Rebels at sea, p.8
Rebels at Sea, page 8
Thomas Truxtun, circa 1799. Truxtun captained or served on a number of privateers and letters of marque during the Revolution, including the privateer Congress, which, along with the Chance, were the first to obtain Continental commissions from Congress.
Black men served on many privateers. Some were freemen who joined of their own volition. Others were enslaved persons who signed on after running away from their owners. Slave owners seeking to reclaim “property” who had fled to join a privateer would run advertisements in colonial papers. At the same time, many slaveholders rented out their enslaved persons to privateers as a moneymaking scheme. An ad in the New-Hampshire Gazette in 1776 adopted a light and airy tone for what was grim business: “To be SOLD for a CERTAIN TIME, or let by the month, a genteel sprightly NEGRO FELLOW, in fine health, about eighteen years of age, he can be recommended for many good qualities, has served at sea and land, waits on company well, and is extreme[ly] desirous of belonging to a captain of a privateer, or going in one, as may be agreed.”
Then there were those Black men who were treated as transient property by the privateers themselves. When privateers captured British slavers, their human cargo was viewed as just another commodity and sold at slave auctions in the French West Indies or the American states—in effect, transforming privateers into slave traders. American privateers captured more than forty British slave ships sailing from Africa to British-controlled Caribbean islands, with more than ten thousand enslaved persons on board in total, who were treated in this manner. While these actions should not surprise, they represent the greatest blemish on the privateering record.
Joshua Barney (right, circa 1805) captained privateers and Continental navy and Pennsylvania state navy ships during the Revolution. In early April 1782, as captain of the Hyder Ally and acting as a privateersman, he won a dramatic battle against the British sloop of war General Monk and the British privateer Fair American. (The bottom image, circa 1802, by Louis-Philippe Crépin, is titled “Hyder Ally” Captures “General Monk,” April 8, 1782.) Although Barney had a privateering commission, that was only because Pennsylvania couldn’t act fast enough to get legislation in place to purchase and commission the Hyder Ally as a state navy vessel. A consortium of merchants, fully expecting the legislation to ultimately pass (and it did, a few days after the April battle) stepped in and bought the Hyder Ally on behalf of the state, outfitted it, and put up a bond for the privateering commission. This enabled the Hyder Ally to go down the Delaware River and the Delaware Bay in convoy with merchant ships to protect them from British warships and privateers. While Barney was technically a privateersmen, he was also a captain in the Pennsylvania state navy, and it seems more accurate to view the Hyder Ally as a state vessel, not a privateer, despite the commission. That is how Barney himself and contemporaries characterized the Hyder Ally.
But privateers may have had a related, and more positive, effect. According to historian Christian McBurney, who studied the role of privateers in the slave trade, “The unintended consequence of the American privateers’ success against British slave ships was that British investors from Liverpool, Bristol and London” for most of the war “invested in many fewer African slave trading voyages. This development, in turn, resulted in tens of thousands of Africans not being involuntarily forced on board slave ships, forced to endure the horrors of the Middle Passage, and forced to spend their remaining days in enslavement.”
Providence merchant John Brown, who had a stake in two slave trading ships prior to the Revolution, decided to capitalize on this potentially lucrative opening by dispatching the 250-ton, 20-gun privateer brig Marlborough, captained by George Waite Babcock, to the west coast of Africa in late 1777 with specific instructions to attack British slave trading interests. Babcock met with spectacular success. He ransacked a major slave trading post and captured more than twenty prizes involved in the slave trade, one of which, the Fancy, had 310 enslaved persons on board. He placed a prize crew on board the Fancy and ordered them to sail it back across the Atlantic to Charleston, South Carolina, home to the largest slave market on mainland North American in colonial times. Whether it made it to Charleston or another safe port or was captured by an enemy vessel or sank at sea is not known. If it did ultimately make it to port, its human cargo would have been sold to the highest bidder, with some portion of the profits ending up in Brown’s pockets.
