by Tim McGrath
Thus abandoned, Moore carried on a rearguard action against the marines, backing off the bluff inch by inch, until he and his men looked to be surrounded. Then, with remarkable coolness, he finally ordered his men to retreat, leaving several dead comrades, while carrying off their wounded. “I was lucky to escape untouched,” he reported (it was an early instance where Moore’s courage came to the fore; he would later be knighted during the Napoleonic Wars).83
The American advance got within half a mile of the fort, but stopped at the woods’ edge directly across from Fort St. George. Lovell ordered Revere to bring up some guns, a task that required the ships’ carpenters to build a wooden road up the steep hill. Back at the shoreline, the proud Lovell took in what his men had done that day: “I dont think such a landing has been made since Wolfe,” he wrote, comparing this assault to General Wolfe’s climb and victory at the Plains of Abraham in the French and Indian War. Lovell’s casualties were high: more than thirty killed and wounded.84
As Moore’s men fell back to the fort that morning, Commodore Sir George Collier was issuing orders from the captain’s cabin of the Raisonable. The report by Boston spies of the expedition had reached New York, and Collier was assembling a squadron to follow his ship-of-the-line and come to McLean’s aid. Four frigates and a sloop went to sea six days later. Among the frigates was the Galatea and James Nicholson’s old command, the Virginia.85
It took two days for Revere’s hardy souls to haul several cannon to the top of the peninsula, but this delay did not matter, for Saltonstall still would not move. Both sides still fired the occasional round at each other, and one cannonball slammed into the Warren’s mainmast, confirming the commodore’s fears that his ships would be decimated by British ordnance if they attacked Mowat. He would not advance until Lovell had taken the fort; Lovell would not attack until Saltonstall did.
July ended, August began. Each day the garrison at Fort St. George bolstered their defenses while the American commanders bickered. “What advantage would it do to go in and take the enemy’s shipping?” Saltonstall haughtily and repeatedly inquired. The answer, of course, was everything. Only a few sorties took place over the next few days, resulting in more casualties among the militiamen.86
Reports of the attack on Bagaduce became exaggerated by the time they reached Philadelphia. Congress heard that a thousand Redcoats had surrendered, including Mowat.” But more accurate reports began seeping in, and the Eastern Navy Board in Boston sent a dispatch to Saltonstall, urging him to stop playing Hamlet and attack. From Philadelphia, one congressman wrote General Gates: “I have now a Dread about that Expedition.”87
Councils of war aboard the Warren had long grown pointless. At each meeting, Captain Titus Salter of the Hampden adamantly wanted to attack Mowat, but Saltonstall spurned him every time. Even Hacker bucked his commodore and proposed attack, only to get the usual nay. Morale among the sailors, marines, and militiamen was nonexistent.88
Saltonstall did see action, however. It occurred on August 7, when a longboat from the Hazard carrying Saltonstall and four of his captains went upriver to discover the whereabouts of Mowat’s sloops. The boat was spotted, and Mowat sent eight longboats after them. The Americans made for the shore and scrambled into the woods. The British took the Hazard’s boat, but as Lovell recalled, Saltonstall’s group “took to the Bush and escaped being made prisoners.” Taking the long way through the woods, Saltonstall and company made it back to American lines.89
On the morning of Friday the thirteenth, Lovell took four hundred men through the woods to the back of the peninsula, and determined the fort would fall from an attack in the rear. He sent a courier to Saltonstall, requesting once again for assistance. To his utter amazement, Saltonstall gave the order Lovell had waited sixteen days to hear: “Weigh anchor.”90
Aboard each warship, sailors had begun jumping to their bosun’s orders to get under way when a lookout posted at the entrance of Penobscot Bay came aboard the Warren: a fleet of ships was approaching. Saltonstall sent word to Lovell. His courier hit the shoreline and then ran through the thickets towards the rear of the peninsula to tell Lovell the dire news. The advance was canceled. Attacked by chiggers, gnats, and mosquitoes, Lovell’s men returned to their original position, where another message awaited the general: the approaching vessels were ships of force. It was Collier’s squadron.91
