Give Me a Fast Ship

by Tim McGrath

  Just then, the skies darkened, the winds blew, and splashes of rain covered the frigate’s deck. Lightning and thunder followed. In seconds, the Randolph belied the cliché that lightning never strikes twice. It struck three times where the Randolph was concerned, splintering the new mainmast despite its lightning rod. Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, Biddle sailed back to Charleston.

  While waiting for the latest repair, Biddle’s officers requested that he remove the French-born Marine Lieutenant de la Falconiere from the ship, being “Most Effectually hated and despised by every one on Board.” Once Biddle learned of his most recent embarrassing act, striking a Continental soldier, his fate was sealed. The Randolph’s repairs complete, a pilot took her over the sandbar and then escorted de la Falconiere back to Charleston. The Randolph headed south.68

  By September 3 she was twenty leagues off St. Augustine, Florida, having sailed through three days of storms, and still possessing her new mainmast. At dusk the lookout cried, “Sail ho!”

  “Where away?” Biddle replied from the quarterdeck. There were five ships, sailing northward, directly ahead of the Randolph. Biddle decided to pursue. He ordered the ship’s lights doused, and told his helmsman to steer by the lantern lights of the five ships, which became easier to see the darker it became. Biddle believed they were merchantmen; if he was wrong, then the Randolph would have to show her heels.

  By dawn the frigate had closed the distance significantly. Peering through his spyglass, Biddle could make out his prey: two ships, two brigs, and one sloop. He ordered his men to battle stations, ran out his guns, raised the Grand Union, and maintained his speedy course. Seeing the Randolph’s ensign, two of the vessels began firing at her—pointless at that distance—while the others clapped on more sail. Biddle’s friend, tall, reed-thin Marine Captain Samuel Shaw, frequently joked about being too skinny for British shot to hit him. Standing next to Biddle on the quarterdeck, he heard a harsh whistling sound fly past him—it was a cannonball, cutting a mizzen shroud right behind him.

  Other shots soon found their mark, but Biddle held his fire. Two jagged splinters struck Midshipman John McPherson in his leg and groin. Biddle sent him below to Surgeon Hore. A squall began blowing; still no order to open fire from Biddle.

  Despite his young years, Biddle possessed as much foresight as courage. Believing the ships more valuable as prizes if undamaged, and realizing he would have to yaw to fire at this point in the chase—and perhaps lose all the ships once he changed course—he continued to withhold the order. He wanted to reach the ships as quickly as possible and then take them whole. Once in their midst, he had one of his little 6-pounders fired. The nearest ship struck her colors. Although the sloop got away, he was soon in possession of the other three.69

  One brig was a Frenchman, captured by the larger British ship. Aware of the efforts to win France over to the American side, Biddle “thought it would be most agreeable to Congress to give her up,” so he freed her officers and men, and sent them on their way. The British ships were laden with West Indies goods, including 702 puncheons of rum for the British army. With prize crews taking most of his men off the Randolph, Biddle sent his prizes to Charleston.

  Few crews in the Revolutionary War were in better humor than these hearties: three days of sailing, three valuable prizes. They were back in Charleston two days later where, to their continued joy, Continental agent John Dorsius immediately prepared the prizes legally for sale, sold them, and converted their prize shares into cash. Their subsequent celebration became the stuff of legend. Decked in the latest finery, the sailors were seen at all hours along the waterfront; newspapers reported them escorting “females ridiculously ornamented with jewelry.” One sailor bought a horse and tack, only to prove as an equestrian that he was one hell of a sailor. The authorities found him dead drunk, carrying his new saddle and bridle. Slurring his words, he explained he “had lost his ship” but “saved his rigging.”70

  News of Biddle’s swift success spread north, where an elated Congress congratulated him and sent new orders to sail for France. Biddle promised he would “be Ready to execute any Orders you may send,” telling Robert Morris: “My Officers have on every Occasion given me the greatest satisfaction.”71

  These weeks ashore gave Biddle time for numerous visits to Archdale Hall, where he resumed his wooing of Elizabeth. By year’s end they were engaged. The dashing young captain had much to look forward to.

