner “Chance” and a brig. The Marine Committee wrote to Captain
Hopkins congratulating him and his fellow captains on the fortunate
outcome of their cruise.[210]
The most important objective of the Marine Committee in its naval
operations was the capture of England’s commerce in transit at sea.
The Committee planned to intercept her sugar ships of the West
Indies, her Newfoundland fishing craft, her Hudson bay fleet laden
with skins and peltries, her Guineamen with cargoes of ivory and
slaves, and her Mississippi trade with its lumber and furs. The
Committee’s agents and the naval officers abroad hoped to ensnare
the enemy’s Baltic trade, the Irish linen ships, the Brazil whaling
fleet, and homeward bound East Indiamen. The sending of frigates
to the Coromandel Coast to intercept the enemy’s China ships and
the trade of India was seriously considered. On one occasion the
Committee designed to attack English vessels bound for Canada with
cargoes of “Indian goods.” But generally the blows were aimed at
the fleets of rich merchantmen returning to England, for their many
vessels were like honey-laden bees flying homeward to their hives.
The British fishing fleet on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and the
homeward bound West Indiamen were found most vulnerable. It is not
practicable for a combatant to prey upon commerce far from his base
of operations. The frequent manning of prizes depletes his crews and
compels him to make an early return home. The chance of prizes being
retaken is increased with the distance they must travel to reach safe
ports. The operations of the Continental vessels in European waters
were made possible by their use of French ports as naval stations. In
attacking England’s commerce the Marine Committee found most promise
of substantial reward by directing its vessels to cruise during the
summer or the early fall some leagues to the eastward of the Bermudas
in the track of the homeward bound West Indiamen, laden with rum,
sugar, cotton, coffee, and other Colonial products. These fleets
sometimes consisted of as many as 200 merchantmen under the convoy of
a few ships of war. Skilful seamanship found it comparatively easy
to cut out a few sail. In three instances Continental vessels made
captures which netted them more than one million dollars each.
Two of these fortunate cruises were made while the fleet was
under the direction of the Marine Committee. On May 4, 1779, the
Committee wrote to the Navy Board at Boston that it desired that
the “Confederacy,” “Warren,” “Queen of France,” “Hanger,” “Jason,”
“Hibernia,” and two of the lately built packets as tenders, and the
“Deane,” which it should send from Philadelphia, should be joined
together and sail in company to the southward and attack the sea
force of the enemy on the coast of Georgia. After routing the enemy
there, the fleet was to throw itself in the way of the West India
ships, bound to England. A fortnight later the Committee wrote that
it had reason to lay aside the expedition to Georgia, and that it was
their intention to place the collected naval force in such manner
as to accomplish the double purpose of intercepting the enemy’s
transports, coming to and going from New York, and of attacking her
homeward bound West India ships.
In accordance with the latter plan of the Committee, sometime
during the summer a fleet was sent to sea from Boston, consisting
of the “Providence”, 28, Captain Abraham Whipple, commodore of the
fleet, the “Queen of France,” 28, Captain John P. Rathburn, and the
“Ranger,” 18, Captain Thomas Simpson. In August the American vessels
fell in with the Jamaica fleet, bound for London, and convoyed by a
32-gun frigate and three other armed vessels. The Americans succeeded
in cutting out from the fleet ten large merchantmen, heavily laden
with rum and sugar. Of the ten vessels, seven arrived at Boston and
one at Cape Ann. The names of these eight ships, whose average burden
was 285 tons, were as follows: “Holderness,” “Dawes,” “George,”
“Friendship,” “Blenheim,” “Thetis,” “Fort William,” and “Neptune.”
This was one of the richest captures which the Continental fleet made
during the Revolution. The ships with their cargoes sold for more
than one million dollars.[211] Early in the year the ship “General
Gates” and the sloop “Providence” sent prizes into Boston which sold
for £240,000.[212]
The Marine Committee threatened and attacked the enemy’s coasts
and towns in the British Isles, Canada, and the West Indies. Two
Continental vessels visited the mouth of the Senegal river on the
west coast of Africa. An attack on the shipping of the Bermudas
was ordered to be made, if it was found practicable. Nassau, New
Providence, was twice captured by Continental vessels, and a third
time by a Spanish fleet and a ship of war of the South Carolina navy.
Robert Morris, when vice-president of the Marine Committee, planned
to send a fleet of five vessels against the British possessions in
the West Indies and the Floridas. The movements of Captains Wickes,
Conyngham, and Jones in attacking and alarming the British Isles are
well known.[213] Those expeditions against British coasts, towns,
and dependencies had several objects in view. One, of course, was the
capture of booty. To the extent that the expeditions were directed
against the shipping and commerce of the attacked ports, their
object was similar to that of fleets which cruised against shipping
and commerce at sea. Another object is discovered in the thought of
Morris when he planned to attack England in the West Indies. Such
a move Morris believed would force the enemy to withdraw part of
his fleet from the coasts of the United States for the defence of
his attacked colonies; and to the extent that he did so, the states
would be relieved. The cruises made in the waters around the British
Isles had in view the lessening of the prestige of Great Britain,
the shaking of her credit, the alarming of her inhabitants, and the
raising of her marine insurance; and also the impressing of Europe
with the power and courage of the new American nation, and perchance,
creating a diversion in its favor. Both a psychological and a
political element entered into the purpose of the cruises in British
waters. They realized to both Britain and the Continent the existence
of a new flag and a new state in the family of nations.
The naval plan devised by Morris, as vice-president of the Marine
Committee, deserves additional notice. It was to be put into
operation by John Paul Jones, with a fleet composed of the “Alfred,”
“Columbus,” “Cabot,” “Hampden,” and sloop “Providence.” Jones was
first to proceed to St. Christopher in the West Indies, which island
was almost defenceless, capture the cannon, stores, and merchandise
there deposited, and then sail for Pensacola, Florida. Morris thought
Jones might find it best to pass along the south side of Hispaniola,
and alarm Jamaica by putting in to some of its ports. Arriving at
Pensacola, he would find it defended by two or three sloops of war,
which could be easily silenced, and the town would fall into his
hands with its munitions of war, including one hundred pieces of
artillery. Having reduced Pensacola, Jones was to send a brigantine
and sloop to cruise at the mouth of the Mississippi, in order to
waylay the British merchantmen leaving there in March and April with
cargoes of indigo, rice, tobacco, skins, and furs, to the value
of £100,000 sterling. Returning from the Gulf, he might alarm St.
Augustine, and finally he might refit in Georgia, or South or North
Carolina. He was directed to carry as many marines as possible for
his operations on shore.
Morris’s object in this expedition involved a nice bit of naval
policy. He purposed not so much the taking of booty, as the alarming
of the whole British nation, and the forcing of the enemy to
withdraw some of her naval forces from the coast of the United
States. “It has long been clear to me,” he said, “that our infant
fleet cannot protect our coasts; and the only effectual relief it
can afford us, is to attack the enemy’s defenceless places, and
thereby oblige them to station more of their own ships in their own
countries, or to keep them employed in following ours, and either
way we are relieved so far as they do it.” Morris proposed his plan
as a substitute for one of Jones, which contemplated a descent on
the west coast of Africa; and to the carrying out of which the
Marine Committee had given its consent. Morris thought that the same
results as Jones sought could be obtained with less risk by “cruizing
Windward of Barbadoes as all their Guinea Men fall in there.”[214]
The Marine Committee naturally planned and carried out naval
enterprises which had in view two or more forms of secondary
operations. Sometimes it ordered its vessels to take stations at
sea where they would be in position to intercept both the West
India trade, and the enemy’s transports plying between New York and
England. Often it left the specific object of a cruise to the Navy
Board at Boston, or to the commander of a ship, and issued merely
the general order to proceed to sea and cruise against the enemy. Any
plan of the Committee which was directed towards meeting an immediate
emergency was rarely carried out. The movements of the vessels were
rendered uncertain by reason of depleted crews, deficient equipments,
and the position of the British fleets. The Committee was often
in the dark as to the exact state of a vessel in New England with
reference to its preparation for sea. Consequently it made many plans
and gave many orders which could not be put into operation. The
telegraph, cable, and rapid postal services have revolutionized the
direction of naval movements.
