Rebels at sea, p.9
Rebels at Sea, page 9
Without question, Lieutenant Campbell, the Maryland man who left the army to sign up with privateers, believed his commitment to privateering was rooted, in part, in patriotism. Others shared his perspective. As privateersman and soldier Christopher Prince said, looking back on his revolutionary career, “Through the whole course of the war I have had two motives in view, one was the freedom of my country, and the other was the luxuries of life.” Rhode Islander Samuel Phillips, who like Campbell left soldiering to become a privateersman, serving on or captaining five cruises, commented on his motivation for joining the fray: “I have ever strove hard and suffered much to help to gain the independence of my country, which I ever held near and dear to me.” Privateersman Charles Herbert expressed his devotion to the glorious cause of revolution while in the bowels of Mill Prison, in Plymouth, England, where he had ended up after the Newburyport privateer he was serving on, the Dalton, was captured by the HMS Raisonnable. In March 1778, having been in prison for nearly nine months, Herbert was visited by a minister and merchant sympathetic to the American cause who told him that the war was going well for his side. Herbert was elated by the news, writing in his diary, “I hope our long wished for prize is just at hand—a prize that is preferable to any other earthly enjoyment. I hope our days of trouble are nearly at an end, and after we have borne them with a spirit of manly fortitude, we shall be returned to a free country to enjoy our just rights and privileges, for which we have been so long contending. This will make ample satisfaction for all our sufferings.” Herbert’s words were clearly those of a patriot, albeit one who had hoped to make some money as a result of his actions.
The question of patriotism versus greed is complicated by the risks privateers were taking. Benjamin Franklin reportedly said, upon signing the Declaration of Independence, “We must all hang together gentlemen, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” The comment may be apocryphal, but even if Franklin never uttered these words, they ring true. Patriots’ lives were in the balance, whether they were captured by the British during the war or seized after, should they lose. Privateersmen faced an additional danger. The British government viewed them as pirates, and, as such, they could legally be hanged. Although they were often threatened with such treatment, those threats were not carried out. Nevertheless, the British government despised privateersmen and threw them into prisons where horrific conditions killed many thousands. Thus capture could be a death sentence. And if the war had been lost, privateersmen and shipowners might have been pursued and jailed, or worse, because of their traitorous behavior. Of course, privateersmen put their lives at risk every time they set sail. Engagements with the enemy were often deadly, and there was also the inherent uncertainty of being on the ocean; more than a few privateers foundered or were lost without a trace. Given all of the hazards involved, it is hard to imagine that money alone could have been reason enough for every privateersman to take up the fight. Some, and most likely a considerable number, must have been moved to action by patriotism as well.
If privateersmen faced particular risks that men in the navy or army did not, many, if not most, nevertheless would have shared a fundamental worldview with their countrymen and countrywomen. On the eve of the Revolution, Americans were arguably among the richest people in the Western world on a per capita basis, and they had one of the highest standards of living. It is no surprise, therefore, that the pursuit of money was seen as a noble calling in the colonies. While much of the strife and anger in the run-up to the Revolution had to do with rights and representation, it also centered on pounds, shillings, and pence. The colonists wanted to be left alone to pursue lucrative commerce without being told what to do. They did not want to be forced to pay taxes when they had no say in the levying of those taxes. During the Revolution, money was an even more pressing concern; without it, there would be no means of paying for the war, and it would have been over quickly. After the Revolution, and up through the present, money has powered American society. To truly understand United States history, therefore, one must follow the money trail, and take notice of who is benefiting or being hurt financially. This is not to say that there aren’t many other factors that played a role in determining the course of colonial, revolutionary, or more recent history. Of course, issues of morality, democracy, and justice are also key, and they should be more important than they typically are in practice. But money, and the desire for it, is central as well. Given this, it seems odd and unfair to fault privateersmen for their interest in money, when that same interest has been so tightly woven into the fabric of American society from the very beginning.
Regardless of their motivations, privateersmen needed a vessel. In practice, most privateers were former merchantmen or fishing vessels, and the most common types were sloops, schooners, brigs, and brigantines, with a smaller number of ships, boats, galleys, and even diminutive whaleboats, which were just twenty to thirty feet long. Later in the war, an increasing number of privateers were built to order, one of the most impressive being Derby’s Grand Turk, a 300-ton ship pierced for 28 cannons that was launched in May 1781. The key characteristic of privateers, other than basic seaworthiness, was swiftness, which proved critical both to chasing vessels and fleeing a superior foe. As ship historian Howard I. Chappelle correctly noted, “The great American deity, ‘Speed,’ had no more devout worshipers than the designers and builders of privateers.”
Successful privateers also needed to be able to fight, and that meant being well armed. For new vessels such as the Grand Turk, the design took into account the need for armaments. Merchantmen and fishing vessels, however, had to be transformed. While they typically had a few small weapons already on board, such as sidearms and pikes, they needed much more robust offensive and defensive capability. This usually required the addition of cannons or swivel guns, or both.¶ To accommodate the former, the hull or the bulwarks were pierced, while the latter were bolted to the rail. Cannons added to privateers tended to be on the smaller side, three- and six-pounders the most commonly used. For cannon rounds, privateers secured balls, bar shot, chain shot, and grapeshot, the last of which consisted of canvas bags filled with small iron pellets; grapeshot was intended to kill men, not damage an opposing ship. Swivel guns were much smaller, with each ball about half a pound. In addition to artillery, privateers relied on a range of smaller guns, such as muskets, blunderbusses, and pistols, as well as cutlasses.
