by Tim McGrath
Jones also received new orders, vague in their objectives but specifically naming him commander of the Ranger. The orders were signed by Franklin and Deane. Lee would not sign them—the first indication that something was amiss with the third commissioner. Jones arrived in Nantes with funds from Chaumont to refit his ship, only to be greeted by surly officers and men. The former presented their captain with a petition requesting the removal of Marine Captain Mathew Parke from the ship. Their official reason was that “no Captain of marines is allow’d to any Ship or Vessell, under twenty Guns.” The real reason was money: Parke’s mere presence cut into their prize shares. To everyone’s surprise—especially Parke’s—Jones acquiesced “for the Harmony of the Service,” finding Parke a berth aboard the Deane.13
The Ranger was ready to sail when Jones learned that Howe’s ships in Philadelphia were unsupported by any cruisers guarding the Delaware Capes. It occurred to Jones that a dozen French ships-of-the-line and a few frigates could cross the Atlantic, sail up the Delaware, and not only trap the British warships in Philadelphia, but also retake Philadelphia and, with the help of Washington’s army, bag Howe’s forces. He shared his plan with the commissioners. “Whoever can surprise well must Conquer,” he concluded. When his letter arrived at Passy, Silas Deane broke the wax seal, read it, and pitched Jones’s plan to the French Court as his own brilliant idea. If good politicians, like good poets, borrow, great politicians, like great poets, steal. Deane was already on his way out of France under suspicion of embezzlement. King Louis loved the idea, ordering d’Estaing to get his fleet ready and presenting Deane with a “portrait of his majesty on a gold box set with diamonds.” It was months before d’Estaing sailed. Three years later, a different French fleet would do exactly what Jones suggested, bottling up Cornwallis at Yorktown.14
The sun was shining and the breezes favorable on February 13, when the Ranger stood down the Loire for Quiberon Bay, the wind filling her new sails and speeding her along (her old sails from Portsmouth were sold to a bakery for bread bags). On Saturday, February 14, the Ranger accompanied the Continental sloop Independence out to sea, but not before passing a French admiral and his squadron. Jones ordered the American ships to fire thirteen-gun salutes; the admiral replied with nine. Jones was not pleased with the number, but his flag, one of the first “Stars and Stripes” flown above a Continental ship, had been saluted.15
Outside Philadelphia, the seamstress of the Ranger’s flag was desperately trying to hold her world together.
After the American defeat at Brandywine, Sarah Barry bade farewell to her husband, John, as he sailed his frigate, the Effingham, up the Delaware. Leaving her Loyalist brother, William Austin, in town, Sarah took her pregnant half sister Christiana Keen and Christiana’s seven children to the Austin summer home in nearby Reading. While her husband was fighting with Francis Hopkinson, Sarah assisted Christiana in delivering her eighth child.16
John Barry arrived in Reading shortly before Christmas after paying a call to General Washington at Valley Forge. As the general’s aides were setting up his headquarters, Barry presented his plan to harass the British below Philadelphia using the navy’s barges in Bordentown. Once Washington approved, Barry headed to Reading, expecting a sympathetic ear from his bride about his troubles with Francis Hopkinson. He did not get it.17
Shortly after giving birth that fall, Christiana Keen died, leaving Sarah with the burden of tending to eight children while their father was assisting her brother William with his Tory assignments in Philadelphia. Word got out regarding their undertakings, and the Pennsylvania Assembly charged both men with treason, confiscating their estates. They wanted Sarah and the children out of the house. To make matters worse, Barry received notification from Congress to appear before them and answer Hopkinson’s charges of insubordination.18
His career hanging in the balance, Barry rode off to York after New Year’s, determined to vindicate himself. He soon learned that he had help: John Brown, an old friend and Robert Morris’s assistant. A lawyer, Brown helped Barry draft his rebuttal to Hopkinson’s well-worded complaint. Morris was busy behind the scenes as well—he had no desire to see a man of Barry’s caliber lost to the Cause as a result of Hopkinson’s superciliousness.19
