by Tim McGrath
In actuality, Sandwich did possess the organizational skills to run the Admiralty, as well as the savvy politician’s gifts of infighting and survival; all he lacked was popularity. He wore such a look of perpetual grimness that Charles Churchill derided him as one who had been “half-hanged” and “cut down by mistake.” The second change went hand in hand with the first. Months earlier, General Gage had been replaced by General William Howe as senior commander in America. Now came Graves’s turn. Tired of the litany of complaints, Sandwich replaced Graves with Vice Admiral Molyneux Shuldham. Confounded by rebel resourcefulness as much as the demands on him from generals and royal governors, Graves seemed to welcome his removal. In a letter to his favorite captain, James Wallace, he commiserated about the “arduous task” of enforcing the king’s insistence “to render the Colonies to obedience.” Graves truly believed he had done his best, but after his orders reduced towns to ashes he realized that he—or probably any commander—could not suppress the Americans’ hydra-like unwillingness to admit defeat.
Shuldham arrived in America with lengthy orders that could be distilled into three words: subjugate, subjugate, subjugate. For decades he had fought for his country on the high seas. Now his own body seemed at war with itself: piercing eyes losing a battle with his drooping eyelids; wide shoulders sloping southward, a potbelly relentlessly escaping the bounds of his greatcoat.
As much as to any Englishmen, it would fall to these three—Germain, Sandwich, and Shuldham—to end American resistance before year’s end.21
By January 18, two weeks after the four original Continental ships sailed from Philadelphia only to become ice-bound at Liberty Island, Congress added new tasks to Hopkins’s to-do list. Word had reached Philadelphia that three southern royal governors, aboard two sloops and one cutter (a speedy single-mast vessel, fore-and-aft rigged like a schooner) were en route to Savannah, Georgia, “to seduce that Province” into joining the king’s side of the fighting. Therefore, once Hopkins had disposed of Lord Dunmore’s fleet, he was to make for Savannah and subdue the three Loyalist ships, making it “very probable you may have three Governors to dine with you on board your own ship.” If the ice did not clear soon, Congress might decide to send Hopkins to London to capture George III.22
By now Hopkins would have gladly clapped on all sail, but the cold front showed no signs of departing; therefore, neither could Hopkins. Nine days later, he informed the Naval Committee that the Delaware had “froze so much that the Pilots will not undertake to carry us from here.” Not until February 11 were conditions permissible for the fleet to stand downriver, a pilot at each helm. Pilots were indispensable in getting ships in and out of ports. Their knowledge of shallows, currents, and potential dangers made all the difference between a smooth passage and a disastrous one. Since the outbreak of hostilities, conditions on the Delaware were much more hazardous, thanks to defensive precautions taken by the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety.
The committee had implemented a combination of defenses and alarms that allowed Philadelphians to know within a few hours if British warships were approaching the two capes—Cape May in New Jersey and Cape Henlopen in Delaware. Once a man-of-war entered the bay, a designated rider was sent galloping ten miles to the next way station, where another rider charged north to the next one, until the last courier reached Philadelphia with the dispatch about the number of ships and their sizes—a forerunner to the Pony Express. As a safeguard against any rider being captured by Loyalist partisans, a small cannon would be fired from each station until the last gun’s echo reached Philadelphia.