In prize-getting the Marine Committee’s most successful years were
1776 and 1779. Beginning with 1776 the number of prizes taken by the
Continental vessels for each year of the Committee’s incumbency was,
respectively, sixty, twenty, twenty, and fifty. The fifty prizes
captured in 1779 were probably more valuable than the one hundred
taken in the other three years. As regards the number of Continental
vessels lost, the years 1776 and 1779, when the fleet was decreased
by but three ships, again prove to be the most fortunate years. In
1777 and 1778 twenty-six vessels, ten of which were frigates, were
lost.[215] With the memory of the misfortunes of the past two years
in mind, well might the Marine Committee write, towards the end of
1778, of “the bad success that hath hitherto attended our Navy.” In
May, 1778, it wrote to the Navy Board at Boston, that the “Committee
are entirely of Opinion with you that it will be proper to send out
a Collected force to Cruise against our enemies that we recover the
injured reputation of our Navy and the losses we have sustained.”[216]
In 1779 the navy retrieved the bad effects of some of its disasters.
Its changed fortunes can in part be easily accounted for. The
transference of the scene of war to the Southern states late in
1778, removed a part of the British land and sea forces from the
North, and thereby gave the Naval Department a freer hand in its
operations, and rendered the movements of the fleet less perilous.
The Department this year had larger success in manning and equipping
its fleet. It was, therefore, able not only to send the armed vessels
to sea more frequently, but also to send several of them cruising
in company. Such little fleets had a decided advantage over single
cruisers, both in defensive and offensive operations. No doubt, too,
the experiences and past failures of the navy were now telling in
a better understanding of naval tactics, and were bringing about
a proper subordination and concert of action between officers and
men. Possibly, something should be attributed to the Department’s
increased experience in marine affairs.
The reader has probably already drawn parallels, far from fanciful,
between the solutions of the naval problems of the Revolution
made by the Marine Committee and those of the Spanish-American
war made by the Naval Board of Strategy at Washington. The naval
problems presented to the two bodies were in certain respects widely
different. Equally striking similarities appear. In both wars the
United States was fighting a European power with possessions in
the West Indies and in the Asiatic seas. The attacks on Nassau
and Morris’s proposed expedition against the British West Indies
correspond to the movements of the American fleet in the West Indies
during the late war. The operations of Wickes, Conyngham, and Jones
off the coasts of the British Isles are matched by the proposed
descent on the Spanish coast in 1898. The plan made in 1777 to send
a fleet of frigates to Mauritius and from thence to operate against
the English trade in the Indian seas looks singularly like Admiral
Dewey’s movement from Hong Kong against Manila.
The hope is to be cherished that America will never again cross
swords with her kin beyond seas, but if moved by some untoward
fate she should, it is not too much to say that a Naval Board of
Strategy at Washington will devise plans of naval attack and defence
quite similar to those of the Marine Committee. The weak spots
in a nation’s armor often prove to be its outlying dependencies,
especially when they are situated near the enemy’s coast. The
principles of naval strategy which led the Marine Committee either
to attack, or to plan to attack, Canada, the Newfoundland fisheries,
the Bermudas, and the British West Indies, are still operative,
notwithstanding the vast changes which the past century and a
quarter have witnessed in the methods of naval warfare, and in
the distribution of the territory of the Western Hemisphere among
nations, new as well as old. In a world of change the fundamental
principles of naval strategy remain immutable.
FOOTNOTES:
[206] Marine Committee Letter Book, Committee to Navy Board at
Boston, November 16, 1778.
[207] F. M. Caulkins, History of New London, 539-40; Records and
Papers of New London Historical Society, Part IV, I, 9.
[208] Journals of Continental Congress, September 14, 1778.
[209] Bancroft, History of United States, V, 319; Marine Committee
Letter Book, Committee to Navy Board at Boston, September 28,
November 10, 1779.
[210] Marine Committee Letter Book, Committee to Captain Olney, to
Captain Harding, and to Navy Board at Boston, February 10, 1779;
Committee to Merchants of Baltimore, February 23, 1779; Boston
Gazette, April 26, 1779; Publications of Rhode Island Historical
Society, VIII, 259.
[211] Marine Committee Letter Book, Committee to Navy Board at
Boston, May 4, May 20, 1779; Continental Journal and Weekly
Advertiser, August 26, 1779; Boston Gazette, September 20, 1779.
“Last Saturday noon this town was alarmed by the Appearance of
Seven Topsail Vessels in the Offing, which, however, soon subsided,
for between the Hours of Three and Five in the Afternoon were safe
anchored in this Harbour the Continental Ships of War, ‘Providence,’
‘Queen of France’ and ‘Ranger,’ with Four Prize Ships laden with Rum
and Sugar, being part of a Jamaica Fleet bound to London captured by
the above Vessels.”—Continental Journal and Weekly Advertiser, August
26, 1779, published at Boston.
[212] Publications of Rhode Island Historical Society, VIII, 259.
[213] See Chapter IX and X, Naval Duties of American Representatives
in Foreign Countries.
[214] Marine Committee Letter Book, Morris to Jones, February, 1,
1777; Morris to Commodore Hopkins, February 5, 1777.
[215] Files of newspapers for the period of the Revolution.
[216] Marine Committee Letter Book, Committee to Navy Board at
Boston, May 8, November 9, 1778.
CHAPTER VII
THE BOARD OF ADMIRALTY
It is speaking tritely, although accurately, to say that our present
executive departments at Washington did not spring into perfect being
in 1789 like panoplied Minerva from the head of Jove. Not a little
of the interest and value of a study of the administration of the
Revolution comes from the fact that the administrative practices
and experiences of this period gave rootage to the later and more
perfect executive organs. The development of the Continental Naval
Department, both in the variety and in the character of its forms,
is typical of that of the other administrative departments of the
Revolution. We have already seen how the naval business of the
Continental Congress was first vested in the small Naval Committee;
and how this Committee, early in 1776, was overshadowed and absorbed
by the more numerous and more active Marine Committee. We now come
to the third step in this evolution, the superseding of the Marine
Committee by the Board of Admiralty.
The Marine Committee had proved slow, cumbrous, inexpert, and
irresponsible. The wiser members of Congress had long seen that it
was a prime defect in governmental practice to add to the duties
of a legislative committee, those of an executive office; for it
threw upon the same men too much work of too diverse kinds, and it
removed from the administrative organ its most essential attributes
of permanency, technical skill, and responsibility. In December,
1776, Robert Morris had urged the employment of a corps of executives
chosen outside the membership of Congress, as a requisite to a
proper and orderly management of the business of the Revolutionary
government.[217]
As early as February 26, 1777, William Ellery, a member of the Marine
Committee from Rhode Island, wrote to William Vernon at Providence,
who was soon to become a member of the Navy Board at Boston, that
a proper Board of Admiralty was very much wanted. “The members of
Congress,” he said, “are unacquainted with this Department. As one of
the Marine Committee I sensibly feel my ignorance in this respect.
Under a mortifying Sense of this I wrote to you for Information in
this Matter. Books cannot be had here; and I should have been glad
to have been pointed to proper Authors on this Subject when I should
be in a Place where Books may be had.”[218] Early in 1779 when
Congress was groping in search of a more efficient naval executive,
Ellery again expressed regret at the lack of technical skill in the
management of the navy. He said that the marine affairs would never
be “well conducted so long as the supreme direction of them is in the
hands of Judges, Lawyers, Planters, &c.”[219] Even before Morris and
Ellery had declared for better executives, John Paul Jones, while
distressed by a loss in naval rank caused by the appointing and
the placing above him of certain “political skippers,” wrote that
efficient naval officers could never be obtained, until Congress “in
their wisdom see proper to appoint a Board of Admiralty competent to
determine impartially the respective merits and abilities of their
officers, and to superintend, regulate, and point out all the motions
and operations of the navy.”[220]
During 1778 and 1779 Congress hit upon a system of executive
departments that did little violence to its lust for power, and
at the same time secured a permanent body of administrators and
advisors. This was the system of executive boards, composed jointly
of commissioners selected outside the membership of Congress, and
of members of Congress. Congress and the Marine Committee probably
derived a part of their knowledge of executive boards from the
practice of the English government and of the states. “Board of
Admiralty” was the name during the Revolution, as now, of the British
Naval Office. Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina had early in
the Revolution established “Navy Boards.” In October, 1777, Congress
had formed a Board of War composed of five commissioners. In October,
1778, Congress attempted to clip the wings of this Board and bring it
under Congressional control by substituting two members of Congress
for two of its five commissioners.[221] On July 30, 1779, a Board
of Treasury was constituted on exactly this plan, being composed of
three commissioners and two members of Congress.[222]
In the spring of 1779 the feeling was general that some change must
be made in the management of the navy. Both 1777 and 1778 had been
lean, empty, and disastrous years for the Continental fleet. The
blame for this failure was placed upon the Marine Committee and the
naval commanders. It was in April, 1779, that Washington wrote to
John Jay asking questions and making suggestions about the management
of the navy, which may be briefly summarized as follows: What are the
reasons for keeping the Continental vessels in port? Had not Congress
better lend them to “commanders of known bravery and capacity” for
a limited term? If additional encouragement is necessary in order
to induce seamen to enlist, why not give them the whole of their
captures? Great advantage might result from placing the whole
fleet under “a man of ability and authority commissioned to act as
commodore or admiral.” Under the present system the Continental ships
are not only very expensive and totally useless, but sometimes they
require a land force to protect them.[223]
This arraignment of the navy is somewhat severe. The last clause in
the above paragraph refers to an incident which took place at New
London in the spring of 1776. The reader may recall that Commodore
Hopkins put into this port on his return from New Providence and
just after his unfortunate engagement with the “Glasgow.” He then
received a temporary loan from Washington of one hundred and seventy
troops, with whom, for the time being, he replenished his depleted
crews. He kept the troops less than six weeks.
