Give Me a Fast Ship

by Tim McGrath

  Days later, Charles took “an affectionate leave” of Nicholas, and headed north, while Nicholas led his squadron down Rebellion Road. To add to his contingent of marines, he signed on members of the South Carolina First Regiment, a dashing lot in their black uniforms. Well-wishers crowded the docks. Standing with them was Richard Fordham, the Randolph’s carpenter, whose injured leg had not healed; Biddle sent him ashore, to rejoin the frigate on her next cruise.84

  Once in the Atlantic, Biddle began searching for the enemy. They were nowhere to be found; after a binge of prize-taking and weeks at sea they were in need of repairs. They also had the makings of an epidemic aboard the Carysfort. When Tory spies informed their senior captain, Robert Fanshawe, that Biddle’s squadron was putting to sea to fight them, he made for St. Augustine.85

  Rather than return to port, Biddle decided to sail to the West Indies, picking up one prize before reaching Bermuda. Thus far, Biddle’s name was a double-edged sword: his successes were rewarded with enough manpower, but word that he was coming with such a force soon reached the Windward Islands, causing British merchantmen to scatter or stay in port, leaving only Dutch and French ships for Biddle to catch and release.86

  The squadron was sixty leagues off Barbados on Saturday, March 7, sailing under clear skies; if the wind had been blowing a bit stronger, conditions would have been perfect. Around one p.m., the Randolph’s mastheader saw a sail four points off the starboard bow. Even with his spyglass, Biddle had a hard time making her out—was she a large merchantman or a frigate? As usual, the best way for Biddle to find out was to make straight for her. He signaled the other captains to follow.87

  Light winds slowed their progress. Since it was late winter, visibility began fading by late afternoon, when the sun rides low by dusk before being swallowed up by the horizon. Biddle was partly correct: she was a Royal Navy vessel, HMS Yarmouth. Her captain, Nicholas Vincent, did not spot the squadron until five p.m. Vincent made out six sail standing to the southward, and decided to stand for them. Seeing the Yarmouth come through the wind and head his way, Biddle knew he would have a fight on his hands; how much of one he would know when he got close enough to count her guns.88

  Biddle had spent half his life in two navies, mastering his sailing skills and developing an approach to leadership that was both fearless and fair. That his men obeyed and admired him was evident the second the drummer began his incessant rhythm: Beat to Quarters. Beat to Quarters.

  By seven p.m. the only light was a quarter moon, yet to ascend to the roof of the sky. Earlier, Biddle had signaled the ships to heave to and await the approaching Yarmouth, now just a black shape closing in on them, making straight for the Randolph. While the General Moultrie and the Notre Dame were astern the frigate, the Polly, the Fair American, and the captured schooner were now downwind, far to the west of the Randolph. Biddle laid his mizzen topsail to the mast, allowing the frigate to turn to windward and wait for the enemy. The General Moultrie did the same, but only after she shot ahead of the Randolph.89

  Shortly after nine p.m., the Yarmouth came alongside the General Moultrie. Taking up his speaking trumpet, Vincent hailed Captain Sullivan to identify himself and his ship.

  “The Polly,” he lied.

  “Where from?” Vincent demanded.

  “New York,” Sullivan replied, in hopes of making Vincent think the ships were Loyalist.

  Seeing the Randolph dead ahead, Vincent sent the Yarmouth past Sullivan’s ship. For the first time that day, the Yarmouth could be easily identified. “My God,” a marine gasped aboard the General Moultrie. “A two-decker!”

  The Yarmouth was a third-rate ship-of-the-line, sixty-four guns, exactly twice the Randolph’s firepower, many of them 18-pounders. She was less than two hundred feet away when she came alongside Biddle’s frigate. “Who are you?” Vincent demanded. “Answer, or we fire!”