In Bordentown, Hopkinson was also reviewing schemes to aggravate the British in Philadelphia. He supported two plans of the French major de Fleury, one of Fort Mifflin’s heroes, to send twelve fireships downriver, but this scheme did not pass a test run. De Fleury also sought volunteers to take shirts packed with sulfur across the frozen Delaware and set them afire once close enough to the Roebuck or her consorts. No volunteers came forward. One plan Hopkinson loved came from the fertile mind of David Bushnell, whose submarine the Turtle was tested in New York harbor. Bushnell wanted to float underwater mines, buoyed by kegs, down the Delaware. The kegs were sent downriver. Not a British warship was hit. However, the attempt was not a total failure; Hopkinson did write a humorous poem, “The Battle of the Kegs,” about this misadventure.20
On January 29, Congress debated Barry’s case, and the motion was made to remove him. The vote ended in a tie, meaning, as only Congress could say, “it passed in the negative.” The tally was barely finished when the Marine Committee approved Barry’s plan, sending him posthaste to Bordentown to get his barges in the water, taking what sailors were willing to volunteer for such a risky mission. To Barry’s bemusement, Hopkinson was ordered to give Barry whatever the captain needed to get under way.21
Barry returned to Bordentown to find that only two of the barges were serviceable. And while he quickly had three junior officers volunteer (including Luke Matthewman from their Lexington days), only two dozen sailors stepped forward. It had been a bitter winter from the onset, and the men were poorly clad for such a mission on the icy Delaware. Barry found fifteen volunteers from the army detachment Washington had given John Hazelwood months earlier. In Bordentown, Hazelwood told Barry that four of the Pennsylvania Navy’s row galleys had been taken overland for just such a mission. Barry would take his barges by the usual route.22
On a moonless night in mid-February, two barges with muffled oars rowed past occupied Philadelphia, keeping to the Jersey side of the Delaware, with their single gun placed at the bow and loaded. The Americans could make out the sentries under the streetlights along the waterfront and their counterparts standing guard on the Roebuck and other warships. By dawn they were in one of the streams near Wilmington, Delaware.23
Once in Wilmington, Barry sought out Brigadier General William Smallwood, commander of the Continental Army forces there. A week later, they had company: the four Pennsylvania Navy barges along with three hundred soldiers from Valley Forge under Brigadier General Anthony Wayne. Washington had ordered Wayne to cross the Delaware to New Jersey, where he was to purchase, confiscate, or requisition all the cattle he could find and bring them back to Valley Forge. It was Wayne’s first mission since his men had been attacked in the Paoli Massacre, where dozens of Americans had been bayoneted to death. This was Wayne’s chance for vindication, just as it was Barry’s. With no British ships this far below Philadelphia to spot them, the barges crossed in broad daylight on February 19.24
Four days later, Wayne had several hundred head of cattle. All he had to do was figure out how to get them to Pennsylvania. The British had learned through spies about the roundup, but Barry’s attempt at loading the cattle into the barges did not go well—not even Noah could have succeeded. Knowing that the British would be looking to intercept them somewhere, Barry and Wayne decided to split up: Wayne took the cattle north, to cross the river above Philadelphia, while Barry took his barges south, making stops at each creek to burn every haystack he could find, hopefully drawing the British forces toward him.25
The deception worked. Aboard the Roebuck, Andrew Snape Hamond saw the growing pillars of fire through his spyglass and sent boatloads of Redcoats across the Delaware to catch the hay burners. Aft
er a second day of their bluff, Barry’s men narrowly escaped in the dead of night, reaching Port Penn, a small fishing village on the Delaware shore near Reedy Island. Wayne brought his beef-on-the-hoof safely into Valley Forge. He and Barry would remain friends for the rest of their lives.26
Ice covered the Delaware for a week, but thawed by March 7. That day, a lookout Barry posted at the southern tip of the island made out two transports heading upriver in the fog, followed by an armed schooner. Barry’s men were lodged in the homes of sympathetic villagers; the shrill cry of a bosun’s whistle let them know they were wanted at the dock.
