Give Me a Fast Ship

by Tim McGrath

  On September 17, Nicholas Biddle sailed the Andrew Doria up the Delaware, the last leg of his final cruise commanding the brig. Despite being so shorthanded that he had to sign on British and Loyalist sailors from his earlier prizes, this was Biddle’s most successful cruise, capturing six ships (typically for the Andrew Doria, one was recaptured by the Cerberus off Block Island, although this time Biddle’s prize crew escaped capture by reaching the island and rowing to Newport the next day). Two of the vessels belonged to Dunmore’s fleet, their holds empty but for ballast. They carried passengers, Virginia Loyalists bound for Bermuda. Biddle let both ships continue on their way, allowing the Tories to keep their furniture and chests of clothes. All he took was their property of value—their slaves.

  Biddle sailed back to Philadelphia in September with a vastly depleted crew. All his best hands were manning prizes, making their way to friendly ports, while he had scores of prisoners below deck, along with more than a few untrustworthy tars among his few faithful hands. With only two officers left on board, Biddle never left the quarterdeck, sleeping with his blanket covering the loaded pistol he kept in his hand. On the seventeenth, the Andrew Doria came in sight of Philadelphia, where a crowd waited at the waterfront to give him a hero’s welcome. All in all, it had been a good run by the navy’s captains.13

  But John Paul Jones topped them all.

  Sailing northward to Nova Scotia, the Providence was caught in a storm so fierce that Jones had to store his guns below deck. By September 19 he was off Cape Sable. Supplies were low. Jones had just given his men permission to fish when the mastheader sighted two sail, a British merchantman and her consort, the frigate Milford, Captain Burr, twenty-eight guns. Burr immediately made for the Providence. As with the Solebay, Jones waited until she was within pistol shot and then changed course, leading the Milford on an eight-hour “Wild Goose Chace,” Burr firing his bow chasers all the way despite the Providence’s staying out of range. Knowing he was “dished,” Burr turned his ship through the wind and fired a useless broadside at Jones, who responded by ordering a marine to return fire with a lone musket. The chase ended when “Night, with her sable curtains” descended (an early example of Jones’s florid prose). Burr’s pursuit took the Providence a hundred miles above Halifax.14

  Risky as it was, the Providences preferred Jones’s approach to command after months of John Hazard’s mean-spirited caution. The lieutenant who earlier did not trust himself with a sloop was now a captain daring to the point of foolhardiness. Jones was a moth to danger’s flame.

  On September 21, he captured a shallop off Canso whose crew informed him that a Jersey fishing fleet lay docked in the harbors of Île Madame, a small nearby island. That night, Jones sailed into Canso to find three English schooners. He took one, burned one, and sank the other. After loading his prize with the fish from the other two, he recruited some friendly sailors to join in his visit to Île Madame. That night he sent the well-armed shallop into the harbor of Arichat (which he called “Narrowshock”) while he sailed the Providence into Petitgrat (to Jones, “Peter the Great”). The islanders were so shocked at the sudden appearance of the American raiders that they made no resistance. In turn, Jones promised to leave enough vessels to carry the fishermen back to Jersey and wrote a safe conduct for them in case they encountered an American privateer. He was justifiably proud of this triumph: “Never was a Bloodless Victory more compleat,” he crowed.

  Jones could outrun enemy frigates, but not nature. He had no sooner sailed out of Arichat than a violent gale struck the ships. He needed both his anchors to secure the Providence. Two prizes were lost: one, which carried a valuable supply of oil, run ashore, the other a schooner driven so hard against the rocks that her crew abandoned ship, scrambling onto a makeshift raft as the storm raged. Shorthanded because of his prizes, his supplies low, and being in the winter quarters of British warships, Jones made for home. “The Fishery at Canso and Madame is effectually destroyed,” he reported. He had captured sixteen vessels: six accompanied him up Narragansett Bay, the others were sunk, burned, or retaken en route home by the British. Jones had repaid the depredations of Mowat and Wallace, as much an officer as they, more a gentleman than both.15

