Give Me a Fast Ship

by Tim McGrath

  Nothing is more telling about Biddle’s character than the letter he wrote to Lydia about this ordeal. With tongue in cheek, he told her “my hand shakes as I write.” But “what astounds, confounds, and frightens me most of all is that during the whole voyage, I did not apprehend danger.” He was planning on volunteering for a similar expedition to the “Southern Ocean” by naturalist Sir Joseph Banks when word of the Boston Tea Party reached London. Seeing what the future held, Biddle returned his midshipman’s warrant and booked passage home.51

  Upon arriving, Biddle sailed a snow to Santo Domingo, officially for molasses but actually for gunpowder. Stowing the half barrels of powder in the hold behind a row of large barrels of molasses, he sailed homeward. He picked up a pilot off Cape Henlopen, who informed him that a British warship was upriver, stopping and searching American vessels and seizing any smuggled “contraband.” The cagey Biddle ran up French colors, boldly sailed past the king’s ship, and docked in Philadelphia. Soon afterwards he accepted the command of a Pennsylvania row galley, the Franklin. The ink on his commission was barely dry when the Continental Navy was born.52

  These were the first Americans to sail under John Adams’s Articles of War, a long list of commandments intended to maintain discipline and keep each ship well run and, hopefully, happy. Before drafting them, Adams devoured the Royal Navy’s articles. His new bylaws were influenced by both the British code and the Age of Enlightenment:

  Commanders . . . are strictly required to shew themselves as a good example of honor and virtue to their officers and men . . . No Commander shall inflict any punishment upon a seaman beyond twelve lashes upon his bare back, with a cat of nine tails; if the fault shall deserve a greater punishment, he is to apply to the Commander in Chief of the Navy never by his own authority to discharge a commission or warrant officer, nor to punish or strike him . . . any [person] who shall utter any words of sedition or mutiny . . . shall suffer such punishment as a court-martial shall inflict.

  In copying nearly verbatim many of the articles, the puritanically minded Adams found that many reflected his New England abhorrence of the human frailties he found sinful:

  The Commanders . . . are to take care that divine service shall be performed twice a day on board, and a Sermon preached on Sundays, unless bad weather or other extraordinary accidents prevent it. If any shall be heard to swear, curse, or blaspheme the name of God, the Commander is strictly enjoined to punish them for every offence, by causing them to wear a wooden collar, or some other badge of distinction . . . He who is guilty of drunkenness, if a seaman, shall be put in irons until he is sober, but if he is an officer, he shall forfeit two days pay.53

  On Friday, March 1, Hopkins’s fleet reached the island of Abaco, east of Grand Bahama Island. The ships dropped anchor off Hole-in-the-Wall, the treacherous southern end of the island still dangerous for mariners to this day.54

  The Bahamas, a chain of islands that stretches gracefully north to southeast in the Atlantic Ocean, were the colonies’ gateway to the Caribbean. The southeast part of Abaco, where Hopkins now waited, hoping for the arrival of the Hornet and the Fly, is separated by the Northeast Providence Channel from the island of New Providence, where Nassau, the Bahaman capital, lies. Almost immediately the fleet captured two Bahaman sloops and their pilots, who informed Hopkins that the two old forts guarding New Providence—Montague on the east, Nassau on the west—both had working cannons and sizable supplies of gunpowder: just what Hopkins came for, just what Washington needed. Further, the forts were manned by an inconsequential force, mostly armed citizens instead of seasoned troops. Hopkins dispatched a midshipman and some longboats to resupply the fleet with freshwater and signaled his captains to convene for a council of war.55

  One of the Cabot’s lieutenants, Thomas Weaver, was familiar with the islands and their soundings. With his help, Hopkins concocted a plan: he would place sailors and marines aboard the captured sloops and sail them straight towards Fort Nassau to surprise and subdue the garrison before they had time to defend themselves, while the fleet remained out of sight but within striking distance. The plan sounded brilliant—in theory. It required trusting the captured pilots to safely navigate the sloops through the passage, with the fleet keeping out of sight of the fort’s lookouts as the sloops sailed boldly into the harbor. His captains approved, and returned to their ships.

