ARMCHAIR HISTORIANS ARGUE ENDLESSLY OVER who was “Father of the American Navy,” but Sarah Barry certainly has claim to being its mother. Young officers never failed to pay their respects whenever in Philadelphia, visiting her at 186 Chestnut Street. With Dale and Somers already in the family, Susan Bainbridge, daughter of William (who finally won his share of glory commanding the Constitution), married Sarah's grand-nephew Thomas Hayes in 1825. Sarah's home became “the pleasant resort of both the young and the old,” and she became renowned in maritime circles as “a prudent and excellent adviser.”1
She also increased the family fortunes with a series of astute transactions in everything from real estate to the Germantown Turnpike. Investment in ships became her passion. John Leamy handled countless transactions whereby Sarah loaned thousands of dollars to merchant captains or invested in their goods.2 In 1805, she sold Strawberry Hill for the handsome price of $12,500, bringing her husband's estate to $27,000—far from the wealth of his friends Rush and Biddle, but better off than his old superiors Morris and Stoddert.3 Sarah never remarried. She died on November 13, 1831, at the age of seventy-seven, having “commanded the respect, esteem and tender affection of all those who had the happiness of an intimate acquaintance with her.”4
James and Jude never received their twenty-pound annuities. Thorough inspection of state and municipal records, newspapers, or church records uncovered no manumission papers, “runaway” notices or other documentation regarding them. They likely did not outlive Sarah and died her slaves. Upon James's death, his twenty pounds went to “the Trustees of the Roman Catholic Society worshiping at St. Mary”; Jude's to Margaret Howlin's family in Ireland.5
William Austin never returned to Philadelphia. Since 1801 he had lived in Charleston, South Carolina, where he became a merchant. Barry's death all but ended any correspondence with his family. His mercantile pursuits never matched his pre-Revolution success with the Arch Street Ferry, and by 1814 both his business and health were ruined.6 On August 5 of that year he wrote Sarah, begging for the three hundred dollars bequeathed him in Isaac's will thirteen years earlier. “I have not for many years considered myself as belonging to the family,” he wrote; only his “long and serious indispositions and the extream badness of the times” forced a quill to his hand.7 He died four weeks later, before Sarah's check arrived.8
Patrick Hayes returned from China in 1804. He made one last voyage to Canton commanding the Dorothea, and then only invested in trade with China, restricting his voyages to the Caribbean. By the 1820s he owned a small fleet of merchant ships, including a brig christened Commodore Barry.9 He also followed in his uncle's footsteps, joining the Sea Captains' Club and the Society of Cincinnati. When war with England was declared in 1812 he was forty-two, and considered too old to be offered a naval command. He served several terms as harbor master, maritime warden of Philadelphia, and director of the Marine Insurance Company. He became a naturalized citizen in 1822. Hayes lived to be eighty-six years old, dying in 1856, outliving his wife by three years.
Patrick and Betsy survived all their children save one. John Barry Hayes died at age eleven in 1807; Sarah Barry Hayes, sickly throughout her short life, died at twenty-three in 1821; it was the death Patrick took hardest of all. Thomas Hayes, who entered the navy as a midshipman at age fourteen in 1815, subsequently followed his father and became a respected merchant captain. He died at age forty-eight in 1849. Only Patrick Barry Hayes, born in 1809, outlived his parents, dying at fifty-three during the Civil War. Isaac and Patrick also worked in the “family business,” each serving as a supercargo for their father's ships.10
At the time of Barry's death, Robert Morris was released from debtors' prison, living in a small house two blocks from Barry's Chestnut Street residence. Gouverneur Morris engineered an annuity for Robert's wife, as Robert's debts legally prevented him any possession of funds. The titan who carried the financial burden for the Revolution, once the epitome of success, died penniless in 1806. Few mourned his passing; only his Icarus-like fall from grace was remembered by the public.11
Francis Hopkinson had been in the ground twelve years when Barry died. He championed the Constitution, wrote a series of songs about and dedicated to George Washington, and was serving as a federal judge when he was “struck down by an attack of apoplexy” in 1791.12
After the Revolution John Kessler opened a grocery store across from Fanueil Hall in Boston and married a New England sailor's daughter. Over the next several years he lost his business, worked as a tax collector, and later was a fur trader with the Indians in Maine before finally returning to sea. After the death of two of his small children he and his wife returned to Philadelphia, where he became constable of Northern Liberties. By 1816 he was on a pension “for injuries received while in the service on board the Frigate Alliance.” In 1813 he and John Brown wrote the “Life of Commodore Barry” for Portfolio magazine. He died in 1840.13
