CHAPTER TWO

STORMS

BARRY'S ACHIEVEMENTS WERE QUITE A TOPIC among the mariners and merchants at the London Coffeehouse and City Tavern. As he was without employ upon his return to Philadelphia, Barry's services as captain were “recommended . . . to some of the most respectable merchants.”1 Each voyage of the Barbadoes netted owner Edward Denny a 10 to 15 percent profit.² Barry's was the latest success story along the waterfront.

Philadelphia's merchants and captains faced new risks. The economic downturn after the end of the French and Indian War, followed by the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts, compounded the ever-present risks of fickle markets and the loss of ships at sea. Established firms, some in their second or third generation, weathered these challenges better than fledgling newcomers could. Quaker mercantile dynasties competed against firms with Anglican names like Willing, Coxe, and Morgan. Some of their suppliers and employees looked at the merchants' wealth and position with envy. Others, like Barry, saw their riches as an objective worth striving for. He was among the mariners, vendors, and artisans who, seeing that their talents and efforts did not produce similar financial rewards, concluded that becoming a merchant was their best chance at getting rich.³

In the early winter of 1770, Barry returned to Philadelphia with a plan, if not a ship. Already managing his earnings in a manner reflective of his penurious upbringing—dividing it between his expenses at home and his family in Wexford—he and Mary saved whatever remained. (Barry's prolonged absences gave her a freer hand on the purse-strings.)4 While lacking sufficient funds to purchase his own ship, there was enough to contribute to a joint venture, and he had partners in mind: John Dugan, a shopkeeper, and Stephen Barden, a grocer, two acquaintances from Dock Ward.⁵ Both Irishmen were doing well in their chosen fields, but like Barry they wanted more. A partnership was formed.⁶

By the end of the 1760s the concentration of wealth in Philadelphia's upper class was accelerating. Poverty—one of the ills William Penn hoped to leave in England—had come to stay, making its presence felt in the social fabric of the New World's largest city.⁷ “It is remarkable what an increase of the number of Beggars there is about this town in the winter,” one Quaker sadly commented.⁸ This development carried economic consequences, increasing the risk factor for new ventures, especially ones funded by those from modest beginnings, gambling everything they owned. For every success story like Barry's, there was a fistful of failures.⁹

For the first time in Barry's marriage Christmas was spent with Mary, attending Mass at St. Joseph's, the small church sequestered off Walnut Street. Rumors of war between England and Spain over the Falkland Islands were fresh in the wintry air when another merchant, John Gibbon, approached Barry with a wrinkle in his plans with Dugan and Barden.¹⁰ Gibbon owned the brig Patty and Polly, whose captain had died on the most recent voyage. With the brig's hold full of supplies for the Virgin Islands, Gibbon asked Barry to assume command. Although the dead of winter posed a challenging time for such an enterprise, Barry accepted.¹¹

The Delaware was “so full of Ice that all Navigation is Stopped,” and Barry could not depart until the end of February, 1771.¹² “Hard Squalls” dogged the brig; one vicious storm forced her to ride under “bare poles”—without sails. For forty hours the masts didn't carry so much as a rag of canvas, as tremendous waves washed over ship and crew. Barry did not find himself in peaceful waters until the end of March. After a month of refitting and loading new stores in St. Croix, Barry returned to Philadelphia in May.13 By then the threat of war with Spain had passed, and Barry renewed his search for a vessel that would suit his new venture.¹⁴

In August he found it: the schooner Nancy, for sale by her owner, an acquaintance of Barry's. After his thorough inspection found her seaworthy, Barry convinced Dugan and Barden of her merits. The three partners purchased her, registering the vessel under her new name, Industry.¹⁵ With a growing reputation as a good captain, Barry had no trouble hiring a crew, and in one week had enough hands and a cargo loaded for delivery to a Virginia merchant.¹⁶ The Industry departed Philadelphia on August 28.¹⁷

Barry titled his log “A Journal of a Voyage from Philadelphia Toward James River Virginia in the Good Schooner Industry.”¹⁸ At twenty-six, he was a ship owner, the equal of his Uncle Nicholas. Barry's Catholicism, lack of extensive education, and family status—insurmountable obstacles in Ireland—were, in Philadelphia, merely incidental facts about the man. The pride in the log's title was merited.

Industry hugged the coast of Maryland until Barry sighted Chincoteague on August 30 and headed the schooner up the James River. On the morning of September 1, wearing his finest clothes, Barry came ashore to register at the Williamsburg Custom House. It was a beautiful day; the streets full of well-dressed Virginians on their way to church. Barry returned to his ship. “Went up to Williamsburg Could Do No Businis,” he sheepishly wrote, having forgotten it was Sunday.¹⁹

For several days, a lingering storm prevented the unloading of Barry's cargo. The downpour slowed refilling the Industry's hold as well. Weeks dragged by before she left Virginia, arriving in Philadelphia on September 21. So far, the Industry was performing to her captain's liking, and she took on another merchant's cargo for New York, departing on November 4.²⁰ For the first time in Barry's marriage he was home for his wedding anniversary. Things looked rosy for John and Mary as they began their fifth year together, thanks to the initial success of Barry and his partners.

Their ardor soon cooled after a marked change of luck for the Industry. Just five hours after leaving Philadelphia, an errant shallop carried away her jib boom. Repairs were no sooner completed the following afternoon when Barry's “Raskill of a Pilot” ran the schooner aground at Cape May. For an entire day, an irate Barry scribbled soundings and fathoms, making every effort to get the Industry offshore, all the while calling the “Raskill” other names not entered in the log for posterity. The usually short trip to New York was also plagued with a vicious nor'easter, “Keeping all Hands at the Pumps.” As the ship took in wave after wave of water, Barry headed further and further south to escape the storm. Soon he was far off course, estimating that the Industry was fifty miles off the Delaware coast. When “Pleasant Breezes” returned, Barry “spoke a pilot boat” off Cape May, the exact spot the Industry had been one week earlier. Four days later, the schooner “Run up to [New] York in Company with several other Vessels.”21

The return trip was no less vexing. “Strong Gales and Dark Snowy weather” damaged the Industry's rigging and sails. The next day “An abundance of Snow” prevented Barry from making any observations. Once again his efforts to keep the ship safe resulted in a further loss of time. After being driven below Maryland, Barry and his crew brought the Industry northward with great difficulty, finally spotting the Cape Henlopen lighthouse after three sleepless days and nights. The Industry returned to Philadelphia on December 12.²² The shortest roundtrip of Barry's career was one of his most hazardous.

