Give Me a Fast Ship

by Tim McGrath

  While young John found two boys of similar age on board (the sons of William Vernon of the Navy Board and Silas Deane), his father made friends with Tucker, First Lieutenant William Barron of Virginia, and Ship’s Surgeon Nicholas Nöel, one of thirty-six Frenchmen aboard. Adams saw Barron as the epitome of an American naval officer, possessing “Qualities much needed in our Navy.” He had also seen Tucker’s orders, calling for the captain to consult with Adams on practically everything.40

  Four days of howling winds and blinding snow kept the Boston in Quincy Bay, much to Adams’s consternation. While he found Tucker “an able Seaman, and a brave, active vigilant officer,” he questioned both Tucker’s intelligence and judgment, wondering why he did not put to sea, or why the crew—mostly landsmen—were not being exercised at the guns, unaware that gunnery practice at anchor and in a snowstorm was pointless.

  All this time, Tucker was besieged by “Mothers, Wives, [and] Sisters” who came on board, begging for leave for their “Sons, Husbands, and brothers.” Tucker wisely refused most requests; when he fired a gun signaling his absent officers to return to ship, none of them showed up, forcing him to send the marines for them.41

  Once the Boston set sail under sunny skies on the seventeenth, Adams became deathly seasick, keeping him temporarily out of Tucker’s hair. The frigate eluded two British cruisers, taking advantage of a “Prosperous gale WNW” that sent her flying over the Atlantic and escaping their clutches.42

  Ever the documenter, Adams entered in his diary thoughts on seasickness, taking into account not just the rolling seas but the ship’s condition as well:

  The Mal de Mer, Seems to be merely the Effect of Agitation. The Smoke and Smell of Seacoal, the Smell of Stagnant, putrid Water, the Smell of the Ship where the Sailors lay, or any other offensive Smell, will increase the Qualminess, but do not occasion it.43

  On February 22 the Boston sailed into a tumultuous storm. Winds shredded canvas while mountainous green waves washed over the ship, running down the covered hatches and forcing Tucker to man the pumps constantly. Minute by exacting minute, Tucker sailed under “bare poles,” all the while expecting to be dismasted. His fears were nearly realized when lightning struck down the mainmast, injuring several men, and another bolt struck a shipmate in the head, leaving a hole the size of a large coin. The man was raving mad for three days before he died. “Pray God Protect Us and Cary us through our Various troubles,” Tucker wrote in his journal. The storm dogged the Boston for two full days.44

  One week later, Adams made a telling entry in his diary, bemoaning the landsman’s lot at sea, the politician’s shock at waste, and the puritan’s abhorrence of everything un-puritan:

  As the main Deck was almost constantly under Water . . . We were obliged to keep the Hat[ch]ways down—Wherby the Air became So hot and dry in the ’Tween decks . . . I could not breathe, or live there . . .

  The Boston is over metalled,—Her Number of Guns and the Weight . . . is too great for her Tonnage . . . There is the Same general Inattention, I find on Board the Navy to Economy that there is in the Army . . .

  There is the same Inattention to the Cleanliness of the Ship and the Persons & Health of the Sailors . . . The practice of Cursing and Swearing, So Silly as well as detestable . . . it is indulged and connived at by the officers . . . there is no Kind of Check against it.45

  Tucker never had to wonder what was on Adams’s mind. “I am Constantly giving Hints to the Captain,” he wrote. When Tucker ordered the hammocks aired and the ship cleaned—commonsense chores that every captain saw as routine—Adams decided it was done “in Pursuance of Advice I gave him.” Poor Tucker! Nöel busied himself teaching John Quincy French; Tucker may have wished it was a family lesson. But his ship was in the midst of a fairly smart passage, off the Grand Banks by early March. Adams was disconcerted by another idiosyncrasy of the crew: superstition. “They Say the Ship has been So unfortunate that they really believe there is Some Woman on board.” After all, Adams added, “Women are the unluckiest Creatures in the World at Sea.” Adams, for the most part, remained nauseous and bored.46

