Give Me a Fast Ship

by Tim McGrath

  Harding soon collected his wits and ordered some hands to clear the debris and get the injured below. Once the damage was assessed, he sent the carpenter, mates, and other tars to rigging new masts, all done while the Confederacy pitched on the rolling sea, threatening to founder. To make matters even worse, the wrenching of the ship upon being dismasted produced so much torque on the rudder that it was rendered useless. Now a solid, heavy weapon against the ship, it slammed into the stern as the frigate veered first one way, then another.

  For nearly two weeks, officers and crew worked tirelessly against wind and water, securing smaller masts in place with shim and rigging while the carpenter came up with an ingenious solution for the rudder: an intricate configuration of eyebolts, chain, and rope attached to spars run out of the cabin gun ports, then connected through block and tackle to the capstan. The Confederacy was no longer a trim sailing wonder, but she was stable, and that was wonder enough.9

  At this point Harding met with his officers, Jay, and Gérard to discuss possible destinations. The Confederacy, with her matériel depleted, could not survive a storm, and Harding believed they should make for Martinique: the hurricane season was over, and the chances of favorable weather increased if they headed south.

  Gérard would have none of it. He insisted that they make for Cádiz, arguing that the South Atlantic conditions would be similar to those en route to Martinique. Cádiz was nearly the same distance, and the Azores and Canary Islands were along the way if they ran into more trouble. As much as Jay wanted to reach Spain and assume his new responsibilities, he sided with Harding: the risks were too great to disregard the expert opinions of captain and officers. Gérard was furious, and immediately “ceased to observe that cordiality and frankness” he had displayed thus far on the voyage.

  The phrase “limped into port” has been used for centuries, but never was it more apt a description than when the Confederacy reached Martinique on December 18. Jay and Gérard booked passage on a French frigate two weeks later. Harding’s clearheadedness and sailing skills had been sorely tested, and proved remarkable.10

  Lieutenant Colonel Silas Talbot, who had captured the Pigot in 1778, returned to sea in 1779 as captain of the sloop Argo, carrying twelve 6-pounders. Using New London, Connecticut, as a base of operations, he made several successful cruises throughout 1779; among his prizes was the privateer King George, commanded by Loyalist Stanton Hazard. All of New England rejoiced that Hazard—as despised as James Wallace and Henry Mowat—was now a prisoner of war.

  In another battle, against the privateer Dragon, everyone on the Argo’s quarterdeck except Talbot was either killed or wounded. When the Argo was returned to her original owner, Talbot believed his successes had earned him a better ship. His friend Congressman Henry Marchand got him a captain’s commission in the Continental Navy but Marchand could not get him a Continental ship; even if he had, he could not guarantee a crew. “We cannot create Men,” he stated rather obviously. Talbot turned to privateering, taking command of the nineteen-gun ship General Washington in Rhode Island. In 1780 she was taken by a British squadron. After weeks aboard the Jersey in the East River, Talbot, like Conyngham, was sent to England and Mill Prison.11

  In Philadelphia, John Young, number 23 on the Captains List, was back from a cruise as captain of a letter of marque, the Impertinent, sailing in a squadron of privateers under John Barry’s command. As the lone Continental captain in Philadelphia, and with all the captains ranked above him either on assignment, in disfavor, captured, or dead, Young was given command of the sloop-of-war under construction at the Southwark shipyard.

  The ship, rising slowly on the stocks above the waterfront homes, was the latest creation from young Joshua Humphreys. Also known as a corvette—a ship with a flush deck and a single tier of guns—she was 94 feet long with a 29-foot beam and weighed about 300 tons. Completing her construction was a race against time, not so much with the coming winter weather but with the fact that Congress had no money. The sale of wines from captured enemy holds helped pay for her finishing touches. She slid off the ways into the Delaware as the Saratoga.12

  Dudley Saltonstall’s assumption of command for the Penobscot campaign left a vacancy aboard the frigate Trumbull. She had been freed from the confines of the Connecticut River by Elisha Hinman, who sailed her to New London. The good news was that she was finally to be fitted out, for a cruise. The bad news—on the surface, at least—was that James Nicholson, late of the Virginia and still top captain on that infernal list, was to take command.