That storm was a harbinger of bitter weather to come. With their financial situation threatened by weather and the calendar, the Industry's owners rushed into another voyage, this time to Nevis.²³ The Delaware was so icebound that few ships arrived in port and even fewer departed.²⁴

Shortly after New Year's Day 1772, enough ice melted for the Industry to stand down the Delaware, but pleasant weather only accompanied her to Cape Henlopen. “Fresh gales” pushed the schooner eastward and further off course, as “Large Seas” broke over her rails and “Caried away sundry small things.” After two weeks, the weather changed to “Mod[erate] Breezes and Cloudy,” allowing the crew to repair “The Flying Jibb Gear and Boom.” On January 19, under a beautiful, starry, midnight sky, the Industry “Came to Anchor in Nevis Road.”25

This voyage marked a return to the winter schedule of Barry's Barbadoes days; he remained in the Caribbean until March, returning with the usual cargo of rum, molasses, and sugar. Navigating the treacherous and oddly named shoals around Nevis was a challenge, but Barry safely sailed the Industry through “the Dog and Prickelly Paire.” “Pleasant and fair all sails Sett” marked Barry's departure but, as befitting the Industry's luck, “Fresh Gales” accompanied her homeward, with more sails, blocks, and yards lost, and more water “shipt” until reaching Philadelphia at month's end.²⁶

The Industry's last voyages put an end to her owners' enthusiasm for their venture. Repairs ate substantially into profits. The challenge of ownership differed for each man. Anxiety over the whims of nature playing with his investment sent Dugan back to full-time shopkeeping. Barden found that cockets and customs laws did not suit him as well as selling Jersey produce.²⁷ Lacking the stomach for the uncertainties of mercantilism, Dugan and Barden wanted out. As for Barry, he had been tested at sea like never before, and was the better captain for it. Whether he wanted to keep the schooner was a moot point—he could not afford to buy out his partners. The best-laid plans of grocer, shopkeeper, and sailor had gone awry.

They agreed to sell the Industry after her return from a voyage to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Barry not only found a prospective buyer but also discovered a sloop for sale, named Frugality.²⁸ She was the classic model of what was popularly called a Bermuda schooner: three lateen sails started from her bowsprit to a single mast, which held a fore and aft rigged mainsail and one square-sail atop.²⁹ After inspecting the craft he took an option on her.

The homeward trip gave Barry time to mull over his future by examining his past. Denny's retirement had left him high and dry, and now his partners' decision to return to the relative safety of their old occupations did the same. Without the wherewithal to buy the Frugality himself, he needed an employer of substance, a merchant who would see his availability and that of the Frugality as a profitable combination. He knew such a man. The Industry no sooner docked in Philadelphia than he was off to see Denny's friend Reese Meredith.30

 

Meredith, reputedly worth £80,000 (a multimillionaire's fortune today), was one of Philadelphia's most respected and experienced merchants, at ease with the ebb and flow of profit and loss, with profit being his usual outcome. His partner, George Clymer, was a man of unquestioned integrity and civic-mindedness, if not possessing his partner's zeal for trade. Well-born and well-off, Clymer, who would later sign the Declaration of Independence, was not in love with his profession, actually instructing his children not to follow in his footsteps.³¹ Meredith and Clymer expanded their business and their fleet with methodical surefootedness.

Barry's hunch was correct. Meredith not only saw the merit in his proposal, but offered to add Barry to his roster of captains and purchase the Frugality for his command.³² Another captain in Barry's predicament might have cursed his bad luck and the “bare poles” that put him in such a financial crisis. Barry turned his dilemma into career advancement.

Meredith's newest captain sailed the Industry back to Nova Scotia that summer, returning aboard Meredith's newest acquisition in September. The sloop's sailing capabilities were a delight to her new master. His reunion with Mary in Philadelphia was a special one, for she had exceptional news: John's brother Patrick was in town, as shipmaster of the schooner Amelia, out of St. Kitts. Mary met not only Patrick but his fiancée, Mary Farrell, as well. Plans were made for an October wedding upon Patrick's return from sea.³³

With his own star rising again, John moved Mary to a larger home in the Walnut Ward, between the docks and the business district. Tax records listed three residents: “John Barrey, wife and servant”—but did not indicate if this servant was indentured or a slave (due to Barry's prolonged absences it was most likely a young woman).³⁴ She could also have been another Irish immigrant, many of whom were already bond servants before leaving Ireland or, arriving penniless, were forced into indenture at the Philadelphia docks.³⁵ This “acquisition” to assist Mary with her housekeeping was as much a sign of success to Mary as was Barry's new position. The injustice of slavery and indentured servitude received very little thought among most white colonists. But the irony that an exile from the demeaning Penal Laws would see nothing amiss in the ownership of another human being was evidently as lost on Barry as it had been on the Irish plantation owners in the West Indies or other successful Irish émigrés.

