Give Me a Fast Ship

by Tim McGrath

  Fortunately for Adams and his pro-navy contingent, the reports that reached Philadelphia over the next nine days began tipping the scales in their favor. News that Parliament was sending thousands of Scottish Highlanders and Irish Roman Catholic soldiers to augment British forces in America was enough to sway Thomas Jefferson that Adams’s viewpoint had merit. Dispatches regarding Wallace’s bombardment of Bristol forced many representatives to rethink their earlier belief that state navies would be an adequate defense. Adams began recounting votes.63

  On October 12, he presented Congress with a detailed proposal for procuring gunpowder from West Indies ports, citing where it could be found, how large a supply was last noted, and the size of any enemy garrison American sailors might encounter. After all, “as the british Ministry have taken Every Step that human Nature could provide” to keep Americans from each and every half barrel of the stuff, then American captains and their crews should take it “wherever they can get it.” He also solicited information from his Boston friends about the Royal Navy’s activities: any news of captured American merchantmen, the treatment of their crews, and the financial worth taken from their holds. “Nothing will contribute so much to facilitate Reprisals, as an expert Account of our Losses and Damages,” he wrote James Warren.64

  On Friday the thirteenth, an agreement was made between the citizens of Newport and James Wallace. In exchange for the supplies of “Beef Beer &c necessarys for his Ships” he promised “he would not fire upon the Town without giving the Inhabitants sufficient warning.” In Virginia, colonists learned that Lord Dunmore had received reinforcements from St. Augustine, Florida. And in Philadelphia, John Hancock read a dispatch from Washington: General Gage had been recalled, to be replaced by General William Howe; a new fleet, including six ships-of-the-line, was sailing from England; “5 Regiments and 1000 Marines” were “expected to join Howe in Boston in 3 or 4 weeks,” and that

  A Fleet consisting of a 64 & 20 Gun Ship, 2 Sloops of 18 Guns, 2 Transports with 600 Men were to sail from Boston . . . They took on Board two Mortars, four Howitzers, and other Artillery calculated for the Bombardment of a Town. Their Destination was kept a profound Secret.

  One other thing: Washington learned that Lord North was “determined to push the War to the utmost.” The British Empire was striking back.65

  In doing so it did Adams and his supporters a favor. The day before, Adams sought detailed reports of actual British attacks. But Washington’s letter, with its list of what was to come from the enemy both near and far, gave Adams something he had not counted on to sway Congress to his cause: fear. Fear of the future, fear of what might come to pass. Not even the argumentative Chase had a rejoinder. That more ships and more men were crossing the Atlantic was one thing. But that a fleet of Washington’s description was heading up or down the coast to shell some defenseless American town only heightened Congress’s collective anxiety.

  With single-minded swiftness, Congress overwhelmingly

  Resolved, That a swift sailing vessel, to carry ten carriage guns, and proportionate number of swivels, with eighty men, be fitted with all possible dispatch, for a cruise of three months . . . That a Committee of three be appointed to prepare an estimate for expence, and lay the same before Congress, and to contract with proper persons to fit out the vessel . . . That another vessel be fitted out for the same purposes [and] a committee [be] appointed to bring in regulations for [a] navy.66

  The Continental Navy was born.

  The three representatives chosen for the Naval Committee were Deane, Langdon, and Gadsden. Adams did not mind being omitted. Gadsden added a southerner’s presence, and Adams was now free to find ships, supplies, and men to take his dream from the State House to the Atlantic. An ebullient Adams wrote James Warren back in Boston: “We begin to feel a little of a Seafaring Inclination here,” adding that

  We must excite by Policy that kind of exalted Courage, which is ever victorious by seas and land—which is irresistible. The Saracens had it—the Knights of Malta—the Assassins—Cromwell’s soldiers and sailors. Nay, N[ew] England men have ever had it hitherto. They never failed in an Attempt of any Kind.

  Adams and his colleagues could be satisfied with their efforts this day. What they could not do was learn where that British fleet Washington had mentioned was heading. 67

  That same day squalls from the northwest struck Falmouth, Massachusetts, a sea town eighty miles up the coast from Boston, in Casco Bay (now Portland, Maine). Through the wind and the rain, the village minister, Reverend Jacob Bailey, watched as a British squadron sailed past the bay, alarming the townsfolk.68 Three days later, the ships entered the harbor, literally blown in by the still prevailing northwest winds. As they approached, a committee of patriots, whom Bailey described as “tradesmen and persons of no property,” stood at the wharf while their fellow citizens, like a Greek chorus, watched from the nearby houses and street corners. It was Lieutenant Mowat’s squadron.

