by Tim McGrath
On August 10, the French ship-of-the-line Magnifique was entering Boston harbor, a feckless pilot at the helm who underestimated the ship’s draft. She ran aground so hard she was wrecked. Hearing this, Morris acted immediately with a solution that worked perfectly for everyone but Jones. “I have the honour to present to you the America . . . in the name of the United States for the Service of His most Christian Majesty,” he wrote the Duc de la Luzerne. Morris’s offer was both a token of gratitude for France’s support and a way to get the giant ship off Congress’s ledger.80
Jones despaired. While he was a good sport to Morris, calling his loss “a Sacrifice I shall make with pleasure,” he was bitter to everyone else, rhetorically asking Gouverneur Morris, “Are we in a condition to make presents?” adding it was like “offering to give a friend an empty Eggshell.” On her first attempted launch, the America got stuck on the ways, but with the help of the anchor cables sent to Portsmouth from the Magnifique, the second attempt went flawlessly. Jones graciously turned her over to the French. James Nicholson was wrong: Jones did get the America to sea. Nicholson was also right: Jones never took her to sea.81
Morris thought he had a consolation prize for Jones: l’Indien, at long last, now called the South Carolina and leased by her owners to the South Carolina Navy.
She had sailed from Texel Island under Charlestonian Alexander Gillon, who possessed more diplomatic skills than nautical ones. Once she reached Philadelphia, Morris planned to give her to Jones, then send him on a cruise with the Alliance and Hague under Jones’s command (imagine Barry’s and Sam Nicholson’s reaction to that!). She was larger than the American-built frigates, but as fast if not faster, carrying forty guns. The ship of Jones’s dreams was in his home port—would she at last be his?82
But Gillon, learning of Morris’s intentions, sent her back down the Delaware in November under command of his South Carolina colleague John Joyner, to keep her out of Morris’s clutches. Foul weather kept her downriver until December 19. Once off the Delaware Capes she was chased and pursued by three of Admiral Digby’s frigates for eighteen hours before they captured her and sailed her triumphantly into New York. For the third and last time, the frigate was taken from Jones.83
“If the War should continue I wish to have the most active part in it,” Jones wrote. With rumors of peace reaching America, and the navy down to two frigates and a packet, Jones received permission to join a French fleet as the guest of Monsieur le Marquis de Vaudreuil, Lieutenant-Général des Armées Navales, about to embark on a cruise from Boston to the Caribbean. After purchasing horses and a sleigh for his wintry passage to Massachusetts, Jones left Philadelphia and the Continental Navy, but not before Morris wrote Elias Boudinot, president of Congress, that Jones
Is about to pursue a Knowledge of his Profession so as to become still more useful if ever he should be called to the Command of a Squadron or Fleet. I should do Injustice to my own Feelings as well as to my Country if I did not most warmly recommend this Gentleman to the Notice of Congress whose Favour he has certainly merited by the most signal Services and Sacrifices.84
Before his departure, Morris gave Jones one more gift—his back pay of $20,705—a remarkable gesture, considering how many naval officers were due less but overdue longer. At Morris’s suggestion, Jones invested $8,800 of it in the new Bank of North America, making him its largest stockholder when he left Philadelphia.85
After three years in prison, John Manley had finally been exchanged and returned to Boston. Still popular with both local politicians and sailors, Robert Morris hoped Manley’s name alone might add more names to the Hague’s muster rolls.
On August 8, Morris sent orders for Manley to cruise the West Indies and, Morris hoped, “annoy the Enemies of the United States” once more. When Morris learned that two hundred transports were heading to America, he dropped another line to Manley suggesting they, too, would make good targets. On September 11, Manley ascended the Hague’s gangplank. The frigate was festively decorated, as a throng of Bostonians took to the waterfront to cheer their hero back to sea, complete with a thirteen-gun salute. Manley even delivered a short speech to his men and the crowd.86
The Hague made it to the West Indies, taking several prizes along the way. The last one, taken around New Year’s Day, 1783, was the merchantman Baille, her hold packed tight with supplies. On January 9, Manley’s frigate was spotted off Antigua by the HMS Dolphin, a forty-four-gun frigate. Soon the Dolphin had company: four ships-of-the-line, all anxious to join in the chase. For thirty-six hours Manley led them south, past Montserrat, hoping to find protection under the guns of the French fortresses along the eastern shore of Guadeloupe. Manley had already been captured twice; there would not be a third time.