  When Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776, it passed by a vote of 12 to 0, with one abstention—New York. It had been a year since that vote, and New York City was now in British hands, the inhumane prison ships in the East River keeping thousands of American sailors in squalor.

  In nearby Poughkeepsie, work continued on the Continental frigates Congress and Montgomery. For more than a year, sawyers, carpenters, and other craftsmen labored between the high hills that acted as nature’s guardians over their work. Both ships were launched in 1776 (the Congress was the last of the original thirteen to slide down the ways). But the high hopes patriotic New Yorkers once held were nonexistent by the fall of ’77. The New York Council of Safety bewailed the lack of cannon and supplies. And as for sailors, “it would be utterly impossible to procure seamen enough to man a single galley,” they reported.72

  By summer’s end the ships were sent downriver to aid in the defense of Forts Montgomery and Clinton. British forces arrived on October 6. With another Redcoat victory assured, New Yorkers burned both frigates.73

  The bright promise envisioned by Bostonians as they watched Captains Manley and McNeill sail their frigates down Nantasket Road had also dimmed long before Manley and the Hancock were captured, due in part to the rancor the two men shared for each other. McNeill reached Boston in August, and with his frigate in poor condition and Manley in a British prison ship, the only people McNeill could fight with were his own officers.

  For weeks, McNeill’s side of the story regarding the loss of the Hancock was the only one heard. Now his officers turned on him, telling the Navy Board in Boston that had McNeill “followed Manley’s orders we might have had not only the Fox, but the Flora and Rainbow.” To add to the navy’s woes in Boston, James Warren informed John Adams in Philadelphia, “[W]e are destitute . . . Sums of Money are now wanted.” By the time Warren’s letter reached Adams, Congress was fleeing Philadelphia, “sums of money” for the navy being the last thing on their minds.74

  Things were just as bleak in Rhode Island, where the frigates Warren and Providence spent the entire year bottled up in Narragansett Bay. The only Continental ship to elude the British blockade was the sloop Providence, under Lieutenant Jonathan Pitcher, in the dead of one late-February night. Her lights doused so as not to be seen and her crew maintaining a deathly silence, the Providence glided so close by a British vessel that the Americans could hear the British watch’s conversations. Once past the blockade, Pitcher headed north and encountered the Lucy, a brig from Cork bound for Quebec. Just as broadsides were exchanged the wind died. The two small ships pounded at each other for two hours, and Pitcher was severely wounded. The battle ended when the Providence’s gunners shot down the Lucy’s mainmast.

  The Providence’s marine lieutenant was John Trevett of the Andrew Doria. Sent across the water to accept the brig’s surrender, Trevett came aboard to a blood-soaked deck so crowded with enemy wounded “you could scarcely find room for your foot.” Their cries gave away their nationality: “Some of them are Irish as they cried out ‘for Jesus sake,’” begging Trevett to spare their lives. The Providence sailed to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where the brave Pitcher turned over command to another of Esek Hopkins’s officers, John Peck Rathbun.75

  The sloop’s new captain quickly resupplied the ship as she was being refitted. Shorthanded, Rathbun sent Trevett to visit the waterfront taverns and brothels to press any non-volunteers. Then he was off, soon prowling the waters off Ne
w York and northern New Jersey. The Providence was off Sandy Hook when four British sails were sighted: one ship, one brig, one schooner, and one sloop. Rathbun made for the ship, the Mary, flying her Pendant Jack and British ensign at the mizzen peak. The other three ships were close by to windward of the coming action.

  Like Jones, Rathbun found the Providence a fast sailer; he was soon on top of the Mary and gave her a broadside, hoping for a quick prize. Instead, he got a fight. The Mary returned fire with a terrible accuracy: shot slammed into the Providence’s starboard quarter, where the sweeps (the long oars used to row the sloop when becalmed) were stored behind the bulwarks. Another round from the ship sliced through the Providence’s rigging. Three sailors were wounded; the sloop’s sailing master, George Sinkens, lay dead on deck.76

  Rathbun kept both his nerve and his wits. He sent the Providence ahead of the four ships, but not to escape. He ordered some hands to repair the rigging, a couple of men to get the wounded below, and others to dump Sinkens’s body overboard. If his men thought they would continue their flight they were mistaken; once the ship’s rigging was repaired enough to sail, Rathbun returned to the fight.

