Congress lacked its own naval dockyards, yet it had to sustain an Atlantic-wide war effort. To do this it appointed agents to represent its naval interests, usually in French ports. You will remember that in mid-1776, Wickes had carried William Bingham to Martinique where he would serve as Congress’s agent until 1779. One of his duties was to pass on information from Congress to Silas Deane, the commissioner in France. When Robert Morris informed Deane of this, he described Bingham as having ‘a good deal of fanciful young man in [him], but experience will cure him of this, and upon the whole, I think he has abilities & merit’.1 In Martinique, Bingham became experienced. He learned that while Congress wanted him to send munitions from the island, they were difficult to come by. He would soon find that Congress had almost no credit to refit or buy ships so he had to use his own resources and those of Willing, Morris and Company or be dunned by Martinique’s merchants. Most of his efforts happened before the French alliance so he found Martinique’s French authorities to be unpredictable and occasionally even hostile to Congress’s interests. Considering his responsibilities, agents like Bingham were as crucial to the American cause as a worthy sea captain.
Robert Morris had worked with Bingham and as Congress’s Secretary of the Treasury in the later years of the war, he would replace the various naval committees. He alone had the wearisome job of figuring out what financial support Congress could expect from the states to carry on the war. In mid-1781, typically, he sent Caesar Rodney, president of Delaware, a certified copy of what was due to the United States’ government both in terms of money and supplies from the previous year. Rodney was to present Congress’s requisition to his legislature as he ‘must be sensible of the impracticability of carrying on the war unless the states will cheerfully furnish the means’.2 Morris would follow up with a request for information from Rodney focusing on 1781, including the amount of money in the state treasury, when taxes were to be collected, and by what process. He also needed to know when the Delaware legislature would meet to offer approval. Morris’s approach was regarded as more efficient than previous committee efforts, but he still had to cope with realities of the war.
Previously, to fund the Continental Navy and Army, Congress had borrowed large sums at first at home and then from European bankers. It also extracted large sums from the states, which were forced to increase taxes. Still this was not enough. Congress began to cover bounties and buy supplies by printing paper currency, which it backed by a pledge of redemption from future tax receipts. However, the states were never able to collect enough tax receipts to retire the $191 million in Continental currency that Congress had issued by 1779, when it stopped. Lack of confidence in the value of the currency led to a steady depreciation in its purchasing power. As Maryland planter and representative to Congress, John Henry put it, ‘The [printing] press is at work … and has been for some time, and nearly a million a week is now made, and yet our demands are greater than we can answer.’3 Typically in 1780, the state of Maryland added to depreciation by printing its own paper currency to cover the cost of the war. The result was a dramatic rise in the cost of living, which fell heaviest on the lower orders because they had least resources to cope with these economic pressures. Ultimately, state funding of the navy and army was at best sporadic.
Providing for the navies was exacerbated by the worthlessness of Continental currency. By April 1781, the value of Continental currency had reached the point that the Pennsylvania Assembly declared it could not be used to pay the debts and taxes due it, only gold, silver and its latest paper emission being acceptable. During the preceding two months, vessels had arrived from the West Indies and filled Philadelphia with discharged sailors whose wages had been paid in Continental currency. When the paper money stopped circulating on May 5, the sailors and other laboring poor ‘with paper dollars in their hats … paraded the streets … carrying colors flying, with a DOG TARRED … his back covered with Congress paper dollars’. They refused to work ‘unless paid in hard Money’.4 This protest destroyed the last vestige of respect for paper currencies in Philadelphia.
During these upheavals, Morris and a few others, such as Silas Deane and William Bingham, were able to build fortunes, despite privateering losses. Those who suffered financially during the war saw their mixing of public funds and private gains as corruption. Morris shored up public credit with his private wealth and created the Bank of North America through private investment, but saw its principal function as providing financial assistance to the government.5 Both Morris and Dean would be investigated by Congress. In Commissioner Dean’s case, he had been honored by Louis XVI and carried letters of commendation from Franklin and Vergennes when he returned to Philadelphia in 1778 to find that Congress charged him with financial impropriety. He would fight the charges, but by the time he returned to Paris in 1780, his investments had soured and ships with his merchandise had been captured by the British. Morris and Bingham were more fortunate.