  Eventually he adjusted to the rolling deck and soon enjoyed those days where a “fine easy Breeze” lulled him to a slumber “as quietly and as Soundly as in my own Bed at home.” On March 6, Adams found the Boston “all in an uproar with laughter” as the landsmen were subjected to a rite of hazing. This “Frolick” involved two dozen raw hands, bound together and soaked to the skin, all done “to conjure up a Prize.” The next day Tucker was all business, assembling all hands to hear the Articles of War (that Adams had written in 1775), followed by gunnery practice. “They seemed tolerably expert,” Adams marveled. Switching moods again, Tucker ordered a “Dance, upon the Main Deck.” Adams and his son watched as “all Hands, Negroes, Boys and Men were obliged to dance,” followed by another hazing where “the Men were powdered over, with Flour, and wet again to the Skin.” Adams did not know if this was “to wash away vermin” or not; on the whole, the somewhat repressed congressman felt it “a humour of the coarsest Kind.”47

  There was little humor aboard the Boston on March 11, when the mastheader sighted a sail flying British colors. In obedience to his orders, Tucker sought Adams’s permission to give chase. He got it. As they bore down, Tucker made her out to be a privateer or well-armed merchantman looking for action. Seeing her guns run out, Tucker ordered Adams to take the boys below. Adams refused, telling Tucker he “would Chuse to Stand the Deck.”

  Tucker fired a warning shot, hoping the smaller ship would strike, but by coming straight at his foe he prevented his opponent from making out the number of the Boston’s guns. The privateer returned fire, her shots cutting into the Boston’s rigging and carrying away her mizzen yard while another cannonball whizzed over Adams’s head. Tucker did not return fire, telling his men “he wanted the Egg without breaking the Shell.” Seconds later, his opponent realized he was engaging a ship of superior force, and “did not think himself able to get his colours down soon enough.”48

  The fight over, Tucker noticed someone standing by his marines, musket in hand. It was Adams. “I ought to do my share of the fighting,” he told Tucker, who would ever after praise Adams for his courage.49

  Tucker’s prize was a good one: the letter of marque Martha, bound from London to New York with more than £80,000 of goods in her hold. Tucker turned her over to Hezekiah Welch, one of the oldest lieutenants in the navy. After Adams handed Welch a letter for the Navy Board assuring them that Adams was safe, Tucker sent the Martha to Boston. She was recaptured en route.50

  The upbeat mood aboard the Boston came to an abrupt end three days later. Another ship was sighted, and Tucker ordered Lieutenant Barron to fire a signal gun. It blew up as it fired, shattering Barron’s right leg. Adams and Tucker carried the young man below, where Surgeon Nöel amputated the leg “in a Masterly manner” while Adams held him down. Barron spent several days in writhing agony. Before he died, a heartsick Adams promised to insist that the government care for his children. Barron was buried at sea, in a chest weighted down with the fragments of the very gun that had killed him.51

  The Boston plowed northward to Bordeaux, where she passed the Tower of Cordouan and anchored in the Gironde River on April 1. Tucker and Adams enjoyed an elegant nine-course dinner aboard a merchantman bound for Santo Domingo. The Boston served as a great conversation piece, the foreigners marveling at her beautiful lines. “One would think they never saw a ship before,” Tucker later wrote, adding playfully, “but it is all on account of being a Boston frigate.”

  By the time Adams and his young charges were ashore he was convinced that Tucker was “as sociable as any Marblehead man”—quite a compliment from a resident of nearby Braintree. For all the details in Adams’s diary about the voyage, it was his son who best summed up the six-week odyssey: “I hope I shall never forget the goodness of God in preserving us through all the dangers we have been ex
posed to.” Before departing for Paris, Adams learned that Franklin had been received by King Louis “in great Pomp” and the alliance signed, and all of France “expect War, every Moment.”52

  Heading to Bordeaux, the Boston sailed past the coast of Portugal, completely unaware that Gustavus Conyngham, the American whom George III detested most, was using that neutral country as a base for his continued mischief against British shipping as well as His Majesty’s nervous system.