  Biddle nodded to Lieutenant William Barnes to answer. “Continental frigate Randolph,” Barnes replied, as Biddle ordered the Grand Union raised, and his starboard guns opened fire.90

  Few Continental ships carried gun crews that equaled those of the Royal Navy, but the Randolph did—Biddle had seen to that. Their first broadsides slammed hard and accurately into the Yarmouth. Vincent ordered his men to aim at the flashes from the Randolph’s guns and return fire. By this time, the Notre Dame had crossed the Yarmouth’s stern, discharging an accurate but light barrage from her little 4-pounders, while Sullivan fired indiscriminately at both ships until he was told that most of his shots were striking the Randolph. The Fair American and the Polly, far from the fray, tacked their way closer.91

  Vincent could dismiss the effect of the Notre Dame’s small guns, but he was in the fight of his life as much as Biddle was because of the speed and accuracy of the Randolph’s gunners. Eyewitnesses recalled that they fired four broadsides to the Yarmouth’s one. The fight was only minutes old, and Vincent’s rigging and sails were already shot to pieces, his bowsprit and mizzen topmast useless from American round shot.92

  The ships were now so close that American and British marines could lob their grenades across the water onto their enemy’s deck. Sharpshooters from the Randolph’s fighting tops fired volley after volley at the Yarmouth’s sailors, while others loaded and fired the four coehorns, lobbing their shells over the water onto the giant ship’s deck. From his high poop deck, Vincent assessed the situation: five dead and twelve wounded, his ship-of-the-line being destroyed by a frigate.93

  Biddle was directing the fight from his quarterdeck with his usual quiet assurance when suddenly he went down, blood spurting from his thigh as his officers rushed to him. Lieutenant Barnes called for hands to carry the captain below. Biddle would not hear of it. Realizing that he could not stand, he rose to a sitting position, telling his officers it was “a slight touch” and commanding a sailor to get a surgeon’s mate and a chair from his cabin. His wound would be dressed on the quarterdeck. Biddle was not going anywhere.94

  Taking heart by their captain’s refusal to go below, Biddle’s officers resumed their duties—there was a battle to be won. The marines maintained their hellish fire from the tops; unarmed sailors manned the sheets and braces, fearlessly adjusting them under fire to keep the wind in their favor; the gun crews, sweating from the heat of the guns despite the cool night air, their eyes smarting from smoke, loading, firing, and reloading their guns. As the surgeon’s mate dressed Biddle’s wound—from either a musket ball or a flying splinter—he sat in his chair, calmly directing the action.95

  Aboard the Yarmouth British tars and marines were playing their parts with the same courageous deliberation. Vincent’s gunners were taking a quick glance at the Randolph’s starboard cannon flashes to adjust their aim, when a sudden, deafening explosion detonated in front of them. Instantly, fire and smoke filled the air. Time seemed to stop; the fire seemed to extinguish itself as the smoke cleared in the light breeze.

  The Randolph and her 305 men were gone.

  Sailors from all the ships were stunned from what they had seen as much as from the blast. Suddenly debris from the vanished frigate rained down on the Yarmouth: shattered beams, grisly remains, even a rolled-up American flag, not so much as singed. A six-foot piece of timber crashed down on the poop deck, just missing Vincent and his officers, while another pierced the foretopgallant sail. Vincent realized how lucky he was, being windward of the frigate—had he been on her port side, the impact of the blast could have destroyed the Yarmouth as well.96

  Reactions aboard Biddle’s squadron ranged from coolheadedness to panic. Aboard the General Moultrie, Sullivan ordered his colors struck, only to be stopped by Captain John Blake of the First South Carolina, in charge of the marines: this was not the time to surrender, Blake insisted, but to sail away—the Yarmouth was badly damaged, and could not catch them. One by one, the other ships followed the General Moultrie’s example and sailed into the darkness. The Yarmouth did give c
hase, but only for a short while; it was dark, the ship was in bad shape, and, perhaps, no one wanted to go back to fighting after what they had just witnessed.97

  Vincent spent the better part of Sunday getting the Yarmouth repaired well enough to begin searching for the other American ships. For several days he scoured the seas with no sign of the rebel vessels. In the wee hours of March 12, the mastheader sighted a sail to westward. Vincent gave orders to make chase. While in pursuit, he came upon a sight he called “something very remarkable,” telling his admiral

