EDITOR’S NOTE: Emerging Revolutionary War has been pleased to co-sponsor a series of Monday-evening programs to commemorate the America 250th at St. Bonaventure University, where contributor Chris Mackowski teaches. In March, the line-up of programs featured a student research panel. We are pleased to present today the work of one of the “emerging scholars” from that panel, Alex Payne.
Alex is a junior Theology and Franciscan Studies and History double-major from Shinglehouse, PA, with a minor in classics.
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Sailor’s ballads in the late 17th and early 18th centuries communicated revolutionary sentiment that influenced the ideological origins of the American Revolution. Sailors’ ballads from revolutionary Atlantic history show how labor culture intersected with protest, emerging revolutionary sentiment, and identity formation. These protest and revolutionary ballads are what I refer to as “records of thought” of oppressed people. By “records of thought,” I mean oral traditions in the form of songs sung by people who were religiously and civilly oppressed that have been written down and transmitted through centuries.
The starting point of the record of thought of oppressed people is with the “Diggers’ Song” attributed to Gerard Winstanley. Winstanley was the leader of the Diggers, similar to but separate from the Leveller movement that emerged during the English Civil Wars between 1641–1659. The Diggers, known to history as radical land reformists, were led by Winstanley. They believed in an agrarian socialism and would “dig up” the land that was unjustly and inhumanly taken from the English commoners. The oppression they endured is found in the record of thought appropriately named “The Diggers’ Song.” This ballad was sung on St. George’s Hill in Surrey around 1649 by 20–30 men. It reads:
Penobscot Expedition by Dominic Serres, circa 1779. (Wikimedia Commons). Warren met her end in this American defeat.
On May 15, 1776, the Continental Navy frigate Warren-32 slid down the ways into the Providence River, the first purpose-built American frigate to taste water. The local committee came up with fifty dollars to pay musicians and throw a party for the men who had worked on her. Eight more followed her in the next few weeks: Providence-28 (Providence) on May 18, Raleigh-32 (Portsmouth) on May 21, Boston-24 (Newburyport) on June 3, Hancock-32 (Newburyport) in July, Delaware-24 and Randolph-32 (Philadelphia) a few weeks later, Virginia-28 (Baltimore) in August, and Trumbull-28 (Chatham) in September.[i] They were far from finished. Rigging, masts, equipment, guns, and crews were all still necessary to complete them.
The colonies already had a navy, just back from a successful, if ill-considered, raid on the Bahamas, where it had seized cannon, shot, and other war materiel already making its way into the armed forces of the rebelling colonies. But, the ships were all converted civilian vessels turned into ad hoc navy ships. Some performed well; others were ill-suited to combat. But, these new ships were designed for war, making May 15 a seminal moment in the history of the Continental Navy. Thirteen colonies, which hadn’t declared their independence, were creating capabilities designed to take the fight to the mother country on the sea, where she was strongest.
The Continental Congress approved the creation of this second generation of naval vessels on December 13, 1775 after reviewing the report of a committee created specifically for the purpose. It intended to build 13 ships: five of 32 guns, five of 28, and three of 24. Congress was precise in the amount to be paid for these ships: 866,666 and 2/3 dollars for all of them, roughly 66,666 and 2/3 dollars each. Due to the limitations of the American shipbuilding industry—no yard was large or capable enough to handle the entire order in a timely fashion—the Congress spread construction across seven colonies. It also helped firm up political support for financing the fleet, a practice still evident today. Each colony was to provide the materials for the hull and masts assigned to it, but Congress undertook to provide the canvas and gunpowder.[i]
Captain Esek Hopkins, Commander in Chief of the Continental Navy, transferred his flag to Warren in December 1776, an indicator that he was ready to go to sea. Still, he struggled with recruitment and the Royal Navy blockading Narraganset Bay. Hopkins might be ready, but Warren wasn’t. It was more than a year before she finally reached open water in March 1778. Warren took two prizes, but entered Boston harbor on March 23 after only two weeks at sea. She sortied briefly again in the fall, and, a third time in company with two other vessels. On this cruise, in the spring of 1779, she took seven of nine ships in a British convoy. She put to sea a fourth time in July 1779 under the command of Captain Dudley Saltonstall, who was also leading an impressive American battle fleet to Penobscot Bay to eject a new British lodgment on the Bagaduce Peninsula. The Penobscot expedition was the largest American amphibious operation of the war. Unfortunately, the campaign against the British unraveled within days of reacing the peninsula. It wasn’t long before a superior British squadron arrived. The American ships fled deeper into the bay. Trapped eventually, their crews set them afire to keep them from falling into British hands. It was the worst American naval defeat of the war and a sad ending for a frigate that had begun life with such promise in May, 1776.[1]
[i] “Journal of the Continental Congress, December 13, 1775,” William Bell Clark, ed., Naval Documents of the American Revolution, Volume 3 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1967), 90.
