Give Me a Fast Ship

by Tim McGrath

  Barry kept Edwards and King aboard the Alliance that evening. After assurances of “orderly conduct” from both officers regarding their men, he sent prize crews to each ship. Once the ships were repaired as best they could be, Barry loaded the Trepassey with all of his captured prisoners and sent her to Nova Scotia as a cartel, the men to be exchanged for a similar number of captured Americans. With jury-rigged masts, Barry turned the Atalanta over to Hezekiah Welch, with orders to make for Boston.

  The Alliance, “Shattered in the most shocking manner,” needed new masts, yards, sails, and rigging. Sure that she would never reach Philadelphia in such a state, Barry ordered Hacker to also make for Boston. Eight of her men were dead and twenty-one wounded; the combined British casualties were eleven killed and twenty-five wounded.85

  On June 6, the overdue Alliance sailed up Nantasket Road. Bostonians believed her to be captured or lost at sea. Weeks earlier, Patrick Fletcher had brought the Mars into port, assuring one and all that the Alliance, the Marquis de Lafayette, and other prizes were not far behind him. (While one prize, the Adventure, made it safely into port, the Atalanta was not so lucky. She was nearing Cape Cod when four British cruisers recaptured her, sending her to Halifax.) By June, most had feared the frigate was either captured or lost at sea, but here she was: no longer the beautiful, fast ship that stood down the Nantasket four months earlier, but battered and sluggish. Lacking a spar of sufficient size to replace her main yard, Barry simply sailed without one.86

  First off the ship was her captain, carried on a stretcher by four sailors and taken to a house by the waterfront, with his clerk Fitch Pool and Kessler for company until they recovered from their wounds. Barry put Pool to work immediately. With his log beside him, the captain dictated letters to Congress, the Board of Admiralty, the Eastern Navy Board, and finally to Sarah. “I am amongst the wounded,” he reported, but “shall be fit for duty before the Ship will be ready to Sail.” Never a good patient, Barry put up with Kendall’s harangues to rest, taking “one dram of bark every three hours” to ease his pain.87

  News of Barry’s voyage first appeared in Boston’s Continental Journal, and was soon published in papers throughout the country. Congressmen praised both his victories and his diplomatic intervention on behalf of the Buono Compagnia, passing a resolution applauding his “utmost respect for the rights of neutral commerce”; even Franklin brought it to King Louis’s attention. Only one representative, Maryland’s Richard Potts, was dismissive of Barry’s heroics, as he “was fortunate in capturing prizes but brought no Stores.”

  Happy as he was to be celebrated, he was happier to learn that Congress had granted him what Franklin could not: while both he and the Alliance were mending, she would be sheathed in copper. Better still, John Kessler, recovered from his leg wound, had been dispatched to Philadelphia to escort Sarah Barry to Boston. Weeks after her arrival, Barry was “in a fair way of recovery,” and the Alliance at last had a copper-sheathed hull.88

  On May 18, 1781, a Continental Navy officer made one of the more audacious escapes from Mill Prison. Weeks earlier, he had been clapped in double irons and confined in a solitary dungeon for thirty days for an attempted escape. Once released to general confinement, he complained that he had sprained his ankle. Now using crutches, he befriended one of the guards who had once served in America. On this sunny day, the officer hobbled past the guard. “Today?” he asked.

  “Dinner,” came the reply, meaning one p.m.—the regularly scheduled mealtime for everyone but a few sentries. Returning to his cell, the officer quickly donned a British uniform he had somehow obtained. Throwing his greatcoat back on, he took up his crutches and returned to the courtyard.

  At a prearranged signal with some other prisoners, he approached a large, stout inmate while they distracted the nearby guards. Quickly the officer dropped his crutches, jumped on the big American’s shoulders, and vaulted over the wall.

  With more bravado than an entire fleet, the officer made his way to the home of an American sympathizer, took a small boat to the Channel Islands, bluffed his way past a British privateer, and boarded a ship bound for Holland. Eventually he made his way back to Philadelphia and was reunited with his young wife.