  That fall, Jones and the other captains returned to various ports to learn that Congress was paying more attention to naval matters. It passed laws guaranteeing half pay to all personnel should they suffer disability while serving their country. It issued uniforms: blue coats with red lapels, flat yellow buttons, blue britches, red waistcoats for the captains, with less ostentatious variations for the junior officers; and green coats with white cuffs, waistcoats, and britches for marine officers. Jones and other captains detested the uniform. In fact, Jones later adopted the blue coat and white waistcoat and breeches of the Royal Navy, yet another way to make use of the ruse de guerre. Being short in stature, Jones also added epaulets, giving height to his shoulders.16

  But dissatisfaction with the new uniform was nothing compared to the vitriol produced over the third bit of news from Congress—the rank of captains, and their assigned ships:

  1. James Nicholson, Maryland Frigate Virginia (28 guns)

  2. John Manley, Massachusetts Frigate Hancock (32)

  3. Hector McNeill, Massachusetts Frigate Boston (24)

  4. Dudley Saltonstall, Massachusetts Frigate Trumbull (28)

  5. Nicholas Biddle, Pennsylvania Frigate Randolph (32)

  6. Thomas Thompson, New Hampshire Frigate Raleigh (32)

  7. John Barry, Pennsylvania Frigate Effingham (28)

  8. Thomas Read, Pennsylvania Frigate Washington (32)

  9. Thomas Grinnell, New York Frigate Congress (28)

  10. Charles Alexander, Pennsylvania Frigate Delaware (24)

  11. Lambert Wickes, Pennsylvania Sloop-of-War Reprisal (16)

  12. Abraham Whipple, Rhode Island Frigate Providence (28)

  13. John B. Hopkins, Rhode Island Frigate Warren (32)

  14. John Hodge, New York Frigate Montgomery (24)

  15. William Hallock, Maryland Brigantine Lexington (16)

  16. Hoysted Hacker, Rhode Island Brig Hampden

  17. Isaiah Robinson, Pennsylvania Brig Andrew Doria (14)

  18. John Paul Jones, Virginia Sloop Providence (12)

  19. James Josiah, Pennsylvania

  20. Elisha Hinman, Connecticut Ship Alfred (28)

  21. James Olney, Rhode Island Brig Cabot (16)

  22. James Robinson, Pennsylvania Sloop Sachem (10)

  23. John Young, Pennsylvania Sloop Independence (10)

  24. Elisha Warner, Pennsylvania Schooner Fly (8)

  Practically every major port north of Virginia was assigned at least one frigate to build (Philadelphia led with four); consequently captains were needed from each area. The list had most of the veterans from the navy’s first year scratching their heads. Jones was easily the angriest about the men ahead of them. Manley and McNeill, for example, had served in Washington’s navy, but the only official navy James Nicholson, number 1 on the Captains List, had served in was George III’s in the French and Indian War. Hopkins’s captains, along with Barry, were also assigned new frigates. In a scenario straight from Greek mythology, Jones had completed the most successful cruise yet by any Continental captain, just as the Marine Committee was drawing up the plum assignments. Had the committee considered results and not politics, Biddle, Jones, Barry, and Wickes would have topped the list. Jones would live another sixteen years, not long enough for such a proud, thin-skinned man to get over such a snub.17

  The thirteen new frigates were in various stages of completion—the Randolph was launched in July, while Biddle was at sea. He returned home to find his new ship off the ways and in the latter stages of completion. He also learned that his brother Charles had been captured off Jamaica, sailing a merchantman bearing flour for Haiti. Once in Kingston he was brought before the fleet admiral, C
lark Gayton, just as the Englishman was reading a Philadelphia paper extolling Nicholas’s deeds.

  “Any relation to this rebel?” Gayton haughtily inquired.

  Charles grinned. “That rebel,” he replied, “is my brother.” Gayton responded by clapping Charles in irons (after several unsuccessful attempts to escape Jamaica, including one dressed “in the style of a mulatto girl,” Charles was smuggled by friends on the island aboard a merchantman bound for New Bern, North Carolina, where he would meet his wife).18

  Back in Philadelphia, Nicholas Biddle hurried to finish and man his frigate. He had company along the shipyards: Thomas Read was hard at it with the Washington, while John Barry readied the Effingham for her October launching. Most of the Continental ships were in port when Hopkins gave Jones new orders and a new command: the Alfred. With the Hampden for company, Jones was to sail back to Nova Scotia and destroy all the colliers (coal ships) he encountered, then make for New Breton, where a number of American sailors were prisoners, laboring in the coal pits. After that was accomplished, he was to sail south and harass the transports coming into New York from England.19

  “All my humanity was Awakened and called up to Action by this Laudable Proposal,” Jones wrote Robert Morris. All that was holding him back was manpower, as “Privateers entice [sailors] Away as fast as they receive their Months Pay,” he complained. As common seamen were “Actuated by no nobler principle than that of Self Interest,” Jones believed the only solution lay in substantially raising the “Private Emolument” paid to sailors. He compared Congress’s paltry wages to “the Old Vulgar Proverb ‘Penny Wise and Pound Foolish.’”