The transports were just abreast of Reedy Island when Barry’s barges burst out of the mist, their bow guns loaded, each man armed to the teeth. Within minutes they had taken the transports, the Kitty and the Mermaid, both loaded with hay for the British dragoons in Philadelphia. Barry sent the transports and barges straight at the schooner. She was well armed, and more than fully manned, but she struck her colors instantly. Barry’s boarding party found her carrying thirty-three sailors, a host of mechanics, and the reason for her quick surrender: three officers’ wives were aboard.
She was the Alert, carrying “eight Double fortified four-pounders and twelve four pound howitzers”—the ideal ship, in Barry’s estimation, to carry out further depredations against the British. To his continued delight, an American sailor came up the hatchway to tell him the pantry contained a large cheese and a jar of pickled oysters. The captain’s cabin held the private papers of Lieutenant General Baron Wilhelm von Knyphausen, commander of the Hessians, and those of chief engineer John Montresor, while her hold was full of Montresor’s engineering tools. Barry could not believe his good fortune. He sent the officers’ wives under escort to Philadelphia with Knyphausen’s and Montresor’s correspondence, making arrangements for Montresor’s tools to be sent overland to Valley Forge. He had something special planned for the cheese and oysters.27
The next day, the lookout sighted several sail approaching—fighting sail, to be exact. Barry’s three prizes were part of a convoy that had sailed ahead of their escorts. The captain in charge of the convoy was heading upriver with his squadron of four ships—one frigate, two sloops, and his own two-decker, the fifty-gun Experiment. Sir James Wallace was not happy to have lost his three charges the day before, and he wanted them back.
Wallace had not changed at all since his days aboard the Rose; punishing rebels and their ships was his job, and he was good enough to be knighted for it. The Loyalist pilot bringing him upriver gave him the bearings of Reedy Island—that the water between the island and Port Penn was excessively shallow at low tide, and also ran shallow north and east of the island. Wallace was ruthless, but also thorough, and he planned his attack accordingly. He would attack Reedy Island the next day.28
Wallace’s opponent also possessed that combination of aggression and prudence. Leaving the hay on board, Barry moved the 4-pounders from the transports, placing them on the Port Penn docks behind some makeshift breastworks. The Alert was anchored northeast of them, ready for Barry’s getaway. By dusk, the winds began blowing from the northeast—a storm was coming. Everything was prepared to greet Wallace’s entourage.29
A genuine nor’easter came howling in on the afternoon of March 9. Wallace was delaying his attack for high tide; Barry was in the Alert’s cabin, calmly penning correspondence. He had already requested that Congress purchase the Alert, “a most Excellent Vessel for our purpose.” Now he took quill in hand to write Washington:
Tis with the Greatest Satisfaction Imaginable I inform you of Capturing two Ships and a Schooner of the Enemy . . . [There] are a number of Engineering tools . . . by the Bearer Mr. John Chelten have Sent You a Cheese together with a Jar of Pickled Oysters which Crave Your Acceptance.30
British cannon fire interrupted his thoughts. Hastily concluding his letter, he gave it to Mr. Chelten for delivery, and stepped out into the storm.
With the tide running high, Wallace put his chess pieces in play, sending the frigate and sloops up the west side of Reedy Island. He had commandeered another sloop, sending her around the island to head off any possible retreat. Wallace had read Barry’s mind well: knowing that the Alert was Barry’s best chance of escape, he sailed the Experiment straight upriver, her long 18-pounders easily able to fire over the island to Port Penn and the captured ships. If Barry fled north in the Alert, Wallace would be waiting for him.
Stiff winds blew sleet and snow without prejudice on Englishman and American alike, as Barry’s men fired the small 4-pounders back at the British ships. Seeing the fight going against him, Barry ordered the Kitty and Mermaid burnt—an easy enough task despite the storm, with all that hay on board. Then he sent his men to their assigned vessels. While some sailors hastily made sail with the Alert, others took the barges and rowed north, then east. Barry hoped the enemy would chase him, allowing the barges to reach New Jersey.31
Watching the Alert make her escape, Wallace ordered his gunners to open fire. There was a deafening roar from the Experiment’s long guns and a harsh whistling noise as the cannonballs flew over Reedy Island before splashing precariously close to the Alert. Some of Barry’s men panicked and ran to the longboat. Barry left his spot by the ship’s wheel, physically stopping them from flight.