Despite damage to his hull and masts from the enemy’s long bow chasers, Manley made it, running aground on the reef off Grande Terre. Not wanting to give the French garrison gunnery practice, the British ships sailed off. “Without a man killed and only one slightly wounded,” Manley got the Hague off the rocks and repaired. She sailed up Nantasket Road in May, by which time her crew was as tired of Manley’s contentious attitudes as they had been with Sam Nicholson’s. His lieutenants, including Michael Knies, pressed charges against him, and Morris had him arrested.87
Navy veteran and historian Dr. William Morgan wrote that Manley, as one of the first captains in “Washington’s Navy,” had captured the first prize of note in the war, the brigantine Nancy. With the Baille, he also captured the last.88
On September 7, 1782, the Alliance was making for the Newfoundland Banks when her mastheader spotted a sail on the horizon. Taking up his spyglass, Captain John Barry determined her a prize worth pursuing, and gave chase. She proved no match for the fast Alliance, and was easily overtaken.
She was the Nantucket whaler Somerset, returning home after a profitable cruise, her hold full of barrels containing spermaceti and ambergris. Captain Thomas Brock objected: the Somerset was an American ship. His protest was soon contradicted once Barry perused Brock’s papers and found Admiral Digby’s pass protecting his ship from seizure by the Royal Navy and Loyalist letters of marque giving Digby’s “permission to bring their Oyl to New York.” That made her a prize—the third for this cruise. Barry placed a small crew aboard and sent her to Boston.89
More prizes meant fewer hands, but Barry was a veteran at sweet-talking captured Loyalists and convincing them of the error of their ways. Several of the Somersets signed on, including Second Mate Shubael Gardner. He was a rare find—a seasoned tar with gunnery experience. Barry made him a master’s mate.90
Gardner was joining a crew far different from the ones Barry had taken with him on his previous voyages to France. “I have a good healthy ships Company, much beyond my expectation,” he happily wrote John Brown. For John Kessler, it harked back to his first days with Barry, sailing the privateer Delaware in 1779. Barry was, at heart, a sailor’s captain; the “Innocent mirth of the Seamen was his delight,” Kessler later recalled. “Indiscriminate enjoyment of mirth & good cheer” was the norm aboard ship:
It sometimes happened that when any one had neglected or done anything wrong & when asked by Capt’n Barry how he came to neglect it . . . the person would begin to state, he thought so and so, Capt’n Barry would hastily say who gave you a right to think so, & which occasioned the crew among themselves to address their comrades with “who gives you the right to think, don’t you know that Capt’n Barry thinks for us all”—and on one of those times of play he heard it, and required and received an explanation with the greatest good humor.91
His cheerful demeanor was matched with unsurpassed skills as a mariner. “He knew how to perform all the duties of a Seaman from Stem to Stern,” Kessler wrote, marveling how he could be awakened in the middle of the night during a storm or crisis and know exactly what to do: “His decisions on sudden emergencies was wondered at and admired.” A sailor would look far and wide b
efore he found a better commander.92
It had been a sweet five weeks for Barry and his men. Since leaving New London they had been blessed with both fortune and adventure. As soon as they left Connecticut waters, two prizes fell into their hands. First Barry sailed to Bermuda, a haven for Loyalist privateers, in hopes of freeing the American sailors imprisoned there, when he learned that the Jamaica Fleet—eighty-eight merchantmen in all—had recently passed the island on its northward course to Newfoundland before turning east towards England. Barry took off in pursuit. The Royal Navy’s convoy, commanded by Admiral Graves, included nine ships-of-the-line, among them Admiral de Grasse’s captured flagship, the Ville de Paris. Barry’s plan was simple: get to the fleet and stay on its heels, avoid the ships-of-the-line, cut out as many prizes as possible, and don’t get caught. He began sailing after them on September 8.93
