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Fishermen, Fish Merchants, and the
Origins of the American Navy
Christopher
P. Magra, Ph.D.
California
State
University, Northridge
Despite its singular importance to the American war effort during
the Revolution, there remains no scholarly consensus with regard to the
genesis of the American Navy. There
are historians who credit
Massachusetts
with the birth of organized naval resistance to British authority.[i]
Other academics maintain
Rhode Island
drew up “the first formal movement in behalf of a Continental Navy.”[ii]
Some of the foremost historians to study the origins of the
American Navy, including William Bell Clark and Samuel Elliot Morison,
believe George Washington first developed the concept of arming vessels
for war.[iii]
Morison goes so far as
to refer to
Washington
as the “‘Founder’ of the United States Navy.”
Clark
unequivocally states: “General Washington provided the idea.”
Others have argued that
Washington
was only part of a group of individuals who collectively developed
arguments for a navy.[iv]
Credit for the formation of the first American Navy has also been
given to the Continental Congress’ Naval Committee and Marine
Committee, established between 1775 and 1776.[v]
Some scholars are willing to consider the fishing schooners
Washington
ordered armed for war at
Beverly
,
Massachusetts
in the fall of 1775 to be the first American warships.[vi]
Others dismiss the idea that these fishing vessels could be
considered warships at all.[vii]
I doubt that I will
be able to resolve these disputes in the time I have today.
What I will do is offer new evidence to reinforce the position
that fishing vessels did, indeed, constitute a crucial part of
America
’s first Navy. Moreover, I
intend to provide you with some social history of the fishermen
responsible for the military conversion of fishing vessels during the
American Revolution, which has never been done before.
This paper is part of a chapter in a book I am finishing entitled
Fish and War: Commercial Fishing and Maritime Dimensions of the
American Revolution.
-------------
Commercial fishing vessels were converted into warships at the
start of the Revolutionary War in 1775.
These warships constitute an important part of the first American
Navy for several reasons. First,
the mobilization of commercial vessels for war represented part of the
American naval strategy developed at the start of conflict.
Second, these vessels were leased directly to the Continental
Congress, making them the temporary property of the United Colonies.
Third, they operated on a basis that defies classification as
privateers. But, these
vessels were only a part of the process by which American sea
power was organized and focused. The
naval strategy that was first developed in 1775, the fishing vessels
that were armed for war, the men who manned and commanded those vessels,
and the administrative support surrounding them, can collectively
be seen as the first American Navy if properly viewed in the context of
an eighteenth-century revolutionary society that lacked any pre-existing
professional military force.
At the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775, colonial Americans
fiercely debated the need for a navy.
Some Revolutionary leaders felt the costs outweighed the
benefits, while others hoped for reconciliation with the mother country.
Those that supported the formation of an American Navy included
that ubiquitous firebrand, Thomas Paine.
Paine wrote:
we
never can be more capable to begin on maritime matters than now, while
our timber is standing, our fisheries blocked up, and our sailors and
shipwrights out of employ….To unite the sinews of commerce and defense
is sound policy.[viii]
Another
supporter, Christopher Gadsden, a former purser in the British Navy and
a member of the Continental Congress from
South Carolina
, met John Adams, then acting as
Massachusetts
’ representative, at the Congress in
Philadelphia
. As Adams reported,
Gadsden
was “confident that We may get a Fleet of our own, at a cheap
Rate.”
Gadsden
believed that smaller commercial vessels, such as fishing vessels, could
be converted into warships, and that the expense of building an entirely
new naval fleet could be largely avoided.
Such a “cheap” navy could “easily take their Sloops,
schooners and Cutters [smaller vessels], on board of whom are all their
best Seamen, and with these We can easily take their large Ships,
on board of whom are all their impressed and discontented Men.”[ix]
Gadsden
maintained that such pressed men would not put up much of a fight,
especially when pitted against fellow colonists.
John Adams
then transmitted
Gadsden
’s plans to Elbridge Gerry, a fish merchant from
Marblehead
,
Massachusetts
, and a member of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, which
controlled the resistance to British forces throughout much of 1775.
The Provincial Congress then debated the issue of arming vessels
for war. On June 20, 1775,
the Provincial Congress resolved “that a number of armed Vessels, not
less than six, to mount from eight to fourteen carriage guns, and a
proportionable number of swivels, &c. &c. be with all possible
dispatch provided, fixed, and properly manned, to cruise as the
Committee of Safety, or any other person or persons who shall be
appointed by this Congress for that purpose, shall from time to time
order and direct, for the protection of our trade and sea-coasts against
the depredations and piracies of our enemies, and for their annoyance, capture,
or destruction.” The
matter was “ordered to subside for
the present.”[x]
This program of arming vessels would resume in
Massachusetts
later in August.