In his reply to Washington’s letter, Jay ascribed the naval
inefficiency to a defective Naval Department. He said: “While the
maritime affairs of the continent continue under the direction of a
committee, they will be exposed to all of the consequences of want
of system, attention, and knowledge. The marine committee consists
of a delegate from each state; it fluctuates, new members constantly
coming and old ones going out; three or four, indeed, have remained
in it from the beginning; and few members understand even the state
of our naval affairs, or have time or inclination to attend to them.
But why is not this system changed? It is in my opinion, inconvenient
to the family compact.”[224] The “family compact” is supposed to
refer to the Lees. During the Revolution the Lees and the Adamses
formed the nucleus of a faction, which was generally opposed to
constructive legislation in the field of administration.
When this letter of Jay’s was written a new naval system was
forming.[225] On June 9 Congress resolved to vest in “commissioners
all business relating to the marine of these United States.”[226]
Apparently this resolution of Congress meant that the naval affairs
were to be given over to a board chosen outside the membership of
Congress; if so, Congress soon retracted it. On October 1, 1779,
Congress discharged the committee that had had the new project in
hand, and directed the Marine Committee “to prepare and report a
plan of regulations for conducting the naval affairs of the United
States.”[227] The Marine Committee reported on October 28, 1779;
thereupon, Congress passed resolutions making provision for a Board
of Admiralty, “to be subject in all cases to Congress.” These
resolutions were in important respects based upon those of October
17 and November 24, 1777, establishing a Board of War.[228] This was
natural, as the work of a war and a naval office are quite similar.
In the composition of the two boards there was a vital difference.
The Board of War, as has been said, consisted of five commissioners;
the Board of Admiralty consisted of three commissioners and two
members of Congress, being modeled after the Board of Treasury. Any
three members of the Board of Admiralty were empowered to form a
quorum. No two members were permitted to come from the same state.
The Board must have its office in the same town in which Congress was
sitting. It selected its clerks, but Congress chose its secretary.
The powers and duties of the Board of Admiralty were practically
The same as those of the Marine Committee. The Board was to order
and direct the movements of all ships and vessels of war. It was to
superintend and direct the navy boards and see that they kept fair
entries and proper accounts of all the business transacted by them.
It was to keep a complete and accurate register of the officers of
the navy, giving their rank and the date of their commissions; these
were to be signed by the President of Congress and countersigned
by the secretary of the Board. The Board was to have the care and
direction of the marine prisoners. It was to obtain regular and
exact returns of all warlike stores, clothing, provisions, and
miscellaneous articles belonging to the marine department. Lastly
the Board of Admiralty was to “execute all such matters as shall be
directed, and give their opinion on all such subjects as shall be
referred to them by Congress, or as they may think necessary for the
better regulation and improvement of the navy of the United States;
and in general to superintend and direct all the branches of the
marine department.”[229]
The officers of the navy were enjoined to obey the directions of the
Board of Admiralty. The proceedings, records, and papers of the Board
were to be open at all times to the inspection of the members of
Congress. The Board of Admiralty was ordered to examine at once the
unsettled accounts of the navy boards and naval agents, and report
thereon to Congress. It was further directed to form proper plans for
increasing the naval force of the United States and for the better
regulating of the same.
The salary of each commissioner was fixed at $14,000, and that of the
secretary of the Board at $8,000 a year. On September 13, 1780, these
salaries were decreased to $1,850 and to $1,100 a year, respectively,
to be now paid quarterly in specie or its equivalent.[230] When
Congress increased the salary of its Commissioners of the Treasury
from $1,850 to $2,000, the Commissioners of Admiralty, exhibiting
that delicate sense of the fitness of more pay which characterizes
the employees of governments, petitioned for a similar increase in
their salaries;[231] and Congress, in accord with its subsequent
character under the Constitution, refused a favor to the navy which
it granted to a more popular branch of its public service.[232] The
Congressional members received no pay for their services on the Board.
When Congress came to select Commissioners of Admiralty, it found
no easy task. Men who were eager for distinction and honor felt
that they were cultivating a surer field in their home governments
or in the army. The prestige of the Continental government was now
declining. The dilution of salaries caused by the depreciation of
the currency lessened the attractiveness of the Continental offices.
Employees of Congress found it hard to support their families on
their pay. Then too, the navy business had become a thankless and
disheartening task. The class of men who will accept a disagreeable
office with little pay and no glory is a small one at any time.
The first three commissioners elected by Congress were William
Whipple of New Hampshire, chairman of the Marine Committee, Thomas
Waring of South Carolina, and George Bryan of Pennsylvania. Each
declined. On December 7 Francis Lewis of New York was chosen
commissioner, and on the next day he accepted the office. Congress on
the 3rd had named the two Congressional members of the Board, William
Floyd of New York, and James Forbes of Maryland. The appointment of
Lewis vacated the position of Floyd, as two members from the same
state could not serve on the Board. William Ellery of Rhode Island
was now elected as the second Congressional member. Congress had
already chosen John Brown, the secretary of the Marine Committee, to
be secretary of the Board of Admiralty. Lewis, Forbes, and Ellery
were sufficient to organize the Board. Accordingly on December 8,
1779, Congress resolved “that all matters heretofore referred to the
marine committee be transmitted to the board of admiralty.”[233]
On December 10 the Board of Admiralty wrote to the Navy Board at
Boston, informing it of the dissolution of the Marine Committee, and
directing it to address in the future all letters and applications
relating to the navy to the “Commissioners of the Admiralty of the
United States.”[234]
Upon the organization of the Board of Admiralty, its difficulties in
obtaining quorums began; and the troubles of Congress in its search
for additional commissioners continued. On January 22, 1780, Congress
gave Brigadier-General Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania an opportunity
to decline a commissionership.[235] On March 21 Lewis was complaining
to Congress that Forbes was sick, and that consequently there had
been no Board since the 4th instant. He hoped Congress would fill
up the vacancy and prevent the navy business from being longer
suspended.[236] On the death of Forbes on March 25, Congress elected
James Madison to fill his place. Madison had but recently arrived at
Philadelphia as a delegate from Virginia.
In June, 1780, Lewis was again in trouble and was writing to
Congress. He conceived that the addition of members of Congress
to the Board of Admiralty was principally intended to lay such
information before Congress from time to time as the Board desired
to give, to explain its reports, and in the absence, or during
the sickness, of a commissioner to make a quorum. He said that,
notwithstanding the attention which Madison and Ellery had been
disposed to give, their necessary attendance on Congress did not
admit of their being daily and constantly present at the sessions of
the Board; that Ellery had been superseded in Congress; and that at
present there was no Board for lack of a quorum.[237] Congress once
more came to the rescue of Lewis and his Board by appointing Ellery
and Thomas Woodford as commissioners.[238] Ellery at once accepted,
but Woodford for some reason declined the appointment. Congress
never obtained a third commissioner. In the fall of 1780 Daniel
Huntington of Connecticut and Whitmill Hill of North Carolina were
the Congressional members of the Board. On their being supplanted in
November, 1780, by new delegates to Congress from their respective
states, it took the urgent solicitation of Lewis to get Congress to
fill the vacancies.[239] When the Board was discontinued in July,
1781, it had but one Congressional member, Daniel of St. Thomas
Jenifer of Maryland.
To all intents and purposes Lewis and Ellery were the Board of
Admiralty; and in many respects they were well qualified for their
positions. Both were able men, though not brilliant. Both had
passed the meridian of life; Lewis was in his sixty-seventh year,
and Ellery in his fifty-second. Both had taken prominent parts in
the Revolutionary counsels in their respective states; both had been
members of the Continental Congress and of the Marine Committee. Both
were among the immortal Signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Lewis had amassed a fortune as an importing merchant in New York, and
had served in the French and Indian war. Ellery had been a merchant,
and later a lawyer in Newport, Rhode Island. Both men were interested
in naval affairs, and had rendered good service on the Marine
Committee. Lewis’s work on the Board of Admiralty exceeded that of
Ellery.
