It was no accident that Manley and McNeill ended their careers as privateer captains. Popular accounts of the American naval effort tend to focus on privateers since they provided the best opportunities for success, even for Continental Navy officers. As with their British counterparts, privateering was a business venture in which profit dominated, justifying the cupidity of the owners and captain. Privateers were said to combine ‘freedom and fortune’ – goals associated with pirates.1
During the Seven Years’ War, privateering had given investors a stake in war. In New York City, the list of privateers was a social register of its finest families as seventeen of them were members of the Vestry of Trinity Church, the city’s most prestigious house of worship. Only the wealthy like the Livingston family could afford the expense of outfitting a privateer. They preyed upon the annual French fishing fleets that came or left the Grand Bank fishery, hoping to cut out stragglers. Altogether, over 200 New York ships would be privateers, manned by 15,000–20,000 men.2 Chesapeake Bay also had privateers. Chestertown gentry fitted out a privateer, the Sharpe, named for the governor. It carried twenty-six guns and twenty swivels and was manned by a crew of 200. It was the first of several privateers that caused havoc among French and Spanish shipping. When the Revolution came, these examples were not lost on merchants seeking to continue profitable trade.
Following British American precedent in the colonial wars, from March 1776, Congress’s Marine Committee issued letters of marque to privateers. Vessels already involved in trade saw the letters as a way of maximizing the profits from a voyage at little cost. As they remained most interested in cargo space, they had only to add five or six guns to be ready for prizes and booty. Over the entire war, Congress would issue letters of marque to 1,697 vessels.3
Fewer vessels were commissioned as private warships as they were much more expensive, often carrying at least fifteen guns, usually financed by a syndicate of merchants to spread the expense in case the ship was lost. In fact, these were warships that Congress and the states could not afford to build, outfit or maintain. Congress also authorized its naval agents in the West Indies and the American commissioners in France to issue privateer licenses. All these licenses had limitations: they did not justify land raids or the taking of property from those who supported the rebellion. Congress further regulated privateering, including the reporting of prizes and treatment of prisoners. Bonds were required of owners, amounting to $5,000 for a vessel under 100 tons and $10,000 for those over it.
The commissioning of privateers was at first slowed by the lack of new Admiralty courts to adjudicate prizes. At the end of 1775, Washington, who had experienced problems in using his own ships during the siege of Boston, requested that the states create ‘tribunals to govern the disposal of captured enemy vessels’.4 Congress authorized the states to create new ones. The Maryland convention established such a court on May 25, 1776. While privateer captains and their crews sought to have British ships captured and their cargos declared prizes and sold, these courts often prevented them from gaining as lucrative a share as they expected.
Why were privateering results often disappointing? It was the cargo that made a ship a prize and some ships taken carried only ballast or insignificant cargos.5 Moreover, only enemy ships could be taken and the identity of ships at a distance was confusing. The cases before the courts were complicated: was, for example, a privately owned vessel, captured by the privateer a prize? Or did it belong to the original owner and therefore should it be returned to him? On investigation many ships turned out to be owned by neutrals like the Danes or later allies like the Dutch. Many had a checkered ownership and all of the non-British owners could claim a share of the prize. Congress and the states also claimed a share. Many claimants were unhappy with the court’s decisions and appealed to Congress, which was simply not set up to handle such cases until 1780, when it created its first Federal Court to adjudicate prizes.
By 1778, all states licensed privateers, even Delaware which never authorized a navy. New York and Connecticut licensed their privateers to operate only in their home waters, while other states allowed them to sail anywhere on the high seas. Massachusetts is thought to have had the most privateers: 1,000 privateers under her commission and 626 under Continent papers.6 From 1776 on, Maryland offered letters of marque to 280 privateers.
While attempts have been made to estimate the number of prizes American privateers took, the figures remain guesses and are compromised by the fact that some privateers held licenses from all of these authorities. It has been claimed that the most prizes by a single captain were secured by Gustavus Conyngham operating successfully in European and West Indian waters, although not in American.7 While Conyngham thought he was a Continental captain, British and French authorities and even Congress felt he acted as a privateer or even a pirate. His and his ship’s commissions were so confused that it is amazing he had such success.
Privateering was a business venture directly related to shipbuilding. While at first, shipbuilding was depressed by scarcity of cordage and canvas, lack of skilled workers and the Royal Navy blockade, in time merchants were able to recover from these conditions by turning to construction or modification of ships for privateering. As an investment, vessels were built for speed and weatherliness, so that they could avoid the Royal Navy. Even if the British took two out of three ships, the one that got through could be quite profitable.
In 1776, the privateer Sturdy Beggar was built at Richard Graves’ Worton Creek yard in Maryland and was described as the ‘handimost vessel ever built in America’.8 She would carry eighty men, fourteen carriage guns and fourteen swivels. Privateers were expected to have a large crew so that it could be dispersed into prize crews to navigate captured ships to friendly ports. To recruit her crew in August, the Sturdy Beggar put in at Vienna on the Nanticoke River and, among others, lured away 18-year-old John Kilby. It then operated successfully out of Baltimore and New Bern, North Carolina for a year, when it was chased by the Royal Navy’s Resolution and perished in a storm with a loss of all hands. Kilby, however, survived in the crew of a prize, retaken by the Resolution and was sent to an English prison until he was released and went to France, where he fortuitously joined the crew of John Paul Jones’ Bonhomme Richard.