The river was also booby-trapped with chevaux-de-frise, wooden spikes more than thirty feet long with sharp iron tips cross-cut and secured in fifty tons of crushed stone, then placed in the river. Unsuspecting captains, unaware of the spikes, got a rude surprise when a shocking jolt, accompanied by a loud crunching sound, informed them of a punctured hull. The effectiveness of the maneuver was proven when a merchantman’s captain neglected to hire a patriotic pilot with knowledge of the chevaux locations; the ship, her hold full of West Indies goods, struck a chevaux and sank immediately.23
River pilots prided themselves on their abilities to bring a ship of any draft safely into port. Rarely did a captain’s log record a mishap (although when it did, it usually included saltier language than the rest of the journal: when one of his ships was run aground by a wayward pilot, John Barry called him a “dammed Raskill” for posterity). Once ships were at sea, it fell to captain, mates, and crew—all hands aboard ship—to keep the vessel afloat and on course. But the man who got her to sea, and brought her safely into port—that was a pilot.24
Once hostilities commenced, the Committee of Safety notified the Delaware pilots that, due to the booby-trapping of the Delaware, their services would not be needed for the duration of the war. This meant economic disaster for all of them, and also doubly stung the patriots among them: their own credibility was being questioned, if not disbelieved outright. Furthermore, it placed pro-American ships in peril. Upset that the committee was taking “the Bread out of their mouths,” they chose as spokesperson the intrepid Henry Fisher, who protested that their patriotism was equal to that of any politician. Relenting, the committee approved ten pilots whom Fisher recommended. Throughout the war they served not only as pilots but as scouts of the waterway, sending dispatches of enemy activities on the coast. Fisher was one of the unsung heroes of the Revolution, as were the other pilots who risked their lives from Massachusetts to Georgia.25
Freed from ice, the ships reached Cape Henlopen with only one incident, and that on land. They no sooner dropped anchor when they were joined by the schooner Wasp and the sloop Hornet from Maryland. By then, weeks of boredom and ice had cooled if not frozen the warm patriotic glow of more than a few sailors. The sea town of Lewes provided the first chance to jump ship, and a few did just that. They were quickly nabbed by the local militia and returned to their respective ships, but those from the Andrew Doria were put in the Lewes jail. Their leader was William Green, a hulking malcontent from the Pennsylvania Navy, which was likely glad to be rid of him. He convinced the others to overcome their guards, and soon the jail became their fortress. They barred the door and armed themselves.
Captain Biddle sent an officer and a small detachment of marines ashore to put an end to Green’s rebellion. They returned empty-handed. Taking a midshipman along, Biddle decided to quell the mutiny himself.
He found the jail surrounded by militia and curious townsfolk, while Green and the other sailors inside welcomed anyone to come and get them. “Oh, damn,” Biddle swore, and stood before the door. “Green! Come out of there,” he demanded. “Open the door or we will break it in.”
Green remained defiant. “I’ll not come out, and I’ll shoot you if you try to come in,” he replied.
Biddle sent the militia to find a log strong enough for use as a battering ram. The irresistible force of the log slammed into the immovable object of the door until, with a noisy crack, it snapped off its hinges. Biddle stepped across the threshold to find the muzzle of Green’s musket pointed right at him. Holding a cocked pistol in one hand, Biddle said in a calm, unwavering voice, “Now Green, if you do not take good aim, you are a dead man.”
Whether it was that Biddle’s show of courage cowed Green or that Green was not as good a shot as he was a bully may not be clear, but the next sound from the jail was the clatter his musket made as it fell to the floor, followed by those of his comrades.
Word of Biddle’s bravado jumped from ship to ship: here was a captain not to be trifled with. To Biddle it was all in a day’s work; he downplayed it in a letter to his sister Lydia, promising another missive would be forthcoming “when I can find Something worth telling.” The crew of the Andrew Doria was the first in the fleet to learn what kind of man they had for a captain. Once they put to sea, Biddle and the other officers began learning what kind of sailors they had.26
Few careers held more danger than the lot of sailors in the wooden world. Any given day saw any man’s life dependent on the seaman next to him. Storms swept men overboard. Too much grog, and a tipsy sailor aloft could miss a line or put his foot wrong and fall into the sea, or land on deck with a sickening thud. Tainted food or the wrong fish at mess could send him into writhing intestinal agony. Tedium went hand in hand with danger. Aboard ship, there were so many ways to die.
If one were a landsman—a farm boy, street urchin, or runaway apprentice who had never been to sea—the first challenge was to win his sea legs, and that happened only after days of total incapacitation. Seasickness came with the constant rolling and pitching of the ship, whose motion was decidedly more prevalent up front in the forecastle (“fo’c’sle”) where the sailors lived. Landsmen, Horatio Nelson wrote, were usually “in the low scuppers, floating in a most wretched state of sea-sickness.”27
Once a newcomer got his stomach under control, he joined the other hands in what seemed to be an eternity of boredom, work, and sleep. A twenty-four-hour day began at noon, broken into seven watches: five of four hours and two “dog watches,” a schedule that ensured that a man never served consecutive days on the same watch. The hours were marked by a ship’s bell, eight bells per four-hour watch. Crews were usually divided in half; off duty they slept below deck in hammocks within inches of each other, swaying in unison to the rhythm of the ocean.