From the first the Board of Admiralty was more dependent on Congress
than the Marine Committee had been. Congress, always jealous of
its prerogatives, naturally permitted a freer exercise of power to
a committee of its own members, than to a mixed board, whose work
was almost entirely that of commissioners selected outside the
membership of Congress. To the Board’s dependence on Congress for its
organization was added that for means to carry out its naval program.
The frequency with which it went to Congress asking for quorums and
money indicates its helplessness and weakness.
The work of the Board of Admiralty was, generally speaking, that of
the Marine Committee under a change of name. It managed the dwindling
business of the navy from December, 1779, until July, 1781. It was
served by the Navy Boards and naval agents of its predecessor, the
Marine Committee. Immediately after its organization, the Board of
Admiralty, in compliance with the resolutions of Congress, urged the
Navy Boards and naval agents to transmit to it accurate accounts
of their transactions up to December 31, 1779. Owing to the loose
methods of business which obtained during the Revolution, the
agents of the Board found it in most cases impossible to make such
statements.
The failure of the agents properly to report their accounts, together
with a diminution in the naval business of Congress, now led to some
decrease in naval machinery. In August, 1780, the Board recommended
that the two Philadelphia prize agents be discharged, since it had
not been able to induce them by means of its repeated written and
verbal requests to exhibit their accounts. Congress now discontinued
their office and gave their work to the Board of Admiralty.[240] In
the winter of 1780-81 the resignations of Winder and Wharton, as
commissioners of the Navy Board at Philadelphia, were accepted by
Congress, and the duties of this Board were vested in its remaining
member, James Read.[241] On May 7, 1781, Congress accepted the
resignation of Deshon of the Navy Board at Boston.[242] The work of
the Navy Boards and naval agents had now greatly diminished. Already
the settling of naval accounts was becoming one of their principal
tasks. After 1779 there were few Continental prizes to libel. Upon
the resignation of the naval agents at Philadelphia, those at Boston,
Portsmouth, and New London were the only ones of consequence.
The Board of Admiralty was called to act upon divers letters,
petitions, and memorials, differing little from the similar
communications which Congress referred to the Marine Committee. It
also fell to its lot to prepare and report not a little important
legislation. The reports of the Board, which were in writing, were
chiefly the work of Lewis and Ellery, and were presented to Congress
by the Congressional members of the Board. Congress usually referred
these reports to a committee, before it discussed them or took final
action upon them. Not a few of the reports of the Board were,
however, pigeon-holed by Congress, and no action was taken upon
them. The naval legislation of Congress during the incumbency of the
Board of Admiralty was in part rendered necessary by the decline of
the navy. Certain other legislation was caused by the putting into
effect of the Articles of Confederation on March 1, 1781; and a few
Congressional resolutions on naval affairs may be attributed to the
special legislative activity and enterprise of the Board of Admiralty.
In January, 1780, Congress on the recommendation of the Board of
Admiralty passed a resolution which was no doubt in harmony with
administrative economy and thrift, but which pressed hard upon many
naval officers. The pay of all officers in the navy not in actual
service was at once to cease. Their commissions were to be deposited
with the most convenient Navy Board, until the officers should be
again called into service; each officer was to retain his rank.[243]
This was merely a courteous way of disestablishing the larger part of
the navy. Owing to the capture and destruction of many Continental
vessels, most of the naval officers were not in actual service. The
number of commissioned officers in actual service in both navy and
marine corps at this time was about twenty. It is clear that the
Continental Congress was unfriendly to the theory that an employee of
a government has a vested right in his office.
On July 11, 1780, naval salaries, subsistence money, and bounties
were ordered to be paid in specie; forty Continental dollars were
considered equal to one of specie. On the same day, in order that
the depleted crews might perchance be recruited, Congress voted a
bounty of twenty dollars to able, and ten dollars to ordinary seamen
who should enlist in the navy for twelve months.[244] On August 7 it
provided that officers who had served aboard vessels of twenty guns
or upwards, and who should afterwards be detailed to vessels of less
armament, should suffer no diminution in pay.[245] These provisions
all indicate a declining government and navy.
On February 8, 1780, the Board of Admiralty secured the re-enaction
of the resolutions of May 6, 1778, concerning the holding of courts
of enquiry and courts-martial.[246] The most important provision
of these resolutions, it is recalled, lessened the requirements
for the membership of courts-martial as fixed by Adams’s rules.
On the partial disestablishment of the navy in January it became
increasingly difficult to assemble courts-martial composed
entirely of naval officers. The only naval captain cashiered by a
court-martial held under the direction of the Board of Admiralty was
the eccentric Peter Landais.[247]
On May 4, 1780, the Board of Admiralty reported and Congress adopted
the following device for a seal: “The arms, thirteen bars mutually
supporting each other, alternate red and white, in a blue field,
and surmounted by an anchor proper. The crest a ship under sail.
The motto, sustentans et sustentatus. Legend, U. S. A. Sigil.
Naval.”[248] The anchor and ship under sail are still a part of the
seal of the Department of the Navy. Instead of the arms, motto, and
former legend, there now appear an eagle with outstretched wings, and
the words “Navy Department, United States of America.”
On April 20, 1780, Congress adopted a new form of commission for
naval officers, which the Board of Admiralty had drafted.[249] This
varied little from the one which had been used since the beginning
of the Revolution. With slight changes in phraseology made to adapt
it to the government under the Constitution, it is still used in
the Department of the Navy at Washington. It is this form properly
filled out which constitutes our present Admiral’s title to his rank
and office. The Board also prepared a form of commission, of bond,
and of instructions for commanders of private vessels of war.[250]
In the instructions the rights of neutrals were especially guarded.
Following the lead of “Her Imperial Majesty of all the Russias,”
Congress declared that the goods of belligerents on board neutral
vessels, with the exception of contraband, were not subject to
capture. It confined the term contraband to those articles expressly
declared to be such in the treaty of amity and commerce of February
6, 1778, between the United States and France.[251]
Congress on March 27, 1781, passed an ordinance relative to the
capture and condemnation of prizes. This law was enacted by virtue of
the ninth article of the Articles of Confederation, which vested the
war powers in Congress. It codified the resolutions of November 25,
1775, and March 23, 1776. It was more severe than these resolutions,
and omitted certain indulgences and exemptions, which they contained.
It prescribed the penalty of forfeiture of vessel without trial for
those captors who destroyed or falsified their ship papers. One of
its provisions related to salvage.[252] This law and also the one of
April 7, 1781, fixing the instructions of commanders of private armed
vessels, brought former legislation into conformity with the Articles
of Confederation.
The Board of Admiralty and Congress were inclined to disagree as
to the proper construction to be placed upon the ninth article of
the Articles of Confederation, which gave Congress “the sole and
exclusive right and power of determining on peace and war.” In a
report which it made to Congress under date of May 29, 1781, after
referring to the commissions which Massachusetts had issued to
the “Protector” and “Mars,” two ships of the navy of that state,
it said that “the Board humbly conceives that Commissions issuing
from different Fountains of Power, is a matter which may merit the
attention of the United States in Congress assembled who are the
supreme power in Peace and War.” The Board was inclined to take the
view that Massachusetts had no right to issue these commissions. The
committee of Congress to whom the report was referred interpreted
more narrowly the war powers of Congress than did the Board of
Admiralty. It conceived that each state had the right to issue
commissions to ships of war under the regulations established by
Congress, and that the only step necessary to be taken for the
present was for the Board to transmit to each state a copy of the
present regulations governing the issuing of commissions.[253] This
incident is noteworthy in its indicating the existence of “strict”
and “loose” constructionists within three months after the Articles
of Confederation were adopted.
If another illustration is needed to show the dependence of the
makers of the American navy upon British models, some words of
the Board of Admiralty are in point. For a long time it had under
consideration a revision of the rules and regulations of the
Continental navy. Concerning its intention to inspect the British
rules and incorporate into its new code such of them as were adapted
to the American navy, it observed that it did not “think it unlawful
to be taught by an enemy whose naval skill and power, until the reign
of the present illustrious King of France, were superior to that of
any kingdom or state on earth.”[254] It is believed that the work of
the Board in this particular was not brought before Congress.
On January 15, 1780, Congress created a permanent Court of Appeals
for the trial of prize cases appealed from state admiralty courts.
