by Tom Anderson
– Captain the Honourable George North, private journal
From: “A History of the Imperial Navy” by Sir Augustus Vanburen (1940)—
Many men have tried to claim a conclusive date for the foundation of the Imperial Navy. Few save the credulous and the schoolboy will attempt to claim that the Imperial Navy truly came into being only on the day when it was legally founded, in the fires of war of the Thirsty Thirties. Indeed, how could such an organisation have moved smoothly into action if it had not been acting independently for years before, waiting only for officialdom to catch up with reality (as is so often the case?)
No, the true date of the Imperial Navy’s genesis must lie by definition earlier. Some have given it, perhaps with some justification, as 1796, the year that the American Preventive Cutter Service was founded. They argue that this was the first truly American manifestation of the British naval service – certainly the first with ‘American’ in the name – and thus qualifies as the spiritual ancestor of the Imperial Navy. However, this assumption fails on two counts. The Preventive Cutter Service, though officially an Imperial[293] organisation, was in practice the responsibility of Confederal or even provincial authorities, and lacked any single unified military command. Its officers were not considered part of the Royal Navy, and with good reason: they were as to trained fighting sailors as militiamen were to regulars on land. This was not usually a problem, as the PCS’ main role was to deter smugglers and illegal transporters,[294] but it certainly illustrates that the PCS cannot credibly be claimed to be a precursor to the Imperial Navy. Besides, ex-RN ships under American command had been stationed in provincial ports ever since the 1760s, though under not even a theoretical unified command, and the PCS simply represented a refinement of this.
It may be that we cannot, in fact, simply point to a single date at which the IN came into existence, but one highly iconic moment was certainly the launch of HMS Enterprize (later retroactively altered to HIMS). Some scholars have scoffed at the populist sentiment surrounding the ‘myth’ of the Enterprize, but to do so is to miss the point. We are not Rationalists and this is not a Rational world. It matters little that a thousand tiny changes in law and alterations in naval policy contributed far more to the foundation of the IN than did one ship. It is what people remember that defines our past, and by extension, our future.
Enterprize’s own history is certainly worth examining. The first HMS Enterprize was a captured French craft, and thence descends the name, as do so many with a rich, incongruously British, history. L’Entreprise, a sixth-rate jackass frigate, was taken from her French captain by HMS Tryton in 1705, during the First War of Supremacy. Renamed HMS Enterprize, she survived for only two years under the command of Captain Paul before being wrecked off the English coast. But the Royal Navy, in its fickle way, remembered the name. In 1709, a newly constructed British frigate, a fifth-rate, was given the name Enterprize. And a legend began.
Three more Enterprizes followed, each with its own log of adventures as thick as that of any Royal Navy ship. One was a captured Spanish craft, while the other two were British-built. The fifth HMS Enterprize was one of the Rifleman class of 28-gun sixth-rate frigates[295] and fought in the Second Platinean War under Captain Humphry Pellew, a Cornishman. This Enterprize fought in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1783 and acquitted herself well, to the extent that the Gazette decided to focus on Pellew’s crew’s heroism rather than dwelling on the overall embarrassing tactical defeat for the Royal Navy. After minor repairs at the Gosport Shipyard[296] in Virginia, Enterprize was then reassigned for escort convoy duty for the transports carrying American troops down to fight in the Plate. Pellew chafed at this inglorious duty, and was glad in late 1784 when he was released for freelance commerce raiding. In the latter stages of the Second Platinean War, it is considered that Pellew and his crew wrought sufficient havoc on the Franco-Spanish attempts to reinforce their troops by convoy that they may have shortened the war by months. For better or for worse.