  The next day Mowat sent a longboat from the Canceaux, with a junior officer carrying a statement informing the town of his intentions: “After so many premeditated Attacks on the legal Prerogatives of the best of Sovereigns” in general and “the most unpardonable Rebellion” of the citizens of Falmouth in particular, Mowat carried “orders to execute a just Punishment on the Town.” A “Red pendant will be hoisted at the Maintopgallant Masthead” to signal the start of bombarding the town.

  Mowat’s declaration had the desired results; after hearing it, Reverend Bailey saw that “every heart was seized with terror.” Frantic negotiations commenced. As daylight waned, Mowat agreed to hold off his bombardment. After all, he felt “not a little for the Innocent” in the village; all the committee need do was “surrender their cannon and musketry and give hostages for their future good behaviour,” as Bailey put it, and Mowat would delay bombardment until he heard from Admiral Graves. That evening a rowboat approached the Canceaux. The Americans aboard delivered a substantially smaller arsenal to Mowat than he expected: a handful of muskets and pistols. Mowat would wait until morning to reply to this insult.

  By this time word of the fleet’s arrival and its intentions had reached the countryside. That night the town was overrun by militia comprising the local Sons of Liberty. Under lit bonfires—easily seen from the Canceaux’s quarterdeck—the militia threatened the more peaceable villagers that it would be they, and not Mowat, who would burn the town to ashes if they acquiesced.69

  The weather cleared on Wednesday. Streets leading out of town were jammed with villagers, their wagons and carts overflowing with furniture, clothes, and china. Mowat’s ships were a-row in the harbor, their guns loaded and run out. The wind was still; only inconsequentially small waves lapped against the hulls of Mowat’s ships. One long minute passed, then another. Finally, at nine forty, Mowat ordered the red pennant raised.

  For the fleeing villagers, puffs of smoke and the roar of broadsides were followed by the deadly whoosh of cannonballs overhead before they slammed into earth and building. To cause the greatest panic, Mowat fired over the fleeing Americans, their screams adding to the cacophony. Many of the oxen towing carts broke from their yokes and stampeded through the crowded streets.

  Minutes later, Mowat ordered his gunners to fire hot shot on the town. Winds spread the fire from house to house. Soon flames were licking at the town hall and the church. Looking through his spyglass, Mowat watched as “a brisk fire was keeped up by all the squadron.” He kept his guns firing into the afternoon. “The whole town,” Bailey later reported, “was involved in smoak and combustion.”

  By three o’clock only the buildings on the south end of town near the docks stood untouched, and Mowat sent a longboat loaded with sailors and marines to burn them. As they reached land they drew fire from the Sons of Liberty who were still in town, killing one jack tar and wounding several others before being driven off. Two hours later, his guns blazing hot, Mowat ceased firing. With
the town destroyed, he gave orders to make sail. As the British departed, small-arms fire peppered the squadron but did no damage. Under darkness and a heavy rain, the British ships left Casco Bay, mission accomplished.

  In the hills above Falmouth, Reverend Bailey watched in horror as his church disappeared into ashes, along with the homes of his flock. Another eyewitness, fifteen-year-old Daniel Tucker, later recalled how an uncommonly early winter set in almost immediately, forcing his neighbors to find shelter inland “among a people as poor as themselves.” Shortly afterwards young Tucker went to sea to fight in three different engagements against the navy that had destroyed his home.70

  News of Falmouth soon reached Portsmouth, where a courier immediately rode south to General Washington, who sent a rider posthaste to Philadelphia with a dispatch to Hancock. Calling the bombardment a “horrid Procedure,” Washington warned Congress that “the same Desolation is meditated upon all the Towns on the Coast.” He sent a detachment of soldiers to Portsmouth, where he believed Mowat might strike next.71