The next morning, Lovell brought his men atop the bluff down to the shoreline. They had braved the elements and enemy fire; now, through no fault of their own, they were ordered to board the transports with the same alacrity with which they had stormed the heights. Aboard the Warren, Saltonstall met with his captains to prepare a defense of the transports: they would not engage, but fight a rearguard action as the entire fleet sailed upriver. Had the American sailors had a Lieutenant Moore to lead them, it might have worked. What they had was a fistful of privateer captains and Dudley Saltonstall.92
The commodore watched Collier’s ships make straight for him with disciplined purpose. His plan to defend the transports required cooperation from the privateers, and for their captains to reach inside themselves—not for courage; they had that—but to fight as a squadron, a skill neither they nor Saltonstall possessed. The commodore signaled new orders: each ship was to fend for itself.93
“To give a description of this terrible Day is out of my Power,” Lovell later wrote, calling what happened “the Great Mortification.” It was a turkey shoot; calling it low comedy would be inappropriate considering the tragic loss of life. As Collier skillfully sailed his ships into battle, the Continental, state navy, and privateer vessels fled pell-mell, fouling the transports they were to protect, speeding past them instead as unerring British gunners did their duty, their shots shredding rigging, slamming into hulls, striking down sailor after sailor. Seeking safety, the American captains made for the streams and inlets, running aground.
As he and his men clambered ashore, Saltonstall ordered some hands to blow up the Warren. Other American captains followed suit. In between British cannonades (the American ships did not return fire), explosions rocked the air, as one American ship after another exploded. The sloop Providence, the last of Esek Hopkins’s squadron, was soon afire, about a mile from the Warren. Those ships that were not burned or abandoned surrendered.94
The last American ship to get upriver was the ordnance brig carrying Paul Revere and most of his command, minus the ordnance. Once ashore, he tried to organize his men, but almost all ran frantically into the woods. Taking the few who remained upon one of the brig’s boats, he rowed along the shoreline hoping to overtake them, only to give up the search at midnight.95
Lovell planned to make a stand on the fifteenth, but was persuaded otherwise. Fourteen ships were burned or blown up, the rest captured; more than five hundred Americans were dead, wounded, or prisoners. The only way home for the survivors was overland. Soon marines, sailors, and militiamen began the long, dispiriting trudge homeward.96
It took three weeks for the first stragglers to reach Boston, where they learned that a Continental Army regiment had been sent to assist them, only to turn back at Portsmouth when they learned of Collier’s rout. Their defeat was already the talk of the town. Anger over the loss of men, ships, and artillery was mixed with panic. Numerous courts of inquiry were held. “It seems,” one official wrote, “that our People were fascinated and charmed into their Destruction.” The angry crowds in the streets, the merchants in the coffeehouses, and the politicians in New England and Philadelphia had one scapegoat in mind: Saltonstall.97
Other officers emerged from the investigations sullied but not bowed, including Lovell and Revere. The entire blame fell on Saltonstall. One Boston paper called him “A new fangled Commodore,” adding that he had lost nothing “except the whole fleet.” Saltonstall’s court-martial was held upon the Deane, and he was summarily dismissed from the navy. The debacle cost Massachusetts seven million dollars, threaten
ing to bankrupt the state and beginning a drawn- out argument over whether Congress should defray the enormous cost.98
Having led American forces into the worst defeat of the war, Saltonstall, the original captain of the Alfred, was finished. That very September, across the Atlantic, his former first lieutenant was about to fight the battle that would define the Continental Navy for centuries.
CHAPTER TEN
“DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND”
The Battle being thus begun was continued with Unremitting Fury.