[i] Nathan Miller, Sea of Glory: A Naval History of the American Revolution (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1974), 209-210. The celebration in Providence was held on May 18 after the Providence’s hull joined the Warren in the river.
A Chart of the Delaware Bay and River, 1776 (LOC).
While the Americans recovered their strength and restocked their vessels upstream after the fighting on May 8, Hamond and his sailors worked to refloat the Roebuck. With a higher tide and deeper water sometime between 2 and 4 am, Roebuck finally floated free.[i] When the sun rose on Thursday the 9th fog blanketed the river and neither side could see one another. The American ships were already on the move, though, falling back down the river under a light breeze and oars to reengage the British vessels, probably in the hope that Roebuck was still grounded.[ii] In the fog, though, they paused to wait.
The mist finally burned off enough to see and around 8 o’clock that morning, Wallace and Liverpool spied the American galleys some two miles upriver.[iii] Hamond made the signal to weigh anchor and pursue them upstream. Even at full sail, though, the British couldn’t catch the Americans as “they industriously plied their Oars and Sails to avoid us.”[iv] They eventually found a point of land on the western shore Hamond could not reach, particularly in the face of an ebbing tide. Both sides anchored and waited. The prospect of continuing to advance up the Delaware, which grew ever narrower and more shallow did not appeal to Hamond. He and Captain Bellew held a quick conference and decided to drop back down the river, hoping to draw the galleys after them toward water more favorable to the British.
Around 2 pm, Hamond detected the Americans getting underway. So, Roebuck and Liverpool raised their anchors and clapped on more sail, still hoping to entice them to chase the British into deeper water. The small squadrons began exchanging long range fire around 4 pm, lasting through afternoon all while slowly moving down the Delaware. The cannon were heavy enough to be heard in Philadelphia.[v] The winds were generally moderate, but an occasional shower passed through.[vi] As they had through most of the day, the Americans stuck to the shallows closer to shore. Throughout, the two sides kept their distance. The Americans were satisfied chasing the British away and Hamond could not tempt them into a close-in fight. Finally, with darkness deepening, the firing ceased. The Americans preferred not to descend below New Castle.
Action off Mud Fort by William Elliott circa 1787 (Wikimedia Commons). This image portrays a subsequent battle in the Delaware in the Autumn of 1777, during the naval campaign to open the Delaware River. Roebuck was a major combatant in those engagements as well.