Against this lack of financial resources, it should be no surprise that gradually Continental Navy ships and captains disappeared. You will remember Captain Nicholas Biddle who had commanded the Andrea Doria in Hopkins’ ill-fated clash with the Glasgow. He was born into a prominent Philadelphia family in 1750 and went to sea at the age of 13, as a ship’s boy aboard a merchant vessel trading to the West Indies.6 At 20, he joined the Royal Navy and served three years until resigning in 1773 to participate in Captain Constantine Phipps’ exploratory expedition toward the North Pole. After the Andrea Doria, on June 6, 1776, Biddle had been appointed by Congress to command 32-gun frigate Randolph, then being built in Philadelphia. She was launched at the end of the year and in 1778 the Randolph sailed from Charleston to the West Indies with four ships of the South Carolina navy: General Moultrie, Notre Dame, Polly and Fair American. They cruised quietly as far as Barbados, when they were confronted by an unknown ship which turned out to be the 64-gun Yarmouth under Captain Nicholas Vincent. The Randolph alone passed the Yarmouth with guns firing, when with a thunderous roar it blew up with the loss of 311 crew members, including Biddle. The South Carolina ships scattered. Four days later, the Yarmouth found four survivors clinging to wreckage. The explosion of the Randolph was the largest single loss the Continental Navy suffered during the war.
By the spring of 1779, Congress’s Marine Committee regrouped and planned a long-term cruise with ships based in New England, the objective being to disrupt British shipping from the Chesapeake all the way to Charleston, South Carolina, and with a diversion toward Bermuda – that nest of Loyalist privateers. They were to contest Loyalist privateers and take merchant prizes to finance the navy. The New England warships’ cruise was meant to placate Southerners in Congress, who felt that New Englanders had been too anxious to gain prizes, which they sailed to their home courts for favorable distribution of prize money.7 This pattern had been established earlier by Esek Hopkins. To prevent a repeat of this, the Committee required the cruising ships to be at sea for as long as their supplies lasted, not returning immediately after taking a few prizes, which had become the usual New England practice.
Back from Europe, the Ranger, under Captain Thomas Simpson was ready to join the Marine Committee’s proposed squadron. It had left France for New Hampshire in August 1778, arriving in late September. Over the winter and spring, it would again be rerigged, reballasted and refitted, including mast work, smithwork, new water casks, new spars and roping.8 Gaps in the European crew were to be filled by a rendezvous or recruitment party. Items were appropriated for the Ranger from the 74-gun America, a ship that had been under construction at John Langdon’s shipyard since May 1777 but would languish incomplete for three more years. When finally finished, Robert Morris and Congress would give the ship to the French, where it had only three years of service because of dry rot caused by the use of green timber in its construction.
The rest of the squadron consisted of the 32-gun Warren, Captain John Burroughs Hopkins – the son of the infamous Esek – and the 28-gun Queen of France, Captain John Olney. The latter, named for Marie Antoinette, was a French ship which had been purchased at Nantes for Congress.9 Olney was placed in command, but Hopkins would dispute the choice. The fleet left Boston, arriving at Cape Henry, Virginia and hoisted British colors to lure the unwary into its clutches. It was able to take several Loyalist privateers and navy transports operating out of New York.
After only three weeks, however, the squadron returned all the way to Boston to redeem its prizes, a blatant disregard of its orders, which required a more extensive voyage in the South.10 It also turned out that Olney and Hopkins had a lively business, acting as prize agents by buying their crews’ prize money shares at much discounted prices. As a result, at their court martial Olney and Hopkins were suspended from the navy, never again holding a Continental command. Simpson survived, although he had also disobeyed orders, only because he did not buy up his crew’s shares. Clearly, New England ships could not be depended upon to defend Southern waters.
The lack of Continental crews continued to delay naval action because their officers and seamen spent long periods incarcerated in British prisons or prison ships. When he reviewed the prison situation in New York in October 1780, Admiral George Rodney was quite aware of the rebels’ need for experienced crews. He commented:
The ships I stationed upon the coast have been very successful against the enemy’s privateers and ships of war … By the great number of prisoners taken [perhaps 1400,] the rebels will find it difficult to man the Continental ships now in the Delaware and at Boston … I am fully persuaded that if their prisoners are not released it will be to the greatest advantage of the commerce of His Majesty’s loyal subjects.11
Rodney was ruthless in his belief that the imprisonment of seamen crippled the efforts of the Continental Navy as well as rebel privateers.
Analysis of Continental ships has concluded that by mid-1781 the navy ‘was capable of little more than running errands and raiding commerce for the remainder of the war’.12 Of the original frigates authorized in 1775, none got to sea until 1777 and eight of those rendered no service while incurring considerable expense. Four were destroyed or captured before they could put to sea. Losses in the defense of Philadelphia in 1777 included a frigate and three smaller ships. A year later, other frigates were lost before they could leave Chesapeake Bay. The next year, it was expected that the few remaining Continental ships would benefit from the arrival of d’Estaing’s fleet. As we have seen, the French presence was disappointing and three more frigates were lost in the unsuccessful defense of Charleston. In 1781, two more frigates were lost off the Capes of Delaware and the newly launched sloop Saratoga foundered in a gale off the Bahamas with the loss of all hands.