  We discovered a piece of wood with four Men on it waving. We hauled up to it, got a boat out, and brought them on board; they prov’d to be four Men who had been in the Ship when she blew up,—and who had nothing to subsist on from that time, but by sucking the rain Water that fell on a piece of Blanket, which they luckily had picked up. They informed us the Ship was called the Randolph.98

  The quartet of survivors was “a Scotchman, a Frenchman, a Spaniard and a Dane.” Alexander Robinson, Bartholomew Bourdeau, John Carew, and Hans Workman had been manning a gun in Biddle’s cabin when the ship exploded. For some reason, the blast threw them out of the cabin into the sea and not up to their Maker. Somehow they pieced together a makeshift raft out of the Randolph’s floating debris. For four days and nights they survived on the open sea, “buried alive,” one newspaper reported, “under the vault of heaven.”99

  Another report described them as “young and hardy,” not appearing “much discomposed.” All they asked their captors for was “a bason of tea” and “a hammock to each,” to restore their health; soon only their swollen feet remained an issue. They had no idea why, or how, the Randolph blew up. Vincent gave up his search for the American ships that survived the Randolph after saving the Randolph’s survivors, and headed for Barbados for repairs.100

  News of the Randolph tragedy shocked Americans. “Our little fleet,” the Marine Committee wrote, “is much diminished.” The new President of South Carolina, Rawlins Lowndes, mourned “the very promising Youths of this Country who have thus immaturely fallen in their Countrys Service,” while Simon Fanning, the young midshipman that Biddle placed in charge of the captured schooner, possessed “all the gallantry of the bravest officer.”

  The news struck Charles Biddle particularly hard; upon hearing it, he left New Bern for Charleston: “During the journey I had many melancholy reflections; it was different from my last, when I went to see and enjoy the company of a much loved brother.” Elizabeth Baker could not be consoled.101

  Not yet twenty-eight when he died, Nicholas Biddle had survived a shipwreck, almost being marooned by a sea of ice near the North Pole, an armed gang of mutineers, and endless rounds of shot and musket ball with an assured courage other men marveled at or downright envied. He was right, two years earlier, when he matter-of-factly wrote, “I fear nothing.” It took an explosion to kill Nicholas Biddle.

  As Captain Vincent brought the battered Yarmouth into Bridgetown, Barbados, he found two warships, the Ceres and the Ariadne, in port with a prize: “a very Stout Privateer called the Alfred.”

  The Raleigh and the Alfred had sailed from l’Orient on December 29, 1777, bound for the West Indies after a cruise along the African coast. Thomas Thompson’s Raleigh now boasted a full complement of thirty-two guns; Elisha Hinman’s Alfred was just as slow as she had been on the voyage to France, forcing Thompson to shorten sail and wait for the original Continental flagship.102

  The African leg of their cruise was unproductive, and they were nearing the Windward Islands when the Ceres and Ariadne appeared over the horizon. The Raleigh had as many guns as the two smaller British ships, but she was farther away. The Ariadne reached the Alfred first, and Hinman engaged. Soon the Ceres came up and began firing. Hinman looked towards the Raleigh: what was Thompson waiting for?103

  “I had not yet determin’d in my own mind what was best to be done,” Thompson honestly recalled later. He watched as the Alfred tried to outfight or escape the enemy. She could do neither. Seeing her situation as hopeless, Thompson lowered his sails, hoping to draw at least one of them towards the Raleigh. When neither British captain fell for his ruse, Hinman struck his colors.

  Now the British ships pursued the biggest dog in the fight. On the voyage across the Atlantic to France, Thompson had brazenly sailed into a British fleet with but six cannon on deck, but now he changed course. Over the next nineteen hours he fled, throwing everything he could think of overboard to lighten his ship—except his new French guns. Had it come to a fight, the Raleigh had every advantage, except in leadership.104

  Once the British gave up the chase Thompson made for Boston, where, to his dismay, he learned that news of the Alfred’s capture had beat him there. He was a pariah, “Condemned by every One.” The Marine Committee suspended him from command. As a result of John Barry’s daring escapades on the Delaware, he was appointed captain.105

