by Tim McGrath
Morris always took his responsibilities on the Marine Committee seriously, but now he was the Marine Committee. That week, Washington sent one of his trusted generals, Israel Putnam, to assume command of Philadelphia’s defenses. With Howe’s forces marching ever closer to Philadelphia, “Old Put” asked and received Congress’s approval to burn the frigates. Morris immediately dismissed Putnam’s proposal out of hand. “I have presumed to go one Step farther in this Navy business,” he informed Hancock, adding he would continue doing so during this crisis whether Congress approved or not. Seeing Alexander delayed in getting the Delaware completed, Morris found enough shipyard hands remaining in town and sent them to work, promising Hancock that the Delaware’s “Sails will be bent, Anchors to the Bows, Stores on b[oar]d and everything in some forwardness.” His efforts bore quick results; learning that the Delaware was nearly ready for sea, he sent for Alexander.31
His own frigate supplied and armed, Biddle held a rendezvous that was a complete waste of time. Practically every able hand not already on board had joined Cadwalader’s forces. Before their exodus, Congress offered a twenty-dollar advance to each sailor who signed the Randolph’s muster rolls. When that notion also flopped, Congress permitted Biddle on December 7 to free any sailors in the city jails and prison. Five days later, it offered him an incredible enticement—especially for Congress—a ten-thousand-dollar bonus, providing that Biddle and what meager crew he could muster got the Randolph safely out to sea. Then Congress fled for Baltimore.32
Biddle went to the Walnut Street Prison to see what sailors were among the felons, vagrants, and British prisoners (many of the third group from his last cruise on the Andrew Doria) languishing behind bars, knowing their loyalty would be truly discerned only when the Randolph faced an enemy ship. There were few. Biddle arbitrarily pressed into service those inmates who did not volunteer but had the required skills. Fully manned, a frigate carried upwards of four hundred men; these, plus a few recently signed landsmen, gave Biddle barely two hundred. On December 14, his orders from Morris in hand, he sent the Randolph downriver, with the Hornet in the lead.33
They were barely under way when one of Henry Fisher’s couriers galloped into Philadelphia with an urgent message: the Roebuck was off the Cape Henlopen lighthouse, and the frigate Pearl, Captain Thomas Wilkinson, thirty-two guns, was anchored near the Brandywine River. Morris sent word to Biddle: turn around. He did, anchoring at Liberty Island, now called “Fort Island,” with construction under way to complete the defenses designed by Captain John Montresor, now Howe’s chief engineer. While there, Biddle received a plea from an invalid widow with no support except for her son, now one of Biddle’s pressed recruits. After his release, she promised to pray “that the great god Will Pour down his Blessings on Your Honor and Family whilst Alive.34
While the Roebuck rode at anchor near the lighthouse, Hamond was visited by a rowboat carrying townsfolk from Lewes and flying a white flag. They assured him their neighbors were all loyal to king and country—news that did not prevent Hamond and Wilkinson from a windfall of prize-taking, especially one: the Lexington, captured off the Delaware coast by the Pearl on December 20, a cold, extremely windy day. William Hallock was not John Barry. Despite her close-reefed sails, the Pearl overtook the Lexington. Conditions were so tempestuous that one of the Pearl’s boats stove in; Wilkinson could remove only Hallock and nine others before placing a similar number aboard as a prize crew and sending the Lexington south to Virginia.35
Such grim news worried Morris. “My labours appear to be lost & sorry I am for the disappointment,” he wrote to Hancock. Adding to his woes, he learned that the British army was reportedly less than ten miles away. Morris had every reason to be distressed.36
But two days later, on December 23, he happily informed Hancock that the Andrew Doria was heading up the Delaware, back from St. Eustatius. There she received one of the first salutes fired in honor of American colors in a foreign port, cause for yet another diplomatic flap, this time between England and Holland. Shortly after Isaiah Robinson’s departure from St. Eustatius its governor, Johannes de Graaf, received a scathing letter from British governor Crai- ster Greathead of St. Christopher’s, questioning how de Graaf’s salute “is reconcilable with the Treaties” between England and Holland.37
Three weeks later Robinson’s men fought a sharp battle above the West Indies against the sloop Racehorse, wounding William Jones, who “has the King’s Commission as Master and Commander.” After the Andrew Doria shredded the sloop’s rigging and sails, Jones surrendered. Perhaps the most amazing part of Robinson’s cruise came when he slipped past the Roebuck and the other British warships prowling about Delaware Bay. After a litany of letters to Hancock, Washington, and others in which he stoically reported the gloom descending on Philadelphia, Morris now shared with them his renewed optimism, declaring, “We ought to hazard everything to get the ships out.”38
Across the Atlantic that same month, the Reprisal was on top of the coast of France. It had been a rough passage, and while the storms she encountered did no damage to the bales of indigo, they wreaked havoc on the oldest member of Congress. Benjamin Franklin spent the entire voyage so seasick he could barely stand. Whenever possible, Lambert Wickes clapped on all sail, sending the Reprisal to France as quickly as possible, for a speedy if not smooth passage. Franklin had often quoted Samuel Johnson’s witticism that a ship at sea was like a jail without the comforts of a jail. He no longer found the line humorous.