  Hopkins made sail on March 2. At first he had his ships right where he wanted them, the two sloops making straight for the fort while his squadron tarried behind. But whether he forgot to order his captains to remain out of sight, or was himself caught up in seeing his stratagem carried out firsthand, the entire fleet was soon close behind the sloops and easily visible to everyone in the fort. All hope of surprise ended when, from the Alfred’s quarterdeck, Hopkins saw one puff of white smoke from the fort’s walls, then another. Seconds later he and his men heard a cannon’s roar, followed by a cannonball humming towards them. It splashed harmlessly in the water, as did the ones that followed. No ships were hit by the meager cannonade. Hopkins signaled the sloops to wear ship—turn through the wind, and follow the fleet out of the harbor. There would be no victory for the Continental Navy this day.56

  From Fort Nassau, Bahaman governor Montford Browne watched the Americans retreat. Even though British forces had abandoned New Providence, Browne and the volunteer garrison, having sent the Americans out of the harbor, “thought Ourselves secure with our own internal Strength and Defence.”57

  Meanwhile, in the Alfred’s cabin, Hopkins and company discussed another attack, this time on Fort Montague but still requiring Weaver and the captured pilots to get the ships safely within striking distance. Years later, John Paul Jones would insist that the idea was his, colorfully describing how he ascended the foretopmast head “where he could see every danger” while guiding the ships to safety. A great story, but untrue: Jones, unlike Weaver, had never been to the Bahamas.58

  On Sunday, March 3, the fleet’s marines were once again transferred to the two captured sloops along with the Providence and the Wasp. Then, with Biddle’s speedy Andrew Doria in the lead, they sailed eastward to Rose Island, a tiny spit of land just north of Fort Montague. By ten o’clock the ships had assembled and dropped anchor, while the four carrying the marines and about two hundred sailors stood for shore. Once they reached the shallows, the longboats were lowered and rowed to shore, packed tight with marines. As soon the boats touched bottom, Captain Samuel Nicholas and the marines vaulted over the sides, their shoes splashing in the water. The tradition citing “the shores of Tripoli” actually began on the beach of Nassau.

  As they hit the beach, the guns of the Providence and the Wasp were run out. The marines soon found themselves on a cart road that wound the two miles up to the fort. At first, the islanders on the shore thought they were being attacked by Spaniards, but as the Americans closed in they were “soon undeceived,” as Captain Nicholas later recalled. As he formed his men into marching order he was confronted by a messenger from Governor Browne, asking his intentions, and Nicholas made them plain: take possession of the “war-like” stores while not harming anyone or their property unless provoked. His message delivered, Nicholas marched the marines up the road to the fort.

  The marines had neither the time nor the inclination to take in the beautiful view. The road curved around a deep cove, while the leeward side was covered by thick undergrowth. The Americans could be clearly seen from the fort’s ramparts. The garrison was outnumbered but not outgunned: sixteen cannon in all, ranging from 12-pounders to 32-pounders.

  Fortunately, they were not manned by seasoned British gunners, nor were the defenders as itching for a fight as were the advancing marines. Nonetheless, they fired three of the 12-pounders at the Americans and, while they hit no one, at least stopped the marines in their tracks. Nicholas held a hurried consult with his officers and approached the fort under a flag of truce, reiterating what he had just told t
he townsfolk below. To Nicholas’s surprise, the garrison’s commander replied that he had fired on the Americans because the governor had ordered him to do so, while behind him the gun crews busied themselves spiking the guns—driving spikes through the touchholes and rendering them useless. Then the defenders fled into town. By three o’clock, the fort was flying American colors. When his men informed Nicholas that the guns were not badly damaged by the garrison’s hasty sabotage, he decided to remain in Fort Montague and give his men a decent night’s rest as reward for their efforts, sending word to Governor Browne that he would meet him in the morning.59

  As the exhausted Americans slept, Browne met with the town council, the militia officers, and the island’s more prominent citizens to determine if this “sudden and unexpected Attack” could be repelled by defending Fort Nassau. Earlier, he had sent out a call to arms among the New Providence citizenry, offering the “Reward of a Pistole to every free Negroe” who “would immediately enter the Fort” and help defend it. Few, if any, took Browne up on his offer. Now, with the sun setting behind them and the Grand Union flying before them, the principal inhabitants and Browne’s other guests decided resistance was futile.