The years after the Revolution were not happy ones for John Brown. His wife died young, leaving him with an infant son to care for. The boy died two years later. Brown never remarried, and never retired from practicing law. He frequently visited Sarah Barry, who constantly relied on his advice and friendship. Like Barry, he provided for his relatives back in Ireland. When Ireland was threatened with an invasion by Napoleon in 1800, he sent for his late sister's children; one nephew later died on a voyage to China. In addition to his charity work with the Hibernian Society, he became a patron of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the “City Dancing Assembly.” When he died in 1833 at age eighty-five, the spyglass John Paul Jones used in his battle against the Serapis was found among his possessions.14
Joshua Humphreys continued shipbuilding for the United States Navy. His innovative designs revitalized navies everywhere; Czar Alexander I requested a Humphreys-built Russian Navy in 1824. The disowned Quaker lived to be eighty-six years old.15
Ben Stoddert's last years were unhappy ones both financially and politically. While Baltimore's maritime boom cut into Philadelphia's business, it demolished Georgetown's. Stoddert was ruined. Jefferson's election, followed by Madison's ascent in 1808, ended the Federalist Party that Stoddert so deeply loved. He died in 1813, as war with his old trading partner, Great Britain, raged—a war in which the navy he championed proved England's equal, frigate for frigate.16
Barry's Royal Navy opponents continued to distinguish themselves after the Revolution. He was right about Sampson Edwards; his bravery was rewarded with a better ship. Cleared of any negligence in the loss of the Atalanta, he was given command of the frigate Diana to cruise the Bay of Biscay and the West Indies. By 1801 he was a rear admiral, with two sons serving as lieutenants.17
James Vashon became captain of the St. Albans, a sixty-four, but in the eight years he commanded her “he never fired a gun in anger, nor saw an enemy.” He resigned his commission in 1801. When war with France broke out again in 1803 he offered his services and was made admiral. His encounter with Barry stuck forever in his craw: whenever the subject of the Alliance versus the Sybil came up, he always insisted it was the Alliance that “sheared off when she had it in her power to continue the action.”18
Andrew Snape Hamond was knighted in 1778, and commanded the fleet that helped take Charleston in 1780. Later that year he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia. Named a baronet in 1783, he served on the court of inquiry that tried the captured mutineers of HMS Bounty. He died in 1828, weeks shy of his ninetieth birthday.19
After the Raleigh's capture, James Wallace continued his ruthless punishment of all things American. But in 1780, the Experiment was caught in a terrific gale off Savannah and dismasted. As the storm cleared, D'Estaing's fleet sailed over the horizon, capturing Barry's wiliest opponent. The Admiralty commended Wallace for his gallant defense of the wounded ship, rewarding him with command of the Nonesuch, sixty-four, and sending him to harass the French coast. He, too, was made an admiral. Sir James then served as commander-in-chief and governor of Newfoundland, returning to England in 1797. No portrait of Wallace is known to exist. Like Barry, he died in 1803.20
Pierre Landais never commanded another ship in the American or French navies. He moved to New York City, forever beseeching Congress for money and dreaming of the chance to meet John Paul Jones and challenge his old rival to a duel. In 1787, he saw Jones on a street corner talking with a friend. Coming from behind, Landais yelled, “I spit in your face!” in hopes of provoking Jones, who later stated he neither heard Landais nor was spat on.21 No duel was fought; thirty-one years later, Landais died at the age of eighty-seven in New York, and was buried in St. Patrick's cemetery.22
Benjamin Rush died in 1813, still Sarah's physician and still championing her late husband's heroics. Over the years he maintained a vigorous correspondence with John Adams. In 1813, he responded to a letter from Adams regarding the origins of the American navy. “Your anecdotes of the laborious birth of our little navy,” he wrote, “are truly interesting.” Then Rush added how “I once saw from the pen of Paul Jones and heard from the lips of Commodore Barry. In the journal of the former are the following words: ‘My hands first hoisted the American flag.' The latter with equal exultation once said to me, ‘the British Naval flag first struck to me,' alluding to his having taken the first British sloop of war.”23
The kindly doctor sought to augment and agree with the dour, ancient ex-president, but Adams treated Rush's letter like a shot across all New England's bow. Immediately Adams wrote to another old soul, John Langdon, who had his share of dealings with Jones and Barry while in Congress. Citing “an irresistible propensity to compare notes,” Adams let fly: “Both these vain boasts I know to be false.”24 Langdon, slower of foot but still quick with pen, concurred. Ever parochial, Adams made the point that John Manley and other New Englanders were first. “Our poor old tame, good-natured pussy Massachusetts,” lamented the not so poor or tame, but certainly prickly Adams.25 After assaulting the unassuming Rush with two vociferous letters, Rush explained how “Capt. Jones meant only that the American flag was hoisted first on board a national ship by his hand, and Capt. Barry meant only that a British national ship struck first to his national flag.”26
For Rush, it was politicizing yellow fever all over again, and he chastised Adams: “you do me great injustice in supposing I possess a single Pennsylvania or anti-New England prejudice.”27 There may not be any battles or plagues for the two old men to quarrel about, but there was still the American navy.