Since January 30, 1777, such cases had been heard and determined
by a standing committee composed of five members of Congress. Such
a committee naturally lacked permanency, expertness, and technical
and legal knowledge. The Court established in January, 1780, was
to consist of three judges, who were to try, in accordance with
the law of nations, questions of fact as well as law. On January
22, 1780, Congress chose as the three judges of the Court, George
Wythe of Virginia, William Paca of Maryland, and Titus Hosmer of
Connecticut.[255]
When the Board of Admiralty took charge of the navy in December,
1779, there were ten Continental cruisers in American waters. The
“Deane,” 32, was fitting for sea at Boston; the “Trumbull,” 28,
was still in the Connecticut river; the “Providence,” 28, “Boston,”
24, “Queen of France,” 28, and “Ranger,” 18, were on their way to
Charleston, South Carolina, in whose defence they were to assist;
the “Confederacy,” 32, was at Martinique repairing and refitting;
and three vessels were still on the stocks, the “America,” 74, at
Portsmouth, “Bourbon,” 36, at Chatham on the Connecticut river, and
“Saratoga,” 18, at Philadelphia. The “Alliance” was at the Texel
in Holland where she had arrived after playing an ignominious part
in the celebrated fight of Jones off Flamborough Head. This is not
a formidable fleet, and its future movements have little bearing
upon the great naval conflict now being waged between the mistress
of the seas on the one side and France and Spain on the other. The
Continental navy, however, still had some important errands to run,
both Washington and the French were to ask its assistance, and on a
few occasions the enemy was to find its officers and sailors no mean
combatants.
In completing the vessels which were building and in refitting
those which were in commission, the Board of Admiralty was from
the first sorely embarrassed by a lack of money. The difficulties
which the Marine Committee had encountered were now intensified by
the prostration of the country’s finances and credit. The Board
resorted to all means within reason in its attempts to obtain the
requisites for prosecuting its work. In January, 1780, it wrote to
the Board of Treasury that unless money was at once forthcoming the
Naval Department would be at a standstill; and that not less than
one hundred thousand dollars would be sufficient for its needs.[256]
It eagerly sought the proceeds to be derived from the sale of rum,
wine, fruit, and sugar, taken from Continental prizes. In the summer
of 1780 in order that its vessels might be in condition to render
assistance to the expected French fleet, the Board solicited aid
from the governors of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut;
pressed the Commissary-General of Issues of the Continental Army to
furnish it with “62,820 weight of Bread and 13,260 weight of Flour”
with all despatch;[257] and finally, applied to John Holker, the
Consul-General of France at Philadelphia, for a loan of 60,000 pounds
of bread, promising to take special pains to repay it.[258]
Thus hampered, the Board was unable to accomplish much with its
little fleet. During its incumbency some half-dozen cruises were
made by the Continental vessels. Twenty prizes were captured; half of
them only reached safe ports. Two of the prizes were His Majesty’s
brigs “Atalanta,” 16, and “Trepassey,” 14, which were taken by the
“Alliance,” 36, Captain John Barry, in May, 1781, when returning from
France. During the fight, which lasted four hours, the gallant Barry
was wounded in the shoulder. This voyage of Barry, during which he
captured seven prizes, was the most successful one made under the
direction of the Board of Admiralty.
In June, 1780, one of the most hotly contested engagements fought
at sea during the Revolution occurred to the northward of the
Bermudas between the “Trumbull,” 28, Captain James Nicholson, the
ranking officer of the Continental navy, and the Liverpool privateer
“Watt,” 32, Captain Coulthard. After a fight of two hours and a
half both vessels withdrew seriously disabled, and with difficulty
made their ways to their respective ports—the “Trumbull” to Boston
and the “Watt” to New York. A British account of the engagement
places the loss of the “Watt” at eighty-eight men, and that of the
“Trumbull” at “considerable more.” The Americans gave their own loss
as thirty-eight men, and the British as ninety-two. The “Trumbull”
had two lieutenants killed. Gilbert Saltonstall, the captain of
marines onboard the “Trumbull,” wrote a vivid account of the fight.
He was in the thick of it, and received eleven wounds. He said that
“upon the whole there has not been a more close, obstinate, and
bloody engagement since the war. I hope it won’t be treason if I
don’t except even Paul Jones’. All things considered we may dispute
titles with him.”[259] This was the first cruise of the “Trumbull.”
The other twelve frigates of the original thirteen were at this time
either destroyed or captured.
In July, 1780, a futile plan for an attack on New York was made. The
Continental navy and army were to coöperate with the French fleet
under the Admiral the Chevalier de Ternay. Under the direction of the
Board of Admiralty, the Continental vessels continued to make voyages
to France and the West Indies. The losses suffered by the navy during
1780 and the first half of 1781 were considerable. The “Boston,”
“Providence,” “Queen of France,” and “Ranger” were surrendered to the
British on the fall of Charleston in May, 1780. The “Confederacy,”
32, Captain Seth Harding, returning from Cape Francois with a load
of military stores and colonial produce, was, on April 14, 1781,
captured by the British naval ships, “Roebuck,” 44, and “Orpheus,”
32. The “Confederacy” was taken into the British navy under the name
of “Confederate.” In March, 1781, the “Saratoga,” 18, Captain John
Young, foundered at sea and all on board were lost.[260]
Early in 1781 Congress resolved to supersede the Board of Admiralty
with a Secretary of Marine, but failed to find a man who was willing
to accept the new office. In June, 1781, the plan of appointing
an Agent of Marine, and vesting in him the duties of the Board of
Admiralty, pending the selection of a Secretary of Marine, was
brought forward in Congress. The commissioners of admiralty were
able to forecast the results of this agitation for a new naval
system.[261] 2 On July 9, 1781, Ellery informed Congress “that his
family affairs pressed his return home, and therefore requested leave
of absence.”[262] As there was at this time but one Congressional
member serving on the Board, on the absence of Ellery no quorum could
be obtained. Lewis now prayed Congress to permit him to resign, or to
give him such further directions “as they in their wisdom shall deem
meet.”[263] On July 17 Congress accepted his resignation.[264] On
July 18 Congress put the marine prisoners in charge of the Commissary
of Prisoners of the army, and ordered the seal of the admiralty to be
deposited with the Secretary of Congress until a Secretary of Marine
should be appointed.[265] The Revolutionary Naval Department was
without a head.
The Board of Admiralty was not a satisfactory executive. It was at
all times dependent on its Congressional members for quorums. It
proved to be slower, more cumbersome, and less responsible than the
Marine Committee. The management of the navy still lacked unity and
concentration. On the other hand, had the Board not been superseded,
its commissioners would no doubt in time have developed greater
expertness and technical skill than did the members of the Marine
Committee. It should also be said that under more favorable auspices
the Board of Admiralty would have shown a higher administrative
efficiency than it did; for its lines had indeed fallen in unpleasant
places, and a bankrupt federal treasury and a decadent Congress
denied it the means requisite to the successful prosecution of its
work.
FOOTNOTES:
[217] Force’s Archives, 5th, III, 1336, Robert Morris to American
Commissioners at Paris, December 21, 1776. Morris wrote as follows:
“So long as that respectable body persist in the attempt to execute,
as well as to deliberate on their business, it never will be done as
it ought, and this has been urged many and many a time by myself and
others, but some of them do not like to part with power, or to pay
others for doing what they cannot do themselves.”
[218] Publications of Rhode Island Historical Society, VIII, 205,
Papers of William Vernon and Navy Board.
[219] Ibid., 257, Ellery to Vernon, March 23, 1779.
[220] Force’s Archives, 5th, II, 1106, Jones to Morris, October 16,
1776.
[221] Journals of Continental Congress, October 29, 1778.
[222] Ibid., July 30, 1779.
[223] Johnston, Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, I,
207-08, Washington to Jay, April, 1779.
[224] Johnston, Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, I, 209,
Jay to Washington, April 26, 1779.
[225] Marine Committee Letter Book, Committee to Navy Board at
Boston, April 27, 1779.
[226] Journals of Continental Congress, June 9, 1779.
[227] Ibid., October 1, 1779.
[228] Ibid., October 17, November 24, 1777.
[229] Journals of Continental Congress, October 28, 1779.
[230] Ibid., September 13, 1780.
[231] Force Transcripts, Library of Congress, 37, p. 207, Report
Board of Admiralty, April 12, 1781.
[232] Journals of Continental Congress, July 7, 1781.
[233] Journals of Continental Congress, November 26, December 3, 7,
8, 1779.
[234] Marine Committee Letter Book, Board of Admiralty to Navy Board
at Boston, December 10, 1779.
[235] Journals of Continental Congress, January 22, 1780.
[236] Records and Papers of Continental Congress, 78, XIV, 309, Lewis
to President of Congress, March 21, 1780.