The beginning of May 1776 found Captain Andrew Snape Hamond of the Royal Navy’s Roebuck, a fifth rate of forty-four guns, operating off the Delaware capes. His job was to control traffic in and out of the bay and maintain a de facto British blockade while seizing any supplies that might be of use to the rebel Americans and instead secure them for British forces. On Saturday, May 4, Hamond began moving up the bay and into the Delaware river in company with Liverpool, 28 guns, the brig Betsey and several tenders. He was short of water and needed to refill empty casks at a fresh source. It was also an opportunity to take a look at rebel defenses on the critical waterway.[i] The British enjoyed only light winds and cloudy skies as they sailed upstream for the next two days, periodically anchoring and frequently taking soundings to avoid the muddy shallows. Operating at some distance, on May 6 the Liverpool spotted a grounded sloop and sent a boat to recover it. But, it was stuck fast and Captain Henry Bellew’s crew burned the ship instead.[ii]
Between 6 and 7 am on Tuesday, May 7, Hamond signaled his little squadron to raise anchor and continue moving up the Delaware River in the direction of Wilmington. Off New Castle, they spied an armed schooner and several boats and gave chase in the afternoon, just as the weather broke and began pelting the ships in strong winds and heavy rain. The schooner ran for the shallows under fire from the British ships. She grounded and Hamond sent boats to seize her around 3 pm. Unable to refloat her, they settled on taking off her cargo: bread and flour.[iii] At the end of a productive day, around 7 pm, Hamond anchored his ships near the Christina River and Wilmington.
Ashore, word spread quickly of Roebuck’s advance up the river. At Dover on May 6, Colonel John Haslet of the Delaware Regiment received word that the British were off Port Penn in the area of Reedy’s Island and the local militia expected an attack. The British were already upstream from Haslet. As Roebuck alternately sailed and anchored, the troops ashore had time to assemble, although they were often chasing dated intelligence about the British position. One hundred thirty men assembled in Cantwells Bridge about 4 am on the 7th, but by then Roebuck had already moved up to New Castle.[iv] Word of the British anchoring off New Castle reached Philadelphia in the afternoon, about the same time that American gondolas at Fort Island left to drop down the river and attack the British at their anchorage. Robert Morris, Vice President of the Continental Congress Marine Committee, ordered Continental Navy Captain John Barry to assemble as many Continental Navy crew as possible and dispatch them to the Pennsylvania ship Reprisal and a floating battery, which were both also to drop down the river and join in the attack on the British.[v] Men from Captain Proctor’s Company of Artillery in the fort even joined the slapdash crews, serving aboard the American vessel Hornet.[vi] It was an all hands moment for Philadelphia’s naval defenders.
Thomas Mitchell, Forcing a Passage on the Hudson. From left to right, Phoenix, Roebuck, and Tartar run forts on the Hudson River later in the war. The smaller vessel on the far left is a tender. Maria or the Lord Howe may have looked like that.
In the spring of 1776, the Sussex County Delaware Committee of Safety sent the schooner Farmer under the command of Nehemiah Field to St. Eustatius for gunpowder, always in short supply in the rebelling colonies. By then, the little Dutch island in the Caribbean was a well known haven for smugglers to sell and buy embargoed goods. Indeed, leaders of the rebellion in America had been cruising Caribbean waters for months, always looking to acquire armaments from neutral colonies from under the nose of the Royal Navy, which lacked a sufficient number of ships to stop the practice. Inevitably, the American smugglers found willing partners, some simply looking to earn a quick profit on high-value goods, others recognizing that islands throughout the area relied on the Americans for bulk foodstuffs. If the Americans could not trade, some Caribbean colonies might go hungry.
Field successfully acquired a cargo and evaded British patrols between the Caribbean and his destination in the Delaware Bay, but his greatest test would come as he sought to enter the bay and unload his cargo in the lee of Cape Henlopen, near the town of Lewes. The British fifth-rate Roebuck (44) under Captain Andrew Snape Hamond patrolled the lower bay with various attached small boats. His chief task was to prevent smuggling, particularly of the kind Field and Farmer represented. Delaware Bay is a large body of water shaped a bit like a rounded arrowhead. It narrows at the top where the Delaware River enters and has a wider bottom, closer to the Atlantic Ocean. But, that wide part starts to curve back on itself, and the mouth of the bay, between Cape Henlopen and Cape May, New Jersey is roughly 17 miles wide with shallows that constrain its navigability for deep-draft ships. Those shallows limited Roebuck’s mobility and increased the demands on its smaller supporting ships and boats. So, Captain Hamond relied heavily on his tender, Maria, and boats to intercept smugglers.
