Chapter V: The Conditions of the Continental Naval Service

The nineteenth century worked its marvels on sea as well as on land. The progress of invention, the discovery of new sources of wealth and power in nature and in man, and the development of powerful states, have revolutionized transportation and communication by sea, maritime pursuits, and naval science. Commerce has found fleeter wings; and it no longer waits on the caprice of Aeolus. Countless steamships with enormous tonnage and high rates of speed have in large measure supplanted the small, snaillike sailing craft of our fathers. The hazards of sea-going trade have been greatly reduced. Invention has pacified Neptune’s fierce temper. The breed of pirates and corsairs has been exterminated by the long muscular arm of the modern state. The privations of ocean-travel which were distressing accompaniments of the colonial period in America, were succeeded about the middle of the last century by the comforts of the first steamships, and these within the memory of young men have yielded to the luxuries of the floating palaces of the sea.

Complementary to these transformations in commerce, navigation, and travel by sea, have come improved methods of their defence. Modern naval science in all of its aspects has been developed. Glancing for a moment in retrospect at the long line of naval progress, one sees it pass from the ancient row-galleys, to the sailing ship of the early Modern Age, and from thence to the steamships of to-day. The motive power has changed from human muscle to wind, and from wind to steam. Placed beside the iron-clad battleships, the light, wooden frigates of the Revolution look almost as antiquated as the Greek galley with its figured prow. Smart, trim, beautiful vessels were the Revolutionary craft, but how small, simple, and crude they now appear. Indeed, a new type of poet, one who loves raw force first, and the picturesque afterwards, has risen to sing the glories of new navies and new seas.

Other naval changes have been made, as significant as those in style of vessel and motive power. Ships of war now wear heavy coats-of-mail. The “great guns” and the “long guns” of the Revolution are neither great nor long beside modern cannon. A new type of sea officer has been trained to meet the new conditions of naval service. It would puzzle a modern officer to take a schooner from Boston to Plymouth, for his seamanship is now fitted to steamships. By over-study of modern armament, torpedo boats, and the latest naval manœuvres, his “weather eye” has lost something of its skill for reading in the skies the coming of storms or sunshine. Trim and immaculate in their uniforms, the American naval officers of to-day, who have entered the naval profession by the way of their technical studies at Annapolis, little resemble their hardy prototypes in the Continental navy, to whom clung the barnacles of their apprenticeship aboard merchantmen.

Notwithstanding this revolution in naval science, a consideration of the conditions of the Continental naval service and of the naval policy of the Marine Committee has to-day a practical value for naval experts. Certain fundamental principles in naval science do not change. Captain Mahan, in his “Influence of Sea Power upon History,” has pointed out that, while naval tactics vary with the improvements in the motive power and armament of fleets, the basic principles of naval strategy do not. They are as enduring as the order of nature. For example, one cannot conceive that there will come a time when an inversion will be made of the strategic principle, that an enemy should be struck at his weak point. Captain Mahan even finds it worth while, for the benefit of his fellow-experts, to set forth with some detail the naval strategy of the Carthaginian wars.

When America, in these first years of the twentieth century, makes an invoice of her resources, she counts first her great prairies of the Mississippi basin, her rich mines of the Alleghanies and Rockies, and her wealth of manufactories and their products. In 1775 her assets were of a different sort. America then was a mere strip of seacoast, cut into a series of peninsulas by the lower courses of a number of navigable rivers. Her interests and her wealth then were much more largely maritime than now. Attention has already been directed to the wide pursuit of commerce, shipbuilding, fishing, and whaling in New England. It remains, to be said that in the Middle and Southern colonies commerce and shipbuilding were important industries. During the Revolution Virginia put more naval ships afloat than any other colony. In the colonial period communication between the towns of the colonies was best by water. The inhabitants of America, during this period, were amphibious. They have lost this quality, for their character is now fixed by the “West,” and not by the Atlantic seaboard. In 1775 America had, relatively, many more seamen than in 1898.