John Brown, circa 1794. On May 17, 1781, Brown placed an ad in the Providence Gazette, imploring men to sign on to his privateer, “the very likely and fast-sailing ship Marquis de Lafayette,” which was “now fitting for a cruise, with all possible dispatch, against the common enemy.” The banner across the top of the ad read, “The Best Encouragement! Good Living, and a Fortune.”
Privateers sometimes brought captured enslaved persons back to their home ports and put them up for sale in the public auctions where the prize ship and its contents were on the block. In Cape May, New Jersey, the number of enslaved persons owned by white households spiked—in some areas tripling—during the war. From contemporary newspaper accounts and legal notices, it is clear that much of that increase came from the sale of privateers’ human cargo. As one study of the treatment of Africans seized by privateers concluded, the prize system “presumed that blackness equaled enslavement.” The Northern states were complicit in slavery, and as so many others have pointed out, the existence and pervasiveness of Black enslavement in the new nation contradicted its most fundamental principles.
At least one enslaved person, Titus, capitalized on privateering by serving as an agent for shipowners—finding men to sign on and receiving a fee for each new recruit. Titus worked for the Cabot family of Salem, which became wealthy through its ownership of numerous privateers. In the summer of 1781, Elizabeth Cabot was preparing her will. In it, she gave Titus £40 and his freedom, provided he stay by her side until her demise. According to prolific diarist and Salem lawyer William Pynchon, “Titus cares not [about such an inducement], as he gets money apace, being one of the agents for some of the privateersmen, and wears cloth shoes, ruffled shirts, silk breeches and stockings, and dances minuets at [Harvard] commencement.” Nevertheless, Titus remained with Mrs. Cabot until her death, in 1785.
Money was obviously a key factor in the dynamics of privateering, but just how important was it? For the owners of privateers, it was the major draw. They transformed their vessels in the hope of profiting handsomely from successful cruises, through their 50 percent of the haul. Privateersmen, too, were drawn in by money, but their calculations were often quite nuanced.
The financial reward for service on a privateer or a navy ship depended on the type of prize. If a naval ship captured a British warship, the officers and crew split 100 percent of the prize money, whereas if a privateer captured a British warship, the privateersmen only got 50 percent of the prize money, after the owners’ cut. This would seem to be a clear incentive to join the navy rather than signing on to a privateer, but in reality it wasn’t. Capturing a British warship was an exceedingly rare event, and not something to be expected. But capturing a merchantman was far more common—and the basis of the entire privateering enterprise.
After seizing a merchantman, naval officers and crew received 50 percent of the prize’s value, the same percentage that went to privateersmen. But there were other factors at play. Naval ships were in the public service, and as such they could not exclusively pursue rich merchant prizes. Instead, much of their time was devoted to ferrying diplomats and dispatches across the Atlantic, convoying merchant ships, and protecting American ports from British attacks. These duties meant that naval ships were not free to cruise waters where the prospect for capturing prizes was greatest. In contrast, since privateers’ sole purpose was to capture prizes, they could sail where they wanted and attack any legitimate target, thereby greatly increasing their chances of success and profits.
Privateers offered better financial prospects through the disposition of prizes as well. When naval ships brought in a prize loaded with supplies that would benefit the navy or army, Continental purchasing agents sometimes appealed to the patriotism of other bidders to persuade them to refrain from bidding at the prize auction, allowing Congress to obtain the munitions or other goods at a cheaper cost. Officers and crew of the naval ship would receive less money for their portion of the prize than they otherwise would have, had the auction been an open contest among all comers.
The reality that privateering was more financially attractive than naval service created a major problem for both the Continental and state navies. Because many potential recruits chose to join privateers rather than naval vessels, the latter often had a difficult time filling their rosters. The role of money in the American maritime war launched a debate that continues to this day. Were privateer owners and privateersmen motivated by greed, patriotism, or some combination of the two?