  Hinman took the news hard; he was eager to avenge his loss of the Alfred and remove any doubts about his capabilities. But Congress played the seniority card, denying his request to retain command as long as Nicholson was available and “considered a man of merit”—at least by Congress. Nicholson proceeded to New London to supervise the Trumbull’s fitting out and rendezvous. That took all winter.

  As the 1770s came to an end and Americans entered their sixth year of war, Congress began centralizing the management of the navy. The Marine Committee was dissolved on October 28, replaced by a Board of Admiralty that would consist of three commissioners, along with two congressmen and a secretary—John Brown, Robert Morris’s indispensable man. Leading the board was Francis Lewis, a New York merchant. He was joined by Congressman William Ellery of Rhode Island, a Marine Committee veteran. For months, they would be the sole members.13

  Even with Penobscot, 1779 had been a decent year for the navy; thirteen ships had captured more than fifty prizes. But the Marine Committee was no longer considered an attractive assignment. The original thirteen frigates were all finished, and few ships had been built since. Starting in 1779, inflation began spiraling at a rate of 17 percent a month, making Continental paper money worthless. As the money in their pockets grew weaker, Philadelphians went from worry to anger, directing it at public figures like Robert Morris, who seemed to grow physically and financially fatter as the price of bread soared. One mob of militiamen, sailors, and unemployed dockworkers attacked the mansion of James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence with a well-deserved reputation as a war profiteer. A few of his friends, including Thomas Mifflin, defended “Fort Wilson” from the mob until Philadelphia’s military governor, Benedict Arnold, sent a troop of cavalry to encircle the house, with sabers at the ready. The following day, John Barry arrived in town from a privateering cruise and offered to send his sailors to defend Wilson’s mansion, but by then the mob had dispersed.14

  News of Flamborough Head and Conyngham’s escape reached the states at an opportune time, as another crushing defeat followed the Penobscot disaster—this time in British-held Savannah. While Jones’s squadron was sailing around the British Isles, a small army led by General Benjamin Lincoln had landed in Georgia, along with Admiral d’Estaing’s French fleet, whose transports carried more than 4,000 French regulars (including a black regiment that d’Estaing had recruited in Haiti). Flush with victories in which he had captured the islands of Grenada and Dominica, d’Estaing saw taking Savannah as a chance to atone for his earlier failures off New England.

  However, while that attempt at a joint Franco-American venture had been disappointing, this campaign was disastrous. In a combined assault against British regular and Loyalist troops under General Augustine Prévost, more than 800 Frenchmen and Americans were lost, including cavalry legend General Casimir Pulaski. D’Estaing, twice wounded himself, was dispirited; his sailors were dropping with scurvy, and he sailed to Martinique and thence to France. Lincoln’s battered army retreated to Charleston, thereby setting the stage for the next undertaking by the Continental Navy.15

  News of another resounding defeat, coming on the heels of Penobscot, was bad enough. But d’Estaing’s return to European waters also destroyed American hopes that the war was about to end victoriously. Soaring prices and plummeting morale made the coming winter bleak indeed. Washington’s army had settled into its e
ncampment at Morristown, New Jersey. While the winters at Valley Forge were grim, this winter, with its numbing cold and horrific blizzards, was the worst one that Washington’s starved, ragged, unpaid soldiers would endure. “A wagon load of money,” he wrote to John Jay, “will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions.”16

  Not that things were going better in Merry Olde England. Antiwar sentiment, fueled by Edmund Burke’s speeches in Parliament, reached a fever pitch after Flamborough Head. Prime Minister Lord North, “miserable for ten years in obedience to your majesty’s commands,” begged George III to let him resign, and was refused. The size of the Royal Navy in America was now down to sixty ships, less than half of them ships-of-the-line or frigates. The First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Sandwich, sent Vice Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot with four ships-of-the-line and 4,000 Redcoats for Clinton’s army to New York. Arbuthnot assumed command of the fleet from Commodore Sir George Collier just as Collier was wrapping up his victory at Penobscot. The reinforcements had no sooner landed than they spread their epidemic of “jail fever” to Clinton’s healthy troops. Soon thousands were in New York hospitals. By the fall of ’79, both sides were tired of this war.17

  But once Clinton learned that Lincoln’s army was holed up in Charleston, he saw the great opportunity presented him. That summer, he had considered a southern invasion, and here was his chance. Washington was too encumbered with bad weather and no supplies to stir from Morristown; d’Estaing’s fleet was not even in the hemisphere; and Savannah proved there was a substantial population of southern Loyalists, eager to rally again around Crown troops.