Thomas Truxton forever rued his decision not to take the command of the Mediterranean squadron. Subsequent offers to serve fell on deaf ears, even when his entreaties were accompanied with one of the hundred gold medals he personally ordered at his expense. Only one, Vice President Aaron Burr, lent a willing ear to Truxton's complaints over lack of use by Jefferson. On July 4, 1804, Truxton attended a dinner with Burr, sitting next to Alexander Hamilton. Truxton “had not the most distant idea of their being any differences between them.” Days later, Burr killed Hamilton at twenty paces. Truxton's public association with Burr ended any chance of reinstatement. After Burr concocted his scheme to conquer Mexico, he approached Truxton to lead “Naval operations.” Truxton would have nothing to do with it, and testified against Burr during his trial for treason. He never returned to the sea. Charles Biddle wrangled the post of “High Sheriff of Philadelphia” for his old friend. The gout-ridden Truxton died in Philadelphia in 1822, at sixty-seven.28
After distinguished service against the Barbary pirates, Richard Dale resigned his commission and went into the insurance business (at one point serving as director of the Insurance Company of North America), remaining active in the Episcopal Church and the charitable concerns of the Sea Captains' Club. When he died in 1826, his widow moved to a home close to Sarah's.29
Barry's “boys” earned more than their measures of glory and tragedy. When luckless William Bainbridge lost the frigate Philadelphia to Barbary pirates, Edward Preble approved a dangerous mission under young Stephen Decatur to sail the ketch Intrepid into Tripoli's harbor and burn the frigate. Remarkably, he succeeded without so much as losing a sailor. The young man's rise was meteoric; by the War of 1812 he commanded the United States and captured the frigate HMS Macedonian. Decatur's deeds placed him in the phalanx of Barry and Jones; like Jones and Truxton, he was rewarded by Congress with a gold medal.30
Richard Somers chafed at being overshadowed by his old schoolmate. On September 1804, it was his turn to command the Intrepid on another daring mission. He loaded her with explosives, and sailed her back into Tripoli harbor, with orders to light the fuse where the explosion could do the most damage to the dey's fleet. The Intrepid never reached the pirate ships. Without warning, she exploded in mid-harbor, killing Somers and every man aboard. His remains lie buried in Libya.31
Charles Stewart accompanied Decatur on his hair-raising mission to burn the Philadelphia. True to Barry's hunch, he did command better than he had been commanded, distinguishing himself during the Barbary Wars. In 1813 he became captain of the Constitution. “Old Ironsides” had already won two victories in the war; now came Stewart's turn. On February 20, 1813, he fought and captured two British ships of war: the frigate HMS Cyane and the corvette HMS Levant. It was the Constitution's last victory in the War of 1812.32 Stewart outlived all of Barry's officers, dying in 1869. His grandson, Charles Stewart Parnell, became one of Ireland's political heroes during the Victorian Age.
Fate was not so kind to James Barron. The young hero who saved the United States in that horrific storm was a commodore himself in 1807 and senior commander of the Chesapeake when she was fired upon and seized by the HMS Leopard, fifty guns, ostensibly searching for British deserters. The incident was a public relations disaster for Jefferson. A court-martial found Barron guilty and severed him from the service. When he applied for reinstatement in 1818, he found his most vociferous opponent was his old shipmate Stephen Decatur. Barron challenged Decatur to a duel. Decatur accepted. William Bainbridge acted as Decatur's second. In deference to Barron's near-sightedness, Bainbridge agreed to a distance of eight paces. Decatur was mortally wounded. Forever disgraced, Barron died in 1852.33
Following the War of 1812, the United States was sent back to the Mediterranean and patrolled the Algerian coast until 1819, when she returned to Hampton Roads for decommission. Slowed by wear and age, she was known to her sailors as “the Old Wagon.” She was still seaworthy; on one voyage in 1842 she rounded Cape Horn; among her crew was Ordinary Seaman Herman Melville. After being used to suppress the African slave trade, she was laid up in Norfolk and lay fallow until the Civil War, when the Confederate Navy re-christened her the Confederate States, nineteen guns, and used her to defend Norfolk's harbor. Later, when Confederates tried to sink her in the Elizabeth River, they discovered how well Joshua Humphreys built Barry's favorite. After countless axes failed to split her live oaking, they bored holes in her hull to sink her. The Union Navy raised her and brought her back to Norfolk. But once the United States was whole, the United States was broken up. This time saws and axes succeeded in breaking her apart, and her wood was sold.34