But Pellew’s Enterprize is of course best known for the First Battle of Falkland’s Islands (known at the time as the Islas Malvinas in the proto-UPSA). In February 1785, months before the war’s end, a Franco-Spanish force commanded by Admiral Pierre André de Suffren de Saint Tropez successfully trapped Pellew near the leeward shores of the islands. Refusing all calls to surrender, Pellew and his crew fought on, outnumbered, against two French ships of the line, a Spanish frigate and a Spanish ship of the line. In the end the Enterprize was sunk, but not before she took down both the Spanish frigate and the French flagship by an astonishingly foolhardy boarding action. Before being captured by the French marines, Pellew managed to shoot Suffren himself at long range with a rifled pistol, killing one of France’s most gifted admirals. Many speculative romantics of the French persuasion have mused on how things would have turned out differently later if Royal France had possessed a man of his calibre rather than the dithering d’Estaing.
A new Enterprize was not launched for a number of years. Perhaps the Royal Navy thought that the name was unlucky after the vessel’s destruction, or perhaps that Pellew’s gallant last stand was too legendary to live up to. In any case, the name disappeared from the Royal Navy lists for over a decade, not resurfacing even in the frantic shipbuilding period of 1785-1794 as the RN struggled to recover from its shock defeats in the Second Platinean War.
In truth, the circumstances of the French Revolution and the loss of much of the former French fleet to the Dauphin meant that Britain and the RN had little to fear, navally, from the French Latin Republic – in the short term at least. However, shipbuilding continued right up to the signing of the Treaty of Caen with Republican France after the Seigneur campaign. At this point, the new Fox ministry cancelled many of the shipbuilding contracts, alienating elements within the Royal Navy but saving considerable funds for a populist campaign of cutting taxes and reducing the national debt. This, however, opened up a vacuum in the Royal Navy’s distribution.
Over the course of the eighteenth century, it had become apparent to the Lords of the Admiralty that the Royal Navy had to become a truly global force. Traditionally, the RN’s role was to dominate the English Channel and, to a lesser extent, the Atlantic coastal waters of France, Spain, and the British Isles themselves. This would be a safeguard against invasion by the continental powers with their huge armies, as it had been since before 1588. However, as the century wore on, it soon became evident that naval warfare was just as important in other theatres of the world, and the Wars of Supremacy necessitated a greater Royal Navy presence elsewhere. Furthermore, William Pitt’s policies of merely holding back France in Europe – by paying the Austrians and Prussians to do it for the British and Hanoverians – was based on the idea of seeking to win longer-term colonial victories over the French and the Spanish. In India of course this was ultimately unsuccessful,[297] because the battles were mostly fought on land rather than sea, and the French presence there was largely self-sustaining. However, in North America a powerful British naval presence was necessary to prevent French raids and to protect the valuable colonies in the West Indies, as well as to take French and Spanish islands there from their owners.
Given the economic value of the West Indies, it is unsurprising that the first British naval force to be explicitly stationed somewhere other than Britain herself was the West Indian Squadron, based in Jamaica. The Squadron’s duties were multiple: to combat piracy, to defend the British plantations, to ward off Spanish attempts to prevent British trade with their own colonies, and, in the event of war, to transport redcoats to the Spanish- and French-held islands in order to take them away.
The Treaty of Amsterdam, which ended the Third War of Supremacy in 1759, saw those same valuable islands (such as Guadaloupe) returned to France after having been British-occupied during the war. Yet this was not such an unpopular diplomatic decision as had King William IV’s to return Louisbourg at the end of the Second War of Supremacy (which was one of the catalysts fo
r the War of the British Succession). Everyone understood that, ultimately, it mattered little if France possessed those sugar plantations, if Britain’s Navy could cut her off from them whenever it pleased. The Royal French Navy, though respectable, had no significant bases outside Europe and lacked the Royal Navy’s long-range power-projection capabilities.
The West Indian Squadron was boosted by the creation of the American Squadron in 1780, a response to Franco-Spanish activity near the American Atlantic seaboard at a time when most of the Royal Navy was engaged in the South Atlantic or guarding against invasion at home. The American Squadron was based at Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia, and soon royal charters were granted to open up subsidiary bases and shipyards in Boston and Charleston. Lewisborough in New Scotland was also converted into a base.[298] Most importantly, American shipyards were in 1789 granted the right to build new warships for the RN as well as merchantmen. The Royal Navy even placed a permanent admiralty post in each base comparable to the big British base at Malta, capable of giving new (American) recruits officer training and setting lieutenancy examinations.
