Give Me a Fast Ship

by Tim McGrath

  Once McNeill sighted Maine, he sailed the Boston up the Sheepscott River. Shortly thereafter, several British ships appeared at the river’s mouth, waiting for McNeill to come out. Hearing of his arrival, the Raleigh’s captain, Thomas Thompson, sent a letter overland to him. Thompson had two reasons to write: one, to congratulate McNeill on his safe arrival and two, to ask if McNeill could spare any hands for the Raleigh. 82

  Reading this, McNeill thought of his own situation. Because of the Fox, he had sixty fewer hands than when he had departed Boston, and now scurvy plagued his crew. He continued reading Thompson’s letter. “Mrs. McNeal & family is well,” Thompson reported, and one more thing: “Jones is here[,] Commands the Ship Ranger.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “THE GANG OF PYRATES”

  Nothing can be more humiliating to those once Proud Lords of the Ocean than the Insults they receive on their own Coasts from those they so lately despised.

  —SILAS DEANE TO ROBERT MORRIS1

  It was not a perfect day for a wedding.

  Three days earlier—July 4, 1777—the weather had been wondrous in Philadelphia. The first anniversary of American independence was celebrated from sunrise to sunset, with a parade of armed ships and row galleys, decorated with flags and streamers and firing a thirteen-gun salute. Afterwards, a lavish meal was spread for congressmen and military officials, while the citizenry feasted on barbecued foods and ices provided by street vendors. The revelries concluded at nightfall, as bells pealed from every church tower, houses were illuminated, and a grand display of fireworks enthralled everyone.2

  On July 7, wedding guests entered Christ Church under threatening skies. The church’s spire had been struck by lightning in June; as the guests arrived, the roofers and carpenters stopped hammering and sawing long enough to allow for a peaceful ceremony. William White, not yet a bishop and well-known for his patriotic sympathies, took his place at the altar beside the famous “Wine Glass Pulpit.”

  The bride—the beautiful Sarah Austin, just twenty-three—wore a colorful dress and was escorted down the aisle by her older brother William. He managed the family business, the Arch Street Ferry, which stretched between the Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey, waterfronts. The family owned a nearby mansion and two blocks of houses and shops, as well as their own pew at the church. Their younger brother, Isaac, a watchmaker, had fought at Trenton and Princeton. But William was a king’s man. Sarah was part of a sewing circle at Gloria Dei Church that included seamstress and upholsterer Betsy Ross. They made flags for the Continental Army and Navy.

  The bridegroom stood at the altar, resplendent in his Continental Navy uniform of blue and red. The charming Sarah had been one of the most pursued girls in Philadelphia. In minutes she would become Mrs. John Barry.3

  The lot of a sailor’s lady has always been marked by excessive absences of her man with far too little time at home between voyages. John Barry’s first wife died while he was at sea; in six years of marriage they were together only six months. While husbands were away, wives kept the house, raised the children single-handedly, and managed a most frugal budget. Fail to do that, and a mariner often returned to find his family in debtors’ prison.

  Many naval officers were already married, like Hector McNeill; some, like Esek Hopkins, were older husbands with sons serving under them. But many more were single. Being in their twenties and thirties, they often pursued relationships while ashore.

  Independence Day 1777 found another naval officer in love. During the Randolph’s layover in Charleston, South Carolina, Nicholas Biddle had been introduced to Richard Baker, an army officer and scion of an old southern family whose plantation, Archdale Hall, lay up the Ashley River. Like most of Charleston society, Baker’s invalid father wanted to meet the Randolph’s heroic captain, and Biddle happily obliged. He, Baker, and a few of Biddle’s sailors took the Randolph’s barge upriver.

  Archdale Hall was the epitome of the southern plantation, spacious and grand; live oaks shaded the gravel path that led from the dock to the mansion. There, among the fishponds and beautiful gardens, Nicholas was introduced to Richard’s eighteen-year-old sister, Elizabeth.

