SAD ROTC TEST

At the outset of the ensuing war, Great Britain appeared to hold all of the advan- tages. Its government was well established, its army professional, and its navy the world's largest. In contrast, the Americans lacked all of these attributes-and had to develop them while fighting for independence. The Americans fortunately pos- sessed colonial foundations on which to build two of the three necessary political- military institutions. For establishing a national government, they could rely on their colonial governments and their experience with intercolonial congresses. Local mili- tia units provided a footing from which to build the Continental Army. But colonial antecedents for an American navy did not exist. Thus, on the American side, the naval history of the revolutionary war is one of institutional development marked by trial and error, fragmentation of effort, significant victories, and equally great set- backs and defeats

The formation of Washington's navy resulted from his need for gunpowder, a commodity in such short supply that in July 1775 the new commander in chief reluctantly discontinued the traditional firing of a cannon at sunrise and sunset for fear that the British would respond with a bombardment he could not answer. Over the summer, supplies dwindled still further. Pleas to Congress were to no avail, and Washington gradually realized that his one hope for supply was to capture what he needed from the British ships constantly entering Boston harbor to sustain the beleaguered redcoats. He turned first to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and proposed that it establish a navy. Rebuffed, Washington decided to act on the author- ity derived from his commission as commander in chief of the Continental Army. On September 2, he chartered the seventy-eight-ton schooner Hannah for "one Dol- lar pr ton pr month" and sent it to sea with orders to avoid contact with armed Brit- ish vessels and to prey only on transport and supply ships "in the Service of the ministerial Army." This wording reflected the fact that Americans still did not con- sider themselves to be at war with Great Britain, but merely to be resisting the actions of Lord North's government.¹

The Hannah's record was not distinguished. It captured only one ship, the Unity, which turned out to belong to John Langdon, a leading New Hampshire patriot, before it was forced aground in October by a pursuing British man-of-war. Luckily for Washington, his other ships did better. Manned by soldiers and commanded by army officers, they captured a total of fifty-five ships worth upwards of $600,000 before the British evacuation of Boston permitted Washington to disband his squadron. These captures raised American morale and demonstrated the vulnerabil- ity of British shipping.

The most important seizures came in the fall and early winter of 1775, when Washington's supply needs were the greatest. During that period one schooner, the seventy-four-ton Lee captained by John Manley, took nine of its twenty-two prizes, a total unequalled by any other ship in the squadron. Its most important capture occurred on November 28, when Lee encountered the 250-ton ordnance brig Nancy, which had become separated from its convoy. Manley, uncertain about engaging such a large ship, was surprised when Nancy mistook Lee for a pilot boat. Seizing this unexpected opportunity, Manley put six men aboard the Nancy with concealed pis- tols and weapons. They quickly overpowered the crew and sailed to Cape Ann with the ship and its cargo of two thousand muskets, one hundred thousand flints, thirty thousand round shots, thirty tons of musket shot, and a thirteen-inch mortar. A value of £10,500 was placed on the munitions, but to Washington they were priceless: the ship's capture renewed the spirit of his army and provided his men with arms not otherwise available. John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich and first lord of the Admi- ralty, called the ship's capture "a fatal event," and General Sir William Howe, the British commander in Boston, said that it gave the Americans "all the Requisites for setting the Town on Fire."2

Washington's eleven ships were not the only American vessels preying on British shipping. On November 1, 1775, the General Court of Massachusetts established three admiralty courts and became the first state to authorize privateering. Rhode Island followed in January of 1776. In November 1775, the Continental Congress took its first steps toward establishing privateering. In response to George Washing- ton's request for admiralty courts to adjudicate prize cases arising from captures made by his squadron, Congress recommended that the states establish such courts. That body also authorized the capture of British warships, troop transports, and supply ships. Beyond this it refused to go until March 23, 1776, when it extended the list of legitimate prizes to "all ships and other vessels, their tackle, apparel, and furniture, and all goods, wares, and merchandise, belonging to any inhabitant or inhabitants of Great Britain." Ten days later, the central government adopted a form of commission for privateers that was, over a period of time, adopted by eleven states. Ultimately, approximately two thousand vessels held congressional commissions, and a thousand privateers were licensed by Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