The Reprisal was approaching Quiberon Bay when her mastheader cried, “Sail ho!” The desire to pursue, usually second nature to Wickes, was tempered by his orders to avoid a chase. Wickes went to Franklin’s cabin and asked his advice. Ill as he was, Franklin deliberated over what to do, using what he called “moral algebra” and weighing the issue—aware of the risk, but yet, what better way to show France a potential ally’s resolve than by sailing into port with a prize? Franklin made his decision. He had seen Wickes’s orders; now, recalling Congress’s final exhortation—Let Old England See how they like to have an active Enemy at their own Door—he gave his blessing.
Wickes pursued, and soon had a prize: the brigantine George out of Cork, Ireland, bound for home with a hold containing building materials and thirty- five hogsheads of Bordeaux claret. Just hours later, another brigantine was sighted, chased, and taken—La Vigne, whose hold carried more wine as well as casks of cognac. Welcome to France, Mr. Wickes; Bienvenue en France, Monsieur Franklin.39
Poor Franklin: rough seas kept the Reprisal off Nantes for three stormy days. Wickes was forced to flag a fishing boat to take Franklin and his healthier grandsons to shore and a waiting carriage for Paris. There Franklin would find adulation, intrigue, and betrayal, and begin to make the old enemy of thirteen British colonies the best friend of thirteen united states.
Back in Pennsylvania on Christmas Day, Washington wrote Robert Morris a long letter touching on several subjects. He would appeal to two New England regiments, whose terms of enlistment were up, that they reenlist as sailors under Biddle to get his frigate properly manned and out to sea. He informed Morris that he had written Admiral Howe, proposing an exchange of Barry’s prisoner, Richard Boger of the Edward, for James Josiah of the Andrew Doria. And despite learning that the British intended to cross the Delaware and attack once the ice had sufficiently hardened, Washington clung to the hope “that some Lucky Chance might turn up in our Favour.” His letter finished, he went back to his plans for the evening: cross the Delaware and attack the Hessian mercenaries camped at Trenton—before they attacked him.40
That night, a nor’easter set in, adding to the desperation of Washington’s gamble. He gave the signal for Henry Glover’s men to begin rowing what was left of the Continental Army across the Delaware to New Jersey. Using “Durham boats”—sixty-foot-long, pointed barges that transported pig iron downriver from Reading to Philadelphia—the “Webfooters” manned the eighteen-foot-lon
g oars and began ferrying Washington’s meager forces across the Delaware.
Glover’s sailors had served as the first American navy in the war; they had saved Washington’s army from capture in New York. Now, beset with ice floes, bitter winds, and snow, they were sure that nature itself was against them. With each stroke of their oars, they bore their fellow warriors—and their young country—towards Washington’s aptly chosen password this night: Victory or Death.41
On January 11, 1777, a day he described as full of “dark Rainey W[eath]r,” Andrew Snape Hamond sent the Roebuck in pursuit of a brig heading back from the West Indies. Four hours and several warning shots later, she became the latest of the many prizes Hamond had snatched off the Delaware Capes since returning in December.
