by Tim McGrath
Now he officiated at a small ceremony aboard the Alfred. After a short burst of song from a fife and drum band, probably playing “The British Grenadiers”—now known in patriotic circles as “Washington at War”—the lieutenant raised the symbol of American rebellion, the Grand Union flag: thirteen stripes of red and white, with the British ensign in the canton. After a call for three cheers was raised, the crowd departed.85
It is not known whether John Adams attended. By then, his mind had moved on to other things. Describing himself as “Worn down with long and uninterrupted Labor,” he was granted permission to visit his family, his long battle to create a navy having been won. For the rest of his life, he would call these days “the pleasantest part of my Labors” in Congress. He departed for Massachusetts on December 8.86
The day before, December 7, the Alfred’s lieutenant was officially sworn in as an officer in the Continental Navy. His real name was not on his commission; killing that sailor had forced him to add a common alias to it. The name his father gave him, John Paul, belonged to the Old World. The commission was made out to John Paul Jones.
As much as any man, Adams had given birth to this American navy. Its learning to sail—and fight—would be up to Jones, Hopkins, and other officers.
CHAPTER TWO
“IF THE REBELS SHOULD PAY US A VISIT . . .”
On my arrival at Balt[imore] I found the whole country had taken up arms against the Injustice of England, my heart soon caught the flame.
—JOSHUA BARNEY, LIEUTENANT, CONTINENTAL SLOOP HORNET1
On a cold December day in 1775, Robert Mullan stepped out the front door of Tun Tavern. He had work to do.
At three stories, Mullan’s tavern was one of the taller structures on the waterfront, with a handsome porch facing the Delaware River. A long bar occupied the first floor, with drawing rooms on the second floor and bedrooms for lodgers on the third. Mullan’s mother, Peggy, had been Tun’s proprietress for thirty years, establishing it as a fine place for beefsteak and oysters, with an endless supply of fine spirits and ale.2
As second-in-command of the newly created Continental Marine Corps, Mullan saw it as his duty to find the right men, fit for him to command. Dressed in his best clothes with a sheathed sword strapped to his side and accompanied by a fifer and a drummer, he marched down the streets of the waterfront. Bystanders were taken with an image he had painted on the drumhead: a coiled rattlesnake above the words “Don’t Tread on Me.” Like the Pied Piper, he soon had a curious throng following him back to Tun Tavern. Then Mullan—or one of his musicians, if he had the better voice—belted out freshly written words to the familiar tune “The British Grenadier”:
All you that have bad masters,
And cannot get your due,
Come, come my brave boys,
And join with our ship’s crew.
Though Mullan may have been unaccustomed to public speaking, he was certainly accustomed to speaking in public houses. Clearing his throat, he made a stem-winding speech, exhorting the men and boys in the crowd to join him in the fight for both their God-given rights as free Englishmen and the glory and prize shares awaiting them. Then he welcomed them inside, where ale and rum flowed freely until enough new recruits added their names or marks to his enlistment sheets.3
Some blocks west of Dock Street, Samuel Nicholas, Mullan’s superior, was doing the same thing at his own rendezvous point, his family’s watering hole, the Conestoga Wagon. Thanks to the efforts of Nicholas and Mullan, the Continental Navy quickly recruited enough marines for each ship in Esek Hopkins’s squadron. Hopkins’s captains had a much more challenging time recruiting sailors—but then none of the captains owned a tavern.