By 1777, Robert Morris, the father of the Continental Navy, decided that privateering might be worth a try and he invested as a silent partner in a ship with agent William Bingham on Martinique. Their next venture, however, ended in a total loss for them as the successful privateer captain refused to pay their shares. Soon Morris warned of ‘that kind of irregular conduct on b[oar]d the Am[erican] privateers that savours more of Moorish piracy than Christian forbearance.’9 He saw that privateers seduced American sailors, who should have been serving in the Continental or state navies. He complained that Continental and state ships dedicated to public defense rather than profit languished in port because they could not obtain crews or complete their outfitting.
By preventing the Continental and state navies from operating effectively, privateers actually obstructed the war effort. They advertised extensively, luring men to make fortunes at one stroke. This happened even to men who had signed the Continental articles, as privateers offered short-time commitments and lucrative voyages.10 In the last years of the war, Continental and state naval commanders had no ships and faced unemployment unless they became privateer captains.11 The demand for privateers affected even those appointed to protect the concerns of the Continental Navy. Nathaniel Shaw, while the Continental agent at New London, Connecticut, owned and operated at least ten privateers, which as a business interest took a priority over his agent’s position.
While privateers became more numerous as the war continued, they did not perform well when joined with the Continental or state navy ships. They were best when operating singly or with one or two compatriots, rather than in a squadron, especially if it was not devoted to taking prizes. In May 1777, the Sturdy Beggar was part of the Manley-McNeill squadron that sailed the Grand Banks, but it soon left the squadron to pursue its own interests.12 Privateers avoided warships so as not to damage or lose their investors’ property. They were also useless in a prolonged siege, as there was little opportunity to take prizes.
In areas of intense trade, states commissioned raiders that were different from privateers. After New York was taken by the British in 1776, the western portion of Long Island (Kings and Queens Counties) was strongly occupied by the British, while eastern Suffolk County was not held so closely and there a substantial rebel opposition reappeared. Trade to the city and across Long Island Sound to New England ports had always been a regional feature and would continue, despite the efforts of the governors and legislatures of New Jersey, Connecticut and rebel New York to treat it as trading with the enemy.13 At first, most of the state laws were embargoes on exports, chiefly foodstuffs, which were enforced by local militia. Like embargoes everywhere in the thirteen colonies, these efforts failed as self-interest prevailed over even the most patriotic Whig. Congress was so upset by illicit trade that by 1780 it urged the states to institute the death penalty to curb the criminal practice. Connecticut had allowed Long Island refugees from across the Sound to return to their former homes in the British-occupied sector, but by 1778, they were involved in this illicit trade. Long Island became a major source of British manufactures so desired by New Englanders, who had been deprived of them by embargoes and wartime interruptions.
Separate from privateering, commissions were given by the Governors of Connecticut and Rhode Island to the owners of private ships to seize British goods locally. This was popular late in the war, as crews received a part of what was seized in booty, although the ships were limited to single cruises on enemy shipping within Long Island Sound.14 It is against this background that the records of Connecticut and Rhode Island county courts, acting as vice-admiralty courts, show the role of these specially commissioned vessels.
In 1776, raiders from Connecticut were usually Long Island refugees, most interested in rescuing their own property left behind when the British invaded. Two years later, however, raiding had become a land enterprise, not traditional privateering.15 In certain cases, Connecticut raiders left their boats on Long Island Sound and traveled overland as far as the southern shore of Long Island. No longer was the object to seize a sugar ship from a convoy, instead focusing on retrieving British manufactures found in the middle and eastern areas of Long Island. Investors sent their crews to scavenge for goods in ports or inland at well-stocked shops or homes. While their crews were armed, most ships carried no ordnance, space for cargo being maximized, as they were not meant to confront British ships.
By 1781, the Connecticut Council of Safety had asked Governor Johnathan Trumbull, Sr. to empower the schooner Weezel, belonging to Nathan Steadman and Company of Connecticut, to use ‘force of arms on the coast of this state above high water mark or islands adjoining the said coast apprehend, seize and take all kinds of British goods, wares and manufactures, the property of the subjects of Great Britain’.16 This private commission allowed the schooner to take British manufactures on Long Island Sound, but whether Long Island itself qualified as an adjoining island is not clear from the commission. The question of how Johnson was to identify subjects of Great Britain was presumably left in his hands. Later, Captain Edward Johnson of the Weezel received clarification from his superior, Captain William Leyland, which instructed him ‘not to enter the dwelling house or molest or rob any peaceable inhabitants on Long Island or elsewhere’.