Famed naval officer John Paul Jones believed it was nothing but greed. Early on in the war, he wrote to Robert Morris, complaining that “the common class of mankind are actuated by no nobler principle than that of self-interest; this, and this alone determines all adventurers in privateers; the owners, as well as those whom they employ.” A less cynical assessment comes from the late nineteenth-century historian Francis Raymond Stark, who agreed that while money was a key driver, privateersmen in the Revolution “were unlike any which the world had ever seen before. It would be idle, of course, to pretend that they were all inspired by patriotic motives only; but it is certain that the patriotism of most of them was of a purer character than that of their English and French predecessors. For the first time in its history the privateer-system assumed approximately the shape of a marine militia or volunteer navy.”
Only a small number of privateers, owners, and investors ever wrote or spoke about their true motivations, leaving later generations to speculate about what was in the hearts and souls of so many people, an impossible task. As historian Paul A. Gilje observed, “Thousands of men sailed under the American flag during the war and each came from his own particular background and had his own special reasons. There was no single Jack Tar.” Nevertheless, given what we do know, Stark’s perspective seems closer to the truth.
Part of the reason privateering was scorned was that many believed the practice undermined the republican ideals of the Revolution, which called for the sacrifice of private interests in the pursuit of liberty. According to Mercy Otis Warren, author of one of the earliest histories of the Revolution, privateering “had a tendency to contract the mind, and led it to shrink into selfish views and indulgencies, totally inconsistent with genuine republicanism. The coffers of the rich were not unlocked for the public benefit, but their contents were liberally squandered in pursuit of frivolous enjoyments, to which most of them had heretofore been strangers.” Many of the Founding Fathers (and Mothers) and other elites would have agreed, in theory. To them, the Revolution was not to be driven by the pursuit of profit but rather by the pursuit of the public good and America’s right to self-determination and control over its own destiny. By the same token, the men who fought in the Revolution, from top to bottom, should be mainly propelled by the same forces.
In practice, however, many of the Founding Fathers and other elites had a more complex view of patriotism, one that wasn’t based on hewing to republican ideals above all else. The majority of the delegates to Congress clearly believed that privateering was a patriotic endeavor that served the public good; they made it a major part of America’s war strategy, fully aware that it was making some—themselves included—rich, or at least better off. Had Congress deemed that privateering worked against the public good, or that it wasn’t a net benefit to the war effort, it could have ended the practice, but it never entertained that thought after the passage of the privateering resolution in March 1776.§ John Adams, Elbridge Gerry, and Robert Morris, as well as the other delegates who voted enthusiastically for privateering, were all passionately committed to republican ideals, yet clear-eyed enough to realize that privateering, however ignoble it might be, would help the United States reach the ultimate goal of gaining independence from Britain. In short, the delegates, and many other political and civic leaders, didn’t view patriotism and the pursuit of profit as mutually exclusive.
The argument that privateers were only in it for the money implies that others engaged in the fight weren’t. But that was not true. While the men who rose up after the Battle of Bunker Hill were burning with patriotic fervor, that fire was difficult to maintain for many soldiers by the later years of the war. In 1780, Brigadier General John Paterson wrote to Major General William Heath complaining about the ragged and discontented state of the men under his command. “It really gives me pain to think of our public affairs, where is the public spirit of the Year 1775? Where are those flaming patriots who were ready to sacrifice their lives, their fortunes, their all for the public[?]” The only way that Congress could keep some semblance of a strong fighting force was to use cash bonuses and the promise of land to induce men to enlist for three-year stints or the duration of the conflict. Some colonies offered similar inducements to fulfill their troop quotas. The resulting army was largely composed of men from the bottom of the social hierarchy, the poorest and most desperate, while men of means shied away from serving because they could afford to. As John Adams observed, why would “men who could get at home better living, more comfortable lodgings, more than double the wages, in safety, not exposed to the sicknesses of the camp . . . bind themselves [to the military] during the war?” Without bonus payments in cash or land for soldiers on top of their salaries, the ranks of the army would have been much thinner than they were.