Barry spent the next several weeks refitting his new ship, now called the Peggy. Shipping records of the day abound with vessels given a lady's name beginning with the letter “P,” in sound and speech easy to understand whenever captains “spoke each other” at sea. Refitting took longer than anticipated, allowing John to be present for his brother's wedding—barely. Patrick was docking the Amelia while Barry and Meredith registered the Peggy at the Custom House on October 9. The next day's tide table gave Barry the chance to stand at Patrick's side just long enough to witness the vows. Then he scrambled to the waterfront to sail off in the Peggy for St. Eustatia. After finding living quarters near John's in Walnut Ward, Patrick too was off, dividing his voyages on the Amelia between New Orleans and Barbados.36

Barry reached Oranjestad, St. Eustatia's capital, at month's end. The island's vast roadstead could hold two hundred ships, and as Barry brought the Peggy into the harbor he saw seemingly countless warehouses built right up to the waterfront. Beyond them was a natural plateau, rising over the town and below the peak of an ancient volcano. An array of luxurious tropical mansions, built by the rogue merchants of this freewheeling isle, made the vista even more imposing. The Peggy dropped anchor at the busiest and richest settlement in the western hemisphere.³⁷

In one major respect, St. Eustatia was different from Barry's other Caribbean destinations. “Statia” was a free port. Trade was open to every country, and the legitimacy of one's trade was no concern at all. Dutch-owned and perpetually neutral, St. Eustatia was nestled among British, French, Spanish, and Danish islands, thereby becoming the principal port for goods coming from and going to America and Europe.³⁸ No wonder Statia was called “the Golden Rock.”

Meredith and Clymer's agent met Barry as he docked, introducing him to the tiny island's carefree business transactions while the Peggy was relieved of her cargo. Nothing in Barry's return cocket was home produced. St. Eustatia did not make or refine anything; it served as a way station for everyone else's goods. The mile-long main street in Oranjestad consisted of shops, taverns, and storage depots one after another. Goods from the world over were traded: rum from Jamaica, furniture from the North American colonies, clothing from England, all interspersed with French silks, Danish coffee, and artisans' crafts from everywhere; all sold at the lowest prices in the world. The “Golden Rock” was an international eighteenth-century traders' paradise.39

A popular Holland product, gunpowder, was not yet banned from sale to the colonies by England, as Parliament saw no need to deny Americans the right to protect themselves against hostile Indians. Not that banning anything in Statia would matter. Smuggling was tacitly accepted by even the most upstanding of merchants. Meredith, Clymer, and now Barry engaged in “business as usual” at this intriguing port. An honest business transaction in St. Eustatia was rarely a good one. By 1772, smuggling was one of the underpinnings of colonial business.⁴⁰

After another round trip to Statia, Meredith sent Barry to a new destination that spring: Montserrat, twenty miles southeast of St. Eustatia. Barry made another voyage to Statia in June, returning to Philadelphia in August. The Peggy was a fast ship with a contented captain at the helm.⁴¹ One of the items not listed on Barry's cockets during his travels, but one he brought back nonetheless, was tea.

By 1773, no other product was so identified with the British Empire—or its increasingly strained relationship with its American colonies. Now tea became a Parliamentary weapon. For over a century, the East India Company had been the major player in the world's largest economy. Now facing bankruptcy, it needed government assistance to keep it (and therefore the British economy) from sinking. East Indiamen, ships that resembled floating cities in size, were the symbol of British mercantile power. Now, “John Company's” warehouses held seventeen million pounds of tea, with nowhere to ship it.42 Accordingly, Parliament passed the Tea Act of 1773, giving the East India Company a free hand in dealing directly with American merchants.⁴³ The decade-long conflict pitting profits against patriotism came to a head over tea.

News of the Tea Act reached Philadelphia that spring, with loyal merchants petitioning to handle the new trade while their unhappy colleagues railed against it.⁴⁴ That autumn, a broadside warned “the Delaware Pilots” that “Tar and Feathers” awaited anyone who would bring up the “Ship Polly, Captain Ayres, a Three Decker which is hourly expected . . . on a Voyage from London to Philadelphia.” It was signed by “the Committee of Tarring and Feathering,” who made their intentions clear: “Pennsylvanians are to a Man, passionately fond of Freedom . . . and at all Events are determined to enjoy it . . . what think you, Captain, of a Halter around your Neck—ten Gallons of liquid Tar decanted on your Pate—with the Feathers of a dozen Geese laid over that to enliven your Appearance?”⁴⁵

The broadside found its way to New England; John Adams later admitted it gave the Sons of Liberty the idea to stage the Boston Tea Party in December.⁴⁶ It also inspired Philadelphia's own, when another ship was boarded by Pennsylvania and New Jersey patriots who unloaded the tea, took it ashore, and destroyed it. (Afterward one of the participants, Henry Stacks, was discovered with his pockets bulging with the vile black leaves: he was derisively branded “Tea Stacks” for the rest of his life.)⁴⁷

All of this activity brewed while Barry was sailing homeward, returning to Philadelphia in December.⁴⁸ Reports of Boston's Tea Party were fresh in the papers when, on December 27, Captain Ayres was taken off the Polly at Gloucester Point and escorted to Philadelphia by the “Committee of Tarring and Feathering.” Barry was part of the boisterous crowd that filled the State House yard, loudly proposing and passing several “resolutions” as Ayres fearfully eyed the swinging halter and inhaled the bubbling tar's noxious bouquet. To be tarred and feathered was not only degrading, it was excruciatingly painful. Assuring all that he would sail home on the next tide, Ayres was returned unharmed to the Polly. The next day, Barry sailed for St. Eustatia in the Peggy, clearing the Capes with the Polly just ahead of him.49 Barry's voyage went smoothly; 1774 began with promise.

While he was in St. Eustatia, Mary died. Patrick, having returned to Philadelphia in January, was present with John's wife at the end, and handled the funeral arrangements. There is no documented record of what illness or accident befell Mary, only that she passed away on February 9. A plain headstone was erected, and her name and age—“29 years, 10 months”—were all that appeared on it.⁵⁰ Two weeks later, the Gazette relayed the news that “Barry, from St. Eustatia” had “arrived at our Capes, and may be hourly expected up.”⁵¹ As the Peggy approached Philadelphia, a rowboat took Patrick out to the sloop, where he broke the news to his brother.⁵²

In later years, Barry wrote in passionately plain language about his deeds as a sailor and patriot. Letters to family members were simply worded and affectionate. But no writings exist regarding Mary. When Barry's days ashore are calculated, they were together for less than six months in a marriage of just over six years. If one of them was destined to die young, odds would have made it the sailor on the high seas, not the spouse living in the most civilized city in the colonies. At twenty-eight, John Barry found himself a widower.