During the American Revolution, the Grand Turk captured sixteen valuable prizes. By the end of the war, the merchant Elias Hasket Derby had built two more 300-ton privateers. This Chinese punch bowl, circa 1786, depicts the Grand Turk, one of the first American ships to visit China after America gained its independence.
Privateers had much larger crews than merchantmen or fishing vessels, often heading out for a cruise with more than fifty men, and sometimes well over one hundred. The large crews were needed to fight and to man prizes. The more prizes taken, the smaller the crew became, and the greater the number of prisoners on board. At some point, it would be either foolhardy or impossible to continue the cruise, forcing the privateer to return home with its now skeleton crew.
Early in the war, most privateers didn’t venture too far from their home ports, and cruises lasted only a few days or weeks, or at most a little longer than a month. Later on, as privateers ranged farther out into the Atlantic to the coasts of Europe and Africa, cruises of two or three months or even longer were not uncommon. The combination of large crews and long cruises demanded well-stocked holds. When the New London privateer American Revenue left on a relatively short cruise of just over a month, in the summer of 1776, its hold included 23 barrels of salted beef, 28.5 barrels of salted pork, 3,370 pounds of bread or hardtack,# and 7 bushels of corn, with each bushel weighing 65 pounds. There was, of course, plenty of rum loaded as well, although the amount was not recorded. No self-respecting privateersmen or any sailor, for that matter, would think about going to sea without liquor to lubricate the cruise and also provide a tastier and often healthier alternative to the water on board, which not uncommonly putrefied due to contamination after long periods of being stored in wooden casks.
Late eighteenth-century six-pounder Saker bronze cannon with oak naval carriage.
A three-quarter-pound swivel gun taken from the wreck of either the HMS Cerberus or the HMS Orpheus, which were sunk in Narragansett Bay in the summer of 1778. Swivel guns were small cannons on a swiveling stand or fork that in turn was mounted on the vessel’s rails. Charged with grapeshot or small balls, they could be pointed in any direction that fell within the swivel’s arc. They were not powerful enough to sink or even heavily damage a ship but instead were used as an anti-personnel weapon. The large ball in the lower right-hand corner is a twelve-pound cannonball, while the smaller ball in the back is a grenade.
The names of privateers offer insight into what the owners loved, valued, admired, or deemed to be worth fighting for. Many were christened after wives, mothers, and daughters. There were at least twenty-five Betseys, fifteen Nancys, thirteen Dianas, twelve Pattys, and eleven Sallys. Others honored the leaders and heroes of the Revolution. Along with at least eight Washingtons and four General Washingtons, there were nine Marquis de Lafayettes, nine General Greenes, six Count de Grasses, and five Franklins. Some names reflected the tenor of the times, including seventeen Revenges, twelve Libertys, ten Unions, nine Retaliations, and six Independences. There were twenty-three Hopes, but it is unclear if their owners were hoping for riches, or freedom from Britain, or perhaps both. Speed and cunning were other themes, with twenty-five Dolphins, twenty-three ships named Fox, ten Swifts, and seven Greyhounds. Other names were literary or philosophical allusions, among them one Romeo, one Tristram Shandy, and nine Catos, after Roman philosopher Cato the Younger (95–46 BC), a determined foe of power-hungry Julius Caesar and a revered figure for the colonists, chiefly elites, who believed he stood against tyranny and for liberty. Then there were privateer names that defied categorization, including two Additions, and one each of Black Sloven and Impromptu.
Once a privateer was christened or rechristened, fitted out, and manned, the cruise could begin. Sometimes, however, extra seasoning was required. With so many non-mariners on board many privateers, it could take a few days or weeks to get the crews in sailing and fighting form. This on-the-job training typically occurred close to the port of departure, because most captains wanted to avoid engaging the enemy with an inexperienced crew.
In the summer of 1778, Captain Charles Biddle of the Cornelia was so concerned with the maritime timber of his men that he moored the privateer near the mouth of North Carolina’s Neuse River for three weeks to exercise them “in the working of the ship, sending them down the yards and topmasts, and doing everything I could to make them useful and prepare them for action.” He deemed this preparation particularly valuable because just past the river’s bar were several British cruisers looking to capture American ships. Biddle ultimately ran the gauntlet past the cruisers, and the training continued at sea. To make his men more comfortable with climbing the masts while the ship was in motion, he lashed the hand pump for the ship’s water supply to the main topmast. If his men wanted to drink, they had to climb. Biddle later wrote that, for a few days, “many of them would come upon deck, look up wistfully at the pump, but rather than go aloft would go down again.” Soon, however, the reluctant crewmen were scampering up the mast with ease. Biddle’s confidence in his crew rose, and he felt they “would fight well if brought to action.”