In the light of these facts it seems somewhat singular that the Revolutionary navy was forced to spend most of its days in port, vainly trying to enlist seamen for its depleted crews. To be sure the lack of sufficient armament, naval stores, and provisions was felt, but it was the lack of sailors that constituted the chief obstacle to the success of the Continental navy. Those vessels that finally weighed anchor were wanting as a rule in this prime naval requisite. The same causes that prevented seamen from enlisting lowered the quality of those that did enlist, and kept them from entering for longer than a single cruise. A ship’s complement of sailors was often ill-assorted. Seamen were improvised from landsmen; captured British seamen were coaxed into service; and for one cause or another many nationalities at times shipped side by side. These conditions made for insubordination, and even mutiny. On one occasion seventy or eighty British sailors, who were enlisted on board the Continental frigate “Alliance,” bound for France, planned to mutiny and carry the frigate into an English port. In order to obtain seamen many measures were resorted to by Congress, the states, the Marine Committee, Navy Boards, and commanders of vessels. Premiums for importing seamen were given to foreigners;[185] wages were advanced to recruits;[186] attempts were made to place embargoes upon privateers;[187] bounties were paid to seamen enlisting for a year;[188] inducements were offered to those captured from the enemy to get them to enter the American service;[189] some seamen were impressed; glowing advertisements were inserted in the public prints;[190] and broadsides, which cleverly recited the many advantages of the Continental service, were displayed in sundry taverns.[191]

All these efforts were defeated by the seductive allurements of privateering. The Revolutionary Congress was poor and paid poor wages. After its seamen had enlisted, they were toled away by mercenary privateersmen. These same privateersmen were accused of taking the naval stores and the artisans of Congress in order to fit out their own ships. The owners and commanders of privateers, as they received the whole of their captures, could afford to treat their crews liberally. It was generally asserted that they paid higher wages than did Congress or the states. Privateering was more popular, more elastic, and more irregular than the other naval services. When no one was looking, parts of cargoes could more readily be appropriated for private use without waiting the tedious process of the admiralty courts. Privateersmen could devote all their time and energy to commerce-destroying, unfettered by the miscellaneous duties which often fell to naval ships.

The backbone of the privateering interest was in New England. Silas Deane said in 1785 that four out of every five of the privateers of the Revolution came from the states north and east of the Delaware river. This probably overstates the proportion in favor of the northern states.[192] Pennsylvania and Maryland did considerable business, but farther to the southward the industry was less flourishing. The Virginia privateers did little. Massachusetts sent out one-third of all the privateers. From 1777 until 1783, inclusive, the Massachusetts Council issued 998 commissions. In 1779, 184 prizes captured by privateers were libelled in the three admiralty courts of this state. The average burden of these captured vessels was one hundred tons. Rhode Island’s best year was probably in 1776, when thirty-eight vessels were libelled at Providence. A list of 202 privateers has been made out for Connecticut. In 1779 twenty-nine vessels taken from the British by privateers were libelled in the Pennsylvania court of admiralty. During the last six years of the war Maryland issued about 250 commissions. Boston was the chief center for fitting out privateers and for selling their prizes, although towns like Salem and Marblehead did a thriving business.[193]

Not a few of the failures and misfortunes of the Continental navy are to be laid at the doors of the Yankee privateersmen, whose love for Mammon exceeded that for their country.[194] A more patriotic course was to have been expected of certain substantial merchants who embarked in the business of commerce-destroying. But on the other hand, one might easily be too severe on many bold, simple, seafaring folk. The war, which deprived them of their gainful pursuits at sea, now pointed the way, as a recompense, to a new and attractive calling. Wives and babies were still to be fed, and plans for sweethearts to be realized. The new trade was as alluring as a lottery. Had not a neighbor drawn a competence sufficient for almost a lifetime by a successful haul of the enemy’s rich West Indiamen? It was true that another neighbor, who but recently sailed proudly for sea with women-folk waving a last good-bye, now languished in a prison-ship off New York, or was starving in the old Mill prison at Plymouth, England. “But then a man must take his chances,” each privateersman argued, “and it may be I, who by a fortunate cruise shall bring home enough Jamaica rum to fairly float my schooner, and every pint of it is as good as gold coin.”

Due credit must always be given to the hardy and venturesome privateersmen for supplying the army and navy with the sinews of war, which they captured. To be sure, if Congress or the states wished their captured property, it was to be had by paying a good round price for it in the open market. Even here the government’s agents sometimes suspected collusions between the buyers and the agents of the captors to run up prices to the disadvantage of the government.[195] The privateersmen were engaged not in patriotic, but business ventures. Could one-half of this irregular service have been enlisted in the Continental and state navies, the other half could not have been better employed than in its work of distressing the enemy’s commerce, transports, and small letters of marque. Zealous eulogists of the privateers have overrun the cup of their merit. They have not always pointed out that the number of American privateers, merchantmen, fishermen, and whalemen captured by British privateers and small naval craft was comparable to the number of similar British vessels taken by the American privateers. The prison ships and naval prisons of the enemy at New York, in Canada, the British West Indies, and England were at times crowded with Americans captured at sea.[196] A few of these men England enlisted in her navy; and with others she manned a whaling-fleet for the coast of Brazil composed of seventeen vessels. It is, however, worthy of note that the supplies captured from the British were often almost indispensable to the colonists; while similar captures made by the British had to the captors little value.