In the midst of his mourning came a new career opportunity, one that would move the young captain to the pinnacle of Philadelphia's merchant trade. In March 1774, Barry received a message from Robert Morris, requesting a meeting.⁵³

 

Benjamin Franklin may have been the most renowned Philadelphian of the time, but Robert Morris was by far the richest. Like Franklin, Morris came to Philadelphia as a young man. Born in Liverpool in 1734, he was raised by his grandmother after his mother died and his father, Robert Senior, migrated to Maryland, where he became a Chesapeake merchant. In 1747, he summoned his son to come live with him.⁵⁴

Physically immense, Robert Senior was an accomplished businessman, raconteur, and politician—attributes that would become even more pronounced in his son. Young Morris was unimpressed with his father's burgeoning library; the only books that caught his fancy were accounting ledgers. This, combined with his open animosity for Robert Senior's lover, forced father to exile son to Philadelphia, where his continued disinterest in scholarly pursuits brought about an apprenticeship under Charles Willing, one of Philadelphia's foremost merchants. Willing's firm traded directly with both the West Indies and England, advertising “European and West India goods . . . West India rum, muscavedo sugar, Bohea, and Hypon teas, Bristol beer, Herefordshire cyder, Gloucester cheese, anvils, hammers, sledges and vises, Vidonia and Sherry wines, long and short pipes, cortage and anchors, window glass . . . and Welsh and West country servants.”55

Willing soon realized that he had two bright boys under his tutelage: his son Thomas and young Morris. Only sixteen, Morris showed an acumen for business far beyond his years. Once, while Willing was away, he learned from a captain just back from London that the price of flour had gone sky high in England. Morris bought every sack he could get his hands on, to the bemusement of the uninformed merchants. The next morning, they learned why Willing's apprentice had cornered the Philadelphia flour market, and Morris was never underestimated again. With Charles Willing's death in 1754, Robert assisted his grieving friend Thomas, managing company affairs and substantially increasing the firm's profits during the French and Indian War. He was rewarded with a partnership. When Barry arrived in Philadelphia in 1760, the firm of Willing and Morris was as successful as any in the colonies, with a fleet of over twenty ships.⁵⁶

At thirty-five, Morris married the beautiful teenager Mary White in 1769; five years later, his family included two sons and a daughter. His vast wealth allowed him to satisfy his appetites for politics and ostentation. After leading the opposition to the Stamp Act, he immersed himself in the growing schism between the colonies and Parliament. To complement his huge mansion in Philadelphia, he built a summer estate on the Schuylkill, where he grew hothouse oranges and pineapples.⁵⁷ If Franklin was the example of how high an artisan could rise in the colonies, then Robert Morris was the perfect role model for every apprenticed clerk.

Morris's request to see Barry did not result in a meeting until springtime. Compared to the average height of the day (about five feet six inches) both men were tall, physically intimidating figures, with resumés to match. Morris had followed Barry's career with more than passing interest. He offered the young widower a choice of two possibilities: one, take command of the recently purchased brigantine, the Venus, or two, remain with Meredith and Clymer until construction was completed on the Prince Edward, a two-hundred-ton merchantman.58 Barry quickly accepted the latter offer while proposing his brother Patrick for the former. Patrick's success aboard the Amelia was known to Morris from the newspapers and Coffeehouse chatter. He readily agreed to hire both brothers.⁵⁹

Before Barry sailed the Peggy to Montserrat on March 20, he notified Meredith that his services would end that fall. Eight days later, the “Brigantine Venus, forty-tons, Patrick Barry, Captain,” was registered at the Philadelphia Custom House, and then sailed with a cargo of wheat and lumber to Jamaica and the Mississippi.⁶⁰ John returned to Philadelphia in June, docking the Peggy in the midst of political and economic upheaval.⁶¹

Parliament and the Crown had spent the past decade dealing with the colonies like a stern but befuddled parent trying to figure out how to discipline rebellious teenagers. Punishing steps were implemented, then reversed; the Stamp Act Congress, the Townshend Acts, the Boston Massacre, and the Gaspee affair were usually dealt with by putting a foot down, then relenting. But the Boston Tea Party called for severe measures. Parliament passed the Boston Port Act, closing the port of Boston. Soon British reinforcements to those stationed at Castle William began arriving in dozens of transports, clogging the King's Roadstead in place of merchantmen. The harbor's closing was a virtual death sentence, threatening Boston's economic survival. Only restitution for John Company's destroyed tea, plus all prospective duties on its sale, would restore Boston's privileges.⁶²

News of the port's closing was carried on horseback by silversmith-turned-courier Paul Revere, who stopped in Philadelphia en route to Virginia, his saddlebags bursting with letters requesting support for Boston from fellow colonists.⁶³ Staunch loyalists saw the Boston crisis as proof that a harsh price awaited rebellious colonists for their protests and sometimes violent acts against the Crown. If this could happen in Boston, could it not happen in Philadelphia? Nearly every Quaker merchant—and many Anglican ones as well—were vociferous in their objections to any support for Boston. One admonished his colleagues to “keep the transactions of our City within the limits of Moderation, and not Indecent or offense to our parent State.”64

