Give Me a Fast Ship

by Tim McGrath

  By mid-July he had familiarized himself with his surroundings. Grim as conditions were, they were markedly better than those found in the New York harbor prison ships. Conyngham spent his first day confined in a guardhouse, then spent eight days in “the Black Hole,” a dank, dark dungeon. What little air inside was foul. For company, he had some French prisoners. The Black Hole was primarily used for any prisoners caught escaping. Conyngham found it “a horrid room.” He would know; over the next several months he would escape, only to be captured time and again.

  There were several hundred prisoners at Mill, and by the time of Conyngham’s arrival there were French and Spanish captives as well as Americans. The Europeans were not kept with the rebels, and were also better fed (at one point a proposal was made in Parliament to give equal status to the Americans, but it was voted down, forty-seven to fifteen). One Yankee tar described the rations as “3/4 lb. beef, 1 lb bread, 1 qt very ordinary beer, and a few greens per man for 24 hours. This is our allowance daily, except Saturday, when we have 6 oz cheese instead of beef.” Conyngham’s journal mentioned that “dogs, cats, rats even the Grass [was] eaten by prisoners,” adding “this hard to be credited, but is a fact.” Another prisoner recalled boiling snails and drinking the “broth” after downing the snails.59

  Americans in Mill and Forten Prisons turned to the one man in Europe who could deliver salvation—Benjamin Franklin. He wrote endless letters to them and on their behalf, sending what money he could, usually through Thomas Digges, the Maryland merchant in London that Franklin had contacted once he learned of Conyngham’s plight. Digges got some of Franklin’s money to Conyngham and kept him abreast of the captain’s situation.60

  Peddlers visited the prison selling sundries at near impossible prices. The prisoners spent their time trying to earn money by making wood carvings, and writing family, friends, and congressmen, begging for cash or to use influence to be exchanged. They also set up their own code of laws: theft, for example, was punished by making the offender run a gauntlet, with each prisoner armed with a jagged rock or nettles to bruise and draw blood. Rarely were there repeat offenders.61

  There were only four ways to leave Mill: death, exchange, escape, or joining the Royal Navy. While prisoners were forbidden newspapers, they learned of the latest events through coded letters or from blabbing guards. Jones’s efforts to exchange Americans for the British tars from the Drake was soon common knowledge and raised hopes that a cartel might send some of Mill’s captives home, or at least, to neutral Holland. But by the time of Conyngham’s arrival the delay of such action had left many of the prisoners despondent of ever leaving Mill except by joining the King’s Navy. Conyngham, using his rank as leverage, appealed to any doubting sailor’s patriotism. He rallied, implored, and derided the tempted sailor, succeeding to such a great degree that even Franklin learned of it. So, unfortunately for the captain, did his captors, sending him to the Black Hole again. For Conyngham, there looked to be only one way out: escape.62

  Two previously described attempts read like the stuff of legend. In one instance he mingled with a group of visitors and walked out of the prison, only to be captured when a woman recognized him before he got far enough to leave the crowd, and he was quickly apprehended. Another account told of how he donned a suit of dark clothes and a pair of wire-rimmed frames (minus the glass), giving him a marked resemblance to one of the prison doctors. With his nose buried in a book and imitating the physician’s peculiar gait, he walked past the sentry at the gate and passed through, only to be spied by one of the prison’s peddlers outside Plymouth. Conyngham left no such details in his own hand, only asides among his writings alluding to several attempts to break out.63

  On August 23, on a windy, rainy evening, he broke out again; a prison log’s entry simply reads, “Gustavus Conyngham, Philadelphia, ran away.” He did not get far, as his journal describes a testy confrontation with a British militiaman at Mill the following day, by which time Conyngham and his fellow prisoners were aware of d’Orvillier’s fleet having been near Plymouth.64

  In the fall of ’79, Conyngham hatched a plan to break out as many Americans as possible. Being on the coast, Plymouth’s earth was as much sand as dirt. With at least one pair of eyes on the guards at all times, the men organized in shifts and spent nights tunneling their way under the floor of their cell, spreading the dirt discreetly along the courtyard during the day. Later, Conyngham would write Franklin how he was imprisoned “on suspicion of high treason on his majesties high seas”; now he and his large band “committed treason through his earth.”65