Privateering cruises were characterized by lengthy periods of relative inactivity, punctuated by brief moments of intense action. To locate British ships, privateers patrolled areas where they were most likely to be found. Favorite hunting grounds included the vicinity of Britain’s sugar colonies in the Caribbean, such as Jamaica and Barbados, off the coast of New York, and as far afield as along western Europe and Africa.
Most of the time, privateers hunted alone, but often enough they sailed in small packs. The increased firepower made them more intimidating, but it came at a cost, given that the proceeds from prizes jointly captured were divided, with the vice admiralty court deciding which of the privateers involved in the action had made the most significant contribution.
Many packs of privateers were successful, but a few were absolute failures. In the late spring of 1780, the New London privateer sloop Hancock, captained by Peter Richards, had only recently left port when it fell in with another New London privateer, the schooner Minerva—the captain was Nicoll Fosdick—and one from Salem, a brig, captained by a man named Welden. They decided to sail together and, upon sighting a powerful British ship with twenty-four cannons, agreed on a plan of attack. The Hancock would go in first and engage the British vessel, whereupon the two other privateers would swoop in and get under its stern to compel its surrender with raking fire.
The Hancock did its part, yet when the shooting began, the schooner and the brig were where the Hancock had left them, six miles off. For an hour, the Hancock and the British ship fought at close quarters. Much of the Hancock’s rigging was cut away, and two men were killed. Finally, the schooner and the brig started sailing toward the action, but very slowly. While they were still a good distance off, a twelve-pound cannonball ripped through the Hancock’s mainmast about fourteen feet from the deck, nearly toppling it. According to one of the Hancock’s officers, the sloop was in “a perilous situation, for all our stays and many of our shrouds were cut away and nothing to secure the mast, which must be done immediately or we should become a wreck.”
A short while later, more than two hours after the battle had begun, the Salem brig was within fifty feet of the Hancock. In a fit of anger, one of the Hancock’s gunners fired on the brig, almost hitting the man at the helm and damaging the main boom. Welden yelled across the water demanding to know why the Hancock had fired on them, to which Richards responded that he hadn’t ordered the firing, and that he would brook no more questions on the subject. Perhaps chastised, Welden maneuvered into position behind the British ship’s stern and fired, prompting it to disengage from the fight and sail away.
The men on the Hancock cleared the decks, tended to the injured, and consigned seven of their brethren to the deep. Then they began repairing the rigging and shoring up the mainmast. While the work was underway, the Minerva came up alongside and Fosdick asked a few questions of the Hancock’s crew but was ignored. When Welden offered his assistance, the men on the Hancock responded with derision. “We told him we despised his conduct, for if he and Fosdick had come as they ought to have done, we should have that ship now in possession.” As for Fosdick, the Hancock’s crew branded him a “coward.” The owner of the Minerva agreed, and when his schooner returned to New London, he barred Fosdick from ever commanding another of his privateers. Despite Fosdick’s well-earned reputation as a coward, he was later hired as captain of the New London privateer Randolph, which went on to compile a respectable record of captures.
Life on board a privateer was fairly monotonous most of the time, and the work was relatively light because of the many hands. Watches scanned the horizon for vessels, while other crew prepared the ship for an engagement by practicing the manning of battle stations and checking that all armaments were in good working order. Given the relatively large crews, sleeping arrangements were tight, especially for winter cruises in the northern latitudes when the men had no alternative but to sleep belowdecks.
The food was not particularly tasty, but it served its main purpose of supplying enough calories for the men to perform their jobs. On the privateer Porus, sailing from Salem in 1781, the bill of fare ran as follows: Sunday, beef and pudding;** Monday, pork and peas; Wednesday, beef; Thursday, beef; Friday, pork and beans; and Saturday, salted fish. What the men ate on Tuesday is not clear, since the captain’s clerk failed to record that day’s repast, although it surely wasn’t any more inspired than the meals on the other days. There were occasional treats, often served on Sundays, such as lobscouse, a mixture of chopped meat, vegetables, and biscuits boiled with grease and spices. And depending on the initiative and skill of those on board, fresh fish, caught off the side of the vessel, could be added to the diet. Such was the case on the Providence privateer Hope, which was off the coast of Virginia when one of the men caught a herring-hog, or harbor porpoise, that made “a fine breakfast, and dinner for the whole crew.”
The limited variety of food was not the only downside to the gustatory options available to privateers. The longer the cruise, the greater the likelihood that stores would spoil—if the food wasn’t already spoiled when loaded in the first place, given that provisioners were not always the most honest individuals. Rotten meat and vegetables, as well as bread riddled with weevils, were relatively common.
The captain was the ultimate authority on a privateer. This was no pirate ship where the crewmen voted their leader in or out. When a vessel was sighted, the captain had to decide whether or not to pursue it. The decision was easy to make when a large British warship was in view. The only rational thing to do in this instance was flee, because even a large privateer would not have a chance against such a ship. There were, however, a few smaller British warships that American privateers did engage and capture. Nevertheless, the main targets of privateers were merchantmen and military supply ships. Deciding whether to attack those sorts of vessels was often a harder decision, requiring skill at reading the signs.