  Jones’s argument was correct. If he had only known that Morris, like many of his congressional colleagues, was financing privateers. When the Hampden struck a sunken ledge in Newport’s waters, Jones commandeered enough men off her and the Providence to get the Alfred to sea on October 30. “Without a Respectable Navy—Alas America!” Jones bewailed before setting off to make America’s navy as respectable as one captain could.20

  The Reprisal was being refitted in Philadelphia when Lambert Wickes received orders from Congress’s Committee of Secret Correspondence on October 24. Wickes was number 11 on the Captains List, with peers before and after his rank given frigate assignments, but he had no time to pout over it. He was to sail immediately for France with two items of utmost importance: a large supply of indigo and one seventy-year-old congressman.

  Secret discussions had been going on for more than a year between Congress and the French government, both realizing they had something to offer each other. By the fall of 1776, most congressmen wanted French arms, money, and her fleet. France wanted America’s tobacco trade. Initially, the aid in arms was covert, thanks to the slave trade. French slavers sailed out of Nantes, a French port in the northern part of the Bay of Biscay. The French “black birders” were as heavily armed as their American counterparts, making it easy to let them do double duty as gunrunners, joining American ships in crossing the Atlantic with powder and arms.21

  In the spring, John Barry had escorted Silas Deane’s ship the Betsy out of the Delaware. She made it safely to France, where Deane had spent the last eight months as Congress’s representative to the court of Louis XVI. The son of a blacksmith, Deane was a seasoned politician in colonial affairs, but proved to be hopelessly out of his league at Versailles. He spoke no French, seemed oblivious to the customs of the court, and carped about how news from home reached everyone else in Paris before he heard it. Even his copy of the Declaration arrived months after all of Europe had read it. British spies became so good at dogging him that they knew what he was going to eat for dinner before he did.22

  He did, however, see a golden opportunity for the Cause, advocating the recruitment of privateers and even naval officers to take the fight to this side of the Atlantic. Deane pleaded for a number of blank privateering commissions, adding how “little vessels” (i.e., schooners and cutters) could make “great reprisals.” After all, “the armed vessel increases your navy and the prize supplies the country.”23

  Now Congress was sending its most famous member on a task nearly as herculean as Washington’s—to get money, arms, munitions, and especially an alliance with Britain’s traditional archenemy. Lambert Wickes was to pay utmost attention to Benjamin Franklin’s needs, and refrain from any prize-taking or combat. Nothing was more important than getting Franklin safely to France. After that, “Let Old England See how they like to have an active Enemy at their own Door, they have Sent Fire and Sword to ours.”24

  Franklin’s mission was secret, but how to keep it so, as Philadelphia teemed with Tory spies? Wickes and Franklin did the best they could. On October 27, the Reprisal stood down the Delaware, stopping at Marcus Hook. The next day, Franklin and his grandsons, Benjamin Franklin Bache and William Temple Franklin, took a coach to nearby Chester and spent the night. The morning coach carried them down to Marcus Hook. Few paid much attention when a tall, stout gentleman wearing a coonskin cap and a greatcoat over his broad swimmer’s shoulders climbed gingerly up the Reprisal’s gangway on two gouty legs, two youngsters right behind him. Once aboard, they passed an array of marines, standing at attention in their new green uniforms. Resplendent in his own blue and red attire, Wickes gave the orders to cast off, and the Reprisal made sail for France.