[237] Records and Papers of Continental Congress, 78, XIV, 337-43,
349, Lewis to President of Congress, June 6, June 12, 1780.
[238] Journals of Continental Congress, June 23, 1780.
[239] Force Transcripts, Library of Congress, 37, pp. 291, 294, Lewis
to President of Congress, November 4, 6, 1780.
[240] Force Transcripts, Library of Congress, 37, p. 125, Board of
Admiralty to President of Congress, August 14, 1780; Journals of
Continental Congress, August 18, 1780.
[241] Journals of Continental Congress, December 5, 1780; January 11,
1781.
[242] Ibid., May 7, 1781.
[243] Records and Papers of Continental Congress, 37, pp. 175-77,
Report of Board of Admiralty, January 24, 1780; Journals of
Continental Congress, January 22, January 25, 1780.
[244] Journals of Continental Congress, July 11, 1780; Records and
Papers of Continental Congress, 37, pp. 261-63, Report of Board of
Admiralty, July 10, 1780.
[245] Journals of Continental Congress, August 7, 1780.
[246] Ibid., February 8, 1780.
[247] See Chapter X, pages 298-300.
[248] Journals of Continental Congress, May 4, 1780.
[249] Ibid., April 20, 1780.
[250] Journals of Continental Congress, May 2, November 27, 1780,
April 7, 1781; Records and Papers of Continental Congress, 37, pp.
225-41.
[251] Journals of Continental Congress, October 5, 1780; Wharton’s
Diplomatic Correspondence, III, 860, 867.
[252] Journals of Continental Congress, March 27, 1781.
[253] Force Transcripts, Library of Congress, 37, pp. 241-44. The
Board of Admiralty probably had in mind the sixth as well as the
ninth article of the Articles of Confederation.
[254] Records and Papers of Continental Congress, 37, pp. 277, 281,
Reports of Board of Admiralty, July 24, July 26, 1780.
[255] Journals of Continental Congress, January 30, 1777; January
15, January 22, 1780; Jameson, Essays in the Constitutional History
of the United States, Chapter I, Predecessor of the Supreme Court;
Carson, Supreme Court of the United States, Part I, 50-57.
[256] Marine Committee Letter Book, Board of Admiralty to Board of
Treasury, January 7, 1780.
[257] Ibid., Board of Admiralty, to Commissary-General of Issues,
August 21, 1780.
[258] Ibid., Board of Admiralty to Holker, August 29, 1780.
[259] Records and Papers of New London Country Historical Society,
part IV, I, 47-56; Boston Gazette, July 24, 1780; Gomer Williams,
Liverpool Privateers, 272-75.
[260] List of Officers in Revolutionary Navy, miscellaneous
manuscripts in the Library of Congress.
[261] See Chapter VIII, Secretary of Marine and Agent of Marine.
[262] Journals of Continental Congress, July 9, 1781.
[263] Records and Papers of Continental Congress, 78, XIV, 445-47.
[264] Journals of Continental Congress, July 17, 1781.
[265] Ibid., July 18, 1781.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SECRETARY OF MARINE AND THE AGENT OF MARINE
On the question of the proper organization of the executive
departments, the leaders of the Revolution were divided into
two factions. Moved by their love of liberty, their distrust of
governments, and their jealousy of delegated and concentrated
powers, the members of one faction favored the vesting of the
executive business in Congressional committees. The members of the
other faction, who stood for governmental authority and control,
for constructive legislation in the field of administration, and
for the application of the principles of business to the affairs
of state, declared for a system of permanent and single-headed
executives chosen outside of the membership of Congress. The issue
that was here joined in the special field of administration was
of course a part of that perennial and perpetual conflict between
the freedom of the individual and social control. In this case, as
everywhere and always, the political doctrinaires, the iconoclasts
and radicals, and the men of heart rather than of head, lined up on
the side of liberty; while the practical and conservative men, the
representatives of vested interests, and the cold, logical thinkers,
stood together on the side of governmental control.
The faction which distrusted power and wished to keep it scattered,
may be called the “dispersive school;” and the faction which wished
to gather up the power and lodge it with a few men, may be called
the “concentrative school.” To the “dispersive school” belonged
Samuel Adams, the Lees, Patrick Henry, and William Whipple; to the
“concentrative school”, Hamilton, Washington, the Morrises, and
Jay. Early in the Revolution the advantage lay with the “dispersive
school.” Its executive plan of Congressional committees needed
little work to put it into operation; it was more flexible than
the scheme of permanent single-headed executives; and it was
more in harmony with the ultra anti-monarchical spirit of the
times. The Revolutionary government, originating as a congress of
delegates, organized itself, after the manner of congresses, by
means of committees of its own members. When the Congress became
a Government, and had entrusted to it a multiplicity of executive
duties, it naturally continued and adapted the old organization
for the transaction of its new business. The executive system of
Congressional committees, in this way becoming fixed, could not be
easily changed.
By 1780 the “concentrative school” was winning its way. Indeed,
the adoption in 1779 of mixed boards composed of men both in
and out of Congress was a compromise between the two schools,
in which the “concentrative school” gave up its contention for
simplicity in the executive organs, in order to secure, in part
at least, another of its objectives, permanency in the tenure of
the administrators. By 1780 both committees and boards had been
tried and found wanting. Then too, there was a greater need for a
change in the executive system, than in the first years of the war.
As Congress became imbecile, the quality of its committees and of
their work deteriorated; and as the country wearied of the war,
and its finances tightened, the necessity for greater economy and
efficiency in administration increased. In 1780 the feeling among
the leaders was general that a crisis in the army, in the finances,
and in the business of the government, which could be met only by
some thorough and far-reaching reform, was approaching. The leaders
of the “concentrative school” proposed a complete change in the
administrative system of Congress as a solution of the serious
problems that confronted the country. By the end of 1780 a movement
for a reform of this sort was in progress. It was diligently
furthered by one school and zealously opposed by the other.
“If Congress,” Washington wrote in December, 1780, “suppose that
Boards composed of their own body, and always fluctuating, are
competent to the great business of war (which requires not only
close application, but a constant and uniform train of thinking
and acting), they will most assuredly deceive themselves. Many,
many instances might be adduced in proof of this.” Washington was
convinced that extravagant and improper expenditures of the public
money, inexpertness in the transacting of business, and needless
delays resulted from vesting all or a part of the duties of an
executive office in Congress.[266] Hamilton declared specifically
for the substitution of single executives for plural ones, and
he named three men whom he considered especially qualified for
departmental posts, General Schuyler for Minister of War, General
McDougall for Minister of Marine, and Robert Morris for Minister
of Finance. He conceived that there were always more knowledge,
energy, responsibility, decision, despatch, zeal, and attraction
for first-rate ability “where single men, than where bodies are
concerned.”[267] Gouverneur Morris contributed to the agitation in
behalf of better executives an enumeration of the qualifications
requisite in the men who were to become heads of the leading
departments. He held, as still do some of the writers on naval
administration, that a Minister of Marine should possess a practical
and technical knowledge of naval affairs; and he presented a unique
list of his qualities in the following words:
“A minister of the marine should be a man of plain good sense, and
a good economist, firm but not harsh; well acquainted with sea
affairs, such as the construction, fitting, and victualling of ships,
the conduct and manœuvre on a cruise, and in action, the nautical
face of the earth, and maritime phenomenon. He should know the
temper, manners, and disposition of sailors; for all which purposes
it is proper, that he should have been bred to that business, and
have followed it, in peace and war, in a military, and commercial
capacity. His principles and manners should be absolutely republican,
and his circumstances not indigent.”[268]
It has been said that the debate in Congress over the change in the
executive system was long, and was marked by the workings of party
spirit, the self-interest of some members, and the doubts and fears
and divided opinions of others.[269] Samuel Adams placed himself at
the head of the advocates of the old system. On January 10, 1781, the
friends of the new system gained their first decisive victory; for
on this day Congress resolved to establish a Department of Foreign
Affairs, and to appoint for its chief officer a Secretary for Foreign
Affairs.[270] Five days later Adams wrote to Richard Henry Lee a
letter which is almost pathetic in its earnestness and seriousness.
“My friend,” he said, “we must not suffer anything to discourage us
in this great conflict. Let us recur to first principles without
delay. It is our duty to make every proper exertion in our respective
States to revive the old patriotic feelings among the people at
large, and to get the public departments, especially the most
important of them, filled with men of understanding and inflexible
virtue. Our cause is surely too interesting to mankind to be put
under the direction of men, vain, avaricious, or concealed under the
hypocritical guise of patriotism, without a spark of public virtue.”