  By the end of 1777, the warm welcome Conyngham had first received in Spain was wearing thin. Unlike France, Spain took her neutrality seriously, and once British officials got wind of Conyngham’s presence they besieged the Spanish government with protests. When the governor of El Ferrol sent Conyngham away in October, he returned to La Coruña, capturing four more prizes on the way, including a British transport, the Two Brothers. Her captain, Nicholas Kelly, swore the ship was actually the St. John Evangelist, out of Portugal. Conyngham kept poking holes in Kelly’s story until a Spanish hand of Kelly’s told the Americans to search the ballast, where Kelly’s British colors were found. From La Coruña, Herman Katencamp, the British consul, raged that “this Pirate” Conyngham was sailing the Revenge out of Spain wherever and whenever he pleased.53

  However, the Conde de Floridablanca, the Spanish minister of state, was not as cowed by British threats. He assured Lord Grantham, England’s minister to Spain, that the Two Brothers/St. John Evangelist was not being sold per Conyngham’s request but merely disarmed and riding at anchor in La Coruña—for the present. Then he protested “the Insults which the Spanish Flag suffers in the American Seas” as well as the seizure and inspection of Spanish ships right under the guns of Spanish forts. As long as Conyngham was only pulling the British lion’s tail, he was tolerated, if not welcome, in Spain.54

  Conyngham was also assisted by two Spanish merchant firms that had long done business with their American counterparts. They quietly sold Conyngham’s prizes, allowing him to pay his men, refit the Revenge, and send funds to the American commissioners in Paris to buy munitions and supplies for Washington’s army.55

  Conyngham’s tenuous relationship with the Spaniards looked to be at an end in December, when the Revenge left La Coruña and sailed east to Bilbao. Cruising near St. Sebastián on the twenty-first, she overtook the brig Gracieux, heading from London to Spain with her hold packed tight with woolen goods, all made in Britain. The only problem was that both the ship and her crew were French. The British merchants who owned the goods had placed them in a “neutral bottom” out of fear that a British merchantman carrying them would be captured by “the Pirate Conyngham.”

  Throughout the war, British cruisers had plundered neutral ships to seize any American goods they carried, so Conyngham saw no issue in returning the favor. As the Gracieux rocked atop the water, Conyngham and her commander dickered over the American’s action. When he offered to sail the brig to Nantes as an American prize, Conyngham insisted that the Gracieux sail to Bilbao. As she was poorly manned—only seven hands—Conyngham put a prize crew aboard and sent her to his new base of operations.56

  While Conyngham’s agents were thrilled—the “valuable Bale goods” would sell quickly and at a good price—the seizure of the brig was a diplomatic catastrophe for both Conyngham and the commissioners in Paris. The paranoid Arthur Lee, whose dislike of Deane extended to Deane favorites, particularly Conyngham, chastised him. Conyngham had given “great Offence to our [French] friends, and should be desisted in the future.” Deane, ironically, was even angrier: “Your idea that you are at Liberty to seize English Property, on board of French or other Neutral Vessels is wrong.” Deane pointed out that “every such Adventure gives our Enemies an Advantage against us by representing us as Persons who regard not the Laws of Nations.” As to Conyngham’s claim to the Gracieux, Deane was clear: drop it.57

  The harshest fury did not come from the commissioners, the French, or even the British—it came from the Spanish. Once the Gracieux reached St. Sebastián, Conyngham’s men were thrown in jail and Spanish officials confiscated the brig. Leaving the Ranger in Bilbao, Conyngham headed to St. Sebastián to get both his men and his prize released. For weeks he argued and pleaded his case with anyone who might help him. Even his old ally William Hodge, recently freed from the Bastille and sent to Bilbao to assist Conyngham, could not change the Spanish government’s decision. The Conde de Floridablanca guaranteed the British that Conyngham “is not permitted to enter any of the ports of the Kingdom [of Spain], after it was perceived that he wished to abuse them.” The Spanish also seized funds being held from the sale of Conyngham’s prizes.58

  All this would have taken the wind out of any captain’s sails, but not Conyngham’s. He apologized to Deane that l’Affaire Gracieux did so much diplomatic damage, adding that he “would Drop the claime as you have Requested.” But he let fly at Lee, first for calling the Revenge a ship instead of a cutter, then regarding the Gracieux. If the Royal Navy could confiscate American goods out of neutral holds, the Continental Navy should do the same. “Have we not a right to retaliate?” Conyngham pointedly asked.59

  The answer was no.