In a final effort to sustain the Continental Navy, in July 1782, Robert Morris proposed to fund the navy by completing two ships being constructed in New England, the aforementioned America and 28-gun Bourbon, and by building six more ships in the future. Congress slashed the proposal by 90 per cent, causing Morris to offer the unfinished America to the French.13 The completed Bourbon and another ship were sold, effectively ending the Continental Navy.
While state navies proved to be an alternative to the Continental Navy and privateering, they never had stable funding. They tended to be put together in reaction to Loyalist raids and it proved impossible to permanently maintain them. In 1777, for instance, the Pennsylvania navy suffered heavy casualties in the defense and occupation of Philadelphia, leading to Washington’s recommendation that its remains be scuttled.14
South Carolina had the potential to create the South’s most active navy. It had shipbuilding yards at Charleston and Beaufort and an abundance of live oak timbers and naval stores. In 1776, the legislature set up a board of commissioners to administer the new navy. While a few ships were built, the problem was the inability to fill crews. It was necessary to switch crews from one vessel to another in order for a ship to sail. South Carolina’s slaves were a majority of the population and the legislature feared them, not allowing them to be armed to serve in its navy. White sailors were few so the state had to look elsewhere. In December 1775, Charleston’s Captain Robert Cochran received permission from Congress to recruit up to 500 mariners from Massachusetts, as long as it did not interfere with existing recruiting.15 Three months later, Cochran left Boston for Charleston with nowhere near that number. Another source of mariners was nearby Savannah. The South Carolina navy could only sail by recruiting its crews in other states.
The Maryland navy’s situation is equally instructive. Like its counterparts in Pennsylvania and Virginia, the Maryland navy decided to use its resources to focus on smaller vessels which could operate in the shallows, at first chiefly galleys, which combined a removable sail with oared propolsion.16 Its Council of Safety originally proposed eight galleys, but when it sent a representative to investigate the Pennsylvania navy’s galleys, the report was negative. We have seen their uneven response to the advance of Hamond’s squadron up the Delaware River. The representative noted that the Pennsylvania galleys were too small for their heavy bow gun, which was only used at a distance from the enemy, and the galley was unseaworthy in the midst of river currents. A larger galley was recommended, which also could serve as a transport. Thus, Maryland’s galleys were to be larger and more seaworthy, but as a result only four could be afforded, which were to be completed by the end of 1776.
One of these original Maryland galleys, the Chester, was built at the request of the Committee of Safety in Thomas Smyth’s shipyard near Chestertown.17 Among the occupations exempt from Maryland militia service were ship carpenters employed in building vessels like the Chester. It was rigged in lateen with three masts and was meant to carry eighty men. Its armament was to be twenty guns, but that number could not be found. Stores on the Chester were divided between the boatswain, gunners, carpenters and cook. As with other state ships, however, when construction was completed, it still lacked cordage, cables and anchors, and despite the Maryland Council’s threats, it was delayed in sailing under Captain Thomas Coursey until June 1778. Forty-eight-year-old Coursey had the qualification of being married to Mary Wickes, a relative of the famed Lambert Wickes.
Maryland’s finances could not bear the cost of even a few galleys like the Chester. Finally, in March 1779, it would be part of Commodore Thomas Grason’s squadron sent to protect trade around the Virginia Capes. By the end of the year, however, the state had begun to sell its galleys because they were too expensive to maintain. Useful as the Chester had become, in March 1780 a buyer was found, ending its career.18 Some of this parsimony was attributed to the failure of Grason’s squadron to prevent Collier’s invasion of the bay in May 1779. When the Maryland navy was revived in 1781, it would build barges similar to those used by Collier rather than galleys.
Virginia’s galley experience was similar to that of Maryland. Its galleys had also failed to stop Collier, resulting in their being scheduled to be sold. By 1780, however, the Virginia Assembly recognized that it needed a renewed navy and it initiated a press for new crews in its best vessels. Virginia captains were authorized to take 20 per cent of the sailors on merchant vessels, excepting those of Virginia and Maryland.19 County Courts were to apprentice at least half of the orphans in their care to the navy. However, the Assembly also reiterated that vessels not subject to this press were to be sold.