Just before Christmas he had written that Washington’s army was finished, with Cornwallis “chasing the Enemy every where before him.” With the British army impeded by hordes of Americans anxious to sign the Howe brothers’ clemency offer, and Congress having fled Philadelphia, the American rebellion looked to be over, a veritable Christmas present for the Howes to present their cousin and king.42
On December 26 Robert Morris was at his office when a courier from General Cadwalader burst in with the news. It was Charles Alexander, whom Morris had summoned to bring back the “few Tradesmen necessary” to complete work on the Delaware. Alexander bore tidings of great joy: a thorough victory over the 1,400 Hessians at Trenton, with 300 prisoners being marched back to Philadelphia. “General Washington is now Master of that place,” Morris gratefully informed Hancock in Baltimore.43
One week later, Washington did it again at Princeton, this time against British soldiers from Cornwallis’s army. After the battle, Cornwallis moved his forces up to New Brunswick, while Washington’s rejuvenated (and reenlisted) troops made winter camp in Morristown.
The sailors of the Continental Navy missed the fighting at Trenton. Cadwalader’s volunteers did not cross the Delaware until the twenty-sixth, and were ordered back to Pennsylvania. They saw plenty of action at Princeton, where they fought alongside Brigadier General Hugh Mercer’s “Blue Hens.” When a British counterattack threatened the American line, it was Cadwalader’s men, manning naval guns from the unfinished frigates, that held the Redcoats back until Washington, mounted on a white horse, personally took command. The night before the battle, Cornwallis had bragged to his officers that they would “bag the fox” the next day. Once the British began retreating, leaving muskets, canteens, and knapsacks in their wake, Washington led the pursuit, crying, “It’s a fine fox hunt, my boys.”44
Washington’s victories infused new life into the Cause. On a minor note, they also changed the tone of Hamond’s reports. Sitting in the Roebuck’s cabin, as the ocean winds swept rain and snow onto the quarterdeck above, he duly noted the recent reversal of fortune for the British. Even as he called the published accounts of the British defeats “much embellished,” he admitted it “was not greatly exaggerated.”45
The contribution of the navy’s sailors was cited in reports from the front. James Nicholson marveled at the jolt it gave sailor and soldier alike: “This affair has given such amazing spirit to the people, that you might do any thing, or go anywhere with them,” he wrote back to Baltimore. The esprit de corps of the sailors made the papers:
The captains of the frigates of Philadelphia, with their brave tars and a number of pieces of cannon . . . were willing to beat the enemy by land as well as by sea, provided the General would let them be commanded by their own officers, and fight their cannon their own way, whose request was granted, and they swear they will never flinch while the General finds them in Rum, Beef, and Biscuit.46
Nor were the “brave tars” the only sailors who distinguished themselves in the days that tried men’s souls. From Baltimore, an ecstatic Hancock informed Morris that the Lexington was once again an American ship. When bad weather cut short the transfer of a larger prize crew than the Pearl’s Captain Williams intended, he sent the captured brigantine on her way, concerned as to whether the British hands aboard her could both sail the ship through the gale and keep the American prisoners confined below deck. His worries proved justified. The ships lost sight of each other in the storm when the Americans, led by Barry’s convert to the Cause, Richard Dale, overpowered their captors and sailed for Baltimore, where they found Congress waiting for them. Having fled Philadelphia when every event took them one step closer to the hangman’s noose, the representatives were thrilled beyond measure to see a favorite ship returned—not just with her crew, but with her hold full of powder and arms. Hancock could barely contain his joy.47
In Philadelphia, a happily determined Morris yearned to get every available Continental ship out of port and out to sea, but the enemy and nature blockaded his plans. Ice so choked the Delaware that the Randolph and Hornet were held fast off Fort Island. Captains Barry and Read returned to find that nothing had been done with their unfinished frigates Effingham and Washington. British ships maintained a stranglehold on the Rhode Island coast, hemming in Hopkins and no fewer than five Continental ships. In Boston, the only naval action came from the growing acrimony between the captains of the frigates Hancock and Boston, John Manley and Hector McNeill. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Thomas Thompson faced the same daunting challenges as his peers did: lack of cannons and the crew to man them.