Landsmen “learned the ropes” with the assistance of the seasoned hands and with the insistence of the bosun. If they were too dense to pick something up quickly, they learned it with the aid of a rope’s end, which the bosun always carried. Some ropes were part of the standing rigging, tarred black and stiff, that supported the masts and was secured by pierced pieces of elm or ash called deadeyes. Those fore and aft of the masts were called stays; those alongside were shrouds; smaller strips of tarred rope, called ratlines, ran across them, serving as ladders for going aloft.
Other ropes made up the running rigging, running through block and tackle to adjust sails and spars (called “yards”) in a system that allowed the hands to change a sail’s direction and respond to any shift in the wind. Halyards were the lines that raised and lowered the yards, while those called braces set the sails in position. Block and tackle took the weight off the sailors’ hands and backs, and was secured on deck by a belaying pin, resembling a short baseball bat, set into a pin rail with a figure-eight knot that could easily be opened in battle or storm.
The most dangerous part of the workday was going aloft, climbing the ratlines to the tops, where a landsman learned the most important rule of all: never let go of one line until your other hand firmly grasped another. To reef (shorten) or furl a sail, one carried gaskets and walked parallel to the yard on footropes—the slender lines just a few feet beneath the yard, always approaching from the windward side of the canvas, with the wind blowing one into the sail, not away from it. Landsmen were drilled in this under the calmest conditions; aloft in a storm there was no margin for error. Each sailor’s skill and nerve increased the safety of the men around him. Each man’s ignorance and fear added to their peril.28
On-deck duties, while less daunting, were repetitive chores. Sailors were constantly repairing spars, splicing rope, and mending sail. And there was the endless drudgery of scrubbing the decks. Using a holystone (called, fittingly, a “prayer book”), one got on hands and knees and cleaned the deck, which was then finished with a swab—a mop made up of bits of rope.
Little respite was found below deck, where the creature comforts of eating and sleeping took place in dark, damp, and smelly quarters. Bilge water, livestock, unwashed bodies, smoke, and tar created an odor that defied description.
Congress had passed a “Mess Bill” providing each hand with a pound of bread, beef or pork, potatoes or turnips, and a half pint of rum. Butter and cheese were meted out Tuesdays and Fridays. Wednesday was “banyon day,” following the Royal Navy’s custom of bread, butter, cheese, and rice for meals. Six sailors shared a pint and a half of vinegar a week. For bread, there was “ship’s biscuit”—a recipe of salt, flour, and water that more than lived up to its name and also became the home of choice for weevils. Every so often the ship’s cook made “lobscouse” out of potato skins, soaked salted beef, beans, and hardtack, which, unappetizing as it sounds, was a sailor’s favorite. To combat the ravages of scurvy, undiluted lime juice was offered.29
Then there was grog. This mixture of rum, lime juice, and water was ladled out two or three times a day, beginning with “the nooner,” the first measure passed out once the sun was over the foreyard. Grog was mother’s milk to most sailors, giving many a tipsy feeling while hopefully not causing any fights or thickheaded execution of performing one’s duties.30
The jibboom extended beyond the bowsprit, where one found the head—a plank with a hole cut in the center and used by the crew to relieve themselves efficiently if not comfortably. Rows of cannons ran down both sides of the ships, starting with two bow chasers that pointed ahead from the bow, used in pursuit of a fleeing enemy. The ship’s bell was mounted by the mainmast on a wooden belfry. Directly behind the fo’c’sle was the ship’s waist, where hatches covered by gratings led to stairways to go below. Lashed beneath the gunwales (the rails atop the ship’s sides) were spare masts and spars. Secured above them were the ship’s boats, usually a longboat, a cutter, and a captain’s gig, their sails stored inside. Livestock was kept in pens along the waist to provide occasional rations of fresh meat.