  The sun was setting when the fight recommenced. Again Rathbun made straight for the Mary, convinced that if he could defeat her the other three would surrender as well. To his dismay, those British ships “played their part so well we gave it up”; only the schooner was captured on this long, hard day. Rathbun had fought in the Glasgow battle. If he still had a bad taste in his mouth from it, he cleansed his palate this day.77

  Before returning to New Bedford, the Providence made for the Gulf Stream for a short cruise that included one of the eerier events of the war. The mastheader sighted a ship on the horizon at noon one day, sailing as if the helmsman was asleep or drunk. As the sloop closed in, the Americans could see that she was under full sail, all sheeted home. After midnight, the Providence was close enough to fire warning shots to slow her haphazard course: no reply. Rathbun sent over a boarding party with Trevett in command. Under the nighttime stars, they came alongside her stern.

  Holding his lantern high, Trevett saw her rudder was gone. He hailed the ship once, then twice, with nary a reply. Upon boarding her they found only one inhabitant, a dog. The captain’s cabin was jammed with chests full of ladies’ silk gowns, shoes, and accessories, along with men’s shirts, “all ruffles in the French style.” The hold was in ballast. With no rudder to steer her by, Trevett loaded what goods would fit in the longboat, took the dog, and left the ghost ship. She was put to the torch, burning clear down to the water’s edge. Trevett surmised that “she must have got on Cape Hatteras Shoals, and the crew and passengers abandoned her.” The ship’s secret remained with the dog.78

  In Portsmouth that summer, Thomas Thompson and John Paul Jones were doing everything possible to get their ships ready to sail. Jones had posted a broadside to recruit sailors for the Ranger, and his reputation for captures stood him in good stead. He soon had a strong crew of Massachusetts and New Hampshire men, calling them “the best disposed one in the world.”79

  He was also enjoying Portsmouth social life, taking a room at the home of Sarah Purcell, a sea captain’s wife and the niece of Benning Wentworth, the old royal governor of New Hampshire. She introduced Jones to the “right people” in town. He cut a dashing figure in his personally designed, pseudo–Royal Navy uniform of blue and white. He also developed a flirtatious relationship with the daughter of John Wendell, a local merchant whose son, David, entered aboard the Ranger as a midshipman.80

  Jones had also made a new friend, Continental Army major John Gizzard Frazer, who wanted to sail to France with Jones and hoped to bring with him his field beds, two Windsor chairs, one case of Jamaica rum, a backgammon table, and a young girl with whom he was infatuated.

  What Jones did not have was a good relationship with local navy power brokers. He did not like John Langdon, the Ranger’s builder. He believed Langdon was paying more attention—and providing better matériel—to the privateers in which he had ownership interests. A good captain takes keen interest in his ship under construction, and Jones paid particular attention to the Ranger’s completion, something Langdon did not like at all. “He thinks himself my master,” Jones carped to John Brown, Robert Morris’s able assistant. Langdon was as disdainful of Jones’s meddling as John Bradford was in Boston. Bradford’s opinion of Jones was shared by Langdon and many a New Englander: “He does not improve on acquaintance.”81

  Langdon got the last move in their stormy association with the appointment of Jones’s officers. He and Congressman William Whipple, working in partnership, palmed off two men guaranteed to give Jones fits. First Lieutenant Thomas Simpson, Langdon’s brother-in-law, and Second Lieutenant Elijah Hall, although seasoned merchant officers, had not served on a ship of war. Neither was a patch on John Rathbun. Jones had better luck with his marine captain, Mathew Parke, and surgeon Ezra Green; their sense of duty outweighed any misgivings about serving under a non–New Englander.82

  As a native New Englander, Thomas Thompson had no parochial problems; his challenges were mathematical. The Raleigh was pierced for thirty-two guns; Thompson despaired of getting any. By summertime he had just six. The Marine Committee came up with a novel, if risky, solution, ordering Thompson to sail to France and get his guns there. If he actually made it to France, he was to temper his desperate situation with Yankee parsimony, and not pay top dollar for even one cannon. Congress believed that in addition to courage and leadership, “Frugality is an absolutely necessary [quality] in all men that are connected with the American Revenue.” For company, Thompson was given Elijah Hinman and the Alfred.