To solve this problem, Hopkins sought the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety’s permission to enlist sailors already committed to the row galleys of the Pennsylvania Navy. Aware that these tars had signed on to serve at a generous five dollars a month, Hopkins had already received permission from Congress to offer eight dollars. He also made it known that food and rum rations were ampler aboard Continental ships. Soon his muster rolls were full (Hopkins did not know how lucky he was; as we will see, the navy would be plagued with manpower shortages for the rest of the war).4
The glowing fire of an inn hearth and a tempting mug of hot buttered rum were the closest things to warmth the Continental Navy possessed as 1776 began. Philadelphia was in the midst of a bleak, bitterly cold winter that threatened to keep the little fleet from departing. The delay also gave Hopkins time to mull over his orders from Congress. While the congressmen had appointed him “Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet of the United Colonies,” they never deemed him equal in rank to Washington, whom they acknowledged as “Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Forces in America” to make sure Hopkins got their drift. They addressed him as “Commodore,” but the title was an honorary one, given to the head of any squadron. It never occurred to them to bestow upon him the rank that mattered: Admiral.5
Born in 1718, Esek Hopkins was ten years younger than his brother, Stephen. He had followed the family’s maritime tradition and established himself as a merchant captain with years of successful voyages from Providence to Surinam and the West Indies. Marriage to the daughter of a wealthy Newport merchant changed both his address and his financial status. During the French and Indian War he served as a privateer, and was a good one. By war’s end he was famous and richer. In 1775 both his political clout and his waistline had substantially increased. The moon-faced Hopkins was in charge of Rhode Island’s armed forces, with the rank of brigadier general, when his elder brother wangled his appointment from Congress. At fifty-seven, he was old by colonial standards.6
By the New Year all of Hopkins’s captains were in Philadelphia, including Dudley Saltonstall of the Alfred. There was a mad scramble to get the ships ready for sea, in terms of both supplies and officers. It fell to the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety to supply sufficient powder, arms, and ammunition. Miraculously, it did—though it was a nearly endless list, indeed: thousands of pounds of grapeshot, cannonballs, and musket balls; 150 muskets and bayonets; and 128 full and half barrels of gunpowder.7
Officer vacancies were summarily filled. Among the marine lieutenants stood Matthew Parke, scion of a military family from England whose grandfather had been an aide to Winston Churchill’s ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, at the Battle of Blenheim. With wide-set eyes and a hook nose, he looked like a human hawk. He would fight in some of the most famous sea battles of the war. Naval lieutenants included the Cabot’s Hoysted Hacker, whose career would be marred with bad luck, and the Andrew Doria’s James Josiah, a ruddy-faced young man personally selected by the ship’s captain (and Josiah’s good friend) Nicholas Biddle.8
But the forbidding weather conditions soon turned the brio of Congress and their commodore into trepidation. The Delaware River was icing over. A snowstorm had blanketed Philadelphia on Christmas Day, and northern gales swept downriver, sending armadas of ice floes past the city. In a frenetic effort to get the ships under way, dockhands slipped on the ice and slush that coated gangway and pier alike, lugging supplies aboard the ships as fast as wagons and carts brought them dockside. Sailors, now living aboard ship, were so cold they fell asleep to the chattering of their own teeth, prompting Philadelphia’s best-known physician, Benjamin Rush, to beg the Committee of Safety that blankets be donated by each Philadelphia family for the freezing recruits.
Congress had hoped to have the fleet out by the end of the year. Now, thanks to Mother Nature, they might not get to sea until the spring thaw. Accordingly, on January 4, the Naval Committee ordered all naval personnel to “immediately repair on board their respective Ships” and get to sea before the ice hemmed them in port. Those who missed the boat would be labeled deserters. All the next morning, rowboats of every type departed Robert Morris’s wharf, carrying the enlistees to their designated vessels. That afternoon Nicholas Biddle, standing
on his quarterdeck, gave orders to Lieutenant Josiah to cast off. Aboard each ship, the bosuns bellowed orders to get under way and sailors weighed anchor and made sail. Soon the Andrew Doria, Alfred, Cabot, and Columbus were standing downriver with the cheers from a crowd of congressmen, merchants, and Philadelphians ringing in sailors’ ears.
Some among the throng were not patriotic well-wishers. A few Loyalists were present who afterwards sent detailed reports to the British describing the ships’ sizes, colors, and guns, while guessing the departed fleet’s destination: perhaps to convoy merchantmen, to sail to neutral European ports for gunpowder, or to seek and fight the British.