  Gustavus Conyngham? No, Joshua Barney.89

  Conyngham was still an inmate at Mill Prison when Barney made his breathtaking getaway. The captain’s second stint as a prisoner was just as harsh as the first. Thomas Digges wrote Franklin that “there will be no hopes of liberating him his name being so offensive.” This time around, in addition to Barney, Conyngham had John Manley for company.90

  But nothing could deter Conyngham from escaping. Having earlier made attempts by disguise and tunneling, he now resorted to the most successful method: bribery. Another American prisoner neatly summed up the power of the pound: “A man who has money, has friends.” The commandants at Mill and Forten Prisons were not fools; if they could not pay the guards enough to resist financial temptation, they would apply the same method the prisoners did, only outside the walls. They began offering five-pound notes to English citizens who turned in escapees.91

  It worked. Luke Matthewman, John Barry’s former lieutenant, was held captive at Forten Prison. In his memoirs he told of a mass escape, after which most of the fugitives were recaptured, thanks to the vigilance of Englishmen whom the prisoners scornfully labeled “five-pounders.”92

  At Mill, Conyngham tested the honor of each guard after watching their interaction with the prisoners. If he saw any degree of affability, he knew who to approach. Eventually his insight paid off. On June 4, 1781, Conyngham and three other sailors, with twenty pounds between them, convinced one sergeant and several guards that twenty pounds was enough for each to look the other way while they made their escape.

  Twenty pounds worked for the four Americans, but not for the guards. They were arrested for dereliction of duty and abetting an escape. Once again, King George’s most despised American was on the loose. Twelve days later, Conyngham was in Dunkirk, where he wrote Franklin, asking him to inform Anne of “her Gusty’s” escape, not knowing if she was in Paris or l’Orient.93

  A happy Franklin immediately replied, telling Conyngham that Anne was in l’Orient, before asking the captain, since he was finally in Dunkirk, to see who from the Revenge’s crew was in town. Franklin could not pay them without proof from Conyngham that they had served under him, three long years ago.

  After a joyous reunion, the Conynghams headed to Paris, where Gustavus told Franklin he would happily return to fighting the British, “Should a Vessel be fitted out for America to my liking [and] with your Approbation.” Too much time has passed for us to know how Anne felt about that.94

  The perfect ship was found in Nantes by Franklin’s nephew Jonathan Williams. “As a great number of our unhappy Countrymen are in the English prisons without any prospect of an Exchange for want of Prisoners to give in return,” Jonathan Williams wrote his uncle, Benjamin Franklin, several American merchants in France wanted to “build & arm a stout privateer of 28 Guns” for Conyngham to command. “We choose him in preference,” Williams recounted, “because his Name alone will make Sailors flock to his ship . . . and no American . . . will be more likely to be active in liberating his Countrymen.” It was a win-win-win to Williams: Conyngham gets his command, future captures provide British prisoners to exchange, and profits from the sale of his prizes and their goods make the merchants richer.95

  Williams selected Conyngham’s old boss, Jonathan Nesbitt, to find a suitable ship if one could be bought quickly enough, and he found one—the Layona, waiting on the ways at l’Orient to be launched. That very day, the merchants began looking for guns and supplies while American sailors happily signed Conyngham’s muster rolls.

  But the French minister of marine had other plans for the Layona, scuttling Conyngham’s hope of harassing the British one more time. A disappointed captain and a relieved wife took passage on
the ship Hannibal for Philadelphia. She sailed only after Conyngham made arrangements for her crew to include ninety-five Americans recently escaped from British prisons.

  This time Conyngham got home safely. Upon his arrival he visited Congress to get the six years of back pay due him. He was confident there would be no problem.96

  Lack of funds and sailors had kept the Trumbull idle in the Delaware for more than a year, by which time even James Nicholson was running out of faults to find and feathers to ruffle. Instead, he focused his full attention on John Paul Jones.

  Since Jones’s arrival in Philadelphia, Nicholson had behaved like a petulant child over the Scotsman’s success and ensuing adulation. But when he learned that some congressmen were considering Jones for an admiral’s commission, he reached new heights of conspiratorial spitefulness. While Thomas Read was the only other Continental captain willing to join Nicholson in his plot to stop such a promotion (it was Read’s wife who first learned of Jones’s possible promotion from an indiscreet congressman), they had the Lee-Adams faction more than willing to assist. Nicholson “took my Hat and with very little Ceremony” called on Samuel Huntington, just finishing his term as president of Congress.