At daybreak on Sunday, April 7, on a clear day, Hamond spied a schooner coming into the bay and already close to the Henlopen light house. Roebuck set a course to the south in pursuit and dispatched the Maria and two armed boats to venture into the shallower waters. Hamond was accustomed to chasing ships, but he didn’t know how lucky he was to stumble across the Farmer, originally sent to obtain gunpowder from the Caribbean. When his prey seemingly ran aground, Hamond must have been delighted.
Ashore, guards at the lighthouse sent word to the village of Lewes that a schooner had arrived and was being chased into the bay. Men were needed to help unload it. Captain Charles Pope, of the Delaware Continental Battalion, quickly assembled his men and the local militia. He needed boats to cross a creek, which the townspeople soon produced. As Pope moved the town militia toward the beaches, the lighthouse guard descended on the Farmer, seven or eight miles south of the cape. They quickly began unloading cargo: coarse linens. If Pope was surprised or disappointed, he didn’t mention it.
As the militia arrived, they could see Roebuck’s tender bearing down on the schooner and hear the retort as it loosed a broadside of swivels and muskets at the Farmer and men unloading her. The Farmer’screw responded by running right up on shore. The guard returned the tender’s fire with muskets, which Pope’s men quickly augmented as they arrived on the scene. A gunfight ensued as the militia and crew aboard the tender exchanged shots without doing much damage. At one point, militiamen even began picking up many of the tender’s musket balls as they rolled on the ground, spent of all energy. But the distance was too great for small arms and eventually the militia laid off firing in order to expedite unloading. According to Pope, the tender, still standing offshore, dispatched a boat back to the Roebuck, presumably for assistance.
By the time the frigate rounded the cape, Pope and his men had managed to load two swivels on the Farmer and engage the Maria, which had moved closer and anchored. As he reported, the exchange of fire between Pope’s men and the tender lasted a solid two hours. The militia kept up a close fire on the tender to keep her from raising her anchor, probably because they thought they were getting the better of the fight. Pope thought he saw men fall, although Hamond didn’t note any casualties in his log. Eventually, the Mariasuccessfully hoisted her anchor out of the sand and mud, but then a swivel on the Farmer shot away her halyards and the sail came down, forcing the tender to drop anchor again. For her part, Roebuck remained in deeper water, visible, but largely out of the fight. Eventually, she sent over a boat to tow off the Maria. The boat drew militia fire and Pope thought they inflicted wounds on her crew too, but the boat and Maria eventually drew off, concluding the shoreline skirmish. There were no American casualties and Hamond did not report any from the affair.
Early in the afternoon, Hamond spied another schooner approaching the bay and hauled off to chase her. He fired one shot at her before identifying her as the Lord Howe, another of his tenders, just arriving from Virginia. Just another day for the Royal Navy on the American coast.
Emerging Revolutionary War welcomes guest historianBjorn Bruckshaw, a bio follows the post.
British nautical chart of the eastern portion of Long Island Sound showing the location of Block Island and the surrounding waters where the Continental Navy squadron encountered HMS Glasgow on April 6, 1776. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. Public domain.