The first colonial
naval strategy, then, was worked-out between June and July, 1775, and
transmitted to the seat of war in
Massachusetts
. The plan at this time
involved arming and manning smaller commercial vessels that could be
fitted out quickly and at low cost.
These vessels were to capture successively larger warships,
protect colonial shipping, and cut British military supply lines.
Such a scheme should not be conflated with the
eighteenth-century way of war known as guerre
de course, or cruiser warfare, in which merchant vessels were
targeted in hit-and-run tactics to bring economic and political pressure
to bear on a government through increased maritime insurance rates,
price inflation, and shipping losses.[xi]
The colonist’s strategy involved these goals, to be sure.
But, there were three additional war aims that
differentiated colonial naval strategy from a guerre
de course. First,
colonists hoped to weaken British sea power through the capture of
successively larger warships and the capture of manpower.
Second, colonists hoped that cutting British supply lines
would cause British forces in
Boston
to run out of food and evacuate the port city.
Third, colonists believed they could carve a path through
the British naval blockade in order to allow trade to continue
unmolested. As a result of these
strategic purposes, the fishing fleet that was converted into warships
at the end of 1775 must be considered an important part of the first
American Navy. These fishing
vessels were part of the initial naval strategy worked out in the
Continental Congress.
In addition, these fishing vessels were leased directly to the
Continental Congress, making them the temporary property of the United
Colonies. These leases
underscore the vessels’ status as the first American warships.
On July 18, 1775, the Continental Congress officially sanctioned
the conversion of commercial shipping into armed vessels in order to
meet the before-mentioned strategic objectives.
The members resolved “that each colony, at their own expense,
make such provision by armed vessels or otherwise, as their respective
assemblies, conventions, or committees of safety shall judge expedient
and suitable to their circumstances and situation for the protection of
their harbors and navigation on their sea coasts, against all unlawful
invasions, attacks, and depredations, from cutters and
ships of war.”[xii]
Marching orders were sent to the Massachusetts Provincial
Congress, which assigned John Glover the task of finding vessels to arm.
Glover was a fish merchant from
Marblehead
involved in the fishing industry and the Colonel of the port town’s
regiment.[xiii]
In August, 1775, Glover succeeded in assembling five of the six
vessels the Provincial Congress had resolved back in June to arm.
The vessels were all fishing schooners; they all belonged to fish
merchants in
Marblehead
; and they were all converted into warships in
Beverly
’s harbor. The schooners
were the Hannah, Franklin, Hancock,
Lee, and Warren.[xiv]
Glover leased his
schooner Hannah of “78
tons” burden to the Continental Congress on August 24.[xv]
The schooner was built in 1765.
Glover purchased her in 1769, and, in typical fashion, the Hannnah
and her crew transported fish and lumber to
Barbados
in the winter months between 1770 and June 1775, probably having worked
the offshore banks on fishing expeditions in the spring, summer, and
fall. She returned bearing
muscovado sugar and West Indian rum in her hold.[xvi]
Glover leased the fishing vessel to “the United Colonies of
America
,” or, in other words, the Continental Congress.
The
Marblehead
fish merchant did not lease the schooner to the Massachusetts
Provincial Congress, nor did he lease her to General Washington.
Such a lease underscores the Hannah’s
role as the first “American,” as opposed to state,
naval vessel. And she was
not given away freely. Glover
charged the Continental Congress a rate of “one Dollar p[e]r Ton p[e]r
Month,” or “6” shillings, which, “for two Months & 21
days” amounted to “208 dollars,” or £32.8.0.[xvii]
He further charged £151.4.0 to “the United Colonies of
America” for provisioning and manning the Hannah.[xviii]
Four days later, Glover billed the Continental Congress £11.9.1
for blacksmith work on the schooner.[xix]
George Washington then reminded Nicholson Broughton, the Hannah’s
captain, that it was Congress that had paid his salary, not
Glover, in his official sailing orders.[xx]
Once she had been armed and manned, the Hannah
set sail for fame and fortune on September 5.[xxi]
In addition to the aforementioned naval strategy and these lease
agreements, the fishing vessels operated on a basis that cannot be
classified as privateers. William
Falconer, the author of a maritime dictionary in 1769, defined a
privateer as a privately-owned vessel, fitted out and armed in wartime,
“to cruise against and among the enemy, taking, sinking or burning
their shipping” in exchange for shares of any captured prizes.[xxii]
And there is evidence
that contemporaries regarded the fleet of armed schooners fitted out at
Beverly
as a collection of privateers. For
example, “Manly, A Favorite New Song in the American Fleet,”
composed in
Salem
,
Massachusetts
in March 1776, referred to the armed schooner Lee, John Manley,
Captain, as a “Privateer.”[xxiii]
Out of exasperation,
Washington
even went so far as to refer to the men on the schooners as “our
rascally privateersmen” in a letter to his secretary Colonel Joseph
Reed.[xxiv]
Such evidence, combined with the facts that the fishing schooners
remained privately owned and the crews (at least) earned some
prize shares, has led several naval historians to consider the vessels
armed at
Beverly
to be mere privateers.[xxv]
Following this line of reasoning, the refitted ships were
profit-driven business ventures, and nothing more.