  For the next two weeks, more congressmen went on record supporting Adams’s campaign for armed ships. “Why should not America have a navy?” Virginian George Wythe asked his colleagues, citing Rome’s sudden construction of one when at war with Carthage. Even Samuel Chase chimed in. Without a navy to defend merchantmen and ports, “we must submit.” By the end of October Congress doubled the proposed navy from two ships to four, and added four new members to the committee responsible for coming up with ships, ordnance, supplies, and sailors: Stephen Hopkins, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, Joseph Hewes of North Carolina, and John Adams, who “procured a room in a public house”—Tun Tavern—for dinner and the business of creating a navy.72

  Persistent in adversity, Adams proved positively zealous in victory. While he found it odd for someone who “never thought much of old Ocean” to be in the forefront of this endeavor, it was now “my fate and my Duty” to learn about ship design and construction, refitting existing merchantmen, proving ordnance, and regulations. Like a sponge, he soaked up anything and everything that would enable him to get his ideas from paper to the docks and thence to sea.

  To James Warren and Elbridge Gerry in Boston he sent letter upon letter, inquiring what ships were available for purchase or loan to Congress, who among the “Whalemen, Codfishers, and other Seamen” might “be inlisted into the service of the Continent,” and “the Names, Ages, Places of Abode and Characters” who might serve as officers in this new enterprise.73

  He soon learned that he did not need to find ships, for there were several available down the street, nestled against Philadelphia docks. And he need not have sought nominees for captains. Adams and his fellow committee members were about to be played like a string section in a small orchestra by the smartest politician among them, Stephen Hopkins.

  Each evening after Congress adjourned the seven made their way to Tun Tavern on the Philadelphia waterfront—not nearly as ostentatious as the City Tavern two blocks west, but not as frequented by their cronies. The ninety-year-old tavern was owned by Robert Mullan, a convivial host whose passion for the rebellion made him known citywide as a rabid patriot.74

  After a sumptuous meal and more than enough rum, Hopkins held court. He also held his colleagues in the palm of his hand. To Adams, the committee was composed of “sensible Men and very cheerful,” but it was the ancient mariner from Rhode Island who enthralled them all with his sailor’s knowledge and storytelling. Usually the business at hand concluded by eight, but that was just when Hopkins got started. Consuming round after round of “Jamaica Spirits,” Hopkins regaled his colleagues with sea tales, ancient history, and poetry. Instead of Hopkins’s rum consumption making him drunk, Adams later recalled, it was immediately converted “into Wit, Sense, Knowledge, and good humour” that miraculously “inspired in Us all with similar qualities.”

  To the committee, Hopkins was mentor, sage, and raconteur, but he saw the committee differently. Thus far, there were four captain’s berths in the Continental Navy, and Hopkins had a family to look out for.75

  Small wonder, then, as Adams busied himself with writing the voluminous Rules of the Regulations of the Navy of the United Colonies (borrowing liberally from the Royal Navy’s Articles of War), Hopkins put into practice another time-honored Admiralty practice: nepotism. He began by suggesting a commodore for the Continental “fleet”: his younger brother, Esek. The committee heartily approved, and he wrote the new commodore that they “have pitched upon you to take command.” Promising Esek that the “Pay and Perquisites will be such as you will have no Reason to complain of,” the older brother cast his net over the waters of Rhode Island for more relatives.76

  He ceded two captaincies to other colonies. Silas Deane solicited his brother-in-law, Dudley Saltonstall, to be senior captain. Pennsylvania congressman Edward Biddle had the honor of informing his younger brother, Nicholas, that he, too, would be among the navy’s first commanders. That left two remaining posts, and Hopkins filled them with an in-law, Abraham Whipple, and then tapped his nephew (and Esek’s son) John.77

  Congress gave shipwright John Wharton £100,000 to “fitt for Sea the first fleet.” The first ship purchased was Robert Morris’s Black Prince. Lacking congressional connections, her captain, John Barry, was not even considered for a commission despite his reputation as a peerless mariner. Instead, he was appointed to the triumvirate assigned to speedily refit the Black Prince into a ship of war, along with another Philadelphia captain, Nathaniel Falconer, and a young shipwright, decades away from revolutionizing naval warfare with his brilliance: Wharton’s protégé, Joshua Humphreys, soon to be disowned by the Quakers for his military efforts.78