On the evening of May 20, a meeting was held among Philadelphia's politicians and merchants at the City Tavern (nearly all of the Quakers were conspicuously absent, as a sign of support for the Crown). Over dinner they scripted a set of resolves, calling for “a day of mourning,” a special meeting of the Pennsylvania Assembly, and the establishment of a Committee of Correspondence between Philadelphia and Boston. Thomas Willing was appointed chairman.⁶⁵ On June 1, the designated “day of mourning,” shops were closed and the bells of Christ Church tolled throughout the day. Barry flew the Peggy's flag at half-staff, an action taken by sympathetic captains as a sign of support for besieged Boston.⁶⁶

Barry refitted the Peggy for his last cruise for Meredith and Clymer (Clymer, one of the resistance's ringleaders, became so involved that he left Meredith with the task of running their firm).⁶⁷ As witnessed by his attendance during the Polly affair, Barry's own political sympathies were with the Cause. There was not one tug of conscience regarding the rights of the British Empire in the heart and mind of this Irishman, exiled because repression and religious intolerance reigned over his native land. If the time came to fight, John Barry would fight.⁶⁸

As Barry oversaw stowing of the Peggy's cargo, Meredith and Clymer attended a meeting at the State House co-chaired by Morris, where it was proposed that a Continental Congress convene in September, with each colony to send representatives. On June 25, Barry headed down the Delaware, taking the Peggy to Montserrat on an uneventful voyage. He left the magnificent view of smoldering Mont Soufrière in his wake in late August. At the Capes south of Delaware Bay he was pleasantly surprised to encounter the Venus. Over the past two years John and Patrick had rarely seen each other. They sailed upriver together, docking in Philadelphia on September 21.69

Down the street from the waterfront at Carpenters' Hall, the first Continental Congress was in its third week of deliberations. Eleven colonies had sent representatives—men with disparate tastes, backgrounds, and education. For many it was their first time away from home. Virginia's delegation included the firebrand Patrick Henry and soldier-turned-tobacco planter George Washington. Among the Massachusetts representatives was the brilliant lawyer who had defended the British troops involved in the Boston Massacre, John Adams; and, wearing a claret-colored suit, his more rambunctious and rebellious cousin, Samuel. The men from Massachusetts and Virginia drove the agenda during these meetings.⁷⁰

Shielded from the warm September sun, Congress questioned, probed, and argued over each issue. As autumn began, conservative members seemed on the verge of reining in their rebellious colleagues. The session was about to conclude with a tepid letter of protest to the Crown when Paul Revere arrived with the latest news from New England.⁷¹ Resolutions had been passed by the citizens of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, vehemently denouncing the latest British laws, declaring that “no obedience is due from this province to either or any of the Acts.”⁷²

The reading of the Suffolk Resolves resulted in bedlam. As radical battled conservative, the Resolves became the basis for a declaration of colonial rights of life, liberty, and property. Economic sanctions against England were enacted, to remain in place until the Coercive Acts, Intolerable Acts, Tea Tax, and the like, were repealed. Effective December 1, 1774, no goods would be imported from England and Ireland, with exports to Great Britain and the West Indies ceasing the following September. Congress adjourned, to reconvene in May 1775.⁷³

At the Southwark shipyard, the final touches were being made to the Prince Edward. Barry's new ship would take him back across the Atlantic for the first time in fifteen years—to England, of all places. While he was attending the annual meeting of the Sea Captains Club at the London Coffeehouse, his appointment as captain of Philadelphia's grandest merchantman was announced, and cheers and glasses were raised in his honor.74 Life was certainly looking up as far as his career was concerned, but even the arrival in port of another brother, Thomas, was not enough to keep Mary from his thoughts, especially as he marked his wedding anniversary—ironically ashore.⁷⁵

The bookish Thomas came to Philadelphia in hopes of furthering his career as a clerk; he also brought news for John and Patrick of the family remaining in Ireland. Their aging parents were living off what money John and Patrick sent home. Their sisters, Eleanor and Margaret, were married with children. Eleanor Hayes had three: Michael, Patrick, and Eleanor; Margaret Howlin had several children, the oldest a daughter.⁷⁶ This reunion was short for Patrick, soon bound for Tobago. Some days later, standing on the Willing and Morris dock, John and Thomas waved farewell as the Venus stood down the Delaware, slowly vanishing from sight. John never saw Patrick again.

 

The Prince Edward had five owners: Thomas Willing, Robert Morris and his brother Thomas, John Nixon from County Wexford; and her builder, John Wharton.⁷⁷ Launching took place while Congress was in session, and Wharton and Barry worked tirelessly to have the ship ready to sail by year's end. Willing and Morris were well aware that the Congressional resolves would bring severe repercussions from the Crown, although how severe was yet to be fathomed. Both partners, while stridently advocating the rights of colonials (especially colonial businessmen), still hoped that all would end amicably, although Willing was beginning to view the radical prospect of independence “as an economic consideration, not a political one.”⁷⁸

The new ship was beautiful to behold: 91 feet 5 inches long, 26 feet 1 inch at the beam, with the blunt bow and raised quarterdeck easily recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as that of a Philadelphia merchantman.⁷⁹ When Barry and Nixon registered her they also changed her name, if not her namesake. Prince Edward was called “the Black Prince” for his wartime heroics as much for his appearance, and that sobriquet was now the ship's name. Her figurehead was a handsomely carved knight, sword and shield at the ready.80

In a last flurry of activity, Barry signed on a crew and oversaw the loading of cargo. The hold was packed with 1,246 barrels of flour, 16,203 bushels of wheat, 800 boards, and 3,840 pipe and barrel staves, all for delivery to Bristol, England. On December 28, the Black Prince stood down the Delaware, the prize float in a two-day parade of outgoing vessels, all sailing for British ports of call. She was the last ship to depart Philadelphia in 1774.⁸¹

The year 1775 began under “Squall[s] with rain” which did little to slow the Black Prince's speed. Over the next two weeks, despite the weather changing from bad to worse, the new merchantman made terrific headway, logging nearly five hundred miles over three days. On January 10, “A Varrey Dangerous Sea” began washing over the deck, and Barry ordered lifelines run to keep his men from being swept overboard. “Hail, rain, [and] much lightning to the E'ward” beset both ship and sailor. For days there were “No Observations”; by now Barry was an old hand at maintaining course by dead reckoning.⁸²