—JOHN PAUL JONES TO BENJAMIN FRANKLIN1
Captain Jones, an excellent sailor, they say, knows all the coasts thoroughly,” an enthusiastic Marquis de Lafayette wrote a friend. The young general had every reason to look into Jones’s background. Ever since the Alliance brought him to France, Lafayette had wanted to attack England and bring the horror of war to an enemy city: Liverpool, Bristol, and Bath were being considered. His plan required transports and a squadron to escort them. Benjamin Franklin suggested Jones in a meeting with Lafayette in March 1779. Giving Jones the command would make the venture a true Franco-American affair.2
Jones learned of this scheme just as he was beginning to convert the lumbering merchantman Duc de Duras into the lumbering warship Bonhomme Richard. He immediately shared Lafayette’s passion for the enterprise, even promising Franklin that he would submerge his ever-present ego and submit to le Général’s leadership. “I shall expect you to point out my errors,” he happily wrote Lafayette, while promising Franklin that his crew would be on their best behavior and refrain from another Selkirk-like foray against British citizens. Both Minister Sartine and Franklin gave their blessing to the partnership.3
The expedition was the answer to Jones’s ambitious dream for himself: an entire squadron to command. In addition to the Bonhomme Richard, the Continental frigate Alliance and the French ships Pallas, Vengeance, and Cerf were placed under his leadership. Jones was ecstatic.4
Had this enterprise become reality (and succeeded), it would have rivaled Trenton and Yorktown. Alas, it was not to be: as enthusiasm and support grew, Louis XVI stepped in. Why not a mass invasion of England instead of a simple raid? Plans commenced to send 40,000 French soldiers to England, borne by an armada of French and Spanish ships. Lafayette’s great scheme was quashed. Jones’s disappointment was surprisingly small, however. He still had a squadron command, and Sartine planned to use it as a diversion, sending Jones around the British Isles before the grand invasion landed; all the more reason to hasten his ship’s preparations.5
No drafts of the Bonhomme Richard exist, but a sister ship, Duc de Penthièvre, gives us an idea of her dimensions: 145 feet long, a 36-foot-8-inch beam, displacing about 900 tons. Thanks to the king, no expense was spared in refitting her. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote that “Jones enjoyed fitting out more than anything except making love.” For the next several weeks it became Jones’s obsession. He wanted the old lady to look every bit as dangerous as he hoped her to be, painting her hull black—there would be no checkered look to his man-of-war.6
Jones’s biggest difficulty was getting battle-worthy ordnance. He wanted the Bonhomme Richard to carry forty guns, and he pierced her bulwarks for that number. He visited several foundries, but found their guns defective. As spring turned to summer, however, Jones began to settle for what he could find, even from condemned stores. His new/old ship would mount six 18-pounders, twenty-eight 12-pounders, and six 9-pounders. He craved the 18-pounders, but would find them to be more dangerous to his crew than British guns. He also covered his rails with swivel guns and stored blunderbusses and shotguns below—they would come in handy. Day after day, ordnance, ammunition, rope, canvas, timber, and other stores were brought aboard, while carpenters, and rope men plied their trade under Jones’s all-encompassing eye.7
If there was anything that took Jones’s mind off his questionable guns it was his captains. The Pallas, a twenty-six-gun frigate, was commanded by Captain de BrÛlot Cottineau de Kerloguen, a former privateersman who had proven his seamanship and courage in a fight with HMS Brune, one of the ships John Barry fought off Reedy Island in 1778. Lieutenant de Vaisseau Ricot commanded the twelve-gun brig Vengeance, while Enseigne de Vaisseau Varage commanded the eighteen-gun cutter Cerf. Each of them was also appointed a captain in the Continental Navy by Benjamin Franklin, still carrying the sheaf of commissions he used for Gustavus Conyngham. They did not appreciate being under an American’s orders.
