Give Me a Fast Ship

by Tim McGrath

  Barry now had one last chance at turning this gruesome bad luck around: close in on the Unicorn, board her, and take her before the Experiment came up. After ordering the helmsman to change course again—putting the Raleigh to windward while sending her straight at the Unicorn—Barry called for hands to join him in boarding the British frigate. With the wind at their backs, the smoke from the battle would be in English eyes, not American. His guns loaded with grapeshot, Barry waited for the Raleigh to get close enough to throw his grappling hooks into the Unicorn’s bulwarks and bring the fight aboard the British ship.

  Once again, Ford thwarted Barry’s hopes by abruptly changing course. The Unicorn sheered off, maintaining her distance while the Experiment continued her approach. After discharging his round of grapeshot, Barry returned to solid iron; now it was the American gunners’ turn to take over the fight. Within minutes, Yankee broadsides hammered the Unicorn’s waterline while also severely damaging her masts and rigging. Even in the dark, Barry could tell by the Unicorn’s increasing listing that she was “waterlogg’d.” For four more hours the two ships limped northward, unable to deliver a knockout blow. From the Unicorn’s quarterdeck, Ford fired a distress signal into the chilly night air.64

  The Experiment’s guns were finally in range at midnight. Aboard the Raleigh, Barry held a hasty meeting with his officers, informing them they would run the frigate aground on one of the islands, burn her, and get the men to the coast in the Raleigh’s boats. By this time the Experiment was alongside the Uni- corn. As soon as Wallace passed Ford’s lame frigate, he would blast away at the Raleigh.65

  But before the Experiment’s 18-pounders were fired, a broadside from the Raleigh came slamming into the two-decker. Wallace returned fire—the first of three broadsides fired back at the Raleigh in the next five minutes. For all the damage they did, Barry’s gunners returned fire “with redoubled vigor.” Remarkably, the Raleigh began pulling away; soon she was far enough ahead that only her stern chasers could be fired back at the enemy ships. A cluster of craggy islands, lacking only Odysseus’s Sirens, now beckoned. Barry sailed straight for the center one, beaching the wounded ship.66

  If his men thought Barry would strike his colors they soon learned otherwise. As he had done at Turtle Gut Inlet, Barry kept his gunners at their stations. Two more broadsides struck the Raleigh from Wallace’s two-decker. After the second one, Barry saw that the Experiment would have to tack or risk running aground too. Now Barry shouted, “Fire!” and his gunners raked the enemy ship. For fifteen minutes the Americans fired at will at both British ships with such fierce accuracy that the Experiment also sheered off, “being close to the Rocks” as well as being pounded by the wounded Raleigh. Wallace would wait until daylight to finish off the rebels.

  But Barry was not waiting until morning to surrender, and quickly issued orders. He and Marine Captain Osborne would take two boats, load them with the ship’s wounded, and get them ashore. Lieutenant Phipps would get the men off the ship with orders to hide in the crevices until Barry and Osborne returned. Jesse Jeacocks, Barry’s young midshipman, would remain on board the Raleigh with the sailing master and twenty sailors, keep the ship’s lanterns lit through the night as a decoy while amassing enough combustibles to burn the ship at daylight, then row the third longboat to the mainland.67

  Two days earlier, Barry had miscalculated the enemy’s whereabouts. Now he erred about both the distance to the shore and in his choice of officers. While it is not fair to fault him, lacking any knowledge of the Maine coast, it turned out that he was more than twenty miles from shore. It took three hours for his weary men to bring the boats in. Once on land, he got his wounded taken care of, and learned the name of the little island his men were trapped on: Wooden Ball.68

  All morning Barry paced the beach, peering through his spyglass to search for the smoke from the burning Raleigh. There was no sign of a fire. In two hours the third longboat came into view. Upon landing, the sailing master told Barry the men had done what he ordered, then he and the men manned the boat, waiting for Jeacocks to set the ship afire.

  From the Unicorn Ford saw rebel sailors scrambling for cover on the west part of Wooden Ball. He sent all of his boats towards the Raleigh, his men heavily armed but under a flag of truce to offer terms.