In the early morning hours of April 6, 1776, a lone British warship slipped through the moonlit waters southeast of Block Island. The twenty-gun frigate HMS Glasgow was carrying dispatches from Newport, Rhode Island, to the British fleet assembling off Charleston, South Carolina. Suddenly the ship’s lookout sighted sails on the horizon—then more sails behind them. Within minutes Captain Tyringham Howe realized the alarming truth: his single ship had encountered nearly the entire fleet of the newly created Continental Navy.¹
What followed should have been a decisive American victory. Commodore Esek Hopkins commanded a squadron of seven armed vessels, including the flagship Alfred, the brigs Cabot and Andrew Doria, and several additional ships. Against them stood only one British frigate. Yet by dawn the British ship had fought its way free and escaped. The encounter became one of the earliest—and most embarrassing—naval engagements of the American Revolution.²
The clash southeast of Block Island revealed the weaknesses of the young American navy: inexperienced crews, poor coordination between ships, and ineffective gunnery. Despite overwhelming numerical superiority, the Continental squadron failed to capture a single enemy warship. As one frustrated American officer later remarked, “A more imprudent, ill-conducted affair never happened.”³
The British vessel at the center of the encounter was HMS Glasgow, a sixth-rate twenty-gun frigate of the Royal Navy. In early April 1776 the ship had been tasked with delivering dispatches from Newport to the British fleet gathering off Charleston for an upcoming campaign against the southern colonies. That expedition would ultimately culminate in the failed British assault during the Battle of Sullivan’s Island in June 1776.⁴
Meanwhile the American rebellion had begun extending onto the seas. The Second Continental Congress had authorized the creation of a navy in late 1775 to challenge British control of American waters. By February 1776 the first ships of the fleet were ready for service, and Congress appointed Hopkins as commander-in-chief of the new force.⁵
Hopkins’s squadron consisted largely of converted merchant vessels hastily adapted for war. The fleet included the flagship Alfred, along with Columbus, Cabot, Andrew Doria, Providence, Wasp, and Fly. Among the officers serving aboard the fleet was a young lieutenant named John Paul Jones, who served aboard the Alfred and would later gain fame as one of the most celebrated naval commanders of the Revolution.⁶
Emerging Revolutionary War welcomes back guest historian Drew Palmer. He is the founder of Revolutionary Maryland; click here to learn more about that blog.
(Vallejo Image Galleries)
In the early evening of March 5, 1776, two armed boats left Annapolis to patrol the Chesapeake Bay. Captain John Pitt and Joseph Middleton were patrolling to prevent any British ships nearby from entering Maryland’s waters. As they patrolled, they discovered an alarming sight: three British warships heading directly towards Annapolis. Middleton and Pitt rushed off to the Maryland Council of Safety’s chambers in Annapolis to report the startling news.1 In the coming days, Maryland was tested for the first time in the growing Revolutionary conflict.
The American rebellion had become a full-scale war by the spring of 1776. In early March, the siege of British-held Boston was about to end. Hundreds of miles south in Philadelphia, the Declaration of Independence was only four months away. In Maryland, politicians worked hard to maintain Maryland’s isolation from the worst of the conflict. In Virginia, a raiding war had already begun. Only two months before, the town of Norfolk, Virginia, was bombarded, leading to the destruction of the town. Along with Norfolk’s destruction, British attacks and raids were carried out throughout the lower Chesapeake Bay, along with a blockade. 2
Participating in British operations in the lower Chesapeake was Captain Mathew Squire of the British Royal Navy. For several months, Squire’s vessel, the Otter, served as the headquarters of the exiled Virginia Governor, Lord Dunmore. From the Otter, British attacks and raids were launched on Patriot strongholds in the lower Chesapeake. By March, Squire had gained a reputation as a competent officer and ruthless raider of American shipping.3 Squire was heavily involved in the bombardment of Norfolk and an attempted attack on Hampton, Virginia. Though Squire’s area of operation had been centered on the lower Chesapeake, new intelligence pulled him northward into Maryland.
The Commission of Captain Samuel Nicholas, the first American Marine. (USMC)
Today marks the 250th birthday of the Marine Corps. November 10, 1775 was a milestone in the creation of American naval power, but the birthday story is a little more complicated.
The Continental Congress resolved to create a navy under its auspices on October 13, 1775, but much work remained to build American naval power to a point where it might serve a strategic purpose. Individual colonies had already begun creating naval forces and George Washington had leased ships under the army’s authority. Thus, the resolution served as more of milestone on a long road, rather than a fresh beginning.