  Capturing Charleston would give Clinton a southern port and a base of operations from which an army could strike into the Carolinas—even, perhaps, Virginia itself. Clinton had failed to take the city in 1776; a victory now could regenerate flagging support for the war back home, and wash away that earlier defeat. He informed Lord Germain that he was going to Charleston; Arbuthnot would take him there. After consolidating his remaining New York force with those in Newport, Clinton’s 7,600 regulars and Hessians boarded the ships of the British fleet, departing Sandy Hook for Charleston.18

  For once, Congress correctly anticipated a British move. Seeing such an invasion as not only possible but inevitable, it turned to the four Continental ships docked in Boston and Portsmouth. After their resounding success against the Jamaica Fleet in June, the frigates Providence, Boston, and Queen of France, and the sloop-of-war Ranger had returned to their home ports, fortunately too late to take part in the Penobscot disaster. By November they were all refitted and ready for duty. Their captains—Abraham Whipple, Samuel Tucker, John Peck Rathbun, and Thomas Simpson—were so eager to sail that they requested orders.

  Days later, they got them: make for South Carolina. “The salvation of that State,” their orders insisted, “depends on these vessels.” So that he could better serve as commodore, Whipple was given a captain for the Providence, the luckless Hoysted Hacker.19

  After three weeks of sailing through a series of storms, Whipple’s squadron was off Bermuda when another vicious tempest struck. The Providence, Boston, and Ranger each lost a mast—but it was the Queen of France that gave Whipple the most concern. “If the gale had continued twelve hours longer she would have foundered,” he wrote Congress. After capturing a brig, the ships sailed up Rebellion Road, docking in Charleston harbor on December 23. There, Rathbun and the other captains assessed the damage to the Queen, deeming her unseaworthy.20

  Charleston sits on a peninsula, with the Ashley River to its west and the Cooper River to the east. To the south, Fort Johnson had been built on Jones Island. To the north, on Sullivan Island, sat Fort Moultrie. There were fewer fortifications on the peninsula north of Charleston. Since his arrival, General Lincoln had worked on strengthening the city’s defenses. He had 2,000 Continental soldiers with him, and Governor Rutledge sent out a call for militiamen. However, rumors of a smallpox epidemic in the city kept them back.21

  Whipple was ordered to place himself under Lincoln’s command. Their first meeting was cordial. Like Whipple, Lincoln was a New Englander—a Massachusetts man. Both men were portly, but Whipple’s dark, leathery features contrasted with Lincoln’s shock of white hair and fair complexion. Over the coming months they would be significantly more cooperative than Saltonstall and Lovell were at Penobscot.22

  On January 6, 1780, Whipple sent out Simpson and the Ranger along with the schooner Eagle to assist a Spanish ship that had run aground twenty miles above Charleston. They returned five days later with alarming news: the schooner had sighted a British transport carrying troops from New York. Word quickly spread throughout Charleston, and Lincoln ordered Whipple to send two more ships out, one north and the other south, to seek the whereabouts of the enemy fleet. Whipple took the Providence out himself, along with the Ranger.23

  The cruise lasted just a week. While the Providence took a brig loaded down with New York Loyalists, both ships were chased back to Rebellion Road by British two-deckers. Once back in Charleston, Whipple met with Lincoln and Rutledge, delivering the long-feared news his prisoners had told him: 140 sail had departed New York in December, escorted by five ships-of-the-line and six frigates under Arbuthnot. Among them were the former Continental frigates Virginia and Raleigh.24