The failure of the Maryland and Virginia governments and their county lieutenants to maintain a navy meant that the Chesapeake’s plantations were undefended against Loyalist incursion. In 1777, Attorney Luther Martin, living near Maryland’s Princess Anne, surmised, ‘There was a period of considerable duration throughout which, not only myself but many others, did not lay down one night in our beds without the hazard of waking on board a British armed ship, or in the other world.’20 Constant raids had put fear into the hearts of the rebels and weakened their commitment to the Revolutionary cause. It was not just a matter of the Royal Navy, for even when it was not present, Loyalist privateers and watermen continued their raids. Late in the war it was warned, ‘Invasion without the power of resistance, however strong the inclination, will and really has, sapped the whiggism of our common people … They have frequently been at the mercy of a cruel enemy without any weapon to defend themselves but those which nature gave them.’21 As these conditions became the norm, these state governments were frustrated in their attempts to defend Chesapeake Bay.
The decline of the state navies caused leading private citizens to take on the defense burden by building their own vessels. Chesapeake planters decided to take their defense into their own hands. They had been involved in shipbuilding before the war, constructing six- to eight-oared barges, rowed by their liveried slaves, which carried them to church. They regarded flat-bottomed barges as the best craft for travel not only in shallows, but also in the choppy waters crossing the bay. On the Eastern Shore in 1779, planter and commissioner Colonel James Murray and three other wealthy friends wanted to invest in building a barge to be used as a privateer against Loyalists in Hooper Straits.22 Proceeds from the sale of the prizes were to support the fatherless families of soldiers who died in the state’s Continental regiments. However, they would need state support and the state did not take up this early private offer.
On March 21, 1781, twenty-six of Somerset County’s leading planters proposed a scheme developed by naval Captain Zedekiah Walley to the Maryland Council.23 Walley’s plan was to build a barge with a 50-foot keel, capable of carrying sixty men and a 24-pound bow gun to protect Somerset’s waters. He argued that such a vessel might be built for less than £150 and he volunteered to superintend the construction. While the state was sympathetic to the proposal, no money existed in the treasury; Somerset’s gentry, therefore, went ahead on their own with the project. Built at Snow Hill, the barge was dubbed Protector. She was destined to sail with initial success, on one occasion driving Loyalist raiders from the Pocomoke region and capturing several prizes.
Simultaneously, reacting to the continued destruction of Maryland plantations, forty-seven wealthy Queen Annes and Talbot County gentry, with plantations along the Wye and St Michaels Rivers, decided to take defense into their own hands.24 They paid for the recruitment and operating costs of officers and twenty men to patrol in the barge Experiment and also built several more barges for their protection. In May 1781, the list of subscribers included many victims of Loyalist raids. Stationed on the Eastern Shore, the barges would cruise between Kent Point and Tilghman Island.
In August, Talbot County planter and slaveholder Colonel William Webb Haddaway was the victim of Loyalist raiders. To pursue the Loyalists, he raised an armed force of ‘spirited young fellows’ from his 38th Maryland battalion. Following in a row boat, they were able to retake ‘the hindmost’ of the vessels.25 Maryland political leader Matthew Tilghman described Haddaway’s experience to the Governor Thomas Sim Lee and suggested that he ‘enable these brave fellows for doing more’. Tilghman proposed to have a vessel, crewed by them, commissioned to rout the Loyalists and regain lost property. He assured the governor that if he could provide a vessel, Haddaway would raise the crew. However, the governor had no resources.
Soon planters in Dorchester County followed the example of their brethren by completing the barge Defence. They wished to punish the raiders, and to this end the Maryland Council commissioned Matthias Travers as captain. Still, it was one thing to construct barges but quite another to find the rope, rigging and naval stores necessary for a launching, or the time necessary to recruit and train a crew, without state support. Eventually, more barges, either captured from the enemy, constructed privately, or built for the state government, began to appear in the Chesapeake, with names like Intrepid, Terrible and Fearnaught.26
As a result of private gentlemen’s efforts, a revived Maryland navy of barges rather than galleys was created. The arrival of the Gayton-Leslie expedition from New York, forced the Maryland Assembly to pass a series of Acts for Defense of the Bay from 1780 to 1781. It was proposed in July 1781 that four well-armed barges be built and equipped with swivels, using bounties and wages to attract twenty-five sailors for each barge.27 These barges followed the design of Loyalist privateer barges. The government would also raise companies of marines for defense of its Chesapeake and Atlantic coasts. Thus, a revived Maryland navy would now use shallow-draft barges and marines to patrol the coastal waterways. What had not entered into their thinking was the appearance in the Chesapeake of a French fleet and how this would affect their needs.