  If he could not defend his town, Browne could at least deprive its invaders of what they had come for. He gave orders to remove the gunpowder from Fort Nassau’s magazine, load it onto a merchant’s sloop and sail to St. Augustine, Britain’s Florida stronghold. The Bahamans removed 160 of the 182 half barrels of powder after Browne decided that “sending away the whole of it might enrage a disappointed enemy, & induce them to burn the Town, & commit other depredations.”60

  The sloop was escorted by the St. John, a British schooner in disrepair. Any hopes Browne had of rallying his fellow British subjects to return to Fort Nassau and duty sailed with the sloop: she no sooner weighed anchor and sailed than “three fourths of the Men and Negroes” disappeared into the shadowy streets to the safety of their homes, leaving the disgusted governor alone with his principles.61

  Even in the dark of night, the sloop and her sluggish escort would have been easy prey for Hopkins’s ships had he done what any British squadron leader would have: blockaded the harbor. The sloop rode low in the water, thanks to a hold full of gunpowder. Nevertheless, the unarmed sloop and her barely seaworthy escort of eight guns and thirty men easily slipped through Hopkins’s fingers.62

  The following morning Nicholas marched his marines and sailors across town to Fort Nassau, where the British colors were struck without a shot fired. From the ramparts the Americans could see their fleet sail into the harbor, then turn and watch Governor Browne pacing the piazza at his mansion with his council and servants in tow. With Nicholas’s permission, an enthusiastic junior officer and a small detachment of marines were sent to escort the governor to the fort. The indignant Browne insisted he would leave only “By force of arms” and was assured that would be the case. Once Hopkins got ashore and learned of Browne’s defiance, he placed him under arrest.

  Hopkins made his way to Fort Nassau under the bright sunshine and the pleasant breezes that have lured people to the Bahamas for centuries: even the water has an otherworldly sparkle there. The commodore was master of all he surveyed. The war against Britain was not yet a year old; weeks earlier, the Continental Navy did not even exist. Hopkins did not know it, but at that moment his career reached its zenith.63

  The cache of stores in the fort was wondrous to behold: no less than seventy- one cannons, fifteen mortars, thousands upon thousands of round shot, and other ordnance supplies—and those twenty-two half barrels of powder. For two long weeks sailors and marines unloaded ballast from their ships and dismantled the fort. When the ships’ holds were packed, Hopkins requisitioned a Bermuda sloop, lading her hold full while promising to send her back to New Providence. The sailors also found a puncheon of rum. After endless trips carrying massive guns, the cask was deemed too heavy to bring aboard ship. Lightening it helped them celebrate their victory, and also made them too drunk for work. Among the itemized list of supplies, Hopkins entered “Part of a Cask [of] Spirit[s],” if less gunpowder than he might have captured had he been more vigilant.64

  Those tars down with alcohol poisoning soon had company as one American after another came down with fever as well as some cases of smallpox. The captains had no experience aboard ships with such large crews—merchantmen usually sailed with “skeleton crews” to minimize overhead and maximize profits. They lacked any understanding of how to maintain a healthy albeit crowded ship. Only Biddle, with his Royal Navy pedigree, possessed such knowledge. In fact, the Andrew Doria boasted the only crew inoculated for smallpox; thus she became the first, though unofficial, hospital ship in an American navy. Even Biddle handed his bed over to an ailing sailor, sleeping atop his lockers for the duration. Soon even his men were prostrate with “tropical fever,” although they escaped the ravages of the pox.65

  On March 18, under “Clear Weather” and “a fresh Sea Breese,” Hopkins led his fleet north. While there was no stirring victory, his New Providence venture had been a success, his ships weighed down with munitions and supplies.66

  Not every American was glad to be returning; aboard the Wasp, Captain Hallock noted that one seaman literally jumped ship and swam to shore. Hopkins had three guests aboard the Alfred who probably wished they, too, were good swimmers: Governor Browne; British army officer James Babbidge; and Thomas Irving, a South Carolina Loyalist and His Majesty’s Inspector General of Customs for the thirteen colonies. “I have been tore away from my family at a moment’s notice” and “cruelly treated,” a distressed Browne wrote to Lord Dartmouth.67