  Seeing the British boats approaching, the sailing master called for Jeacocks to start his fire and abandon ship. Instead of going aboard to complete the mission, the sailing master set off for the shore. Whether young Jeacocks lost his nerve or turned traitor we do not know, but when Wallace fired several shots the Raleigh’s way, Jeacocks hauled down Barry’s colors. Barry sent the three longboats back to Wooden Ball as fast as his weary tars could row them. When they got there at nightfall, only thirteen Americans remained to be saved. Phipps and the 122 others had surrendered to the British.69

  While the Unicorn was finished as a serviceable frigate, Wallace got the damaged Raleigh afloat and repaired her. She was “taken into the British service.” Having “Saved 85 in number,” Barry took those who could travel with him on the long row back to Boston, hugging the coastline all the way. By the time they reached Boston, Barry knew it well.70

  It was a motley-looking crew that returned to that port. A court of inquiry commended Barry for his actions; the Eastern Navy Board reported to Congress “perhaps no ship was ever better defended.” Washington himself praised Barry’s “gallant resistance.” Some naval historians consider the court’s findings a whitewash, but compared to the recent actions or inactions of his peers, it is easy to see why officials stressed Barry’s fighting spirit over his misreading of both Wallace and young Jeacocks, especially when, at Turtle Gut Inlet, Barry saw fit to torch the Nancy himself.71

  But for all the praise, two facts were plainly clear. The Continental Navy had lost another frigate to the British, and one of their best captains was now “on the beach,” without a ship.

  The loss of the Raleigh was at least partially offset by the actions of another new name in naval activities—Silas Talbot.

  He had been an adventurer his whole life. The ninth of fourteen children, Talbot was born in Massachusetts but raised in Rhode Island, where he went to sea as a cabin boy. He was one of the first commissioned officers in the Rhode Island regiments when war broke out and had been one of the two hundred Continental Army “volunteers” Washington had loaned Esek Hopkins after the Glasgow debacle. When Admiral Howe’s armada sailed into New York harbor, Talbot volunteered to command the fireship sent down the Hudson to torch the ship-of-the-line Asia. Talbot ordered his men not to set fire to the combustibles aboard—turpentine and tar barrels—until he had sailed the ship close enough to foul the Asia.

  As British cannonballs slammed into his vessel, Talbot ordered the gunpowder fuses lit and sent his men over the side. The last to abandon ship, he was caught as a change in the wind blew the flames towards him, and he was severely burned and blinded. The Asia narrowly missed catching fire.

  Once ashore in the woods below New York City, Talbot’s men could find no one in the cabins dotting the riverbank who would care for him; being so horribly disfigured, he frightened the children. Eventually they found a widow who took him in until he recovered his eyesight, after which he returned to his regiment and was promoted to major. In Philadelphia he was twice wounded during the siege of Fort Mifflin and given leave to return to Providence, where he served under Major General Sullivan, who anxiously awaited the arrival of d’Estaing’s fleet and the chance to take Newport back from General Pigot’s Redcoats. Talbot was as disappointed as Sullivan when the French sailed away. 72

  There was more bad news coming Sullivan’s way. When Admiral Howe followed the Frenchman out to sea, Clinton no longer had enough naval support to drive Sullivan out of Rhode Island or possibly capture him and his army, which would have decimated the rebel cause. So Clinton vented his anger on nearby Massachusetts, sending a force under Major General Charles Grey
(the author of the infamous Paoli Massacre) in a combined operation with Royal Navy ships under Captain Robert Fanshawe of the Carysfort.

  By this time, Howe’s replacement, Rear Admiral James Gambier, had arrived in America. Like Clinton, Gambier was more than willing to comply with Lord Sandwich’s plans to destroy ports and commerce—eighty-five years before another military man, William Tecumseh Sherman, carried out the same practice against Georgia in the Civil War.