American trade was as open to British attack as British was to American, and the need to protect that trade set in motion the process that ultimately led to the estab- lishment of the Continental Navy. During the spring of 1775, the North ministry in England passed legislation prohibiting trade with all but four of the colonies. When that act took effect on July 1, British naval forces clamped such a tight watch on Narragansett Bay that Rhode Island's commerce almost ceased to exist. In response, the state legislature instructed the state's delegates to the Continental Congress to propose the formation of an "American fleet." On October 3, the dele- gates made the proposal, and two days later Congress learned that two British supply ships were headed for the Saint Lawrence River without escort. A three-man com- mittee was appointed to recommend what action should be taken, and on October 13, 1775, Congress approved the committee's report by voting to fit out two armed vessels and to order them to intercept the British supply ships. The Continental Navy was born. Two weeks later Congress voted to fit out an additional two ships, not for a single voyage, but "to be employed in such manner, for the protection and defense of the United Colonies." In December a thirteen-man Marine Committee was appointed to oversee naval affairs on a permanent basis.

It was, in part, to allay such fears that the fleet of converted merchantmen col- lected by the Congress was ordered in January 1776 to proceed to Chesapeake Bay and to clear it of the enemy raiders that had been preying upon the commerce and plantations of the area. Once he had rid the Chesapeake of the enemy, the fleet's commander, Esek Hopkins of Rhode Island, was ordered to carry out similar operations along the Carolina coast before turning northward to clear Narragansett Bay of the enemy. Unfortunately, Hopkins chose to take advantage of a loophole in his orders, giving him discretion "to follow such courses as your best judgment shall suggest to you as most useful to the American cause and to distress the enemy," and ordered his eight ships to rendezvous in the Bahama Islands. There he made use of the newly formed Continental Marines to launch an amphibious landing against the forts guarding New Providence and to carry off fifty-eight cannon, fifteen mortars, and a quantity of shot and shell. These commodities were much in demand by Washington's army, but the voyage was not an unmarred triumph. In route home the fleet met HMS Glasgow and its tender and received from the British such rough treatment that Hopkins was ultimately relieved of command.

The entire operation appeared at the time to be a disaster. Clearly it represented a tactical defeat for the Americans, but it was a strategic victory. By overcoming terrific obstacles and building a fleet, Arnold had forced the British to do likewise. Thus their 1776 advance into upstate New York was delayed until it was too late in the season to continue. Sir Guy Carleton, the British commander, feared that even a short delay in taking Fort Ticonderoga would render any further advance toward Albany impossible, so he withdrew to Saint Johns. Had Albany fallen in 1776 and been available as a starting point for General John Burgoyne's campaign of the following year, it would almost certainly have cut America in two. Instead, Arnold's squadron bought the Americans time to prepare so that they were ready to defeat Burgoyne's army at the crucial battle of Saratoga, where the tide of the war was turned.

Thus, as 1776 closed, the record of American naval forces was mixed. On Lake Champlain they had checked a British invasion, but around New York City they were wholly ineffective. In other areas, Massachusetts and Connecticut naval vessels took a dozen prizes. The state navies of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and Caro- lina defended ports and commerce. Two Continental Navy brigs, Reprisal and Andrew Doria, joined the sloop Independence to transport William Bingham, the Continental Congress' naval and commercial agent, to Martinique and to bring back much-needed munitions. These three vessels took several prizes en route, as did the many privateers that had put to sea. Commerce raiding, or guerre de course, in indi- rect support of operations ashore constituted the hallmark of the young nation's

strategy in the first year of the war.

Unfortunately the frigates did not live up to congressional expectations. First, it soon became clear that none of them would be completed by the end of March 1776 as originally estimated. Part of the blame for the delay is attributable to the decision to order the ships' construction in seven different places. Certainly there was no single city capable of building all thirteen, but the decision to disperse the contracts as widely as they were was also a politically motivated effort to divide government contracts among as many states as possible.