  Once past Abaco, Hopkins sent each captain orders to keep up with the Alfred if possible but, “Should you Separate by accident you are to make the best of your way to Block Island Channel” just off the Rhode Island coast. Hopkins was heading home. In his later reports to Congress he would take care to mention that he considered making for Georgia and ridding that colony’s coast of British warships, but this is doubtful. Surviving logs and correspondence show that his men were getting sicker by the hour, his captains stopping for burials at sea. Over the next two weeks they sailed past Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia—as much a part of Hopkins’s ordered destinations now as they were before. The return trip encountered the same stormy weather as when the ships left Cape Henlopen, even losing the Wasp in a storm.

  En route home, as Biddle returned to exercising his men at the guns, the American ships frequently gave chase to sighted sails that proved to be American or neutral. One day they “spoke” a Frenchman out of Connecticut (hailing its captain across the water), who informed them that the Redcoats had abandoned Boston the same day they had departed New Providence. For the most part, the fleet dealt with medical and meteorological conditions. Hard gales forced the captains to reef sails and man the pumps, while the sick lists mounted. The ships’ bottoms were foul, as were the dispositions of their captains. A beleaguered Hallock, trying to catch up with Hopkins, spoke for his peers when he wrote in his log, “We are in a bad Setuation.”68

  Hopkins ordered the fleet to make for Rhode Island, passing the Delaware Bay and thereby Congress, awaiting his return to Philadelphia. In so doing, Hopkins also eluded capture. A British squadron was lying in wait for him there, led by Captain Andrew Snape Hamond, a proud, talented sea warrior who daily anticipated the Americans’ arrival. By April 4 the Continental ships were off Montauk Point on Long Island, where the Columbus captured the Hawke, a schooner serving as tender to James Wallace’s squadron. She struck her colors without a fight, the first Royal Navy ship taken by the Continental Navy. Tenders, used by larger ships for supplies and carrying dispatches—the Hawke carried just six guns and eight swivels—seemed the perfect prey to Hopkins, who soon had all his ships scouring the horizon for others.69

  The next day, Hopkins led the entire fleet in capturing another ship from the despised Wallace’s squadron: the Bolton, a
bomb brig used for mortar shelling. Her crew was dispersed among the fleet, including seven African slaves of the British officers. Rather than being set free, they were added to the ships’ muster rolls. Hopkins now had a fleet of a dozen ships.70

  As they continued towards Block Island, another Continental ship was departing Philadelphia.

  John Barry had spent months seeing to it that merchantmen were successfully converted into ships of war, only to watch Congress hand them over to other captains. Barry waited, somewhat patiently, for his turn.71

  It came in March, when the Maryland brigantine Wild Duck docked in Philadelphia after a harrowing voyage from St. Eustatius, her hold containing 2,000 pounds of gunpowder and other wartime supplies. While sailing past Virginia she was chased by HMS Edward, a sloop acting as tender to Lord Dunmore’s fleet and under the command of young Richard Boger, who already had one prize under his belt. The Americans barely escaped, and then eluded Hamond’s squadron off the Delaware Capes. While the Wild Duck’s stores were unloaded, Congress purchased her for the navy, renamed her Lexington, and offered command of her to John Barry. “With a determined resolution of distressing the enemy as much as in my power,” Barry accepted.72

  The ebullient Irishman had her ready for sea in just two weeks. Along with her “square-tuck Stern painted yellow, and a low, rounded stem painted lead colors, black sides and yellow moldings,” as one Loyalist spy reported, she carried sixteen 4-pounders and twelve swivels—a bee with a potent sting for her diminutive size. Barry strode tirelessly from shipyard to storehouse to statehouse to obtain munitions, supplies, and men. He was inadvertently aided by Henry Fisher’s latest dispatch from the capes: an enemy sloop was heading upriver. News of such imminent danger shortened the pilot’s letter; instead of the typical signoff “I am Sirs, your obedient Servant, etc.,” Fisher simply wrote, “Yours in haste.”73