Adams recognized that the public service needed reforming. This he
would accomplish, not by a change of the administrative system, but
by the introduction of more competent and more virtuous men into
Congress and into its committees. This latter was to be brought about
by a revival of civic interest in the several states.[1]
On February 7, 1781, Congress “resumed the consideration of the plan
for the arrangement of the civil executive departments.”[271] It this
day resolved that there should be a Superintendant of Finance, a
Secretary of War, and a Secretary of Marine. It summed up the duties
of the Secretary of Marine in the following brief paragraph:
“It shall be the duty of the secretary of marine to examine into
and to report to Congress the present state of the navy, a register
of the officers in and out of command, and the dates of their
respective commissions; and an account of all the naval and other
stores belonging to that department; to form estimates of all pay,
equipments, and supplies necessary for the navy; and from time to
time to report such estimates to the superintendant of finance, that
he may take measures for providing for the expences, in such manner
as may best suit the condition of the public treasury; to superintend
and direct the execution of all resolutions of Congress respecting
naval preparations; to make out, seal, and countersign all marine
commissions, keep registers thereof, and publish annually a list
of all appointments; to report to Congress the officers and agents
necessary to assist him in the business of his department; and in
general to execute all the duties and powers specified in the act of
Congress constituting the board of admiralty.”
Speaking generally, the Secretary of Marine was to succeed to
the duties and powers of the Board of Admiralty. It is, however,
significant that the Secretary was not specifically charged with the
ordering and directing of the movements of the vessels of war, as
was the Board. The specified duties of the new office are largely
secretarial. Congress was disposed to be less liberal in granting
powers to a Secretary chosen outside its membership than to a Board
partly composed of Congressmen. On February 9th the salary of the
Secretary of Marine was fixed at $5000 per annum.[272]
On February 27, 1781, Congress, with a promptness which was
exceptional, elected Major-General Alexander McDougall of New York to
be Secretary of Marine, for which position he had been recommended
by Alexander Hamilton. McDougall’s qualifications for the office
were above the average. In the French and Indian War he had been a
commander of privateers. Later he became a merchant in New York City.
He was a leader of the Revolution in that state, and had risen to the
rank of a major-general in the Revolutionary army. McDougall declined
to accept the position proferred him unless permitted to hold his
rank in the army, and to retain the privilege of returning to the
field when his services were required. He based this partial refusal
on patriotic grounds. Congress did not wish a Secretary of Marine on
these conditions; and it therefore voted that it did not expect the
acceptance of Major-General McDougall, and that it had a due sense
of his zeal “for the safety and honour of America, and applaud his
magnanimity in declining ‘to retire from the toils and perils of
the field in the present critical condition of the United States in
general, and that of New York in particular.’”[273] Congress made no
other choice of a Secretary of Marine.
During the summer of 1781 the control of naval affairs gravitated
towards Robert Morris. Soon after assuming the office of
Superintendant of Finance in May, 1781, he was brought into close
relation with the navy. He was invited to take upon himself more or
less of the naval business by the urgent need of sending the cruisers
on important errands, the helplessness of the Board of Admiralty,
the inertia of Congress, and the interregnum in the headship of the
Naval Department, which lasted from the discontinuance of the Board
of Admiralty early in July, 1781, until the appointment of an Agent
of Marine on September 7. The figure that Morris presents at this
time is that of the strong and confident man of affairs, sagacious,
expeditious, and painstaking, who is surrounded by weaker men,
hesitating, vacillating, and procrastinating in their administrative
attempts.
In June, 1781, Morris wrote to the President of Congress recommending
the appointment of a captain for the 74-gun ship “America,” and
explaining how money for completing her might be obtained. He says
that he is aware that John Jay has liberty to sell this ship at
the Court of Madrid; that he thinks and hopes that Jay will not
succeed, for the sale of the “America” would be injurious to the
United States; and that it would be “more consistent with Oeconomy
and with the dignity of Congress to have her finished than to let
her Perish.” On the receipt of this letter, Congress authorized
Morris to take measures for launching the “America” and fitting her
for sea.[274] Morris now hinted to the Board of Admiralty that the
frigate “Trumbull” could perform an essential public service if put
under his direction, and pursuing his plan, he obtained a resolution
of Congress giving him control of this vessel.[275] During the summer
of 1781, while the reorganization of the Naval Department was in
suspense, Morris, on his own initiative, directed the fitting out
of the “Alliance” and “Deane,” and ordered them to proceed to sea,
“being convinced that while they lay in port, an useless Expence must
necessarily be incurred.”[276]
Meanwhile, a movement to place the Naval Department under the control
of Morris had been set on foot in Congress. On June 26 Meriwether
Smith of Virginia reported a series of resolutions providing for the
reorganization of the Naval Department, a work which he considered
necessary because the present naval system was “inefficient and
expensive.”[277] The most important of these resolutions was one
which dissolved the offices of the Board of Admiralty, the navy
boards, and the naval agents; and another, which empowered the
Superintendant of Finance to appoint some discreet agent to manage
the navy under the order and inspection of the said superintendant,
until a Secretary of Marine should be appointed, or until the
further pleasure of Congress. On the day of their introduction these
resolutions were referred to a committee, consisting of Meriwether
Smith of Virginia, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Daniel of St.
Thomas Jenifer, of Maryland. On July 2, having made a slight change
in the phraseology of the resolutions, this committee reported them
to Congress;[278] and on July 6 it again reported them, having
now added a few additional resolutions. One of the latter was to
the effect that the election of a Secretary of Marine should be
postponed until the first Monday in November. On the putting of
this resolution, it passed in the negative. The states divided
sectionally; the four New England states and Delaware voted in the
negative; Pennsylvania and the five Southern states, except South
Carolina which was divided, voted in the affirmative; delegates from
New York and New Jersey were not present in Congress. The vote seems
to indicate the defeat of those who were in favor of placing the navy
under the control of Morris. On the same day, July 6, the remaining
resolutions were referred to a committee consisting of Thomas McKean
of Delaware, Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, and Theodoric Bland of
Virginia.[279]
On July 18 the new committee reported a series of resolutions,
differing little from those which had been referred to it, with the
exception of one important change; the Agent of Marine was now to
be appointed, not by Morris, but by Congress. On this day Congress
passed two of the committee’s resolutions. One of these transferred
the care of the marine prisoners from the Board of Admiralty to the
Commissary of Prisoners of the army; and the other ordered the seal
of the admiralty to be deposited with the Secretary of Congress, and
empowered him to use it in countersigning naval commissions. The
remaining resolutions again went over. Congress was able to agree
on the discontinuance of the Board of Admiralty, but not on the
arrangements for its successor.[280]
Finally, the whole business of the re-organization of the Naval
Department was referred to a third committee, composed of Theodoric
Bland of Virginia, James M. Varnum of Rhode Island, and James Duane
of New York. On the report of this committee on August 29, Congress
agreed “that for the present an agent of marine be appointed, with
authority to direct, fit out, equip, and employ the ships and vessels
of war belonging to the United States, according to such instructions
as he shall, from time to time, receive from Congress.” The Agent
of Marine was to direct the selling of all prizes. He was to settle
and pay the naval accounts, and keep a record of his work. As soon
as he entered into the execution of his office, the functions and
appointments of the board of admiralty, the several navy boards,
and all civil officers, appointed under them, should cease and be
determined. The salary of the new head of the Naval Department was
fixed at $1,500 a year, and that of his clerk at $500. Both the Agent
of Marine and his clerk were required to take an oath “well and
faithfully to execute the trust reposed in them, according to the
best of their skill and judgment”; and to give good and sufficient
bond.[281]
These resolutions of August 29 were to be only temporary; and they
did not displace those of February 7, 1781, which provided for a
Secretary of Marine. A second temporary expedient was resorted to on
September 7, when Congress resolved: “That until an agent of marine
shall be appointed by Congress, all the duties, powers, and authority
assigned to the said agent, be devolved upon and executed by the said
superintendant of finance.”[282]
The reason why Congress appointed an Agent of Marine instead of
a Secretary of Marine is not at all points clear. Having failed
to secure the acceptance of McDougall as Secretary of Marine,
Congress may have decided that the small and disheartening business
of the navy would not attract first-rate talent; or that for the
transaction of this business a full-fledged executive department was
not necessary. It is more probable that the appointment of an Agent
of Marine, under the circumstances of a disagreeing Congress, the
failure of the Board of Admiralty, and the improbability of securing
an efficient Secretary, was merely a temporary and feasible expedient
for conducting the affairs of the navy. There are obvious reasons
why the proposal to give the Superintendant of Finance the power to
appoint the Agent of Marine, or the selection of Morris as Agent,
should have aroused vigorous opposition. Men of Samuel Adams’s way
of thinking would oppose it, among other reasons, because it placed
too much power in the hands of one man. The friends of the navy would
dislike to see the Naval Department swallowed up by the Department of
Finance. But on the other hand, many considerations recommended the
step which was finally taken. It was the most economical disposition
of the naval business which could be made. Morris had superior
qualifications for the office, and he was at once available. Indeed,
he was the only man in sight that promised to be equal to the task
of straightening out the tangle of marine accounts, of financing a
bankrupt navy, and of wielding effectively that arm of the military
service. He was admirably qualified for the headship of the Naval
Department by his experience as a man of business, familiar with
accounts and the selection of employees, as the owner of a fleet
of merchantmen, and as one of two or three of the most influential
members of the Marine Committee during the years 1776 and 1777, when
the navy was founded. Whatever may have been the shortcomings of the
navy while Morris was directing it, they did not spring from the lack
of an efficient executive. For the first time during the Revolution
its management was marked by despatch, decision, and an expert and
adequate understanding of its problems.