In 1777 there were equally grandiose plans for the other components of the American fleet. While the new frigates were clearing the American coasts of British warships, the older, smaller vessels usually converted merchantmen-were to extend the war beyond America. John Paul Jones's 1776 cruise off the coast of Can- ada, in which he captured sixteen prizes and destroyed the British fisheries at Canso and Madame, led him to suggest a similar voyage along the unprotected coasts of Africa, where trading outposts and the India fleet would replace fishing villages and army supply ships as his targets. Robert Morris, speaking for Congress, endorsed an overseas strategy by saying, "It has long been clear to me that our infant fleet can- not protect our own Coasts; and that the only effectual relief it can afford us is to attack the enemy's defenseless places and thereby oblige them to station more of their Ships in their own countries, or to keep them employed in following ours, [and] either way we are relieved so far as they do it." In the same letter Morris suggested an alternative to Jones's African plan. He felt that a raid through the Caribbean by five ships would be better. Such a force could be strong enough not only to attack commerce, but also to capture Pensacola, Florida, which the British were using as a base to harass American shipping. If successful, such a voyage would "oblige the Ministers to provide for the security and protection of every Island they have and by that means they must divide their force and leave our Coasts less carefully guarded." Desirable as the plan may have been, it was never executed because it clearly exceeded the capabilities of the Continental fleet, whose ships were under- manned and desperately needed repair.

Still, the war was carried to foreign waters in 1777. The agent of action was Lam- bert Wickes, who had come to the attention of Congress after he carried William Bingham to Martinique in 1776 and returned with a load of munitions. Ordered to carry Benjamin Franklin to France as American representative to the French court, Wickes's ship, Reprisal, was the first American warship to appear in European waters. After delivering Franklin, he sailed in January 1777 to the English Channel, where he took five British prizes. When he returned to France, two vessels were added to his command: Lexington, which had arrived from America, and Dolphin, which had been purchased in Dover. In May he led the three ships boldly into the Irish Sea, where they captured eighteen prizes before again returning to France.

Such were the strained relations of the two nations that had not Saratoga led France to declare war on Britain, American commerce raiding might have led Britain to declare war on France. For Americans the result was the same. When Britain and France went to war, the American Revolution became part of a global war in which Britain faced a rising number of opponents. In 1777 Britain faced only its former American colonists; in 1778 France entered the war, and in 1779 Spain joined France. During the following year, Russia began organizing the Armed Neutrality to counter practices Britain had adopted to protect its commerce from its American, French, and Spanish enemies. Denmark, Sweden, Prussia, Austria, and Portugal sup- ported the Russians, and Britain prevented the Dutch from joining the league only by declaring war on them.

Although promising so much, 1778 turned out to be a depressing year for Ameri- can arms, and a dismal record at sea heightened congressional disillusionment with the Continental Navy. The year started well when Captain John P. Rathbun and a lone sloop, Providence, captured Nassau in the Bahama Islands and took several prizes and a quantity of military stores, including 1,600 pounds of gunpowder, but this success was not to last. During March the frigate Randolph blew up while engag- ing a larger British ship, Yarmouth, in the West Indies. All but four crew members were killed, including the ship's captain, Nicholas Biddle, the sole professional naval officer in the Continental Navy (he had served as a midshipman in the Royal Navy). Only two days later the frigate Raleigh fled from an inferior enemy off the coast of France and left her partner, Alfred, the Continental Navy's first flagship, to surrender after putting up only brief resistance. Early in April, the frigate Virginia went aground and was lost while trying to evade the British blockade of the Chesapeake. Columbus, another of the navy's original ships, was lost in similar circumstances, try- ing to run the British blockade of Narragansett Bay. Still another ship, Independence, sank off North Carolina. In short, five Continental Navy ships were lost within ninety days, and Americans had nothing to show for those losses. Nor was the list of losses complete. Given a new captain, the frigate Raleigh got to sea again in Sep- tember, only to be cornered by two British ships that outgunned Raleigh, seventy- two to thirty-two, and ultimately forced her captain to ground her on the coast of Maine, from which she was plucked by the British and placed into service in the Royal Navy.