Reading Barry's entries of this voyage one can hear the awful howl of the wind, the roar of pounding seas as they crashed over the Black Prince's bulwarks, and the gruff shouts of orders to his crew over the din of the tempests. The phrases “Peopel Employed on weaving mattes, and knitting of yarns,” interspersed with “set Doubel Reef main to fore topsails and jibb” encapsulate long, dangerous days when the crew was constantly occupied with the repair of rigging and sail after a perilous watch aloft on the footropes, desperately leaning into yard and canvas, reefing sail in an effort to keep their ship afloat and themselves alive. Respite finally came on January 16, with “Light airs inclinable to Calm” and “Peopel Employed in making [repairs to] the sail and rigging.” For the next few days, Barry's log reads like an elongated sigh. The Black Prince continued eastward.⁸³

The dreadful nor'easters proved the excellence of the ship's construction to captain and crew alike. No masts gave way, no yards were lost. Another storm struck the ship on January 19, and for a solid week, the gales were too fierce to be heard over; on January 22, Barry “spoke a brig from Philadelphia Captain McGurney But Could not understand what he sayed it blowing hard.”84 Three days later, the Gazette informed Willing and Morris that the Black Prince had been sighted: “the ship George Captain Pinkerton, from this port for our Capes he spoke the ship Black Prince, Captain Barry, from this port for Bristol.”⁸⁵

That very day, January 25, Barry literally turned the Black Prince around to survive Mother Nature. Besieged by the elements, the merchantman could only make one or two knots, as winds shifted quickly and unexpectedly throughout the day. The constant change of direction meant painstaking tacking of the Black Prince until, after no less than fifteen hours with all hands aloft or on the braces, Barry finally ordered “wear ship!”⁸⁶ With a collective groan that seemed to come from her keelson, the Black Prince slowly came around on the opposite tack, her bow wearily turning away from the howling wind. Barry ordered the mainsails brailed up and the foresails braced around to catch the gale and bring the bow around with the stern coming through the wind.⁸⁷ Barry's drenched, exhausted sailors more than earned their salt that day.

By this time, the crew had a healthy respect for their captain; one sailor recollected Barry “possessed courage without rashness.”⁸⁸ Barry's leadership skills were now second nature to him: a winning combination of seamanship, fearlessness, and honesty. Keeping his emotions just beneath the surface, he applied his wit or his temper to emphasize a point or an order. His reputation for fairness and hard work was already well known on the Philadelphia waterfront.⁸⁹ Now these sailors saw it firsthand.

Soon the Black Prince was on top of the British Isles—the closest Barry had been to Ireland in fifteen years, but on a course that would not take him any closer. He was near enough to the English coastline on January 26 to record a sounding of fifty fathoms, with “Pebel stone and schalaps shells and mud.” Land was sighted the next day, and Barry arrived in Bristol Channel under “light Breezes and fluttery” conditions. “Hard gales with a Constant Rain” accompanied the Black Prince past the Avon River's shoals. Just thirty-one days after leaving Cape May, Barry dropped anchor in Bristol harbor.90

Congress' trade policy was already the talk of Bristol taverns and coffeehouses, and Barry's order for ballast in lieu of trade goods was not welcome news to merchants or officials. In tacit retaliation they purposely took their time getting the Black Prince's hold unloaded.⁹¹ Barry found the talk regarding Anglo-American relations pessimistic. Although many Bristol merchants were sympathetic to the colonists' plight, others spoke “with contempt of the firmness of America.”⁹²

For the next two weeks, Barry seethed as stevedores “Employed on Dischargging part of the Cargo” worked at a snail's pace, with “Nothing Rec'd on Board.”⁹³ On one of these lethargic days, another ship broke her lines and smashed into the Black Prince's stern, damaging her quarter rail and breaking the cabin windows. Dockhands continued to slowly, ever so slowly, bring Barry's cargo out of his ship's deep hold; sometimes only three hundred barrels a day were removed.⁹⁴ Willing and Morris agents informed Barry that the market would not pay the firm's requested price for the wheat and flour.⁹⁵ Frustrated by accidents, glum businessmen, and boredom, Barry turned command over to his first mate and accompanied other American captains to Bath, the old Roman city southeast of Bristol, whose warm mineral springs had just been rediscovered by the local gentry. The two-day soak did him good, and no doubt his crew enjoyed the break from their captain's darkening mood.⁹⁶

Not until March 1 did the Black Prince have sufficient ballast to sail. Once again, storms forced the ship to anchor downriver. Eleven days later, still in the roadstead, an irritated Barry wrote “at 5 AM one Snow pembrook drove fowl of us Caryed away his jib boom.” Two days afterward, the relieved captain departed “with several sails in Company” and “all sail set.”⁹⁷

 

The first leg of this voyage passed smoothly, as Barry took the Black Prince southward toward the Azores. From there, “heavy tumling seas for the W'ward” propelled her homeward; even a ship of this size could be sent bobbing up and down on a high, rolling ocean. On April 11, 1775, Barry let the merchantman race a bit, running up to ten knots, but in doing so “splitt the main topsail” and then “splitt the fore topsail.” She was also being driven south of her intended course, and in five days was at the latitude of the Carolinas. The following days were blessed with favorable conditions, and the Black Prince plowed northward, covering 350 miles. By April 21, Barry was outside the Delaware Capes under “Light Breezes” and picked up a pilot at Cape May. Fog kept him below the bay's entrance until the twenty-fourth, when the pilot took the ship upriver, reaching Chester by nightfall. That night the Black Prince rode at anchor. Her captain and crew turned in, knowing they would be home in the morning.98