  Nicholson coincidentally found Jones in the hallway, waiting to make his own pitch. Once alone with Huntington, Nicholson opened fire, beginning with Jones’s junior status on the Captains List. At least five of the seventeen captains ranked above Jones were still in service (or at least, still alive). Elevating so low an officer was unfair to all of them, not just Captain number 1—that is, Nicholson himself. He then closed in for the kill, and “informed [Huntington] of what I had heard . . . Many things pretty severe of the Chevalier’s private as well as Public Carrector to odious to mention.”

  Next, Nicholson visited the man he derisively called “Bob Morris the Financier,” to lobby against Jones’s getting the America. Nicholson adamantly insisted that it be offered to every captain ahead of Jones, realizing, as number 1, that it would only have to be offered once. Nicholson maintained a clear conscience regarding his malevolent offensive, as “The Chevalier ever since his arrival . . . has devoted his time, privately, by making personal application to members of congress to give him rank at the head of the navy.”

  Before departing on the Trumbull, he wrote a poison-pen letter to Barry, full of superficial praise for the Irishman’s heroics, replete with his mean-spiritedness against Jones, but careful not to mention how hard Nicholson campaigned against Barry earlier:

  Your arrival and success came opportunily and I did not fail to make use of it I mean outdoors in the presence of Capt. Jones & some of his advocated Members, by observing that you had acquit yourself well, which they acknowledged. I then told them they could not do less than make you Admiral also. I had not a sentence of reply. It irritated the Chevalier so much that he was obliged to decamp.97

  Nicholson and Read got half a loaf: Congress abandoned any promotion for Jones (in fact, the first admiral in an American navy was David Farragut in the Civil War). But “Bob Morris the Financier” was made of sterner stuff, and much savvier than Nicholson politically. Jones was made captain of the America by a unanimous decision of Congress. “I am convinced he will never get her to sea,” Nicholson hissed to Barry, but Morris believed otherwise. “Send that ship to sea,” he ordered.98

  Nicholson’s attempt to demolish Jones was suspended once the Trumbull was ready to sail. Like Barry, Jones, and Harding, Nicholson took on British prisoners for this cruise (fifty in all) to have enough hands to adequately man the frigate. After escorting twenty-eight merchantmen out to sea, Nicholson was to make for Havana, sell his hold of flour, and deliver Robert Morris’s dispatches to the Spanish admiral in port.99

  Among Nicholson’s lieutenants were Alexander Murray and the resilient Richard Dale. After an earlier stint in the navy, Murray had served in the Continental Army before going privateering. Recently captured and exchanged, he was happy to be a Continental officer again. The fleet cleared the Delaware Capes on August 8, only to be immediately spotted by three British cruisers. Nicholson signaled the merchantmen to disperse before cracking on all sail himself. Two of the enemy ships gave chase.100

  The Trumbull was making her getaway when a storm rolled over the horizon. Within minutes the gale was blowing hard, and the frigate lost both her foretop and main topgallant masts, the topsail yard puncturing the foresail before crashing onto the fo’c’sle. Nicholson had no choice but to “run before the wind,” hoping to elude both the storm and his pursuers. As the Trumbulls did their best to clear away the wreckage, one British ship, far ahead of her consort, closed in on Nicholson’s lame frigate.101

  The enemy warship was the HMS Iris, formerly the Continental frigate Hancock—John Manley’s old command. By daylight she had the Trumbull in range. From his quarterdeck, Nicholson cried “Beat to Quarters!” certain that he could rally this crew to duty just as he had before the engagement with the Watt. But in that battle he had “green country lads” who rose to the occasion; now Nicholson watched, stunned, as “three quarters of [the crew] ran below, [and] put out the lights”—not just his pressed British prisoners, but many Americans as well. It was the Virginia in reverse; Nicholson wanted to fight, but his men did not.