His vision of Continental ships wreaking havoc on the high seas dashed, Morris turned his attention to the exchange of prisoners. On New Year’s Eve he received a letter from Hamond. Knowing that British sailors and officers were well treated by their rebel captors, Hamond had given “immediate orders that every Prisoner now on board the Ships under my Command Shall be Set at liberty without delay.” He put them ashore at Cape Henlopen. The vigilant Henry Fisher was the first American to greet those freed by “His Majesty’s Pyrates.” Morris arranged for those British tars in Philadelphia to be sent there in exchange. Hamond saw his act as a chance to show his humanity. He was the rebels’ enemy, but also a gentleman.48
The same could not be said, however, for many of Hamond’s fellow officers, who strictly obeyed Lord North’s instructions about prisoners. While waiting for a winter thaw, Nicholas Biddle received a letter from Margaret Tarras, James Josiah’s sister. Josiah had been able to write her and his father long paragraphs detailing the abuse he endured in the waist of the Cerberus. Now, “obligd to Smother that grief For fear of more distressing an aged father,” Margaret begged Biddle to continue to intercede with the British on her brother’s behalf.49
Morris and Biddle had long heard about mistreatment aboard British prison ships, not just for Continental sailors but also
Masters, supercargoes, &c. of merchant vessels, with Indians, Mulattoes, and Negroe slaves, are all put together between decks . . . As to their provisions, the allowance is very small, and the quality unwholesome . . . the miserable prisoners must eat [the meat] raw . . . Butter and cheese they have none . . . they have oil, so rank they cannot eat it . . . They are often twelve or sixteen hours without a drop of fresh water . . . the prison ship had on board no less than two hundred and sixty unfortunate men . . . this prison ship had neither Doctor or medicine chest.50
An incensed Morris wrote Washington that “our poor Soldiers and Sailors are perishing for want of food, fresh Air and Cleanliness, whilst theirs in our possession are feasting on the fat of this Land.” He urged the general to “remonstrate to Genl Howe and L[or]d Howe against the base treatment our people meet with,” or face “immediate retaliation . . . if they did not alter their conduct.”
Prisoner exchanges were also agreed upon in Rhode Island between Esek Hopkins and Admiral Peter Parker “by Order of Lord Howe.” Washington responded to Morris’s letter and made Congress’s sentiments known, but for American sailors, prison conditions only worsened.51
As 1777—called “the Year of the Hangman” for its three 7s—dawned, most Continental captains
were at work getting their ships to sea. But not even Jones and Biddle were more desperate to see action than their commodore was.
Esek Hopkins was well aware of how far his stock had dropped with both Congress and the public. Whereas Jones and Biddle enjoyed soaring popularity among congressman and citizen alike, Hopkins had fallen so low he was even being criticized from the pulpit. When the Reverend Samuel Hopkins of Newport laid the wanton habits of American sailors at Hopkins’s feet in his sermon “Complaints of the Morals of the Navy,” the commodore could only commiserate about “the depravity of the Times.” Neptune may have given Hopkins his trident, but the God of Hopkins’s fathers was relegating a pitchfork to him—or at least the Reverend Hopkins was, perhaps to prove publicly that he was no relation to the unpopular commodore.52
Imagine Hopkins’s excitement when he learned that the British frigate Diamond, Captain Charles Fielding, had run aground in Narragansett Bay between Newport and Providence. She was part of the British blockade, and had recently captured a privateer sloop. Fielding celebrated the New Year by sending his longboats over to Patience Island, looking for remnants of a rebel stronghold, only to find the island abandoned. The boats returned at dark just as it began to rain.
That night a marine entered Fielding’s cabin and roused him from his slumber. Two of the American prisoners had cut away the longboat secured at the stern and made their escape. Despite the darkness and lack of a pilot, Fielding ordered the men to make sail and hunt down the escapees. The wind began a vicious blow from the southwest, and Fielding “veered his cable”—dragging his anchor to drift—but when the wind changed direction, the Diamond ran aground and began listing to port.