Johnson did the opposite of Leyland’s order, heading to Southold and seizing the goods in Nathaniel Finning’s store.17 Johnson carried the goods to a Connecticut port, where they were adjudicated by a Connecticut Court. The court ignored Fanning’s claims, ruling in favor of the owners of the Weezel, but ultimately the court’s decision was overturned by Congress and Fanning’s property was ordered returned. It was evident that profit from the sale of goods was the paramount goal of the Weezel, even if the goods belonged to rebels.
This raid led to Trumbull being censured by Congress as he had assumed that everyone living on Long Island was a Loyalist and thus fair game. He defended himself by implying that the British manufactures had not been sent by the North ministry to supply New York’s military and civilians, but rather to purposely disrupt the rebel cause. He saw the situation as a plot by the ministry:
For this end the British ministry have sent large quantities of goods to New York; large parcels of them have been brought along the whole length of [Long island] … agreeably to a plan systematically laid, to introduce them … to various places on our seacoasts, to care and disposal of inimical, evil, & artful men, fit tools for their turn, to catch hold of the avarice, luxury, pride and vanity of some persons who are designing and others who are unwary … with the allurements furnished them, spread the contagion of corruption, falsehood, unreasonable jealousies, a cry of intolerable taxes, and artfully seduced young men to enlist [in] the associated loyalists, and they secretly hand out the declarations of General Clinton and Admiral Arbuthnot offering pardon.18
Thus, the rights of property had to yield to combat this inimical plot.
Another raid the same year was carried out by East Haddam, Connecticut’s Captain Amos Judson, commander of the Revenge, which marched with premediated speed inland to the Southold home of Captain Jeremiah Wells. Judson claimed that he had a right to Wells’ property because all inhabitants of Long Island were subjects of the King, while Judson held a permit from Governor Trumbull, similar to that of the Weezel. When a Southold Justice of the Peace demanded to see it, Judson refused, mumbling a few phrases. Wells was a respectable Southold merchant and a captain in Fanning’s regiment of New York militia. His family made a living in the local trade of goods such as ‘broadcloth, calico, chintz, flannel, holland, gauze, cambric, poplin, silk, knives and knife and fork sets’.19 Judson moved on from Wells’ house to that of David Gardiner Jr. and robbed him of similar goods. It was these manufactures that Judson took back to Connecticut and at a Hartford hearing, despite ample evidence that Wells and Gardiner were rebels, the goods were awarded to Judson. Wells and Gardiner knew they were in the right, however, and appealed to the Congressional Court of Prize Appeals and after two years, it reversed the lower court decision and ordered the goods returned to them.
Rebels like Fanning, Wells and Gardiner were victims in these commissioned raids because governors and prize courts did not attempt to review the loyalty of their Long Island victims. They found it convenient to believe that all inhabitants of Long Island were Loyalists. It was left to Congress to correct these miscarriages of justice. As the final arbitrator of these raids, its Court of Prize Appeals overturned the local decisions, proving that most of the victims were rebels.20 Some of the local courts actually forbade appeal to Congress’s court, knowing that their biased judgements would be overturned, but those rebels with a strong case were able to appeal.
Historians have seen the raids from across Long Island Sound as efforts to harass the British. This may have been true in the early years of the British occupation, but the commissioned raids were not aimed at crippling British trade as with the licensing of privateers. Commissioned ships preferred to establish illicit trade, carrying out trade contrary to the laws of their state. Often these commissions became the basis of purposeful smuggling operations, established to avoid Congressional and state embargoes on British goods.21 These were purchased in New York and distributed to shops and homes in British-controlled areas or beyond. They were exchanged for food carried by Connecticut traders. The goods were then made up as cargo and taken to an obscure Connecticut or Rhode Island port, ignoring the militia enforcing the embargo. There, a local court adjudicated in favor of the original investors, avoiding the government’s duty on British goods, so that fortunes were made in the sale of these goods. Rivalry between Connecticut and Rhode Island courts existed as raiders chose the court that would be most rewarding. Soon produce came to New York from far beyond Connecticut, as ships under flags of truce arrived from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland and Virginia. This illicit trade existed because the new United States remained as dependent on British manufactures as it had been in the colonial era.
In fact, historian Bernard Bailyn has claimed, ‘what helped bind the widespread and intensely competitive Atlantic commercial word together – was the mass of illegal trade that bypassed the formal, nationalistic constraints.’22 With the British occupation of New York City from 1776 to 1783, it became the great magnet for illicit trade in British manufactures that embarrassed Robert Morris. To counteract illicit trade, Congress recommended that the states make it unlawful to import any British manufactures except prize goods. While states and merchants tried to comply, they made little headway against market forces. Morris hoped to have French manufactures replace those of Britain, but the French navy could not protect its ships and illicit trade in British goods flourished until the end of the war.
American privateers will be found in action in coming chapters. It was privateers who sustained the central role of overseas commerce in the American war effort. Gustavus Conyngham’s career will be described, explaining why he was called the ‘Dunkirk pirate’. In 1779, we will see the failure of privateers to contribute to a fleet besieging Fort George at Penobscot, Maine. Two years later, similar conditions to those of Long Island Sound existed in Nova Scotia, encouraging New England privateer raids on its ports.