  In the dark of night on November 3, Conyngham pulled tufts of grass through the tunnel (according to one anecdote, he also poked his head up to find a guard in a tryst with a young Plymouth woman). Keeping as silent as possible, fifty sailors and three officers joined Conyngham in climbing through the small, circular hole. Conyngham had escaped, but he was not free—he was “at large.” When—or more correctly, if—he safely got out of England, then he would be free.66

  For more than three years, Boston had been free of British occupation. True, the town was still repairing the damage left by General Howe’s Redcoats, British warships and Loyalist privateers still preyed upon the New England coastline, and many families waited daily for word of loved ones in the army or at sea, but the Lobsterbacks’ immediate presence was gone. The focus of the war had moved to the south. Some semblance of routine, having been restored, was again the norm.

  Imagine the surprise, then, when word reached Boston in June of 1779 that a force of more than 600 Redcoats from Halifax, Nova Scotia, led by Brigadier General Francis McLean, had landed on the Majabigwaduce Peninsula on the Penobscot River in Maine Territory (commonly known as Bagaduce throughout New England and now called Castine). They had arrived in a convoy of transports and small warships under Captain Andrew Barkley.

  Bagaduce is one mile long and two miles wide; a thin, wooded neck connects the peninsula to the mainland. McLean immediately put his men to work building a fort on the high bluff atop the peninsula that overlooked both Penobscot Bay to the left and the Penobscot River to the right, where a thick forest of trees and underbrush dropped straight down to the shore. Once the fort was completed and its guns were in place, Fort St. George would be nearly impregnable.

  Before Barkley sailed for Halifax, he left three sloops-of-war to defend the waterways. They would be under Captain Henry Mowat, forever despised as “the firebrand that burned Falmouth.”67

  The fort was both a military and a political masterstroke. A military base at Penobscot placed British might just two hundred miles from Boston, making it easier to raid the New England coastline and strike quickly at those Yankee privateers preying on British shipping. It also gave the Admiralty convenient access to the territory’s vast forests, whose timber was indispensable for construction and repairs of the king’s ships—a resource they lacked in Nova Scotia. By taking the Penobscot, the shortage of lumber would still exist—but for the rebels.

  Politically, the establishment at Penobscot solved the problem of what to do with the thousands of Loyalists who had fled their homes from Boston to as far south as Philadelphia and were virtually homeless, thanks to their fealty to George III. The British envisioned a new colony in the territory, to be named New Ireland.68

  Patriots throughout New England reacted at first with alarm and then resolve. With Newport still in British hands, such a base put New England in general and Boston in particular between two pincers, dramatically increasing the odds against any merchantman leaving or returning to Boston safely. Mowat’s very name conjured up the memories of Falmouth and the ease with which such raids could now be perpetuated along the New England coast. Something must be done.

  Accordingly, both the Massachusetts General Court and the New Hampshire General Assembly ordered that a military force be sent to Penobscot to drive the Redcoats back to Halifax. Neither government believed there was e
nough time to wait for Congress to learn of their plight, deliberate and debate over what action to take or not take, and finally act. Therefore, the General Court called for both a land force and naval support. “To employ such armed vessels,” it ordered the impressments of sailors as well as use of privateers, while the General Assembly agreed “to Joyn with those at Boston for the reduction of our Enemies.”69

  At first it seemed that the expedition would be assembled with the same speed at which the politicians had created it. Three Continental ships: the Warren, the sloop Providence, and Hacker’s recent prize, the brig Diligent, would lead the fleet. From the Massachusetts State Navy came the brigs Tyrannicide, twenty guns; Hazard, eighteen; and Active, sixteen; while New Hampshire sent their thirty-gun ship, the Hampden. They would be accompanied by sixteen privateers along with twenty-one transports and supply ships. Command of the largest American fleet of the war—and for the next seventy years, for that matter—was given to the Warren’s captain, Dudley Saltonstall. Brigadier General Solomon Lovell would lead the land forces; the task of overseeing the artillery went to Lieutenant Colonel Paul Revere.70

  Officers the venture had; sailors and soldiers it did not. As Continental Navy officers and marines prowled the waterfront streets, raiding the taverns and brothels to find “recruits,” Lovell’s goal of 1,500 militia fell far short in both numbers and ability. He settled for fewer than 900, most of whom were old men, boys, and invalids, some of whom had never fired a musket before.