  Talbot learned that Fanshawe had forty-five vessels at his disposal along with Grey’s four thousand infantrymen. On September 4 and 5 they set upon Buzzard’s Bay, Martha’s Vineyard, New Bedford, Fair Haven, and Holmes’s Hole, burning ships, homes, and stores. When dispatches of Fanshawe’s destruction reached the Admiralty, Lord Germain’s secretary chortled that Gambier had done “more to subdue the Rebellion than his lordship [Howe] during the whole of his command.” Next, Gambier and Clinton set their sights on Egg Harbor, New Jersey.73

  Back in Rhode Island, Pigot sent a schooner—named after himself—into the Sakonnet River, the eastern passageway to the mainland. Small as she was even compared to a sloop-of-war, the Pigot was heavily armed, with eight 12-pounders and ten swivels. Netting had been run along her sides to prevent any boarding parties from effectively getting aboard.

  Talbot saw the Pigot not as an insurmountable foe but as an opportunity to strike back at the enemy. After familiarizing himself with the schooner, he wanted to take a small sloop, the Hawk, sail her downriver, and capture the Pigot. It took some convincing, but Sullivan approved Talbot’s scheme.

  He found sixty volunteers among Sullivan’s men to man the Hawk. She was armed only with two 3-pounders, but Talbot was not looking for the coming engagement to be a slugfest. For his plan to work, he mounted a kedge anchor at the Hawk’s bow—a small anchor mostly used to warp a ship—moving her along when becalmed by some hands who dropped it from a longboat, then pulled on the hawser until the ship reached the anchor.74

  On the night of October 28, the Hawk drifted silently downriver under bare poles—Talbot let the current do the work until he passed some British batteries along Fogland Ferry. Once clear, Talbot ordered the mainsail raised, and stood straight for the Pigot, now visible in the distance. As the Hawk closed in, the British sentries hailed her. Talbot maintained silence. They fired their muskets. Still no sound from the sloop.

  Just as the Hawk approached the Pigot, Talbot ordered his helmsman to hit the schooner. As the sloop bumped alongside, the kedge anchor shredded the netting, making a large hole starting at the Pigot’s bow. “Grappling hooks away!” Talbot ordered, and his men tossed them across, pulling them close enough for Talbot and his men to board.

  The shocked British sailors were driven below deck—all except their commander, Lieutenant Dunlop, who was technically out of uniform and actually in his nightshirt. Once surrounded, he surrendered. Talbot took his prize to nearby Stonington, Connecticut, and then marched his prisoners back to Providence, presumably giving Dunlop the opportunity to dress for the occasion. For his victory Talbot received a promotion, a citation from the president of the Congress, Henry Laurens, a ceremonial sword from the Rhode Island Assembly, and the moniker “arch rebel” from the British. He was also made a captain in the Continental Navy.75

  As naval affairs seesawed between victories and defeats off the American coast, William Bingham was still in Martinique, getting acquainted with Gustavus Conyngham.

  Both Philadelphians, they had briefly met before the war. While Conyngham was making his mark as a mariner, Bingham, the son of a well-to-do family, graduated from the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) at sixteen, and soon after displayed an astute head for business in the merchant trade. No less an expert than Robert Morris saw much of himself in the boy. “He has abilities & merit,” he believed, “both in the Political and Commercial Line.” At twenty-four Bingham was secretary of Congress’s Committee of Secret Correspondence. The young man shunned wigs, tying his light-colored hair in a queue. Under long, dark eyebrows, his deep-set brown eyes missed nothing: not a detail in a contract, a suspicious face in a crowd, or a distant ship on a horizon.76

  Morris sent Bingham to Martinique in 1776, where he quickly established friendly relations with the French officials there. By the end of 1778 he had made several missions to France. He also added to the family fortune with a series of shrewd investments in privateers. Now he was back in Martinique; Conyngham was the most recent Continental captain to arrive there in the fall of ’78. Under the shadows of the high inland mountains, the two men made plans for the Revenge to cruise from St. Pierre, Bingham being one of the American agents trusted by Morris to issue orders to navy captains.77

  On October 26, Bingham ordered Conyngham—so successful at capturing British shipping in European waters—to try his hand in the Western Hemisphere, while making a point to remind the captain not to anger their French hosts. After Bingham gave him a letter for d’Estaing in the hopes that the Revenge might meet the admiral on his voyage to the West Indies from Boston, Conyngham departed St. Pierre to cruise the West Indies for British merchantmen and transports. For two weeks the Revenge sailed north against the winds without sighting a sail, but on the morning of November 13, the cutter’s lookout spotted a ship off St. Eustatius.78

  She was a sloop, the Two Friends. Fast as she was, the Revenge easily overtook her. She carried freshwater for British troops; Conyngham sent her back to Martinique (like a number of his prizes, she was retaken by a British privateer the same day). Shortly afterwards the Revenge captured two schooners whose prize crews got them back to St. Pierre. In the late afternoon, another schooner was spotted—a privateer, the Admiral Barrington, Captain Pelham, six guns. After a short chase a broadside from the Revenge convinced Pelham to lower his flag. Conyngham had his fourth prize as the sun set. Not a bad day. He returned to St. Pierre.