  The British fleet arrived off South Carolina at the end of January after four weeks of stormy seas that scattered the transports for miles. One army officer, George Philip Hook, described the harrowing storms vividly: one transport leaked so badly her captain “was oblig’d to sink her.” Hook was “in doubt whether we may gain our destin’d Port.” Hundreds of horses suffered broken legs from the pitching of the ships and had to be destroyed. One transport was forced to dock in Bermuda; another, carrying Hessians, was blown so far off course she made for the nearest port for repairs—Cornwall, England. Nonetheless, the fleet arrived. On February 11, Arbuthnot landed 5,000 troops on Simmons Island.25

  Rutledge placed the state navy, consisting of two ships, a brig, and several row alleys, under Whipple’s command, and gave the commodore authority to press as many sailors as he might need—even giving him a warrant to conduct house searches along the waterfront for any reluctant recruits (Whipple wisely gave this task to a South Carolina officer). As part of his strategy, Lincoln wanted to use the ships as floating batteries, moored broadside to broadside to keep Arbuthnot’s ships from easily entering the harbor. He asked Whipple and his captains to take soundings inside the bar.26

  Their unanimous findings were not what Lincoln wanted to read or hear. If a strong wind blew from the east while the tide was coming in, it would be impossible for the American ships to safely ride at anchor with their broadsides ready. Furthermore, the combination of wind and tide would allow enemy ships to sail right past the anchored Americans, permitting them to sail close enough to shell both Fort Moultrie and Charleston itself.27

  Lincoln was stunned. He had hoped the combination of the high sandbar and the massed firepower of the Continental warships would thwart any British offensive by water. He now questioned whether defending Charleston would be worth the cost in casualties, ships, and risk to civilian life and property. But Charlestonians, led by Lieutenant Governor Christopher Gadsden, would not hear otherwise. Gadsden had been an early advocate for the navy, had watched its ships serve at the whim of northern interests, and was not about to see four of the remaining vessels leave Charleston in the lurch. Whipple conducted another series of soundings, but they produced exactly the same result; his ships could not keep Arbuthnot’s cruisers from coming into the harbor if nature did not cooperate.

  Whipple recommended that the Providence, Boston, and Ranger move up the channel, join Fort Moultrie, and defend the city there. “The Channel is so narrow between the Fort,” he argued, “that they may be moored so as to rake the Channel and prevent the enemy’s troops being landed to annoy the Fort.” Lincoln acquiesced. Whipple sent a detachment of
marines and sailors to destroy the lighthouse. Seeing that Fort Johnson would be more of a hindrance than a defense in the coming battle, the marines leveled that as well. The Queen of France and the state navy vessels were sent up the Ashley River, past the Baker plantation that Nicholas Biddle loved to visit, with orders that Rathbun fire a gun three times at one-minute intervals when he sighted any British ships.28

  Once the smallpox rumor proved false, Lincoln had about 5,000 Continentals and militiamen to defend Charleston. If Clinton sustained enough losses in his attack, the Americans might repeat their victory in ’76, but few thought so: the British had taken both New York and Philadelphia by land and water and, if it came to a siege, it would be only a matter of time before Charleston fell.29

  As if Whipple did not have enough to contend with, his men soon faced shortages of both trousers and rum. To address the former, he sent the ships’ pursers ashore to impress any empty pairs of pants or bolts of cloth to stitch new ones. As to a solution for the latter, he put the men on half rations, then switched to an allowance of two quarts of beer a day, believing it “vastly better for health” than drinking large quantities of bad water. After sending Congress a report about the Queen’s deplorable condition, he received orders to fill her hold with rice and have Rathbun sail her to Philadelphia, where the market was good for selling rice. Only Congress.30

  Any serious concerns over rum, beer, and rice were cast aside on March 4, when Arbuthnot’s warships approached the bar. He ordered Andrew Snape Hamond and the other captains to remove their guns, water barrels, and other provisions. At high tide the depth was nineteen feet—just enough water to get the frigates across the bar. Hamond was particularly careful with his beloved Roebuck; having run her aground four years earlier in the Delaware, he did not want to make that mistake twice. For the next sixteen days, under peppering fire from the state navy vessels and Whipple’s captured brig (now called the General Lincoln and commanded by Hoysted Hacker), British captains rearmed and resupplied their ships. On March 20, the strong east wind Whipple had feared arrived with the rising tide, and Arbuthnot’s ships crossed the bar. The British lion was in the henhouse.31