Another factor in the naval situation of the Americans was the existence of state navies in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The fleet of Massachusetts, comprising sixteen armed vessels, was the most active and effective of the state fleets. The Virginia navy numbering about fifty vessels, was poorly equipped and rendered little service. These fleets were made up of all sorts of naval craft; sailing vessels variously rigged, fire-ships, floating batteries, barges, row-galleys with and without sails, half-galleys, and boats of all sizes. Most of this craft was designed for the defence of coasts, rivers, and towns. This was especially true of the galleys, which were shallow vessels, some seventy or eighty feet in length, carrying two or three cannon, sometimes as large as 36’s or 42’s. Only some sixty of these vessels of the state navies were well adapted for deep-sea navigation.[197]

To a limited extent both privateers and state vessels were placed at the service of the Marine Committee. There were cruises, expeditions, and defences of towns, in which two, or the three, services participated. In such cases the senior Continental captain was regularly the ranking officer, or the commodore of the fleet, as it was then expressed. To the extent that state vessels and privateers might be concerted with the Continental vessels, it would seem at first blush that they undoubtedly were elements of naval strength to the Marine Committee. This was by no means true. These concerted expeditions proved disappointing, and when too late the Committee became wary of them. Proper subordination, upon which naval success so much depends, could not be obtained in these mixed fleets. The commander of a state vessel or the master of a privateer, for aught either could see, subtended as large an angle in maritime affairs, as an officer of Congress, which body was to them nebulous, uncertain, and irresolute.

If the location and physical form of colonial America with reference to the sea tended to develop a maritime people, they also made most difficult the problems of naval defence. As has been pointed out, the territory of the revolting colonies comprised a narrow band of seacoast divided into a number of peninsulas. All the large towns were seaports. Had the peninsulas been islands, their defence against the great sea-power of England would have been an impossibility. The connections by land on the west side of the thirteen colonies gave Washington a most valuable line of communications from Canada to Florida. Had the revolting territory lain compactly, approaching a square in shape, with a narrow frontage on the sea, its naval defence would have been a simple problem.

Having decided late in 1775 to make a naval defence, Congress early in 1776 took into consideration the establishing of one or more bases for naval operations.[198] There were needed one or more strongly fortified ports where the Continental fleet and its prizes would be comparatively secure from attack, and where the armed vessels could equip, man, and refit. The ports best adapted for naval stations were Boston, New York, Philadelphia, some point on or near the James river in Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina. Lesser towns had their advocates and their hopes. In February, 1776, Gurdon Saltonstall of Connecticut wrote to Silas Deane that New London would be “the Asylum of Cont. Navey,” for “one they must have of necessity.”[199] The Southern ports were not available for several reasons, but chiefly on account of their distance from the center of maritime interests in New England. New York was occupied by the British. Philadelphia had many points in its favor, not the least of which was the location there of Congress and the Marine Committee. Its occupation for a time by the enemy in 1777 and 1778, and the close watch which his armed vessels maintained at the mouth of Delaware Bay, greatly impaired its usefulness as a harbor of refuge for the Continental vessels. Boston was by far the most available port. After its abandonment by the British in March, 1776, and the shifting of the theater of the war first to the Middle and later to the Southern states, it was left comparatively free from British interference. It was the naval emporium of the Revolution, where naval stores, armament and equipment for vessels of war, seamen, and ships could be procured, if they were to be had at all.