Four destroyers were named after John Barry in the twentieth century. The first, a Bainbridge-class destroyer, was appropriately built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Thousands attended her christening, the champagne bottle smashed by Barry's great-great-grandniece Charlotte Barnes. After patrolling the South China Sea and Pacific, she served in convoys against German U-boats. She was sold in 1920. The second, a 1,200-ton Clemson-class destroyer, was built that same year in Camden, New Jersey. In World War II she played an active roll against the German U-boat “wolf packs.” In 1945, off Okinawa, she was hit by kamikaze pilots on two separate attacks. The second sunk her. The third ship, a 2,800-ton Sherman-class, was built in Bath, Maine, in 1956. Her duties included action off Vietnam and later in the Persian Gulf. She is currently moored at Washington Navy Yard, where Patrick Hayes's descendants, the Hepburn family of Philadelphia, presented her commander with a copy of John Kessler's memoirs.35 The fourth is an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, built in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and commissioned in 1992. She has participated in operations in the Persian Gulf, and assisted in the evacuation of American citizens during the 2006 conflict between Israel and Lebanon.36
In 1939, Barry's logs, uniforms, swords, and other artifacts were auctioned in New York by the Hepburn family.37 Most of the collection went to the Library of Congress and other museums. Barry's cutlass hung in the Oval Office from 1961 to 1963, where it bore silent witness as another Irish-American naval hero, John F. Kennedy, navigated his way through the most perilous thirteen days of the Cold War, using the U.S. Navy in the judicious manner that Washington and Barry envisioned in 1794.38
Naval historians will forever argue over who deserves the title, “Father of the American Navy.” There are enough worthy nominees: Washington, Adams, Franklin, Congress, Joshua Humphreys, and Edward Preble among them. But Jones and Barry are the two that slug it out the most often—or at least their supporters do. In terms of personalities, Jones and Barry are the Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig of the American navy. From their papers, it is easy to see which is which. Jones wrote prolifically, never afraid to toot his own horn. Barry, as we have seen, never wrote two words if one would do. Jones is a broadside, full of bravado; Barry is a shot across the bow. When a statue of Barry was dedicated at Independence Hall in 1913, thousands attended. (It was the second statue in his honor; there is also one from the Centennial of 1876 in Fairmount Park.) A year later a third statue was erected in Washington, D.C. Woodrow Wilson delivered the address. A fourth, in County Wexford, faces the harbor.
These ceremonies were cap guns, however, compared to the twenty-one-gun salute-like return of John Paul Jones to America. For over one hundred years his remains lay in a Paris cemetery. By 1905 it had been filled in, and was now beneath a laundry. President Theodore Roosevelt, one of the navy's greatest advocates, saw Jones as a valuable symbol in his ambition to make the navy second to none in the world. When Jones's body was discovered and returned to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Roosevelt made a grand speech, extolling Jones's accomplishments. The president was the perfect champion for the brave but vain captain; in his daughter Alice's words, Roosevelt, like Jones, “wanted to be the baby at every christening, the bride at every wedding, and the corpse at every funeral.”39
As it turned out, Barry and Jones were even buried in a befitting manner. Jones finally has the resting place of his dreams. You will find him beneath the Naval Academy Chapel (where Barry's Bible is displayed at the altar). Stairs take you below to a circular tomb; his crypt is dead center. Walking quietly around it one can see Jones's gold sword, the same one given to Barry and thence to Dale; a portrait of the bantam Scotsman, his certificate of membership in the Society of the Cincinnati, and the medals awarded him by France, Russia, and the United States. It is a grand tribute, but Jones is buried alone, the eternal warrior and bachelor.
At Independence Hall, one follows the direction Barry's statue points to, proceeding down Fourth Street to Locust and St. Mary's Church. Walking toward the graveyard one passes markers for the Bouvier family, ancestors of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; in the cemetery itself one finds Thomas Fitzsimons, Mathew Carey, and other friends of the old commodore. Front and center is Barry's tomb, where he is buried with his wives Mary and Sarah, along with Patrick and Betsy Hayes. It is not nearly as ostentatious as the crypt in Annapolis, but the hero is buried with his wives, his family and friends, in the city he adopted and that adopted him.
After lying forlorn for more than a century on Petty's Island, the Alliance disappeared, as much from neglect as natural causes. Through all that time only one Philadelphian took pity on her fate. In the early 1800s, a boat returned from the island with various pieces from her deck and bulwarks. Skilled hands went to work and produced a handsome, if rustic, tea caddy.40
For years its owner wheeled it out for appropriate social occasions. The tea was poured, and the guests, some in navy uniforms, found it quite a conversation piece, recalling the ship itself, bringing back to life the men who sailed her and the captain who trod her quarterdeck, shed his blood, and won honor for his country. Guests may have found such use of beams that once carried American sailors into battle an anomaly, but they politely congratulated its owner on the craftsmanship of the work and the cleverness of its use. The owner smiled and thanked them.
Sarah Barry was always very gracious.