On October 30, the Continental Congress considered the reports of its naval committee and confirmed recommendations for two vessels of 14 and 10 guns. Moreover, it resolved to add two more ships to its burgeoning navy, one of 20 guns and one carrying up to 36 guns. It also added four new members to the naval committee, bringing it to a total of seven. Stephen Hopkins (RI), Joseph Hewes (NC), Richard Henry Lee (VA), and John Adams (MA) joined John Langdon (NH), Silas Deane (CT), and Christopher Gadsden (SC).[1] On November 2, Congress gave the naval committee authority to call on the treasury for up to $100,000 to acquire a navy and delegated to the committee the authority to recruit officers and seamen, offering them prize money in the amount of one-half the value of all warships and one-third the value of transports made prizes.[2] It also took up a petition from a Committee of Safety in Passamaquoddy, Nova Scotia to join the association represented by the Continental Congress. Naturally, Congress appointed a committee—Silas Deane, John Jay, Stephen Hopkins, John Langdon, and John Adams to consider the matter. The naval expansion and Passamaquoddy petition sparked a new round of thinking about American naval power.
Unity vs. Margaretta, 12 June 1775 by Robert Lambdin (Naval History and Heritage Command). Margaretta was a Royal Navy vessel captured off Machias, then part of Massachusetts but now in Maine. The image illustrates the relatively small sizes of vessels involved in creating the early American navy.
During the first six months of the American rebellion, the colonies inched toward some means of dealing with Britain’s naval superiority. Over the summer the Americans had already waged a sort of whaleboat war among the estuaries and islands around Boston, mainly to deprive the British army couped up there of forage and fodder. Efforts escalated as the war continued. A confrontation between small Royal Navy vessels and the Massachusetts town of Machias over the summer serendipitously resulted in a small Massachusetts Navy created by capture in June 1775.[1] In June, Rhode Island’s General Assembly voted to charter two ships and outfit them for naval operations to protect the colony’s trade, essentially by contesting the Royal Navy’s control of Narragansett Bay.[2] In September, Colonel John Glover in the Continental Army offered his fishing schooner, Hannah, as a charter to wage war on the sea. George Washington naturally accepted, limiting its operations to capturing unarmed supply ships serving the British army.[3] The army had essentially created its own navy out of necessity.
Katy in her later service as the Continental Navy ship Providence. “Sloop Providence under Sail by Kristopher Battles” (Naval History and Heritage Command)
Since his brief visit in November 1774 and his longer term stay commencing in December, Captain James Wallace of the British ship Rose (20 guns), had patrolled Narragansett Bay to enforce the Coercive Acts and prevent Britain’s rebellious colonies from importing gunpowder and armaments. Loyalists had taken heart and rebels had been frustrated with his presence. Not only were his patrols interfering with local commerce by seizing ships and their cargos—his main mission—but he created a more visible symbol of Britain’s ability and willingness to force its colonists to comply with Parliament’s laws.
One of the loyalists encouraged by the Royal Navy presence in Narragansett Bay was a Newport merchant named George Rome. Wallace had visited Rome and was dining with him when a breathless messenger warned the captain that a mob was out to tar and feather him back in December, 1774. In the moment, nothing came of it, but Governor Joseph Wanton warned Wallace that the town was not safe for British officers, sailors, or loyal subjects. Things remained at a low simmer that winter and spring, including the initial weeks after the Lexington and Concord. Tensions, however, could not help but rise. Diarist Ezra Stiles, recorded on May 23 that some 90 Rhode Island soldiers under the command of Captains [John] Topham and [Thomas] Tew marched from the Newport courthouse and through town beating up volunteers to join the nascent American Army. Wallace was dining in town that day and no doubt heard the racket.[1] Stiles wrote, “The Tories were greatly mortified to see the daring Boldness of the Rebels as they called them. The Tories had said that the Men o’War would fire the To[wn] if any Soldiers were raised in it. But there was no Molestation.” From Stiles’ version of events, the march appears as nothing less than a provocation to determine whether the rumored threat of Wallace and his ships to Newport proper was a bluff. The lack of an immediate response may have demonstrated that it was. In truth, a significant portion of Newport’s population opposed the rebels and voluntarily supplied Wallace and contracted for grain to provide to the British army.
Emerging Revolutionary War Era 