Astern of the waist rose the captain’s domain, the quarterdeck, whose height gave the officers a clear view of the deck. It also served as a tangible reminder of the difference in status between sailor and officer (larger ships had another level above that, called the “poop deck,” rarely found on a ship smaller than a frigate).31
Rank aboard ship increased the farther aft one walked below deck, beginning past the fo’c’sle with the wardroom, where the command and warrant officers had mess. For Hopkins’s fleet, this included the lieutenants, the marine captain, his lieutenant, and the warrant officers: the sailing master, responsible for the ship’s navigation; the surgeon, gunner, purser (responsible for the ship’s accounting and supplies), and the bosun, the top seaman responsible for on-deck activities and chores. His piercing whistle piped all hands.32
Compared to a lieutenant’s berth, the captain’s cabin was palatial. Like the British frigates that the Alfred vainly tried to resemble, Hopkins’s cabin contained at least two cannons, one large table, several heavy chairs, a washbowl, and a cot. A settee was built in just below the stern widows.
The lowest deck, the orlop, contained the quarters for midshipmen and the master’s and surgeon’s mates. Large as the room was, it rarely exceeded five feet in height; it also served as the surgeon’s domain during battle, with the large eating table cleared for surgery. Though midshipmen were frequently boys not yet in their teens, they had plenty of clout; one complaint by a midshipman about a sailor’s behavior could get the man flogged or put in irons. They were, on the whole, careful not to abuse their authority, for their own misconduct would likely find them bent over a gun and given “a taste of the colt.” More often, they were “mast-headed”—sent aloft to the highest crosstrees for hours at a time.33
While merchantmen carried a cannon or two for protection against pirates, it was a guessing game for Hopkins at this stage as to how his new sailors would fight against a real navy. Under his orders, the captains held constant gunnery practice. Only Biddle had served in the Royal Navy, and he worked his crew day and night exercising the guns.
Cannons were classified by the weight of the ball they fired. The largest guns among Hopkins’s fleet were 9-pounders, which weighed 1,500 pounds. They could fire a cannonball up to 1,800 yards, but their accuracy at that distance was haphazard at best. In fact, the preferred distance to commence firing by British captains was much closer, usually “w
ithin pistol shot”—50 yards or less.34
Gunnery practice typically began with the captain’s order “Beat to Quarters.” As a marine drummer played a sustained, rapid roll, the men flew to their battle stations. Any fires aboard ship were doused, as the gunner went from cannon to cannon to ensure that each gun crew had their equipment ready.
Mounted on wooden carriages, the guns were held in place by two sets of rope, block and tackle attached to ringbolts driven into the bulwarks (and a spare set of ringbolts in place, in case the first set was yanked out of the bulwark by the gun’s recoil). Several sailors made up a gun crew; each had assigned duties and stations. The equipment included a rammer/sponger (a broomstick-like rod several feet long with a butt end and a stiff sponge on the other end), a bucket of water, a crowbar, a handspike to set the gun in place, and a quoin—a notched wooden wedge that elevated the gun. Balls and powder charges were brought to the gun by ship’s boys, not yet called “powder monkeys.” But for Hopkins’s fleet, the drills were carried out without a cannonball in the muzzle, except for the last practice round. Powder was too scarce to use for practice.
Gunnery exercises aboard the Alfred were under the direction of Lieutenant John Paul Jones, who began the sessions with a series of orders. “Cast off your guns,” he bellowed, and the tars removed the muzzle lashings that secured their cannons. “Level your guns,” he cried, and the men set the guns parallel to the deck. “Take out your tompions,” and the stoppers that kept any seawater from entering the muzzle were removed. “Load with cartridge” came next, and the men pantomimed the act of sending a wad and powder down the muzzle. “Shot your guns,” Jones continued, and they pretended to run a cannonball down the gun. “Run out your guns,” and the men, using the block and tackle, sent the gun through the opening pierced through the bulwark.