In Philadelphia that same day, the St. George's Society for the Assistance of Englishmen in Distress held its annual banquet at the City Tavern.⁹⁹ Over a sumptuous meal, the hundred members discussed the growing divide between king and subject. After dessert, the society's vice president, Robert Morris, stood to propose a toast to the health of George III. Members rose to drink to their king and patron saint's namesake. Suddenly, a panting dispatch rider burst through the front door with news: musket fire had been exchanged between Massachusetts Minute Men and British “Lobster-backs” at Lexington and Concord.¹⁰⁰ The members of St. George's Society, spilling glasses and upending chairs, bottled up the doorway in their mad rush to spread the news. According to legend, Morris, now alone in the room, changed his toast to a vow of support for the Colonial cause, and downed the contents of his glass. Then he stepped out of the tavern and into the uncertain, dangerous future.¹⁰¹

The following day, under “fine clear sunshine weather,” the Black Prince nestled against the Willing and Morris dock, and Barry saw firsthand the pandemonium created by the previous day's news: a “River covered with ships and the wharves covered with inhabitants.” The waterfront and adjoining streets were hopelessly clogged with carts, drays, and wagons: full ones heading to the docks to be unloaded; empty ones heading toward the warehouses to be refilled and unloaded again. Cargo was not laded into the holds so much as tossed. There were no idle longshoremen that day; “there were as many hands as could work” without inadvertently jostling a fellow dockhand into the river. Those merchants with ships in port were beseeched by their unluckier colleagues with exorbitant offers to allow them space for their wares, to no avail.102

On nearby streets, approaching the chaos, millers came with more wagons full of grain. Shallops and row-galleys crossed the river from Camden, weighted down with goods. Outside the State House, speakers exhorted their fellow countrymen to enlist in the coming fight while men drilled on the square. Once outspoken loyalists cowered in their homes, fearing a mob of “rebels” might attack them and destroy their property.¹⁰³

Along the waterfront, a truth of human nature lay just beneath the surface disorder. Merchants had been in the forefront of resistance against England, not necessarily as much over patriotism as over profits. Now, after a decade of Crown affronts to their citizenship and commerce, after a decade of warning king and Parliament that they would fight for their rights, they learned their fellow Americans in Massachusetts had done just that. Further, the imminent session of the Second Continental Congress would surely approve a plan of resistance that would terminate all business with England indefinitely. Colonial merchants had been walking a narrow path as ardent advocates of American rights and shrewd icons of commerce. The merchants were patriots, but they were still businessmen. Now, seeing a future pitting them in a war against a great international power, they hoped for just one more killing in the marketplace before any actual killing came to Philadelphia.

Willing and Morris found Barry's arrival more than opportune, and gave him no chance to relax. Outside of a brief visit to the Gazette offices to report the news from Bristol and the ships he “spoke,” his waking hours were spent supervising the Black Prince's refitting and the stowing of cargo; 2,623 bushels of wheat were stored in one day (compared to 320 bushels being unloaded in one day back in Bristol).¹⁰⁴ On May 6, as Barry continued his manic pace to get his ship ready for sea, thousands crowded the docks to welcome the Pennsylvania Packet, carrying home Philadelphia's favorite son, Benjamin Franklin, after his long absence in England. From the Black Prince's quarterdeck, Barry could see Franklin disembark “to the satisfaction of his friends and the lovers of Liberty.”105

The following day, less than two weeks after docking and without an inch of empty space in her hold, the Black Prince stood down the Delaware, accompanying the brig Nancy and the merchantman Aurora, captained by Barry's friend Thomas Read. All three were bound for the British Lion's den itself: London.¹⁰⁶ Practically every remaining Philadelphia ship accompanied them downriver, headed for England or the West Indies. The Delaware was a wild traffic jam as ships of all size came dangerously close to each other, tacking their way to the Capes. It looked as if all of Philadelphia was leaving home.¹⁰⁷

The Black Prince was sailing under the first mate's command. Barry remained in town for last-minute discussions with Morris regarding a scheme to sail from London to St. Eustatia, to smuggle home a shipment of gunpowder. The idea was dismissed, and Barry came aboard at New Castle in Delaware on May 9.¹⁰⁸ The Black Prince discharged her pilot and cleared Cape Henlopen two days later. That same day the Second Continental Congress went into session.¹⁰⁹

Once at sea, Barry found the Black Prince “Vastly out of trim” due to the rushed preparations for this voyage. The Atlantic weather, usually peaceful in May, was again unkind. Storms returned in full force, and while the Black Prince still kept company with the Aurora and Nancy over the next two days, conditions became even more dangerous: “a hollow grown sea” with gale-force winds “splitt the forestaysail and the mainsail.” All three ships turned into the wind until the tempest passed. Only fifty miles were made the following day. As his crew repaired the torn canvas, Barry watched the less damaged Aurora and Nancy disappear over the horizon.¹¹⁰

It seemed foreordained that storms would stalk the Black Prince on this voyage. Barry did not sail in favorable conditions until the middle of June, when he sent his ship speeding eastward. On June 17, a “Steady Breeze and Pleasant Weather” allowed “all sails sett” and he soon “spoke Captain Read”; the Black Prince had overtaken the Aurora. The ships proceeded together up the English Channel. One week later, Barry “got the Pilot John Abraham on Board at Dover,” and on June 27, the Black Prince docked in London after forty-eight strenuous days of sailing.111

The fighting at Lexington and Concord seemed the only topic of discussion in London when Barry and Read came ashore. Neither captain carried news that London had not already heard. In fact, London had news for them. Rebel forces had captured Fort Ticonderoga, its much-needed artillery now in colonial hands.¹¹² The two captains read an ominous comment in the London Public Advertiser that Parliament “Will either keep Possession with Troops of all the great Towns on the Coast of America and shut all her Ports with Frigates, or . . . finish the War at once, by reducing with a military Force, the Provinces of New England to Obedience.”¹¹³

Stuck in London, Barry did not venture far from his ship, sleeping in his cabin rather than taking a room in the city—a decision made as much for his safety as for convenience. The slow discharge of cargo, similar to his experience in Bristol four months earlier, was concern for worry, especially when he contemplated the very real possibility that the Black Prince could be seized and he and his crew imprisoned. Mundane entries in the ship's log of “Tarrd the For Topmast Shrouds and Back Stays” and “Disch[arged] 7 Casks of Bees waxe” belied the churning anxiety Barry shared with other Americans, waiting to refit and leave what was now the enemy capital.¹¹⁴ Fresh reports of the battle at Bunker Hill, and the heavy British casualties, did little to ease the fraying nerves of American sailors.