  However, “with the remainder and a few brave officers we commenced an action,” he later reported, adding that “at no time did I have more than forty men upon deck.” Remarkably, he almost succeeded. For more than ninety minutes, his faithful officers and tars fought the fully manned Iris to a standstill. Finally, the second British ship sailed into the fight: the General Monk, eighteen guns. She had once been the Yankee privateer General Washington. Within minutes, the momentum of the battle shifted. Both Dale and Murray were among the wounded, and five others were dead. “Seeing no prospect of escaping in this unequal contest,” Nicholson struck his colors. For the rest of his life, he never forgave the British and American sailors who “through treachery . . . and from cowardice betrayed me.”

  The Trumbull was so badly damaged that the Iris had to tow her to New York. Once she arrived, carpenters found her beams so rotten that they abandoned her. Nicholson and his officers were quickly paroled, his British sailors freed. His American hands were among the last Continental sailors turned over to the prison hulks on the East River. Some of them survived this nightmare; others did not.102

  Historian William M. Fowler, Jr., cites the irony of the Iris’s capture of the Trumbull: “the first of the thirteen frigates built by Congress had captured the last.” With the loss of the Trumbull, the Confederacy, and the Saratoga, the Continental Navy was down to the frigates Alliance and Deane. It was also about to have new management: a one-man committee named Robert Morris.103

  As the days grew shorter that September, two seismic events were unfolding. One was the stuff of legend: in September, Admiral de Grasse’s fleet and the combined armies of Generals Washington and Rochambeau bottled up General Lord Cornwallis’s army in Yorktown. After a short siege, Cornwallis surrendered on October 19. While historians have written ever since how a British band played the popular tune “The World Turned Upside Down,” it is interesting to note that it was also the melody to the song “When the King Enjoys His Own Again.” As the war had more than a year remaining, perhaps it was that song’s lyrics running through the Redcoats’ heads.104

  The other development, far less well-known but just as necessary for the American government’s survival, was the consolidation of powers given to Robert Morris. He had been appointed superintendent of finance and given carte blanche to do what he deemed necessary to address the country’s catastrophic economic mess. Though his detractors saw his appointment as the evil centralization of power, nearly everyone else saw Morris as the only man whose financial wizardry could keep both the economy and the government from total collapse. In truth, he was effectively running the country, with the exception of the army. Morris had broad shoulders. He woul
d need them.105

  When news of Yorktown reached Philadelphia, Morris gained another title: Agent of Marine, similar in authority to England’s First Lord of the Admiralty. In typical fashion, he plunged headfirst into the assignment. With just two frigates in action, the ships America and Bourbon still on the stocks, and no money to build any others, Congress had lost interest in the Continental Navy.106

  Morris had not. He saw the navy as a means of maintaining commerce, still capable of escorting convoys, taking prizes, and thereby protecting and generating revenue. John Brown, his assistant since the Willing and Morris days, would be his right arm. Morris considered Brown “an honest, a modest, and a sensible Man”—just what he needed for this near-Sisyphean task. He sent Brown to Boston, where the Alliance and the Deane were docked. Brown, carrying a lengthy list of orders and ideas to get the two-ship navy ready, went right to work, making payments when required and cutting costs where necessary. Some egos were bruised in the process; when the Eastern Navy Board complained to Morris about Brown’s actions, Morris unhesitatingly backed Brown up.107

  No one was happier to see Brown than his old friend John Barry. His wife’s nursing had gone a long way towards assuring Barry’s recovery, although his shoulder would forever serve as a built-in barometer, alerting him of forthcoming squalls. In August, Barry breakfasted with John Paul Jones, who had stopped in Boston en route to Portsmouth and the America. Jones wanted to hear Barry’s ideas about the America’s construction. They also discussed the Alliance, Landais, politics, and the war. Barry tactfully did not mention Nicholson’s malicious letter. Later, when Jones learned of it, he wrote Barry, thanking him for his disregard of Nicholson’s gossip.108

  In August, another of Barry’s prizes arrived in Boston along with the Trepassey, bearing 130 American sailors exchanged for Barry’s prisoners. Barry’s prizes were libeled and promptly sold, giving the Alliances some, if not all, of what was owed them.109