Then there was Pierre Landais. For such an observant sailor and warrior, Jones was often gullible in his judgments of people, and Landais proved this more than anyone. As he did with Deane, Franklin, and Lee, Landais flattered Jones while overstating his own maritime prowess. The combination worked at first. Jones declared Landais “a sensible, well-informed man.” When Jones learned that the Frenchman’s own officers wanted him removed from the Alliance, Jones defended him.8
The immense size of the Bonhomme Richard required a much larger crew than Jones had ever commanded. When his rendezvous ended he had more than 350 names or marks on his muster rolls, and an international cast of characters at that: not only Americans and Frenchmen but Scots, Irish, Swedes, Norwegians, and one Italian. They ranged in background from John Jordan, a sailor from East India (one of several blacks aboard), to Giusseppe Broricellia, a boy from Naples. The muster roll anglicized his name to Joseph Brussels. With so many countries represented, the fo’c’sle was a nautical Tower of Babel.9
Nor were these salts the salt of the earth. Monsieur de Grandville, Lorient’s port captain, called Jones’s French hands “wretches picked up on the street,” while his English tars were mostly Royal Navy prisoners or deserters. Jones’s officers, however, were mostly Americans, including Nathaniel Fanning.10
On May 13, John Adams arrived in Lorient, about to visit home after his first year as commissioner. Jones invited him to a dinner he was hosting for his officers at a local hotel, l’Epée Royale. Adams had been charmed by Landais when he first met him the year before; now he found the Frenchman “jealous of every thing and jealous of every Body,” a far different man than he had observed at the Court of Versailles.11
Adams did find better company in Lawrence Brooke, ship’s surgeon. Not yet twenty-one, Brooke came from a prominent Virginia family. He and his brother had been sent to Edinburgh by their father to continue their education: law for the brother and medicine for Lawrence—a vocation in which he showed great promise. But news of Lexington and Concord cut his education short, and the brothers escaped to France. Lawrence signed on as surgeon in April, becoming a favorite of Jones as much for his breeding as his medical skills.12
Table conversation turned to learning French. When the question was posed as to whether it could best be learned at the renowned Comédie Française or from a mistress, Adams answered, “Both at once”—a remark that he pointedly clarified later in his diary as what he had been told, not what he actually did. He also described his host for history:
Eccentricities and Irregularities are to be expected from him—They are in his Character, they are visible in his Eyes. His voice is soft and still and small, his eye has keenness and Wildness and softness in it.13
Adams was peeved that Jones and his officers were in the captain’s blue and white uniform and not the blue and red that Adams had designed. He was also miffed that Jones’s marines were wearing red and white and not the green and white that Adams had directed, unaware that these marines were in uniform—that of l’Infanterie Irlandaise—an Irish regiment serving the French king.14
In June, Sartine sent Jones orders to escort several merchantmen into the Bay of Biscay. The captain felt the assignment beneath him, but with France having foot the bill for his ship’s refitting and given him a squadron, Jones decided not to bite the hand that was feeding him. Instead, he used the mission as a shakedown cruise. Before departing, he sent a letter to Mme. de Chaumont. It was time to bid adieu to his pat
ron’s wife. He gave her the brush-off in a florid combination of sentiment (“My thoughts have done ample Justice to [your] Affectionate Friendship”) and fare-thee-well (“I shall carry with me thro life the most Constant and Lively sense of your polite Attentions”). On June 19, the Bonhomme Richard led Jones’s squadron and their convoy out of l’Orient, past Île de Groix, and into the bay.15
Months earlier, Jones had begged for a fast ship. Now he learned quickly that his flagship was painfully slow. He also found his subordinate, Landais, to be anything but subordinate. That night, a fierce storm struck the convoy. In the darkness, the Bonhomme Richard and Alliance ran into each other, damaging the flagship’s bowsprit as it tore the rigging from the Alliance’s mizzenmast and toppled it. Jones suspected that Landais did not sheer off out of spite, while Landais stated that he had heard shouts coming from Jones’s British sailors and believed they had mutinied and were attacking his frigate. Jones, being in his cabin when the accident occurred, decided to believe Landais, disciplining instead his own first lieutenant, Robert Robinson.16
For the next ten days British ships sailed over the horizon, only to change course when they saw the size of Jones’s squadron. On one occasion Jones chased two British cruisers, but they easily left the Bonhomme Richard in their wake. Still, Jones was determined to put a positive spin on his first days as commodore. Once back in l’Orient, he wrote to Franklin—not to complain as before (or beg for l’Indien) but to extol “the martial spirit of my crew.”17
As the Bonhomme Richard and Alliance underwent repairs, Jones sought a worthy first lieutenant to replace Robinson. He found one: Richard Dale, the young man John Barry had brought into the Continental fold aboard the Lexington. Captured with Henry Johnson, the intrepid twenty-two-year-old had escaped Mill Prison, been recaptured, and escaped again, this time strolling out of the place wearing a Royal Navy uniform. Jones saw in Dale the same combination of grit and skill that Barry did. Dale would be the best officer Jones ever had.18