To Barry’s consternation, a vicious storm prevented the Alliance from making any headway towards the fleet. But on September 18, Barry learned how lucky he was. The Alliance captured a brig from the fleet, whose captain informed him that the storm he had safely sailed through was the tail end of a huge hurricane that had scattered the fleet for hundreds of miles. For two days, countless ships foundered. Two ships-of-the-line, including the Ville de Paris, went down with all hands. No fewer than thirteen merchantmen met the same fate. Graves’s own flagship, the Ramillies, also went down, but most of her men were rescued and taken aboard the fleet’s surviving ships.94
For days, the Alliance sailed through the wreckage of floating hogsheads, masts, and sailors’ sea chests, the remains of much of the giant fleet and its mighty escorts, now at the bottom of the sea. The cruise became a combined prize-taking binge and rescue effort. One after another, the Alliances overtook merchantmen too damaged to sail effectively; some were literally floating derelicts, with the exception of the wealth in their holds. One captain told of watching a ship-of-the-line being torn apart plank by plank by the gales before the tempest’s massive green waves swallowed her up.95
As before, Barry was a gracious host to his prisoners, including officers from the Ramillies, who thanked him for his kindnesses, a stark contrast to how American sailors were treated when captured. One asked Barry to “Accept my thanks for the genteel treatment we castaway dogs received on board the Alliance.” With too many mouths to feed, while growing more shorthanded with each prize crew, Barry decided to make for France, taking four of his prizes in tow. After sailing through another storm that damaged the Alliance’s bowsprit, the five ships reached l’Orient on October 17.96
Coming into port, Barry saw no fewer than a dozen other prizes at anchor, taken by American and French privateers. With such a glut of ships, there would be no quick sale of his captures. Once ashore, he visited Consul Thomas Barclay to make arrangements for repairs, refitting, the sale of his prizes, and pay for his men. He found l’Orient abuzz with rumors that peace was at hand—which was welcome news at Versailles after the Battle of the Saintes, and recent reports that Russia was eyeing French holdings in the Crimea. Three days after Barry’s arrival the General Washington sailed into l’Orient. Joshua Barney informed Barry he had secret dispatches to take immediately to Franklin.97
For months, peace negotiations had dragged on, slowed by the bickering between three principals—the American triumvirate of Franklin, Adams, and Jay, “the greatest quibblers I ever knew,” one British diplomat groused. Barry was no warmonger, but he knew that peace rumors would drive down the sale of his prizes. He was also not eager to remain in l’Orient when news of actual peace arrived. Like the Philadelphia merchants who sent their ships hurriedly back to England to fatten their accounts before word of Lexington and Concord reached Parliament, Barry now wanted to escape France before peace put an end to his prize-taking. He gave Barney a slapdash note for Franklin, suggesting that Barney join Barry on another cruise that would “render Great Service”—or at least funds—“to the United States.”98
He hoped to have his frigate ready and his prizes sold by the time Barney returned from Passy, but three things kept the Alliance from sailing. The first was Barclay’s inability to get the prizes sold. The second was Barry himself. Without warning he was stricken with a “Bilious fever” that forced the giant Irishman to take refuge in a chamber above a waterfront tavern. No matter what Ship’s Surgeon Joseph Geagan did to treat it, the fever would not spike, and Barry was confined to his room for weeks.99
Deathly ill, Barry did not see the third incident coming. Having deterred a mutiny by British sailors with the lash and one by American seamen with a tongue-lashing, Barry now faced a third, from his officers. While some, like Geagan, were new to the Alliance, others, like Mathew Parke, had served aboard her for years, with little or no pay to show for it. Parke paid a courtesy call to Barry’s sickroom, informing him that six officers, fed up with Morris’s promises of pay and having learned the officers aboard the General Washington had “rec’d considerable compensation,” had left ship in Barry’s absence and taken rooms in a dockside hostel. They demanded that Barry obtain notes they could discharge for payment.