  Not everyone was rapt in patriotic determination. Marine Lieutenant John Trevett of the Providence, as brave as any man, sensed folly in the expedition. He had seen Saltonstall in action with Esek Hopkins’s squadron, and was appalled at the makeup of Lovell’s force. Trevett was sure that Tory spies would get information about the expedition to the British in New York, and perhaps even to the enemy at Penobscot before the Americans sailed from Boston. Believing that the expedition would be trapped once British reinforcements sailed into Penobscot Bay, Trevett asked and received a leave of absence, ostensibly to attend to family matters in Rhode Island.71

  Carrying his orders to “Captivate, Kill or Destroy the Enemies whole Force both by Sea and Land,” but “to conduct measures and preserve the greatest harmony” with Lovell, Saltonstall came aboard the Warren on July 19, and ordered his fleet to sail. When word reached Philadelphia that Massachusetts had, out of necessity, picked up both the responsibility and the tab for the enterprise, Congress joined New England in waiting and worrying. “I pray to God it may succeed,” Congressman William Whipple wrote John Langdon in Portsmouth, but feared “the great delays” would give General McLean his greatest weapon: time.72

  In fact, the Americans gave McLean two assets—the delay it took to get the forces ready, and the refusal of Saltonstall and Lovell to establish a working relationship. Neither one had a scintilla of experience in leading such a mission, nor did they have the ability. As Trevett foresaw, Tory spies got word to both New York and Penobscot about what was heading McLean’s way. Preparations “not having been Conducted with that Secrecy the Nature thereof requir’d,” as one legislator put it, virtually guaranteed that the British knew Saltonstall was sailing, before Saltonstall sailed.73

  On July 18—the day before Saltonstall departed—McLean learned of the expedition. He put his men on round-the-clock details, felling trees to finish Fort St. George while Mowat sent his three sloops—the Nautilus, sixteen guns, and the North and Albany, fourteen guns each—north of the Penobscot with their port broadsides in a row. He anchored several transports behind them; they could be converted to fireships if the Americans took his sloops. Batteries were placed along the peninsula with an eye for maximum coverage and damage to an American attack by land or sea.74

  British soldiers and sailors were attending to the defenses on the afternoon of July 25 when the first of Saltonstall’s fleet was sighted. It made a magnificent sight: three dozen ships approaching the harbor, with the wind in their sails, looking every bit a formidable force, a mixture of battle-tested marines, seasoned salts along with green boys and old men, ready to do their duty.75

  If only they had been better led.

  Saltonstall acted immediately, sending nine warships directly at Mowat’s sloops. Nine against three. Just as they were getting within range, Saltonstall pulled them back, and both sides spent the rest of the day peppering each other ineffectively. That night, Lovell sent a detachment to Bagaduce, establishing a foothold on the shoreline, but strong winds forced him to abort the operation, lest his first landing force become stranded. He and Saltonstall decided to pick up the attack the next day.76

  That morning, Saltonstall sent the Diligent under Lieutenant Philip Brown to reconnoiter. Brown sailed back to Saltonstall with news: the fort was a fort in name only, what one marine sergeant called “a rough looking concern, built with logs and dirt” barely three feet high and far from finished. Furthermore, McLean’s gun emplacements covered everything the eye could see except the west side of the peninsula—that wooded bluff, nearly four hundred feet, and nearly vertical to the shoreline.

  Meanwhile Lovell sent 150 marines to Nautilus Island, just south of Bagaduce. After a short but fierce battle, the British evacuated the island, leaving four cannons. The taking of Nautilus Island compelled Mowat to send his ships farther northward. So far, so good; the marines began building earthworks, preparing for the attack on the fort they were sure would take place the next day.