The British had naval bases in America that left little to be desired. When they seized New York in September, 1776, they obtained not only a military point of the highest strategic value, but also a secure naval station for fitting out and refitting their privateers and naval ships. From New York, centrally situated with reference to the revolting colonies, their vessels proceeded along the Atlantic coast both northward and southward on the outlook for American merchantmen, privateers, and naval craft. Their favorite patrolling grounds were off the entrances of Delaware, Chesapeake, and Narragansett bays. British vessels were also to be found off Boston Bay, Ocracoke Inlet, Cape Fear, Charleston, and Savannah. The British occupation of Newport from 1776 to 1779, and of Savannah from 1778, and Charleston from 1780, to the end of the war, afforded other convenient stations for British operations against the shipping of the colonies. St. Augustine was a port of much importance in the movements of the enemy’s smaller ships. The naval stations at Halifax, Jamaica, and the Bermudas, while not so convenient as those enumerated, were sources of naval strength to the British. Halifax was a base for the naval operations against New England. It scarcely needs to be said that the ports mentioned were in a way secondary bases of operations, and that England’s center for ships, seamen, and supplies of all sorts was the British Isles.

From this account of the respective naval stations in America of the two combatants, one proceeds naturally to a comparison of their fleets. The rude naval craft of the Americans, two-thirds of which were made-over merchantmen, was outclassed by the vessels of the Royal Navy at every point. Disregarding the fleets of Washington and Arnold, there were during the Revolution fifty-six armed vessels in the American navy, mounting on the average about twenty guns. The vessels in the British navy when the Revolution opened in 1775 numbered 270, and when it closed, 468.[200] Of this latter number, 174 were ships of the line, each mounting between sixty and one hundred guns. The naval force of the Americans when it was at its maximum in the fall of 1776 consisted of 27 ships, mounting on the average twenty guns.[201] At the same time the British had on the American station, besides a number of small craft, 71 ships, which mounted on the average twenty-eight guns.[202] Of these, two were 64’s; one, a 60; seven, 50’s; and three, 44’s. The British vessels, being so much larger than the American, were naturally armed with much heavier guns. Very few 18-pounders were to be found in the Continental navy. The frigates were usually mounted with 12’s, 9’s, and 6’s; and many of the smaller craft with 6’s and 4’s. The guns on the larger British ships mounted 18’s, 24’s, 32’s, and 42’s.

An exhibition of figures showing the difference in size between one of the largest of the frigates built by the Marine Committee in 1776 and a typical 100-gun ship of the line of the Royal Navy is interesting not only by way of comparison, but also as giving a notion of the size of Revolutionary naval craft. The figures in feet for the American 32-gun frigate, “Hancock,” and for the British 100-gun ship, “Victory,” respectively, were as follows: Length of gun deck, 137 and 186; length of keel, 116 and 151; width of beam, 34 and 52; depth, 12 and 22. The tonnage of the “Hancock’s” companion frigate, the “Boston,” was 515 tons; of the “Alfred,” the first ship fitted out by Congress, 200 tons.[203] Continental naval craft, such as the “Cabot,” “Wasp,” and “Fly,” were smaller still than the “Alfred.”

The number of seamen and marines in the Continental navy is believed not to have exceeded at any time three thousand men. The exact number of commissioned officers in the Continental navy and marine corps may not as yet have been ascertained. Owing to the diffusion of the power of appointment, the Naval Department of the Revolution seems to have prepared no perfect list of its officers. The best list of commissioned officers, and one that in all probability needs few corrections was compiled in 1794 in the Auditor’s Office, Department of the Treasury.[204] This gives the names of 1 commander-in-chief, 45 captains, and 132 lieutenants, or 178 commissioned officers in all, in the navy proper; and 1 major, 31 captains, and 91 lieutenants, or 123 commissioned officers, in the marine corps. With the exception of the years 1776 and 1777, when the total number of officers in actual service was about one-half of the above figures, the number of officers at sea or attached to vessels in ports was much less than one-half. In 1902 the American navy consisted of 899 commissioned officers of the line, arranged in eight grades.

In 1775 the British navy contained 18,000 seamen and marines, and when the war closed in 1783 this number had risen to 110,000. The total “extra” and “ordinary” expenses of the Royal Navy from 1775 to 1783, as voted by Parliament, amounted to £8,386,000.[205]

Both Continental and state naval services suffered from the lack of _esprit de corps_, naval traditions, and a proper subordination and concert of action between officers and crews. Bravery is often a poor substitute for organization and naval experience and skill. Navies can be grown, but not created. The quality of the Continental naval officers, diluted it is true by the presence of a few “political skippers,” was upon the whole as high as the circumstances of their choice and the naval experience of the country admitted. Many of them were drawn from the merchant service, and a few had had some months’ experience in state navies. Six captains appointed by Washington entered the service of the Marine Committee.