Ultimately, the purpose of this plan was to support the Royal Navy’s painful rebirth in the wake of the defeats of the Second Platinean War. Letting the Americans look after themselves meant that the RN could focus on its primary objective of defending Britain. With the advent of the Jacobin Wars, this policy was altered somewhat. American shipbuilding was increased, with the intention of withdrawing fleet elements from the West Indian and American Squadrons and adjoining them to the Mediterranean Squadron and the Channel Fleet. This dated from a time when it was considered likely that the whole French Royal Navy would turn its colours and join the Revolutionaries. Due to the time it took for orders to cross the Atlantic, the plan was obsoleted almost by the time the Americans were reading it, but like all plans in such a crusty and conservative organisation as the RN of the time, it soon had a momentum all of its own. Thus it was that, despite the fact that no ships were in fact removed from the American and West Indian fleets, and peace was signed in 1800, the American shipyards were still going at full capacity as late as 1805. The Royal Navy would eventually come to be thankful for this, but at present it was largely a piece of politics on the part of the ruling Constitutionalist Party, which favoured a more independent American foreign policy and saw – with more perspicacity than usual – that the name American Squadron might one day signify command as well as geography.
However, this meant that at present, the Americans had more ships than they knew what to do with. Fortuitously, this came at the same time as a deepening crisis. In 1799, another ‘Jenkin’s Ear’-like incident startled newspapers in London and especially Fredericksburg, despite the ongoing war with the Republic. Though theoretically allies in that conflict, or at least cobelligerents, Britain and Spain were nonetheless clashing in the Oregon Country in the north-west of North America, south of the Russian outposts in Alyeska.[299] A small colony of British adventurers led by John Goodman had colonised Noochaland[300] in order to set up a new fur trade. Fur was the primary source of Russian interest in Alyeska, and Noochaland was just as rich in that regard. Goodman’s men traded with the native Noochanoolth and Salish Indians, mainly for food and supplies in exchange for the usual European manufactured trade goods.
Goodman’s furs were mainly sold on via the Pacific islands, in which he had a number of connections. He had previously traded at the court of King Kamehameha of Kohala, who was seeking to unite the Gavajski Islands under his rule at the time.[301] Kamehameha essentially served as an intermediary for Goodman’s trade goods to be passed on to the other islands, and ultimately to Europeans (via the Dutch and Portuguese in the East Indies and the Spanish in the Philippines). This helped finance Kamehameha’s own wars of unification, leading to the creation of a single Kingdom of Gavaji by 1804, and also sparked renewed interest in the central to north Pacific among several states. Not all of those states were European: down in Autiaraux, some among the feuding Mauré began to look back at the islands from which they had long ago travelled, and pondered…
But Goodman’s activities also alerted the Spanish. The Viceroy of New Spain, Martín de Gálvez, was alarmed by British interest in a territory which was claimed by Spain according to the old treaties, even if it had never been colonised. He sent a mission north commanded by Admiral Juan Esteban Rodriguez. Rodriguez arrested Goodman and occupied his colony. The Spanish authorities had always had problems distinguishing between official British actions and those of individual British citizens, unsurprising considering the fact that the British government unofficially sanctioned a lot of privateers and secret missions against Spanish rule in Novamund. Thus, even as the Republican French fought both countries, a crisis grew in North America.
The Rockingham Ministry of the time was unwilling to act too strongly against Spain at a time when both countries were aligned against the Republicans. Thus it ultimately fell to the Americans to stake their own claim to the region. Britain had records of Sir Francis Drake possibly exploring the same lands earlier in the 16th century, having named it New Albion, but a ship needed to be sent to examine the territory in order to plausibly confirm this. Diplomats acting on behalf of the Duke of Grafton and James Monroe eventually secured Goodman’s release, negotiating directly with Martínez. This diplomatic traffic between Fredericksburg and the City of Mexico was a sign of things to come, with London and Madrid being only peripherally involved. Goodman was released, but the Spanish remained in occupation of Noochaland and warned that British interference would not be tolerated. In response, the Americans – with the tacit assent of London – launched the mission of HMS Enterprize.