  Thompson did not have enough hands to man his frigate until August 22, when the two ships at last sailed down the Piscataqua, leaving Jones and the unfinished Ranger behind. They were embarking on one of the more intriguing voyages of the war.83

  The Raleigh and the Alfred were three days at sea when they captured a schooner bound for Halifax whose meager stores in the hold did include contraband as yet untaken by the Continental Navy: $4,390 in counterfeit American money. “I shall commit to the flames,” Thompson later reported, “after saving a Sample.” On September 2 the Americans captured the Nanny, a snow from the West Indies; she was part of the Windward Islands fleet, under escort by Commodore William C. Finch of the Camel, along with the warships Druid, Weazel, and Grasshopper. Among the captured captain’s personal effects were Finch’s signals for the fleet. Thompson sent the Nanny to Portsmouth. He and Hinman would follow the fleet.84

  Few ships afloat could match the breathtaking sailing abilities of the Raleigh. The Alfred could not keep up with her. Thompson described his mood as “vexed” over the Alfred’s plodding, unaware that Hinman was equally vexed over Thompson’s unwillingness for them to sail together. The Raleigh would speed along, her bow slicing through the water, only to slow to a crawl to wait for the Alfred. The two ships headed east, the beautiful, fast frigate and the slow, dowdy ex-merchantman, in joint pursuit of a huge fleet, convoyed by four well-armed enemy ships.

  On the afternoon of September 3 they found them, sailing through a hard, driving rain: no less than sixty sails, with the nearest escort being the sloop Druid, Captain Peter Carteret. Thompson wanted to make a joint attack, but the contrary winds and the Alfred’s sluggishness prevented that. With six cannon mounted behind thirty-two gun ports, the Raleigh stood into the fleet alone.

  Taking the captured signal book, Thompson dispatched a false message to the fleet that the Raleigh was just another British frigate, sending her gliding past the unsuspecting merchantmen until she came alongside the Druid. Then Thompson ran up his country’s colors, ordered all three of his port guns run out, and hailed Carteret “to Strike to the Honour of the Congresses Colours.” Thompson’s three port guns fired a broadside as deadly as if they had been a full complement, wounding Carteret in the thigh and killing his sailing master. Li
eutenant John Bouchier took command, and immediately signaled for assistance. The Camel changed course, fighting the same winds as the Alfred, but from the opposite direction.

  Had the Raleigh been fully armed, the battle would have been over in minutes, but the frigate’s firepower was barely equal to the Druid’s. Young Bouchier rose to the grim occasion, both in fighting and in sailing. Try as he might, Thompson could not “cross the T” to rake the Druid. Bouchier continually edged to leeward, thereby keeping the Raleigh on the sloop’s bow, firing her guns at the frigate all the while. Thompson ordered his gunners to switch from round shot to grape. For another half hour, under nearly blinding rain, the two ships continued trying to outmaneuver each other while the Camel and the other British warships closed in.

  Thompson realized this was too much for the Raleigh to take on. He sheered off and returned to the Alfred while Finch set off to round up his dispersed charges. Bouchier sent his battle-weary men to repair his ship’s shredded rigging and man the pumps: the Druid took in ten feet of water over the next twenty-four hours. The morning after the battle with the Raleigh, Carteret died of his wound. He was one of nine fatalities aboard; the Druid had paid a high price for not surrendering to the honor of Congress’s flag.85

  Thompson believed that if the Alfred had been able to come up, the Americans could have bagged the whole fleet. For days the two ships nipped at Finch’s heels, then gave up and made for France. “O! for another good ship,” Thompson wailed in a letter to John Langdon. Hinman was embarrassed that the Alfred could not come to the Raleigh’s aid in the fight. On their return voyage home, the tables would be reversed.86