Back in America, political leaders were drawing conclusions from these events. The Marine Committee had exhausted its resources and was forced to suspend con- struction on part of its 1776-77 building program. Committee member William Ellery came to the conclusion that work should be stopped on the 74-gun ship-of- the-line under construction in New Hampshire because large ships were of no use except to engage similar enemy ships and because such actions were beyond Ameri- can capabilities. In any case, 74-gun ships were too costly and required more men to man them than America had available. Congress should give up the idea of being "able to cope with the British Navy," Ellery believed. "Our great aim should be to

destroy the trade of Britain, for which purpose frigates are infinitely better calculated than such large ships." No such change in strategy was ever enunciated by Congress, but it was adopted by default. Work was never begun on the seventy-four ordered to be built at Philadelphia, and only a beginning was made on the one ordered from Boston. Work continued on America at Portsmouth, but at a much reduced pace.

Lafayette was assisted by the exploits of Gustavus Conyngham, an Irish-born American who had gone to Europe in 1775, planning to return to America with a load of powder. Trapped in Holland, Conyngham spent over a year on shore before securing a commission in the Continental Navy in March 1777. Two months later he put to sea in the lugger Surprise and took several valuable prizes. Conyngham spent the early part of 1778 operating out of Spanish ports, before British protests forced the Spanish government to expel him. Setting our for America via the West Indies, he took two British privateers before arriving at Philadelphia. Conyngham had a total of sixty captured vessels to his credit during the past eighteen months, but he paused only briefly before leaving the Delaware on a cruise against British commerce entering and leaving New York City. Within a month his luck ran out. In April 1779 he was captured by the British and sent to prison in England. On his third attempt the wily Irishman succeeded in digging his way out of prison and made his way to France, where he received a hero's welcome.

Meanwhile, having completed her mission of delivering Lafayette to France, Alli- ance was placed under the command of John Paul Jones. Jones also had a converted French East Indiaman, Bonhomme Richard, and four French privateers under his command, giving him the strongest American squadron yet to appear in European waters. As reluctant to remain in port as Conyngham, Jones left France in August on his famous circular voyage through the Irish Sea and around Great Britain. The climax came in the duel on September 23, 1779, between Bonhomme Richard and the British frigate Serapis, when Jones shouted, "I have not yet begun to fight," before going on to defeat the enemy with his own ship sinking under him.

The Continental Congress recognized this deterioration of the American position and moved to strengthen it by forming executive committees to operate the government better. Some of the harshest criticism leveled at the government had been directed at the navy, and in December the Congress replaced that service's gov- erning body, the Marine Committee, with the Board of Admiralty, a new body com- posed of three commissioners and two members of Congress. Its powers were basically the same as those of its predecessor, but it was hoped that the permanent civil servants on the new committee would devote more time to naval affairs than congressmen, while providing the continuity that was lacking under the old system. Unfortunately, the new board had no more money, ships, or men at its disposal than had the Marine Committee, and its record was little better.

The period from 1780 through the end of the war was clearly anticlimactic when compared to the years that came before. Following Penobscot, American warships did not sail as a fleet. No ship-to-ship action approached that of Bonhomme Richard and the Serapis for heroism, and never again did the ships of the Continental Navy render services on a par with those of 1776 and 1778. During the era of 1780 to 1783 they cruised alone or in pairs to harass British shipping. Several ferried diplo- mats, carried messages, and transported supplies. But none took part in the final Franco-American victory at Yorktown in October 1781 Victory there was made pos- sible not by the American navy, but by the French. After that time, land warfare vir- tually came to a halt in America, and that which continued at sea was restricted by America's inability to send out more than a dozen naval vessels.

Important as these things were, they were probably no more important in the long run than three less tangible contributions. First, the Continental Navy was a visible sign of American unity and a source of pride for Americans from all parts of the con- tinent. Second, the victories of the Continental Navy, while small in the context of the entire war, came at times when American fortunes seemed to be at their nadir and were great morale boosters. Last, the Continental Navy provided the basis for a great American naval tradition. The naval lessons of the war were debated for over a century, but the gallantry of heroes like John Paul Jones, Gustavus Conyngham, and Lambert Wickes and the engagements like Valcour Island, Bonhomme Richard versus Serapis, and Randolph versus Yarmouth would inspire future generations and lay the basis for one of the world's great naval traditions.