Having said this, there are several reasons the fishing schooners
that were armed for war in late 1775 were not mere privateers.
First and foremost, the Continental Congress’s naval strategy
was not one of guerre de course, as has been mentioned.
Such a strategy would have typically involved privateers.
Moreover, most of the prize money earned from the sale of prizes
these schooners took went not to the vessel owners, as it would have
done with privateers, but rather to the government to recoup
outfitting costs.[xxvi]
Additionally,
the crews on the armed schooners were given wages in addition to
prize shares, and these wages were paid by the Continental Congress.
The standard practice for privateers in the late eighteenth
century, by contrast, involved giving crews food but not wages.[xxvii]
All of this evidence supports the claim that the
collection of fishing vessels armed at
Beverly
represents the first American warships.
This fact should not be overly surprising.
There was an established naval tradition of arming fishing
vessels for war in the Atlantic World.[xxviii]
Moreover, most of the vessels engaged in combat at sea with the
British during the Revolution were of smaller design.[xxix]
As for the men who manned these fishing vessels-turned-warships,
they were commercial fishermen. A
significant portion of
New England
’s population had worked in the cod fishing industry prior to the war.
Of the 581,100 people living in
New England
in 1770, 10,000 – or 8% of the adult male working population - found
employment in this sector of the economy.[xxx]
In 1765, there were 4,405 workers employed in the
Massachusetts
cod fisheries alone, 8% of the adult working population among the
245,698 people counted in the colony’s census.[xxxi]
Fishermen played a variety of important roles in the
Revolutionary War. At sea,
these maritime laborers armed and manned the first American warships,
transported troops across hazardous waters, and manned privateers.
Fishermen evacuated George Washington and the Continental Army
from Long Island, and they transported those same land forces across the
Delaware River
prior to the Battle of Trenton. On
land, fishermen built seacoast defenses, served in a supporting role at
the Battle of Bunker Hill; fought on Long Island, and at Pell’s Point
during the White Plain’s retreat; they fought at Trenton; it was their
reconnaissance work that led to the capture of British General John
Burgoyne at Saratoga; and later they fought to retake Rhode Island from
the British.[xxxii]
Fishermen were also exceptionally willing participants in the
Revolution. While it
was typical for 22-35% of the adult male population among in-land
farming towns to take up arms and resist British authority,[xxxiii]
the foremost fishing port in British mainland North America,
Marblehead
,
Massachusetts
, sent 39%.[xxxiv]
In addition, of those men who were positively identified in my
recent study as having worked in the commercial cod fishing industry
prior to the Revolution, 82% could be documented as having fought in the
war in some capacity.[xxxv]
Thus, those involved in commercial fishing may have been more
likely to participate in the Revolutionary War than any other
occupational group in colonial
America
.
Fishermen were motivated to fight against British authority in large
measure due to the Restraining Act that was passed in Parliament in
March 1775.[xxxvi]
The Act aimed at restricting
New England
maritime commerce. It
prohibited Yankees from trading with any other part of the world except
the British Isles and
British West Indies
. These restrictions further
empowered the British Navy to impress the ships, men, and goods of
merchants who violated the legislation.
The Restraining Act also posed a total moratorium on New
Englanders’ access to known fishing grounds after July 20, 1775, but
it was published in newspapers throughout the colonies as early as May.[xxxvii]
These restrictions meant unemployment for workers in this vital
colonial maritime industry. Charles
Watson-Wentworth, better known as Lord Rockingham, a Whig leader during
the imperial crisis, believed the Act to be one of the foremost causes
of the American Revolution. In
a speech in the House of Lords on November 5, 1776, he explained the
situation to MPs such as Lord North who were shocked at the level of
colonial resistance to that point. Rockingham
stated that Yankee “seamen and fishermen being indiscriminately
prohibited from the peaceable exercise of their occupations, and
declared open enemies, must be expected, with a certain
assurance, to betake themselves to plunder, and to wreak
their revenge on the commerce of Great-Britain.”[xxxviii]
Fishermen from
Marblehead
,
Massachusetts
, the foremost fishing port in the thirteen British North American
colonies on the eve of the Revolution, made the transition to fighting
men during the war.[xxxix]
The port town employed more men, more vessels, and larger amounts
of capital than any other port in the region.
If fishermen were going to join the Revolution anywhere in
colonial
America
, they would do so in
Marblehead
. Indeed, Ashley Bowen, that
ubiquitous observer of town events in the fishing port, recorded in his
diary on Monday, May 22, 1775, “the fishermen are enlisting quite
quick.”[xl]
Such a port community therefore represents the best case study
for determining fishermen’s military service.