The navy was no different. The mariners who joined Washington’s navy, as well as those who signed up for state navies and the Continental navy, were all partially motivated by money. Each of the naval services offered officers and crew a cut of the profits in addition to their base salaries, because few would have joined otherwise, as those who created the navy knew full well. Virtually all the world’s navies—including the Royal Navy—at the time used prize money on top of base pay to entice recruits, since life at sea was so difficult and unprofitable that it would be impossible to find enough men to crew the ships. John Paul Jones understood this dynamic. When he was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in July 1777, hoping to rally a crew for the Continental navy ship Ranger, he posted an advertisement that could have just as easily been a recruiting poster for a privateer. Under the heading “Great Encouragement for Seamen,” it read, in part:
ALL GENTLEMEN SEAMEN and able-bodied LANDSMEN who have a mind to distinguish themselves in the GLORIOUS CAUSE of their country, and make their fortunes, an opportunity now offers on board the ship RANGER, of twenty guns . . . now laying in Portsmouth . . . commanded by JOHN PAUL JONES Esq; let them repair to the ship’s rendezvous in Portsmouth, or at the sign of Commodore Manley, in Salem, where they will be kindly entertained, and receive the greatest encouragement.—The Ship Ranger, in the opinion of every person who has seen her is looked upon to be one of the best cruisers in America.—She . . . was ever calculated for sailing faster, and making good weather.
Any gentlemen volunteers who have a mind to take an agreeable voyage in this pleasant season of the year, may, by entering on board the above ship Ranger, meet with every civility they can possibly expect, and for a further encouragement depend on the first opportunity being embraced to reward each one agreeable to his merit.
In addition to the prospect of fast sailing and being “entertained,” the poster added yet another enticement, stating that by order of the Congress, every able seaman who answered this call or any other call to sign on to a Continental navy vessel would receive an advance of $40, while every ordinary seaman or landsman would get $20.
George Washington, that paragon of Republican virtue, understood the mixed motivations of men all too well, having had to deal with numerous soldiers and sailors disgruntled over their pay, or lack thereof. On April 21, 1778, he wrote from Valley Forge to John Banister, his friend and officer in the Virginia militia, demonstrating keen insight into human nature.
Broadside published in July 1777.
Men may speculate as they will—they may talk of patriotism—they may draw a few examples from ancient story of great achievements performed by its influence; but whoever builds upon it, as a sufficient basis, for conducting a long and bloody war, will find themselves deceived in the end. We must take the passions of men, as nature has given them, and those principles as a guide, which are generally the rule of action. I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone—It must be aided by a prospect of interest or some reward. For a time it may, of itself, push men to action—to bear much—to encounter difficulties; but it will not endure unassisted by interest.
At another time, Washington observed that the men “who act upon principles of disinterestedness [civic virtue], are, comparatively speaking—no more than a drop in the ocean.”
Taking this broader view, privateersmen weren’t so different from their peers. If one wants to impugn the motives of the former, one must also be ready to impugn those of the latter. A kinder and, arguably, fairer way to understand what drove men to engage in privateering is to accept that the pursuit of money and the pursuit of patriotism don’t have to be at odds with one another. Yes, it is true that all privateers, as well as owners and those who invested in them, were driven by money; and certainly many of them had that as their sole motivation. After all, the merchants who sponsored privateering vessels were businessmen, and privateering definitely was a business venture. The men who sailed on privateers had the welfare of themselves and often their families to consider, and that made it imperative that they try to generate income as best they could. Although many cruises came up empty, enough succeeded to keep the promise of profit alive. But it is equally true that many privateer owners, investors, officers, and crew also believed in the revolutionary cause and were indeed patriots who had the public interest in mind—or at least their interest in being part of an independent country no longer shackled by the constraints of a distant controlling power. Who knows how many privateer owners and privateersmen were moved by patriotic impulses, but that percentage was surely in line with the levels of patriotism prevalent in the society at large.