  Biddle had enjoyed romantic flings in Philadelphia, London, Providence, and New London, but now he was smitten. He began escorting Elizabeth to dinners, balls, and Charleston’s grand celebration of the Fourth. The young captain showed her his latest addition to the Randolph—a lightning rod atop her mainmast. That evening the couple attended a dinner hosted by John Rutledge, president and commander-in-chief of South Carolina. A fine meal was followed by thirteen toasts, which Biddle, a teetotaler, observed with water, as thirteen guns outside the mansion fired salutes. The final toast was the nearest to Biddle’s heart: “The American Army and Navy—may they be victorious and invincible.” Then Biddle took Elizabeth home.4

  Earlier that year, Lieutenant William Grinnell had written his old shipmate John Paul Jones from Providence. Having recently ended his bachelor days, he sent word to Jones of his good fortune, along with a newlywed’s advice that a bachelor “might think [it] strange” to be taking a wife in these hard times. “I assure you it is a Grand Choyce,” he continued, adding that Mrs. Grinnell “will Give you Letters to Some Ladys that She is Sartain will be very aGreable to you and them.”5

  Mrs. Grinnell’s earnest offer to act as matchmaker for Jones was not necessary. He was as adept at courting women as he was at chasing prizes. Upon his recent return to Boston, he had sought out the companionship of other Scotsmen at St. Andrew’s Lodge, other Masons (including Paul Revere) at the Dragon Tavern, and the company of women wherever he found them. The fiery warrior and patriot was quite a ladies’ man ashore. In the spring of 1777, he had grown captivated by an ex-slave, Phillis Wheatley.

  She was born in West Africa in 1753 and sold into slavery as a child, surviving the transatlantic voyage of the schooner Phillis. She was bought on the Boston auction block by Susann Wheatley, whose husband, John, was a well-to-do tailor and merchant. The family named her after the slaver. Within two years she was speaking and reading English as well as any adult and soon mastered Latin as well. By her teens, she was writing poems, and they were soon published, including an elegy for the martyrs of the Boston Massacre. Her growing celebrity was greeted with great skepticism among the “learned” Bostonians: how could such small masterpieces of language spring from the mind of an African slave girl?

  Accordingly, a meeting was arranged for the pillars of Boston society—eighteen white men—to meet the teenager. The assemblage included Governor Thomas Hutchinson, Reverend Samuel Mather (son of Cotton), and John Hancock. This inquiry—“inquisition” is a better word—would determine if Wheatley’s poems were Wheatley’s poems. When they finished their grilling, they declared her the true author. Her fame skyrocketed.6

  Wheatley had already written a paean to Washington; another, “To a Gentleman of the Navy,” was penned before she met Jones, who was captivated by both her talent and her presence. Evan Thomas, Jones’s biographer, called their relationship “cordial and may have been flirtatious or romantic.” Either way, she left enough of a mark on Jones that he wrote poems for her in 1777, enclosing one in a letter to his friend Hector McNeill when Jones was out of town, requesting that he deliver it to “the celebrated Phillis the African favourite.” Throughout his career, Jones spent his time ashore torn between getting a command and falling for the lady who most recently had captured his heart. For him, duty always won out, and it did so in Boston.7

  In May, Congress ordered Jones to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he was to board the thirty-two-gun Frenchman Amphitrite and share command with her French captain. They were to sail to Charleston and thence to France, where Jones was told the American commissioners would find a French frigate for him. A joyous Jones went to Portsmouth, only to have his hopes dashed yet again: the Frenchman refused to share command of a French warship with an American. Jones returned to
Boston.8

  His spirits were raised when he received word of an American command. On June 14, Congress declared “That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white: that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” Then they declared that Jones be appointed to command the Ranger, sail her to France, and assume command of that much-promised frigate, with the Ranger to serve as consort. The slings and arrows of Hopkins and Hancock were set aside, if not forgotten, and Jones happily returned to Portsmouth.9

  The sloop-of-war that Jones was to command was actually a square-rigged vessel, launched in 1776. She was 97 feet long with a 29-foot beam, displacing 308 tons. To Jones’s dismay he found her “Scarcely half-Rigged” and well behind schedule. The Ranger had black topsides and a broad yellow stripe, her figurehead a tribute to Rogers’s Rangers of the French and Indian War. With her sharp bow and rakish lines, even a farmboy could tell she was built for speed.10