Soon the British gunners were finding their targets, splintering the Alert’s stern just as she had reached the shallows north of the island. Barry turned to see that the barges were escaping to New Jersey. If Wallace had been correct in guessing Barry’s plan, Barry also guessed right: Wallace was coming for him. Having “maintained an obstinate fight” for more than two hours, Barry sent the Alert into the shallows, running her aground. After he ordered “Abandon ship!” his men manned the longboat, rowing to the Delaware shore and safety as the last British barrage soared over their heads.32
Good news was hard to come by in March of 1778, and the Pennsylvania Gazette’s report that “Captain Barry has distinguished himself exceedingly on the river” soon spread to New England and down to the Carolinas. But the best praise of all came from Washington himself, congratulating Barry “on the Success that has crowned your Gallantry” and “the degree of Glory which you have acquired”—and thanking him for the oysters.33
Barry hoped to repeat his success, but Andrew Snape Hamond put a stop to that idea. British ships and barges patrolled the river daily for the next two months, capturing the sailors who escaped from Wallace’s clutches on March 9, and making any further attempts at interrupting British shipping impossible. By May 8, General Howe had turned the British army over to Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton. Certain that America’s French allies were sending at least one fleet across the Atlantic, Clinton did not want to be caught in Philadelphia (Jones had the right idea). On this day, he sent troops up to White Hill and Bordentown to destroy the Continental Navy supplies remaining there.
The Redcoats not only burned the stores, spiked the cannons, and put the carcasses of fifty-four ships (including the half-sunk Effingham) to the torch, but they almost captured Barry as well. He had stopped at White Hill en route to Reading, and was staying as a guest of Captain Read’s wife—Read had gone to Baltimore to take command of a Continental brig—when a detachment of British troops came to her front door. She went to warn Barry and found him shaving. As he dressed and headed out the back door, Mrs. Read politely received the soldiers at the front, informing them that Barry was no longer there. She was serving them rum and breakfast as Barry saddled his horse and galloped off to Sarah.34
Admiral Howe’s fleet soon departed Philadelphia The transports that brought his brother’s troops to Philadelphia had new passengers: the many Philadelphia Loyalists, including William Austin, who were now exiles.35
Wallace, who viewed his encounter with Barry as a blot on his record, was soon cruising with the Experiment off Boston. Fate, and the Marine Committee, would send Barry there shortly.36
One representative who missed the Barry-Hopkinson imbroglio was the navy’s foremost champion in Congress. John Adams had gone home to Braintree, Massachusetts, in November 1777, hoping to return to his law practice and reacquaint himself with his young family.
But Congress had other ideas, selecting Adams to replace Silas Deane in France. It seemed an odd decision, since Adams was not known for tact or sensitivity. Now he was being sent to that diplomatic minefield, the court of Louis XVI, just as Benjamin Franklin was doing his utmost to cement an alliance “the French Way”—acting on the surface as if that did not matter at all.
Adams was trying a case when Congress’s dispatch reached his home. Abigail read it first. As nightmarish as a midwinter Atlantic crossing was, that must have seemed becalmed in Adams’s mind when he confronted the storm awaiting him at home that evening. Abigail had already noted that these were “times that tried women’s souls as well as men’s.”37
Congress wanted the frigate Boston to take Adams to France. By this time Hector McNeill had been replaced by Samuel Tucker, another Marblehead veteran of “Washington’s Navy.” The Eastern Navy Board ordered Tucker to keep Adams safe, but feel free to take or destroy enemy ships—and make sure, for God’s sake, to conceal his guns once in French waters.38
On Friday, February 13, Tucker dined with Adams and his ten-year-old son, John Quincy, before boarding the Boston’s barge in Quincy Bay (there were too many spies in Boston to board the frigate there). The water was churning and the winds strong—but thanks to “a Quantity of Hay in the Bottom of the Boat, and good Watch Coats,” the two future presidents boarded the Boston “tolerably warm and dry,” a phrase he would not use again for the rest of the voyage.39