  The next ship acquired was the ship Sally, built by Humphreys for the merchant firm of Conyngham and Nesbitt and given the more adventurous name Columbus for her new role as a warship. The Anglican Conynghams were originally from County Donegal in Ireland; one of the younger members, Gustavus, was a merchant captain who had just embarked for Europe on another of the firm’s vessels, the Charming Peggy. Gustavus was on a mission for Congress “to procure powder, salt-peter, arms, medecins & every thing Necessary for War.” When his attempt at passing himself off as an Irish merchant captain failed to fill his hold in Holland, he made for Dunkirk on the French coast and the beginning of years of adventures and misadventures both nautical and political.79

  The Black Prince soon had company at Wharton’s shipyard, four ships altogether, being refitted and renamed, but let John Adams explain:

  The first we renamed Alfred in honor of the founder of the greatest Navy that ever existed. The second Columbus after the Discover[er] of this quarter of the Globe. The third Cabot for the Discoverer of this northern Part of the Continent. The fourth Andrew Doria in memory of the Great Genovese Admiral.80

  A fifth soon arrived from Rhode Island, the sloop Katy, bearing her captain, Abraham Whipple. She was renamed the Providence.81

  The trio of Barry, Falconer, and Humphreys worked tirelessly day and night. Beginning with the Black Prince/Alfred, carpenters busied themselves piercing her bulwark for gun ports and reinforcing her hull. Mile after mile of rope, thousands of planks and boards, and countless buckets of paint and tar arrived daily. As Humphreys’s carpenters and sawyers kept at their tasks from the keelsons to the quarterdecks, Barry’s riggers, working like a troupe of high-wire acrobats, adjusted stays and shrouds, blackening the standing rigging—and themselves—with pitch and tar. Wending their way between the two groups were Falconer’s men, stevedores carrying bales, yards of sailcloth, hoisting cannons over the rails with block and tackle, and toting what half barrels of precious gunpowder came their way. Miraculously, the ships were ready for their new role as a naval fleet by December. Soon two schooners, the Wasp and the Fly, were added to the fleet, along with another sloop, the Hornet. Nearly giddy with such visible evidence of their resolve, Congress resolved to build no fewer than
thirteen frigates, each carrying between twenty-four and thirty-two guns, to be constructed, launched, and battle-ready within four months, and budgeted at $866,666.67. They would find their deadlines delayed not by weeks but years, and their projected cost off by millions.82

  At another dinner at Tun Tavern, Adams, Hopkins et al. discussed adding a contingent of marines to their naval needs. Their subsequent resolution “That two Battalions of marines be raised” was approved by Congress, which gave the first captain’s commission to a Philadelphia Quaker, Samuel Nicholas, a fox-hunting crony of Robert Morris and Charles Biddle. Known for his fearlessness, Nicholas was soon joined in this venture by another captain, his friend and Tun Tavern proprietor, Robert Mullan. Using his tavern and its reputation for quality ale, Mullan went immediately to work as the Continental Marine Corps’ first recruiter.83

  As November’s winds ushered in December and winter, Adams’s naval manual was completed and approved. Most of the navy’s officers had arrived in Philadelphia, with the notable exception of their “Commander-in-Chief,” Esek Hopkins.

  Sunday, December 3, was cold and clear, giving no hint of how soon true winter weather would arrive. Sometime after church services, a crowd of Philadelphians and their congressional guests gathered at the docks to watch the first act of the Continental Navy.84

  The senior lieutenant aboard the Alfred was a small Scotsman. Still in his twenties, he had made a name for himself as a successful merchant captain in the West Indies trade, but after killing one of his sailors during an argument over wages in 1773 he fled to his brother’s adopted home, Fredericksburg, Virginia, with just fifty pounds in his pocket. Once ashore, he learned that his brother had died. Lacking both money and connections, he used his Freemason’s membership as a way to advance himself.

  Virginians quickly learned that he lacked riches but not confidence. Soon he was competing with a firebrand lawyer for the affections of Dorothea Dandridge, Martha Washington’s cousin. After sizing up her suitors, she opted for the lawyer and became Mrs. Patrick Henry. But Congressman Hewes, a fellow Mason, saw merit in the young mariner. Hearing of the new navy, he headed to Philadelphia, where Hewes pulled some strings on his behalf. The captaincy of the sloop Providence was offered him, but lacking experience commanding a fore-and-aft rigged vessel, he declined, accepting a lieutenant’s commission instead.