  Jones plunged into both his work and the social life at Portsmouth. He immediately printed a broadside to recruit hands, promising an advance of forty dollars to able seamen and half of that to any adventure-minded landsman. For four long months he begged for both guns and experienced gunners, arguing with John Langdon, the ship’s builder and Congress’s agent, over everything from mast placement to a bosun’s whistle, all the while sending the Marine Committee detailed complaints of his difficulties. He also returned to his favorite grievance, reminding Robert Morris of his place on the Captains List while eliciting the congressman’s support in purchasing property in Virginia. He designed his own coat of arms, and joined his friend Hector McNeill in flirting with the ladies while McNeill was in town with the Boston. In many ways Boston and Portsmouth were no different to Jones, with one exception—in Portsmouth he had a ship to sail to France, and the promise of a frigate for him. Even Jones’s own demons could not deter him now.11

  Unbeknownst to John Paul Jones—or anyone else in America—the naval war was being taken to George III’s backyard, and by the Continental Navy, to boot.

  Gustavus Conyngham and his men were still languishing in the Dunkirk jail in May 1777 when Lambert Wickes embarked on the navy’s most ambitious cruise yet, and with the smallest of ships for a squadron. For months, Wickes had adroitly delayed French government orders to leave France—orders meant to assuage the ever-offended Lord Stormont. He had the approval of Franklin and Deane to do something big, but he needed more than just the Reprisal to do it. The Dolphin was now in Samuel Nicholson’s hands, but Wickes wanted one more ship for company.12

  That problem was solved on April 9, when the Lexington arrived in Bordeaux, bringing three prizes into port. As a bonus, Captain Henry Johnson immediately boarded a coach to Paris, taking with him not only the latest dispatches from Congress but also the blank Continental commissions and letters of marque that Deane craved so desperately.

  The first suggested destination for Wickes and company was the Baltic Sea, which Wickes politely dismissed as too risky: none of his officers knew those waters, and it would be fairly easy to get trapped there. The second suggestion was the Guinea coast, which, while a safer bet, required more water and supplies than the small ships could carry. But the third idea was the charm: a cruise into the Irish Sea.13

  Refitting was carried out at l’Orient, the French naval base on the Bay of Biscay in Brittany. Originally known as Port-Louis, it was well fortified and had been the home base of the French East India Company since the 1600s. Yet before the ships were ready, Wickes’s sailors mutinied. They had served with him since he took command of the Reprisal and sailed from Philadelphia the year before, and fought the British at Turtle Gut Inlet, Martinique, and in European waters—all without pay. Wickes did succeed in getting his men some back pay just as word reached them of Conyngham’s cruise with the Surprise, and his being thrown in jail for his efforts.14

  With orders to report any prize taken as “An American Vessel” to minimize diplomatic problems between France and England, the little squadron departed on May 28. Their crews consisted of Americans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Irishmen, and Scots. After two years of the mighty Royal Navy’s preying on American merchantmen in American waters, three diminutive Continental vessels set off to turn the tables.15

  Wickes intended to clear the Bay of Biscay and make straight for the Irish Sea, but the northwest winds slowed the ships’ progress. Two days later they were forty leagues west of Belle Isle, where they were spotted by the HMS Burford, seventy-four guns, Captain George Bowyer. He took up the chase but was easily outdistanced by the Americans. Bowyer never got within range for his guns, but was able to provide descriptions of the Reprisal (“Her Stern painted Black & Yellow”) and the Lexington (“Square Tuck is painted Yellow . . . Black Sides and yellow Moldings”). While he neglected to mention the Dolphin’s green stern and black top, Bowyer mentioned how all three ships carried new sails, set among the older ones.