The vessels of the Continental navy were procured and managed under several Continental auspices. The Marine Committee, with its predecessor and its successors in naval administration was the chief naval administrative organ of the Revolutionary government. We have already seen, however, that Washington fitted out one fleet in New England and another in New York; and that Arnold fought with still another fleet, one of the most important naval engagements of the Revolution. In a succeeding chapter we shall find that the American representatives in France, who were responsible to the Foreign Office of Congress, and the Continental agent at New Orleans, who worked chiefly under the Committee of Commerce, fitted out fleets, and were vested with important naval duties. At one and the same time three committees of Congress, the Marine Committee, the Committee of Foreign Affairs, and the Committee of Commerce, were fitting out armed vessels.

FOOTNOTES:

[185] Journals of Continental Congress, April 17, 1776.

[186] Ibid., March 29, 1777.

[187] Rhode Island Colonial Records, VIII, 53.

[188] Journals of Continental Congress, July 11, 1780.

[189] Ibid., August 5, 1776.

[190] In July, 1778, when a joint American and French attack on Newport was planned, the Navy Board at Boston inserted a notice in the Providence Gazette, requiring sailors who were enlisted to repair to their vessels, and calling for recruits. This call was in the following language: “All seamen now in America, who regard the Liberty of Mankind, or the Honor of the United States of America, as well as their own advantage, are now earnestly entreated to enter immediately on board some of the Continental Vessels, in order to afford all possible Aid and Assistance to His Most Christian Majesty’s Fleet, under the Command of the Count de Estaing, the Vice-Admiral of France, now in the American Seas, for the Purpose of assisting these American States in vanquishing a haughty and cruel Enemy, too long triumphant on these Seas. Now is the Time to secure to yourselves Safety in your future Voyages, and to avoid the cruelties which all those experience who have the Misfortune to be captured by the Britons; and now is the time to make your Fortunes.”—Providence Gazette, July 25, 1778. See also advertisement in Connecticut Gazette, March 7, 1777.

[191] A facsimile of a most interesting and rare broadside will be found in C. K. Bolton’s Private Soldier under Washington, page 46. This broadside was designed to attract recruits to the ship “Ranger,” Captain John Paul Jones, fitting out in the summer of 1777 at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to sail for France.

[192] Collections of New York Historical Society, Deane Papers, V, 466.

[193] For additional information and appropriate references concerning privateers, see Part II, State Navies.

[194] There is much evidence on this point. See especially Publications of Rhode Island Historical Society, VIII, 256, William Vernon, Commissioner of Navy Board at Boston, to John Adams, December 17, 1778; Force, American Archives, 5th, II, 1105, John Paul Jones to Robert Morris, October 17, 1776; Ibid., 599, Mrs. John Adams to John Adams, September 29, 1776; Ibid., 337 and 622; Ibid., 5th, III, 1513, Benjamin Rush to R. H. Lee, December 21, 1776; and C. K. Bolton, Private Soldier under Washington, 45, 46.

[195] In the case of Continental prizes the Navy Board at Boston discovered collusions which were detrimental to the government. Ordered to buy the Continental prize “Thorn,” it writes to the Marine Committee that the agents and captains interested in the prize refuse to let it have the “Thorn” at a price to be fixed by three disinterested appraisers; and that “taking our chance, in the purchase by auction, amongst such circles of men in combinations is a miserable one.” In the same letter the Board writes also concerning the “Thorn” that “bets run high that she will sell for two hundred thousand pounds.”—Records and Papers of Continental Congress, 37, pp. 145, 147.

[196] See Chapter IX, page 267; also Gomer Williams, Liverpool Privateers, Chapter IV, Privateers of the American War of Independence. From August, 1778, to April, 1779, Liverpool fitted out one hundred and twenty privateers.

[197] See Part II, State Navies.

[198] Journals of Continental Congress, March 23, 1776.

[199] Papers of Silas Deane in the Library of the Connecticut Historical Society.

[200] Clowes, Royal Navy, III, 328.

[201] Few of these vessels were ready for sea for lack of crews. The British also suffered greatly during the Revolution owing to the scarcity of seamen. This the First Lord of the Admiralty attributed to the loss of 18,000 American sailors, who had contributed to the manning of the British fleets in former wars.—Annual Register, 1778, 201.

[202] Boston Gazette, November 4, 1776.

[203] A battleship building in 1903 at the New York navy yard has a displacement of 16,000 tons.

[204] Manuscript list, in Division of Manuscripts, Library of Congress.

[205] Clowes, Royal Navy, III, 327.