  He was back at sea on November 16, again ordered to cruise for ships while keeping a weather eye out for d’Estaing. Five days later he was back with another privateer, the aptly named Loyalist, Captain Morris, mounting twelve 3-pounders and fourteen swivels. Morris put up a fight, but Conyngham’s gunners made it a short one. By the time he departed on a third venture on November 29, Bingham had received the French fleet’s signals, passing them along to Conyngham to use if he did encounter the long-awaited d’Estaing. They were in French; ironically, for all his time there, Conyngham never learned more than a few rudimentary phrases. “Take care to have them interpreted,” Bingham stressed, “by those such Persons on board that you may repose unlimited Confidence in.”79

  After capturing the brig Lukey off St. Lucia, Conyngham did intercept d’Estaing’s fleet. A French-speaking sailor made the correct signals, and the Revenge joined the fleet in a two-week cruise in the Caribbean, where they encountered a British squadron escorting fifty-nine transports carrying five thousand Redcoats from Sandy Hook, sent to capture St. Lucia. D’Estaing engaged, but Conyngham kept his distance—this was no battle for a cutter. The Revenge sailed into St. Pierre on January 2, 1779.80

  The New Year looked promising for Conyngham. He had returned to what he did better than anyone—seizing British ships and giving the Admiralty fits in the process. And he was unencumbered by diplomatic sidestepping, thanks to the French alliance (and being an ocean away from France and Spain). News of his Caribbean exploits filled patriotic newspapers in America. “The Pirate Cunningham” of the British press was now “the celebrated Cunningham,” even though American papers perpetually repeated their English counterparts in misspelling his name. Conyngham summed up his western hemisphere adventures with typical understatement: “Kept the British privateers in Good order in those seas, captured two of them.” Enough said.81

  Imagine his happiness, then, when Bingham ordered him to take fifty chests of weapons to Philadelphia. After more than three years away from his family, he was going home. The Revenge left St. Pierre o
n February 5; just sixteen days later she was sailing up the Delaware.

  If he expected a hero’s welcome similar to those he received in Europe, he was disappointed. What he did get was the same headache he thought he had left behind across the Atlantic: complaints from former sailors and politicians alike. Several Americans who once served aboard the Revenge had returned to Philadelphia months before. Led by Conyngham’s former surgeon, Josiah Smith, they accused him of not paying their wages and prize shares, taking their grievances to Congress. The Marine Committee summoned him to present his side of the story. It was Lee, Deane, and Franklin all over again: be successful at sea, but do not expect us to support you if your success puts us in hot water.

  What Conyngham did not know was that he had been embroiled in the scandals surrounding Silas Deane; Arthur Lee had seen to that. Lee had sent reports linking the two in Deane’s scurrilous financial dealings to his brother, Richard Henry Lee—now chair of the Marine Committee, including the activities of the Surprise and the Revenge. As Deane’s friend, William Hodge, had bought the ships, Deane must have profited handsomely from their cruises, and so too Conyngham. It would not be the first time Lee would add two plus two and come up with cinq, but Congress had not yet caught on to Lee’s vituperative paranoia.82

  Conyngham possessed neither Jones’s gift for self-promotion nor Biddle’s innate assurance, but he rose to the occasion, presenting a detailed list of captures and defending his actions with logic and vigor. In the end, he laid the lack of pay for his men where it belonged—with Congress, the American commissioners in Paris, and the American agents in French and Spanish ports. As Conyngham’s European cruises took place during the years of France’s feigned neutrality, he had to disguise his prizes in unconventional (and often illegal) ways with the approval of the diplomats before the act—if rarely afterwards.