Most of the other American ships had already left London when, on August 5, the Black Prince's hold was empty and ballast could be loaded. Barry decided that any unfinished repairs would be completed at sea. On the eighth, he met with Morris' agent while the first mate took the ship downriver. Barry rejoined his crew the following day.¹¹⁵ “Sailed, the Black Prince, Barry for Philadelphia,” read the clearance of the British officials.¹¹⁶

Any hope of smooth sailing was short-lived. Shifting winds kept Barry tacking back and forth until the nineteenth, when the Black Prince finally reached the Atlantic—and more bad weather. Distances traveled on these days ranged from average to dismal; only thirty miles were tallied on the twenty-third. Conditions varied from calm to stormy, and Barry recorded them in clipped, frustrated sentences. His entry for September 3 was only forty-nine miles; the following week was more of the same: fits and starts, but mostly fits. On September 10, thirty days after leaving London, the mast-header finally sighted the Azores.117

 

In eight months of sailing the Black Prince, Barry had pitted her against whatever the elements brought to bear. For the next twenty-four hours, the weather gods smiled.

On a course of “NNW, the winds bearing ESE,” Barry started the September 11 entry at noon, the official beginning of a day at sea: “This 24 hours a fresh gale and Cloudy attended with light Showers of Rain.” The Black Prince was cruising at eight knots. Soon, nine: as the winds shifted “to the So'ward,” Barry ordered steering sails set to maximize the wind. The Black Prince was doing ten knots when, at 6:00 P.M., the gale “Carried away the M[ain] Top G[al]l[an]t Royal yard,” the highest sail and spar aboard ship. Not wanting to lose a second, Barry sent his top-men aloft and “got the mizen top gallant yard up in his Place.” This quick fix only held for two hours when a fresh gale “Caried [it] away” under darkening clouds, but its loss was not enough to stop this one-ship race.¹¹⁸

Barry ordered a smaller yard hauled up to the awaiting top-men, who finished their high-wire act above the deck, only to see their repair come crashing down below. No matter. The rest of the sails were more than doing the job, the masts, yards, and stays groaning from time to time under the full press of canvas.¹¹⁹ Strong as the winds were, Barry was determined to make up for lost time—in actuality, lost days—as long as the winds were favorable. To him, this gale was a blessing. The very act of sending the Black Prince hurtling over the waves gave him joy, and his mood was contagious: one did not get many days like this one; best to enjoy it.¹²⁰

The prize ship of Philadelphia now raced into darkness at eleven knots. At 2:00 A.M. the wind shifted yet again, blowing east. Barry had the night watch “Set the foretopmast Steering [sail] for a Driver.”121 Under another soaking squall, sailors took the steering sail and set her at the end of the spanker boom, giving them one extra square sail aft to maintain—if not increase—the Black Prince's speed.¹²² In the gloom of this rainy, windy night, with “the Carpenter Employd making a new Royal yard,” Barry worked his men without rest, sending them up and down the ratlines replacing canvas while he thought up spur of the moment solutions that kept the Black Prince flying at top speed.¹²³ Her bow literally hummed as it cut through the water.

Back to ten knots, a speed the Black Prince would keep into the next day's entries. “No Observ. to Day” is the last entry on the right hand side of the log. On the left, “Dist. logged—237.”¹²⁴

Two hundred and thirty-seven miles. There is no faster known twenty-four hours of sailing in the eighteenth century.¹²⁵ For one glorious day, Barry had the right combination of seas and wind.

On September 13, foul weather returned, as strong winds carried away the main topmast. Ten days later, “High Seas Attended with Thunder and Lightning” attacked the ship, driving her off course toward Sandy Hook, New Jersey. On the twenty-eighth, Barry “herde the Main yard crack” and made his last repair on the Black Prince. He finally sighted Cape Henlopen through his spyglass on October 4.¹²⁶

Barry awaited a pilot boat. None came. The Black Prince rocked at anchor, her decks cleaned and sails furled. Aboard any of his previous ships Barry would have headed into the bay, but the draft of the Black Prince was over fifteen feet; he dared not risk her passage up the Delaware without a pilot.¹²⁷ Nor did he know, five months away from home, what had become of home. Barry sent his mate ashore to find a pilot. He found one hiding from the British in obedience to orders from the newly formed Committee of Safety.¹²⁸

As the Black Prince made this last leg homeward, the pilot told Barry he was wise to have waited for him. There was a new, man-made hazard in the Delaware, the chevaux-de-frise. These crisscrossing, pointed stakes were anchored by up to forty tons of stone at the river bottom. Their frames were thirty feet wide, pierced with protruding spikes two feet wide that reached up to sixty-five feet in length. Sunk at different depths, but not more than six feet below the surface at low tide, they were designed to rip apart the hull of an unsuspecting (and unpiloted) enemy ship.129 Only trusted pilots knew of their whereabouts. On Mud (now renamed Liberty) Island, construction was under way to complete what was commonly called “the mud fort.” The waterway to William Penn's peaceful kingdom was being prepared for the British warships that were sure to come.

Barry docked the Black Prince at the Willing and Morris wharf. When he departed in May, the world he knew seemed to be on the verge of monumental change. By the time he returned, that change had become a reality.