On September 8, 1781, Morris wrote to the President of Congress
accepting, in words of modesty and reluctance, his appointment as
Agent of Marine. “There are many Reasons,” he said, “why I would have
wished that this Burthen had been laid on other Shoulders, or that at
least I might have been permitted to appoint a temporary Agent untill
the further Pleasure of Congress. As it is I shall undertake the Task
however contrary to my Inclinations and inconsistent with the many
Duties which press heavily upon me, because it will at least save
Money to the Public.” He then added, in a characteristic way, some
observations on his new task. “True Oeconomy in the public business,”
he declared, “consists in employing a sufficient Number of Proper
persons to perform the Public Business.” He wished the accounts of
the marine department to be speedily settled.[283]
Morris filled the office of Agent of Marine from September 7, 1781,
until November 1, 1784. It is believed that he received no salary as
Agent of Marine. In addition to Morris the personnel of the Marine
Office consisted of James Read, Secretary to the Agent of Marine, at
a salary of $1,000 a year; Joseph Pennell, paymaster, at a salary of
$1,000; and George Turner, Commissary of Naval Prisoners, at a salary
of $1,200; the latter officer was authorized on July 24, 1782.[284]
Read, who had been one of the commissioners of the Navy Board of
the Middle Department, was of great service to Morris in conducting
the business of the Marine Office. The clerical work of the Office
was performed by the clerks of the office of the Superintendant of
Finance, an instance of Morris’s economies.
According to the resolutions of September 7, 1781, the positions of
the commissioners of the navy boards were abolished and the positions
of the prize agents were vacated. The Navy Board at Boston continued
however to fit out vessels until March, 1782. It was not until some
time later that it delivered over the books and papers of the Board
to John Brown, the former secretary of the Board of Admiralty, whom
Morris had appointed naval agent for settling the business of the
navy in New England. In the four New England states, North and South
Carolina, and Georgia, Morris either re-appointed the prize agents of
the Board of Admiralty, or appointed new ones; in the other states,
he served in this capacity himself.[285]
The Agent of Marine, like the Board of Admiralty, communicated with
Congress by means of written reports, which that body referred to
special committees of its own members. Accordingly, when naval
business was discussed in Congress, it usually came up in the form
of a “report of a committee on the report of the Agent of Marine.”
The subjects upon which the Agent of Marine reported were similar
to those dealt with by his predecessors in naval administration.
Not a few of his reports were concerned with the settling of marine
accounts, and the satisfying of claimants against the government,
which business was now insistent. During his tenure of the office
of Agent of Marine, Morris prepared the larger part of the naval
legislation of Congress. The changes or additions to his work which
were made by committees of Congress were unimportant.
The law that provides for a change in a governmental system is often
incomplete, and experience under the new order of business soon
suggests the need of supplementary legislation. This was the case
with the laws which transferred the naval business from the Board
of Admiralty to the Agent of Marine. Morris, in one of his first
reports, explained to Congress that he had no power to hold courts
of enquiry; thereupon, Congress, on November 20, 1781, revived the
law of February 8, 1780, on the holding of courts of enquiry and
courts-martial, which had lapsed with the passing of the Board of
Admiralty. Morris’s business-like care for the saving of time and
effort is well shown, when in this report he tactfully suggests that
Congress adapt their act not only to the Agent of Marine, but also
to the Secretary of Marine, so that when the latter is appointed,
“it may not be necessary for him to bring this matter again under
Consideration.”[286]
By the law of November 20 Morris was empowered to constitute a court
of enquiry with three persons; and to constitute a court-martial with
three captains and three first lieutenants of marines, “if there
shall be so many of the marines then present”. But in the event
that so many officers for a court-martial could not be conveniently
assembled, he might appoint any five persons to hold it. Morris,
convinced of the impropriety of constituting naval courts with
civilians, did not wish to avail himself of this latter alternative.
Accordingly, on June 8, 1782, he made a report on naval courts,
which became the basis of the resolutions of Congress of June 12 on
this subject. These provided that in the future a marine court of
enquiry or court-martial for enquiring into and trying capital cases
should consist of five navy and marine officers, two of whom should
be captains; and in all cases not capital, should consist of three
navy and marine officers, one of whom should be a captain in the
navy. No sentence in capital cases was to be executed until approved
by the Agent of Marine. All naval courts for commissioned officers
must be appointed by the Agent of Marine. A captain in the navy might
appoint a court-martial for the trial of offences committed by any
other than a commissioned officer, provided that the sentencing of a
warrant officer to be cashiered should have the confirmation of the
Agent of Marine.[287]
During the incumbency of Morris, no captain in the navy was
cashiered. The findings of a court-martial, which was held in Boston
in the early summer of 1781, possess a peculiar interest, because of
the light which they throw upon the penal code of the Continental
navy, and because this case is one of the first in which a seaman
in the American navy was sentenced to be hanged. Three seamen,
who were enlisted on board the “Alliance,” were tried for a breach
of the 29th article of the rules and regulations of the navy.[288]
Of Patrick Sheridan, the court adjudged that he should be whipped
three hundred and fifty-four lashes upon the naked back, one hundred
and seventy-seven thereof alongside the ship “Alliance,” and the
remainder alongside the ship “Deane.” John Crawford was sentenced to
wear a halter around his neck, and receive fifty lashes. Sheridan and
Crawford were to lose certain wages and their share of prize money.
The court found the third seaman, William McClehany, “peculiarly
Guilty of a breach of all the Clauses in the Article aforesaid,” and
it adjudged that he should “suffer the punishment of death, and that
he be hanged by the neck on the starboard fore Yard Arm of the said
ship ‘Alliance’ until he is dead.”
The Board of Admiralty laid the proceedings of this court-martial
before Congress in July, 1781, but owing to the confusion of the
naval business at this time, and to the carelessness of Congress, no
action was taken on them. When John Brown, the naval agent of the
Agent of Marine, reached Boston, towards the end of 1781, he found
the three men in prison, waiting the execution of their sentences,
and “perishing with cold for want of Cloathing.” The fate of the
three men is best told in Brown’s words: “Under these circumstances
it was the opinion of the Board (and I agreed with them) that as
the proceedings had lain so long before Congress without anything
being done, and it being uncertain when they would act upon them, to
save expence it was best to dispose of the Men in the best manner we
could. Accordingly the two who were sentenced to be whipped were put
on board the Deane, the other was sold by the Sheriff to pay his bill
of fees, keeping, &c., and with the surplus of the money he procured
us three good seamen for the Deane. My motive for concurring in this
proceeding was to save expence and preserve the public Money in my
hands for more Material purposes.”[289]
In December, 1781, and January, 1782, Congress passed an ordinance,
“in pursuance of the powers delegated by the Confederation,” which
codified in great part the previous legislation on captures and
condemnation of prizes, recaptures and salvage, contraband, and
the sharing of prizes between the captors and the government and
between the captors themselves. Several changes were made in previous
resolutions, and a few new ones were added. On their receiving a
reasonable salvage, the recaptors of negroes, mulattoes, Indians,
and indented servants, were to return all such property to its
owners. The new ordinance specified in some detail the various forms
of property which were subject to capture. It contained a revised
list of articles of contraband. It declared that the rules of
decision in the several admiralty courts should be “the resolutions
and ordinances of the United States in Congress assembled, public
treaties when declared to be so by an act of Congress, and the law of
nations, according to the general usages of Europe;” public treaties
were given precedence over the two other classes of rules.[290] This
ordinance went into operation on February 1, 1782. Its importance
is diminished by reason of its being in force during only the last
year of the war, when the naval activities of the American fleets had
decreased.