  For the next two days the ships encountered the harsh winds and high seas the Bay of Biscay has been forever famous for. The Reprisal and Lexington weathered the storms well, but the Dolphin did not. The storms did show, however, that Sam Nicholson, for all his peccadilloes, was a true mariner. During one gale the Dolphin sprung her mast, but came through thanks to Nicholson’s skillful handling. Although she was a “Foulkestone Cutter”—built by that region’s master shipwrights and carpenters, and highly regarded by the Royal Navy—she was useful as a packet, but that was all. “She is only a pick pocket,” Wickes reported.16

  Thwarted by the winds in his attempt to sail north into the Irish Sea, Wickes decided to enter by the opposite direction. He sent the ships northwest into the North Sea, sailing around Ireland’s west coast with the game Dolphin doing her best to keep up. The ships rounded Cape Clear, the southernmost tip of Ireland, and headed northward, the lookouts ever watchful for signs of British cruisers. They sailed around the island, arriving at the North Channel on June 18, then headed south, with Scotland to port and Ireland to starboard, and the Scottish shipping lanes dead ahead.

  Wickes did not know it, but coming from the north was extremely fortuitous. While British warships patrolled the southern entrance of the Irish Sea, there was no significant naval presence in the north. No one had any idea that the Americans were there. On June 19, they were off the Mull of Kintyre, the tip of a Scottish peninsula. Wickes spread his ships across the channel like three trawlers waiting for the schools of fish to come. Flying false colors, the Americans had no problem sidling up to passing merchantmen, taking them completely unaware. Four ships were seized that day.

  Over the next week, the Americans captured another fourteen ships: everything from a Scottish smuggler to a brig bound for Norway loaded down with “deals”—valuable planks of pine for shipbuilding. Merchantmen from Jamaica were taken, their holds full of the usual West Indies goods of rum and sugar. Three captured colliers were sent to the bottom within eyesight of Dublin. By the time they reached south Ireland, Wickes barely had enough sailors to sail his original three ships for all the hands needed on his prizes, which he ordered to the first French port they could reach.17

  One thing Wickes made sure of was that proper care was given to the captured British sailors. Before departing for France he used one of his prizes as a cartel for exchange. Once ashore, the prisoners told the British press “in the warmest terms of the humane treatment they met from the commander of the Reprisal and Lexington, both of whom endeavoured to make the situation of their prisoners as easy as their unhappy circumstances would permit.”18

  On June 26, the Americans were off the island of Ushant, forty miles west of Brest, one of the main ports in France. Known for its high coasts, Ushant lies at the entrance of the English Channel above the Bay of Biscay and served as a rendezvous point for both the British and the French navies. Just before reaching the island, Wickes’s squadron captured their eighteenth prize, the Frie
ndship, a snow that he placed under Second Mate Henry Lawrence’s command.19

  A sail came into view as they raised the island. To Wickes it looked to be the fitting end of their cruise: a ship that large, sailing alone, had to be an English East Indiaman. He signaled Johnson and Nicholas to stand for her just as some sailors noticed their prey had changed course and was coming straight for them.

  Two hours later, Wickes could see why his prey was so foolhardy—she was the Burford, the ship-of-the-line that had originally pursued them on their departure from Nantes. With every sail available raised to speed her pursuit, the Burford looked to the Americans like a tower of canvas, touching the clouds as she bore down on them. Wickes may have misjudged her identity, but Captain Bowyer immediately recognized her from a month earlier, despite her now flying British colors. The race was on.20

  Wickes ordered the four ships to separate, expecting the Burford to make straight for the Reprisal, the largest of the American ships. He was right. The Lexington easily escaped. As for the Dolphin, Nicholson watched the Burford fly past her without a glance. The courageous moment came from the Friendship. Seeing the giant warship running over the lapping water, ever closer to the Reprisal, Henry Lawrence changed course, cutting suddenly into the Burford’s path in an effort to slow her down. Had his ploy succeeded, Lawrence and his men would have been easily captured; Bowyer later called it “a willing Sacrifice.” But he would not be denied the Reprisal, and shifted the Burford past the Friendship, leaving Lawrence’s gallantry and the other three rebel ships in the Burford’s wake.21

  Farther and farther the two ships flew, with Bowyer gaining by the hour. Wickes sailed due east, edging towards the coast of France. At four p.m. British bow chasers came into play with several shots slamming into the Reprisal’s stern. Wickes ordered his guns overboard so he could pick up speed. As his best sailors manned the sheets and braces, playing with them as subtly as possible to keep the sails full, the gun crews hastily removed the cannons from the breeching rope and tackle that secured them. The men heaved them into the sea, each splash giving the Reprisal less weight and more speed—but not enough.22