The ships made an impressive sight as the Alfred took the lead; as the fleet shrank in the distance the crowd could still identify Hopkins’s flagship by her black and yellow colors. Light winds and heavy ice soon slowed their progress. At dusk they reached Mud Island, now renamed Liberty and home to an unfinished fort designed by British army engineer John Montresor.9
Hopkins intended to continue down the Delaware the next morning, but awoke to find the river completely frozen. His ships remained at Liberty Island for twelve days. The enforced ennui—along with the bitterly cold conditions—took its toll on a few tars and landsmen. Quite a few jumped ship, compelling Hopkins to post notices back in Philadelphia offering a reward for information leading to their arrest. One broadside offered the grand sum of two dollars to help nab
PETER M’TEGART, born in Ireland, about thirty years of age, five feet seven inches high, smooth faced, brownish complexion, short dark brown hair. Had on a light brown coat, white cloth jacket and breeches, blue stockings and new shoes.
All one need do was deliver the said deserter to the sheriff’s office to claim the reward (as the broadside was published throughout the month it’s unknown if Mr. “M’Tegart” ever returned to duty). Hopkins’s letter-book for February 2 would not indicate whether he saw his shadow from the quarterdeck, but the commodore had six more weeks of winter coming.10
While the ships were stuck at Liberty Island, Congress sent Hopkins his orders—a well-crafted synthesis of military, political, and practical matters. It made no sense to send Hopkins north in the dead of winter; it was too late weather-wise for the new navy to assist Washington in his siege of Boston. In fact, the general was enjoying a successful few weeks with his own navy, thanks in no small part to John Manley, a former Royal Navy bosun’s mate, now a middle-aged sea captain from Marblehead who, commanding the armed schooner Lee, captured the British ordnance vessel Nancy. Washington could not have asked for a better present. The Nancy’s hold contained 2,000 muskets, 30,000 cannonballs, more than 30 tons of musket shot, and a 13-inch mortar—a short, stocky piece of ordnance with a large bore that could lob shells at a high arc—the very weapon for a siege. In Boston, General Howe lamented the Nancy’s loss as “rather unfortunate.” Washington, on the other hand, could barely contain his glee. Manley was made commodore of Washington’s “little fleet” and given command of the Hannah.11
Word of Manley’s success no sooner reached Congress in Philadelphia than news from the south determined the plans for the Continental fleet. For months, dispatches about Lord Dunmore’s raids along the Virginia coastline had been sent to the colony’s congressional representatives. By the end of 1775, Dunmore’s “Ethiopian Regiment” had grown to nearly five hundred men, thanks in part to his issuing the first emancipation proclamation in American history in November. In it, Dunmore declared
All indentured Servants, Negroes, or others (appertaining to Rebels) free that are able and willing to bear Arms, they joining His Majesty’s Troop as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this Colony to a proper Sense of their Duty.12
As Lincoln would do four score and eight years later, Dunmore only freed slaves whose masters were in open rebellion. His proclamation set in motion the same fear that would shake white Virginians fifty-six years later during Nat Turner’s uprising: that of armed blacks fighting for freedom from their masters and revenge for generations of slavery. It also sent neutral-minded Virginians dashing pell-mell into the Patriot fold.13
Earlier, in September, forces from Dunmore’s ships had landed in Norfolk and seized the town’s printing press, as its patriotic owner was “poisoning the minds of the People.” Dunmore used that same press to print his proclamation. To counter his offer of freedom, plantation owners mounted their own propaganda campaign, telling slaves that the offer was a trick to fill Dunmore’s coffers with the money he would make selling them to West Indies sugar barons. Meanwhile, rebel forces converged on Norfolk. In a fierce battle that their commander, William Woodford, called “a second Bunker Hill,” Americans overran Dunmore’s British sailors, Loyalist allies, and the Ethiopian Regiment.14
After Dunmore returned to his ship, his request for water and supplies from Norfolk was denied, and he promised “fire and sword.” On New Year’s Day all Norfolk was aflame. It was Falmouth all over again—but as much from patriot torches as from Dunmore’s cannons.15
The next day in Philadelphia, Esek Hopkins broke the seals of two dispatches from the Naval Committee. The shorter of the two contained his orders and directions regarding his leadership and conduct, a long list including maritime discipline, correspondence with Congress on a regular basis, directions on sending any captured prizes into American ports under command of a carefully chosen officer, the feeding and care for his men, humane treatment of any prisoners, and providing signals and contingency orders for his captains should they become separated from the squadron by storms.16
The longer missive, after saluting Hopkins’s “Valour, Skill, and diligence,” got to the essence of his mission:
Proceed directly to the Chesapeak Bay in Virginia . . . to gain intelligence of the Enemies Situation and Strength—if by such intelligence you find that they are not greatly superiour to your own you are immediately to Enter the said bay, search out and attack, take or destroy all the Naval forces of our Enemies that you may find there.