This sixth Enterprize was an American-built ship, from the same Gosport Shipyard in Virginia which had repaired her predecessor. Her construction incorporated many new innovations which might not have been approved by the more conservative Royal Navy establishment back in Britain. A fifth-rate, 36-gun frigate, she incorporated four of the new short-range carronades as well as a new design of bow-chaser with a rifled barrel. This had been developed by the American gunsmith James Murray-Pulteney, a relative of Patrick Ferguson of the breech-loading rifle. She carried a crew of 247 men under the command of Captain the Honourable George North. The Captain was the second son of the late Lord North, the former Lord Deputy of North America. George North had mostly grown up in Fredericksburg and thought of himself as a Virginian, and the rest of his crew was also largely American, although like any Royal Navy crew it had its share of eclectically recruited personnel. We know from the detailed records surrounding the voyage that the Enterprize carried a Malay, a Chinese, three Guineans, two black freedmen from Pennsylvania, thirty-nine Britons, three Frenchmen, two Spaniards, five Indians of the American variety and two of the Asian. The penultimate group was perhaps the most significant. Among the five Indians was John Vann, the son of the influential Cherokee leader James Vann, who was himself a cousin of the current Cherokee Emperor Moytoy IV Attaculla and essentially the Emperor’s chief minister.[302] The elder Vann, who like many Cherokee leaders had part-European ancestry, wanted his son to see more of the world and to learn about naval practice. Also, just as the Americans had a secret motive for wanting to learn more about the Oregon Country, so did Vann and the Emperor of the Cherokee…
The Enterprize left Virginia in April 1801. She carried aboard her the naturalist Andrew Sibthorpe, a rival of Erasmus Darwin II who had achieved fame for his exploration of the flora and fauna of the Great Lakes a few years before. Sibthorpe was determined to find even more extraordinary creatures and plants to present to the Royal Society.
Captain North proposed a leisurely course that would allow the Enterprize to ‘fly the flag’ for America in various ports – contrary to regulations, along with the White Ensign of the RN she flew the Jack and George of the Empire. To that end, the Enterprize sailed pointedly through the Spanish parts of the West Indies, pausing in British Havana in order to take on supplies. Sibthorpe
, a noted Linnaean, wrote much-debated musings on how the new Carolinian colonists of Cuba were treating both the black slaves and the established Spanish hierarchy there, and how this fitted into Racialist philosophy, if at all. These were the days when the Carolinians were learning that they could not truly seek to dominate Cuba unless they cut deals with the old Spanish nobility, something which would eventually have profound effects on Carolinian views of confessional affairs and international relations.
The Enterprize crossed the Atlantic to briefly call in on the trade posts of the newly reinvigorated Royal Africa Company. Sibthorpe met Joseph Banks there and discussed the prospect of a truly universal system of classification. The ship then moved on, spent a week in the friendly port of Buenos Aires in the UPSA, and finally rounded the Horn through the Straits of Magellan. It was only on the return voyage, contrary to what many textbooks state, that the ship landed on Tierra del Fuego and Sibthorpe wrote about the natives—another of his works which would be hotly studied in later years.
Finally, the Enterprize sailed north through the Pacific. The hostile policies of the Spanish Empire meant that she could not call in at those ports enroute, but that was no great hardship for a vessel commanded by Nantucket whalers who knew these waters like the back of their hand. The Enterprize called in at Lahaina, the capital of what would become the Kingdom of Gavaji. Here Captain North met Goodman, who had made his way there after finally being released by the Spanish. Goodman was notably and vocally disappointed by North’s refusal to give a definitive answer on whether Britain would stake a claim to the region and restore him to his colony. It is for that reason, many historians believe, that Goodman and his compatriots (not all of whom were British) gave up on attempting to gain British or American backing for their trade project, and instead turned their attention to other sponsors…