  Franklin’s cover had been blown outside the State House weeks earlier, when merchant and patriot Reese Meredith loudly asked his friend Robert Morris, “Is Franklin really going to Paris?” Spies sent word to General Howe that Franklin had departed, seeking “the Interposition of the French Court & its assistance,” but by then the Reprisal was sailing the Atlantic.25

  The weather turned cold early that fall. At the shipyards, carpenters, chandlers, and rope men blew on their hands as they toiled aboard the Randolph and the other three frigates. Philadelphia was second to none at shipbuilding in the New World, and these four ships were the largest yet built in America. They loomed over the waterfront like monstrous, hulking giants, daily drawing crowds that got as close to the ways as the marines patrolling the perimeter of the yard would let them.

  People openly marveled at their colossal size and graceful lines. The Randolph was already in the water, her hull painted a rich blue, her gun ports and bow a burnished yellow. When the Alfred was launched as the Black Prince in 1774 she was the largest ship built in Philadelphia, at 91 feet, 5 inches, with a 26-foot beam. The Randolph was 60 feet longer and 8 feet wider. Her bowsprit and boom added another 40 feet to her length. Her mainmast rose 150 feet above the deck. Nicholas Biddle—and Congress—could not wait to get her out to sea.26

  The latest reports from Washington and his officers were as bitter as the weather. Having lost New York, the general had constructed Fort Washington outside of New York City and Fort Lee across the river in New Jersey to defend his evacuation of New York. By November 20, both had fallen, their garrisons now prisoners of war. To make matters worse for Washington, the brothers Howe came up with a brilliant ploy. On November 30, they guaranteed “a full and free Pardon of all Treason” to any soldier, sailor, or rebel sympathizer as long as they “disband themselves and return to their Dwelling, there to remain in a peaceable and Quiet Manner.” As General Howe marched south through New Jersey, his campsites were invaded daily by thousands of former rebels, all happy to pledge their loyalty to England once again. At Sandy Hook, other penitent patriots did the same, boat after boat taking them out to British warships.

  Three days after Howe’s proclamation, General Charles Lee, who undermined Washington with every letter and saw the general’s array of defeats as his best chance to succeed him, was captured while dawdling at a New Jersey tavern. Six months earlier, Washington began the New York campaign with 20,000 men. On his retreat down New Jersey roads towards Philadelphia, he had fewer than 3,500. “Their Army is a wretched Plight indeed,” one Loyalist happily wrote to Lord Dartmouth, adding, “Most of t
hem have no other covering than a Rifleman’s Frock of Canvas over their shirt . . . diseased and covered with Vermin to a loathsome degree.” From New York harbor, Admiral Howe sent fifteen ships—half his fleet—heading towards Rhode Island to establish winter quarters and blockade Hopkins’s ships. One, a fifty-gun two-decker, the Experiment, had recently been given to James Wallace as a reward for his activities off Rhode Island these past two years. From the Delaware Bay, Henry Fisher reported that the two capes “are Lin’d with w[it]h Men of War,” including the Roebuck.27

  In the face of such peril, high-ranking patriots made public appeals to their fellow citizens. At a rally by the State House, two famous Philadelphians, David Rittenhouse of the Committee of Safety and Quartermaster General Thomas Mifflin of the Continental Army, beseeched the crowd to take up arms and aid Washington. More than 2,000 volunteers joined the hastily organized Philadelphia Brigade. The navy’s captains, eager to do their part, called on the Marine Committee. Biddle, Barry, Read, Alexander, and John Nicholson of the Hornet offered to place themselves, their sailors, and their guns under the army’s orders. The committee sent Biddle and Nicholson to their ships with orders to prepare for departure, and took the other three up on their offer, placing them under General John Cadwalader, commanding the Pennsylvania “Associators.” The captains returned to the shipyards, rounding up every sailor, carpenter, or rigger willing to join the coming fight. The navy was joining the army.28

  And they were not the only sailors to volunteer. Seeing the need for every available fighting man to get to Philadelphia, Samuel Chase sent a courier to Baltimore with a request that the navy’s top captain bring “a Body of Seamen and Marines” to help get the frigates out to sea or fight with Washington. “I shall make the best of my way,” James Nicholson wrote, and he did.29

  After Cadwalader gave Read command of a battery and put Barry and Alexander on his personal staff, he marched his men north to Bristol, where they could rendezvous with Washington’s bedraggled soldiers. Looking back as they departed their city, Barry and Read saw hundreds of Philadelphians preparing to leave, clogging the streets with wagons and carts overloaded with furniture and household goods. Congressmen, ordered south to Baltimore, led the way. Soon only one representative remained—Robert Morris.30