  Two more ships joined the Randolph, the Virginia, and the Alfred in the loss column that spring. In Providence, Rhode Island, Hoysted Hacker was ordered by the Marine Committee to break out of the British blockade and sail the Columbus to New London, Connecticut. Earlier, John Hopkins had sailed the frigate Warren past the enemy’s ships, despite their being tipped off by a Rhode Island Loyalist to expect the attempt. Hopkins succeeded “One Very Dark Knight,” one militiaman stated; he was doing sentry duty on a nearby beach when a “black cloud” passed him by. It was the Warren. She eluded the British ships, including the detested Somerset from Lexington and Concord days, and was soon in Boston.106

  Now came Hacker’s turn. Ordered to sail “on the first opportunity of Wind & Weather,” Hacker made his run on March 27, escorting a merchantman in the bargain. She made a poor convoy, having been stripped of all her guns but her swivels. She was spotted and recognized by two British frigates and trapped before she got past Port Judith. The next morning, Hacker’s men and some militiamen turned back a British boarding party, but before the day was out, they abandoned the last of the original Continental ships. The British promptly burned her.107

  That March, on the Atlantic Ocean, John Young was sailing the sloop Independence home from France after departing Nantes with John Paul Jones and the Ranger. Jones had suggested that Young make for the Carolinas, and he was doing just that. Upon reaching the North Carolina coast, Young picked up a pilot to get his ship over the Ocracoke bar. Instead, the Independence was wrecked on the bar. While Young managed to save most of his guns and supplies, it was suspected that the pilot had sabotaged him. The Independence was the fifth Continental ship lost in three months.108

  Despite Rathbun’s Nassau expedition, Barry’s Delaware adventure, and Tucker’s safe escort of John Adams, the Continental Navy was off to a sad start in 1778. Even a cartel bringing captured sailors back to Boston brought more misery: the men were stricken with smallpox that spread so quickly through Boston that widespread “anoculation” was ordered. Looking back to 1775, one Boston official wrote to Colonel Timothy Pickering, “We should have bin in Much happier Sucumstances.” Pickering agreed. “Our Naval affairs have been conducted shockingly,” he replied.109

  Who was going to turn this tide?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “HER TEETH WERE TOO MANY”

  I had the Ranger in disguise at Camaret but I have now pulled off [the] Masque as the face of Affairs are altered.

  —JOHN PAUL JONES TO SILAS DEANE1

  For more than a month, John Paul Jones had been sailing the Ranger off the French coast, tinkering with the masts and sails, dealing with a sickly and nearly mutinous crew, and abiding the backstabbing of his senior officers, led by Lieutenant Simpson. With loyal sailors coming down with smallpox, disgruntled ones jumping ship (taking the Ranger’s cutter and abandoning it on the rocks offshore), and his ship’s still crank condition, Jones returned to Brest on March 8.2

  While in port, Jones finished his renovations, reducing the yards an
d sails and ordering lighter steering and topsails. He dispatched several letters to the American commissioners and agents, all mentioning, hinting, or outright begging for the frigate l’Indien. Earlier he had begun his refitting with a “Masque”—a red cloth draped over his gun ports to hide the Ranger’s belligerent status—but that was no longer necessary. Lord Stormont had returned to England. Louis XVI had instructed that his ambassador to George III inform the British monarch that the United States had made an offer of alliance that the French could not refuse. Next, Louis sent notification to his “Very Dear, Great Friends, and Allies” that the French army and navy were now on their side. As Louis dictated this, Comte d’Estaing was preparing his fleet to cross the Atlantic.

  Knowing this, Jones removed his ship’s red camouflage. Unlike Wickes, Conyngham et al., he was unencumbered by diplomatic games. He was also the guest of Admiral Louis Guillouet, the Comte d’Orvilliers, commander of the French fleet at Brest, aboard his hundred-and-ten-gun flagship Le Bretagne. The admiral’s great cabin was more a palatial chamber than officer’s quarters. That Jones was treated like an admiral by d’Orvilliers was gratifying enough for his ego, but when the admiral promised to intercede on Jones’s behalf about l’Indien—well, that was even more to his liking.3