  By March 1778, Conyngham had more pressing problems. In 1777 he had arrived in Spain with a polyglot crew of a hundred Americans, Frenchmen, and Spaniards. Now he had considerably fewer, a situation that forced him to recruit prisoners to adequately man the Revenge. He wrote a forlorn letter to his old first mate, John Beach, now in France: “Since I left you I have nothing but trouble from one thing to Another.” Conyngham departed Bilbao on March 6, with fifty-seven men including William Hodge, ostensibly to sail for Martinique.60

  Once at sea, he picked up where he had left off, capturing three British merchantmen, their holds laden with fruit. He dispatched the ships to Massachusetts; then, with an eye to padding his muster rolls, he set the captured officers ashore at Madeira (west of the Barbary Coast of Africa) while offering freedom to their sailors—as long as they joined the Revenge. Most did. Conyngham now headed to Gibraltar, to see what mischief could be found there.61

  On March 20, the Revenge captured and burned a tender of the British frigate Enterprize. The next day, the Enterprize sailed over the horizon, hell-bent on taking the rebel cutter. Conyngham was about to take her on a wild-goose chase when the wind died. “Man the sweeps!” he ordered, and the Revenge was rowed to safety, the becalmed frigate unable to follow. Three days later another sail was spied as the sun set. She was coming fast, her guns run out. Taking her for a privateer, Conyngham let her come, instructing his gun crews to load their weapons but keep the gun ports closed. His pursuer believed the Revenge would be easy pickings; as the privateer closed in, he ordered a warning shot fired as the ship came abreast of the Revenge. “Run out your guns,” Conyngham cried, then “Fire!” and the cutter’s broadside took down the privateer’s captain and one of the ship’s boys. After a second broadside, the privateer, named Hope, struck her colors (she was later retaken by the Enterprize).

  Conyngham put into Cádiz, the nearest Spanish port just above Gibraltar, for cleaning and refitting. Any thought that the Spanish would turn away the Revenge was settled right before the enemy’s eyes. As British consul Joseph Hardy watched aghast from the waterfront, as did the captain of HMS Monarch from his quarterdeck, Conyngham “came swaggering in with his thirteen stripes, saluted the Spanish admiral, had it returned.” When the Spanish dockhands began carrying freshwater, fruit, and other provisions aboard to “an Outlawed Smuggler” just two cable lengths away, it became too much for them to behold: the Monarch’s captain longed for the day when a British fleet would “chastise our natural and insolent enemies.”62

  As in northern Spanish ports, Conyngham received assistance in refitting the Revenge from sympathetic merchants who had American connections. One day, a Frenchman informed Conyngham that the British planned to set the Revenge on fire. The French consul, now an official ally, offered assistance, and the S
panish admiral offered the protection of a ship-of-the-line. Conyngham, not wanting his crew to be involved in another international incident, declined any help. That night a longboat carrying a gang of British tars with torches came near, only to find more than enough well-armed and menacing men from the Revenge to persuade them to return to the Monarch.

  Remarkably, the Revenge sailed safely out of Cádiz, even though two British frigates were waiting to pounce on her. Fearful that spies knew of his West Indies destination, Conyngham received new orders: keep cruising off Spain and Portugal. Conyngham cruised the Canary Islands, capturing or burning several more ships despite being chased several times by British frigates. By May, the ship needed cleaning and supplies. With two “British Cruzers” dogging him with orders to follow the Revenge into any harbor and sink her, and well aware that Spanish ports were officially to turn him away, Conyngham raced for the closest port: La Coruña.63

  To his surprise, Coruñans gave him a warm reception, while the frigates remained outside the harbor. Glad as Governor O’Neille was to see Conyngham` personally, he warned the captain that “British influence at Court & infamous representations of their Consuls” compelled O’Neille to send the Revenge on her way as soon as she was ready. To add to Conyngham’s woes, the crew demanded their pay—their enlistment was up, and they would not re-sign without coin in their pockets. Forbidden to recruit hands in Spain, Conyngham had no choice but to pay them. The Revenge departed La Coruña on May 20.64

  Eleven days passed before they sighted a sail that Conyngham pursued and captured. She was the Honoria Sophia, a Swedish brig bearing dry goods to Tenerife in the Canary Islands for the British. It was the Gracieux all over again, but Conyngham was not succumbing to the thrill of a capture. Not a second time.