Simple enough. And, if Hopkins were successful in Virginia, he was to “proceed immediately to the Southward and make yourself Master of such forces as the Enemy may have both in North and South Carolina.” And that was not all. Once Hopkins completed that task, he was “to proceed Northward directly to Rhode Island” and rid his home waters of James Wallace and his ilk, without mention of the refitting or repairing of his ships, or of the possibility of any casualties. To Congress, the entire American coastline was Hopkins’s oyster.
The salty old tar never lacked confidence in his ability to do anything, but these orders were daunting enough to make Don Quixote wince. Fortunately, at the end of this to-do list, Hopkins found an escape clause: “If bad Winds, or Stormy Weather, or any other unforeseen accident or disaster disable you so to do You are then to follow such Courses as your best Judgement shall Suggest.”17
Now all Hopkins had to do was clear the Delaware of ice, train his merchant sailors in the art of warfare, and boldly go to war at sea with a fistful of hastily converted merchantmen against the finest navy the world had ever seen.
While ice kept the American ships bottled up in the Delaware, two profound changes took place in British leadership that would have a significant impact on the war.
In England, George III and his prime minister, Lord North, sought a man who shared their ardor to vanquish the American rebels while possessing the one thing they lacked: military experience. Since Lexington and Concord they had been bombarded with complaints from their generals about Admiral Graves’s ineffective management while the liberal Whigs in Parliament eloquently railed against their policies. The Irishman Edmund Burke would be a thorn in the king’s side throughout the war; when Lord North appointed a special secretary of state to direct American affairs, joining the Crown’s two existing secretaries of the northern and southern departments, Burke chortled, “The two secretaries [were] doing nothing, so a third was appointed to
help them.” Thanks to Burke’s leadership, opposition to Crown policy grew. “The spirit of America,” Burke marveled, “is incalculable.”18
In November 1775, King George dismissed Lord Dartmouth, whose efforts on His Majesty’s behalf seemed to some—especially the king—to be halfhearted at best. To succeed him the king appointed the Viscount George Sackville, Lord Germain, who had grown up in a palace with 365 rooms (one for each day) and a fifty-two-step staircase (one for each week of the year). The place was cold and forbidding, as was he. A soldier in his younger days, Sackville maintained an air of disdain for those beneath him—which was, in his mind, pretty much everyone else. In 1770 he inherited the expansive Germain estate and assumed the title Lord Germain. A political ally of Lord North, he was an easy choice for the king to make, believing as he did that the American population consisted of “peasants.” A contemporary engraver etched a profile of his likeness: a bulging-eyed old man (he was nearly sixty at the time of his appointment) with a weak chin and an impossibly long nose.19
Germain immediately got off on the wrong foot with First Lord of the Admiralty John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich. Once he assumed the position of secretary for the Americas, Germain waded through each report, from general and admiral alike, and concluded that Sandwich and not Graves was responsible for the Royal Navy’s poor showing thus far in the war. The only thing the two men shared was a hearty dislike of America and Americans, who Sandwich believed were the “most worthless race of men on earth.” Sandwich boasted that the more Americans joined the rebellion, the easier it would be for the king’s men to vanquish them.20