  It did not. Watching from the Warren’s quarterdeck, Saltonstall grew increasingly wary about the offensive. Though Mowat was outnumbered, Saltonstall’s experienced eye could see that his foe had set the table for an action that guaranteed American casualties. Mowat and McLean could be dislodged, but at what cost? As he swung his spyglass from Mowat’s sloops down to Nautilus Island and up to McLean’s high fort, Saltonstall’s caution turned to intransigence.77

  At a council of war in Saltonstall’s cabin (one of many over the next seventeen days) the commodore and General Lovell, along with their senior officers, commenced hostilities against each other. Lovell wanted Saltonstall to move against Mowat to take the enemy’s ships out of the coming assault on Fort St. George, while Saltonstall wanted Lovell’s forces to capture the fort; he was not about to attack Mowat with McLean’s guns bombarding his ships from on high. Saltonstall’s ships would be moving, not sitting, ducks. The expedition was now a contest of wills, not between Americans and British but between Saltonstall, who seemed to care less about Lovell’s militiamen and his own marines, and Lovell, who appeared to think Saltonstall’s sailors and ships were expendable.

  The commodore won, but at a price. The privateer captains were furious with him. They had been coerced into this enterprise. Used to swift raids and acting on their own volition, they chafed under Saltonstall’s obstinate attitude, and presented a petition conveying their displeasure that foresaw the future:

  We think Delays in the present Case are extremely dangerous: as our Enemies are daily Fortifying and Strengthening themselves, & are stimulated so to doing in daily Expectation of Reinforcement . . . our desire of improving the Present Opportunity to go immediately into the Harbour, & Attack the Enemys Ships.78

  One of the officers at this meeting went further, telling his commodore that the American warships would easily defeat Mowat and the hastily placed British batteries, only to be cut short by Saltonstall. “You seem to be d_ _n knowing about the Matter!” he exploded. “I am not going to risk my shipping in that d_ _ _ _d hole!”79

  The decision was made to attack the fort first before taking on Mowat’s sloops. Nearly 1,200 men, mostly militia but including 217 marines and 80 of Revere’s artillerymen, would advance on the Bagaduce heights. The marines would attack on the right, while the militia would attack on the left. The landing would take place at midnight.80

  The landing was, of course, delayed, but by three a.m. Saltonstall had his ships ready to unleash thei
r broadsides at the woods below the fort to clear them of British skirmishers. At a prearranged signal between the commodore and the general, Saltonstall yelled, “Fire!” and a deafening barrage slammed into Bagaduce, followed by the sharp crack of timber as trees broke and fell below the bluff. Once again, Mowat sent his sloops farther upriver, just as Lovell’s forces climbed into the longboats. With three lusty cheers, they headed to shore, as cannonballs screamed overhead.81

  As they drew closer to shore each man could see for himself what lay before and above him. “The enemy had the most advantageous place I ever saw,” Colonel Revere recalled. “A bank above three hundred feet high and so steep that no person could get up it but by pushing himself up by bushes and trees.” Once the longboats reached the shore, the men had been ordered to form battle lines, but they came under immediate fire from the Redcoats above them. The only thing to do was head into the woods and begin the torturous ascent.82

  The steepness of the heights prevented them from stopping to fire back at the British. Instead, they climbed hand over hand uphill, grasping first one branch or clump of bush and then another, methodically, courageously inching their way in the face of enemy fire. On the water, Saltonstall’s gunners elevated their cannon, maintaining their bombardment of the peninsula.

  The militia on the left was opposed by the British 82nd Regiment, comprised of lowland Scots. Dangerous as their climb was, they did not face the more experienced Highlanders of the 74th, who were doing their utmost to pin down the marines below them on the right. One volley of English muskets struck and killed Marine Captain John Welsh; Lieutenant William Hamilton lay severely wounded. Atop the bluff, Lieutenant John Moore, a fair-haired teenager, urged his men to maintain their relentless firing. From the corner of his eye, he saw rebels swarming over the bluff and the 82nd’s soldiers scattering. Just after Moore ordered his men to fire another volley, he heard his captain yell “Retreat!” and the 74th also began running, with the exception of Moore’s twenty men.