Drawing himself up in his bed, Barry tried to reason with Parke, having “as Much reason to Complain as any of you.” But while Barry refused to force Morris’s hand, he promised that if wages were not paid the officers upon their return to America, he would join them “in any Petition or Remonstrance” Parke thought proper. Barry’s offer was refused. With a hand trembling from his illness, Barry wrote orders to each of them: return to duty, or face arrest.100
By November’s end he was well enough to return to his cabin and finish refitting the Alliance. Barney returned from Passy with orders to remain in l’Orient until negotiations were completed, then sail home with the momentous news of peace. Franklin had assured Barney “you will have an English passport”—proof to any British boarding party he might encounter that Great Britain now recognized the “band of rebels” as a sovereign nation. Barry wrote to Morris about “the Joyous news of peace” and that he would “run down the Coast of Guinea” before sailing to Martinique and from there, America.101
But what to do with disobedient officers who were still ashore? Barry’s solution was simple and quick. Rather than send marines to return them to the ship and find enough officers in port to conduct a trial, Barry marooned them. He ordered Barclay not to pay the men; rather, let them “get to America as well as they Can,” where “they will be Tried by a Court martial and merit their desserts.” With just old Lieutenant Welch and young Marine Lieutenant Thomas Elwood remaining among the officers, he promoted several hands, young Kessler joining Shubael Gardner as a master’s mate. With a cold, bitter wind filling her sails, the Alliance departed l’Orient for the last time on December 7 (soon afterwards, the preliminary peace accords were signed, “in as short a time as a marriage agreement,” a sardonic John Adams noted).102
The Alliance sped south to Africa, then made her way without difficulty across the Atlantic. In just one month, her mastheader sighted Martinique, where Barry found orders awaiting him from Morris. He was to proceed to Havana and collect 100,000 Spanish milled dollars—about half a million dollars in U.S. currency—and bring it posthaste to Philadelphia. Congress was broke again.103
Before departing Martinique, Barry told the publisher of the local gazette that the preliminary articles of peace had been signed. The news island-hopped its way to the American coast, by which time the facts of Barry’s report had been altered: “ARTICLES of PEACE were SIGNED on the 22nd day of December last!” the Boston Evening Post declared. The facts were wrong, but paper after paper attributed the good tidings to “Capt. Bary [sic] . . . an officer of credit.”104
Barry did his own share of island hopping while heading to Cuba, with the occasional British cruiser for company until the Alliance’s superb sailing ability left them in her wake. At the Hôtel de la Coursonne in Cap François, Haiti, Barry met with Seth Harding. The former captain of t
he Confederacy had been recently paroled from the British prison in Jamaica, and needed passage home. Barry, needing senior officers, was happy to oblige. The Alliance resumed sailing on January 22, escorting two slow ships to Havana. They arrived at dusk on January 29.105
In the dim light of sunset Barry made out Spain’s West Indies fleet, one long row of warships nestled under the mighty stone walls of Morro Castle, which guards Havana’s harbor to this day. The following morning, after salutes were exchanged between the Alliance and the fortress, Barry’s pinnace was rowed to the stone quay by the castle, both he and his sailors resplendent in their best attire.
To his pleasant surprise, he was greeted by his friends John Brown and John Green. Ever cautious, Morris had purchased yet another ship for the navy, fitted her with twenty guns and renamed her the Duc de Lauzon. Green, recently paroled from Mill Prison, was appointed captain, with orders to take Brown with him to Havana and bring back the cache of Spanish milled dollars in the event that Barry did not arrive.106
One last time, the best-laid plans for the Continental Navy ran into political shoals ashore. When Brown went to make arrangements for the transfer of the money, he was told that his country’s credit was good for only $72,447—a far cry from what Morris expected. In fact, Brown was told by the banking official that, had Morris used his credit and not his country’s, Brown would be taking home a substantially larger amount.107
Things got worse on the evening of February 1, when Barry hosted an ornate dinner for Don Luis Vizaga, the governor of Cuba; Don Josef Solano, admiral of the Spanish fleet; along with the American registrar, James Seagrove, Brown, and Green. The affair went swimmingly until Don Josef informed his host that the American ships were not going anywhere. The Spanish fleet was readying itself for a joint offensive with the French against British-held Jamaica. For the sake of secrecy, the port was closed until they departed.108