For my dissertation, I compiled a database of fishermen and their
participation in the Revolutionary War.
I triangulated data from vital records, probate records, merchant
ledgers, and military service records in order to isolate and identify
individual fishermen and their war records.
This process yielded a short list
(N=55).[xli]
However, this is the most reliable list possible.
The list also fully details the different types of military
service fishermen from
Marblehead
performed, or did not perform, in the Revolution.
It is possible to gain a fairly exact portrait of the fishermen
who fought in the war. They
tended to be younger men in their early-to-mid twenties, with little
taxable income or property and an average height of 5’7.”
Such men commonly re-enlisted for at least one more tour of duty
after their initial experience in the war.[xlii]
Of the Marblehead
fishermen who did military service in the war (N=45), 78% performed some
service at sea, including work in local coast guard units, the
Massachusetts Navy, the Continental Navy, and privateers.
Berths on
Continental Naval vessels held out to maritime laborers potential for
increased earnings, partly in the form of inflated war-time wages.[xliii]
Such war-time inflation of maritime wages was typical throughout
the eighteenth century Atlantic world in those labor markets in which
naval authorities and merchants competed for manpower.[xliv]
Marblehead
fishermen such as Richard Tutt, Jr. signed-on
for cruises in the American Navy during the Revolution.
Tutt was the son of a fisherman.
He was born on February 11, 1759, and while records of his
fishing exploits have not survived, he is listed in probate records as
having lived his life as a fisherman.[xlv]
Tutt enlisted in the
Marblehead
regiment at the start of the Revolution, and fought on land until March
20, 1776. At some point
after that, he signed-on as seaman on board the “
U.S.
” brigantine General Gates,
John Skimmer, captain.[xlvi]
While it might be
expected that fishermen would fight at sea, it is perhaps less obvious
that such maritime laborers would also fight on land.
Yet, 76% of those
Marblehead
fishermen who fought in the war participated on one occasion or another
in some military service on terra
firma. The local militia
regiments that were formed at the start of the conflict provided the
first means by which
Massachusetts
fishermen could supplement or replace the earnings they had lost as a
result of the Restraining Act. Such
local regiments then became part of the first American Army once
Washington
assumed command. Some
members of the
Marblehead
regiment left the ranks to board
Washington
’s schooner fleet at the end of 1775, but others re-enlisted in the
regiment when the commander-in-chief re-organized the Continental Army
in January, 1776.
Not every fisherman
in
Marblehead
participated in the Revolution. There
are several reasons why 18% of
Marblehead
’s fishermen did not fight in the war.
Age played a significant role in these maritime laborers’
decision to not fight. Of
those who did not serve (N=10), the average age was 32.
This was higher than the average age of those who did serve
(N=45), which was 26. Significantly,
cod fishermen were the most physically productive in catching fish, and
thereby reached their peak earning potential, between the ages of 25-30.[xlvii]
In other words, those
Marblehead
fishermen who decided to fight against British authority lost more as a
result of the Restraining Act. Those
over the age of thirty, by contrast, were usually realizing fewer and
fewer profits from the fishing industry.
There were also minors such as thirteen-year-old Thomas Ingalls,
and fifteen-year-old Thomas Dolliber, whose parents or legal guardians
may have prevented them from serving.
Sixteen was the standard age young lads were allowed into
militias, although necessity ensured that there were boys under sixteen
in the armed forces during the war.[xlviii]
Regardless of their reasons, those who chose to publicly support
the Crown and Parliament were persecuted and ridden out of fishing ports
very early in 1775.[xlix]
-----------
So, what can we
conclude from this evidence? Was
the military conversion of fishing vessels and fishermen part of a
distinctive American way of war? Does
the mobilization of the fishing industry represent the roots of an
American military-industrial complex?
Can we consider the American Revolution to be a total war because
of this industrial/commercial mobilization?
I would say that the answer to each of these questions is
“no.” Other
civilizations mobilized fishing vessels and fishermen for war.
A government agency was not established to regulate the
mobilization of the fishing industry the way agencies were created
during the build-up to WWII. And
there were civilians who did not participate in the Revolution.
What I would say is that the strategy that was conceived in 1775,
the pay system and lease agreements that were established, the fishing
vessels that were armed and manned, and the officers that were
commissioned collectively constitute the first American Navy.
Moreover, the military conversion of the fishing industry during
the Revolution underscores the important and necessary relationship
between commerce and war. Without
the mobilization of the fishing industry, American sea power would have
been limited and manpower would have been diminished.
These maritime dimensions of the American Revolution represent
the major theme of my first book, Fish
and War.
[i]
William M. Fowler, Jr., Rebels Under Sail: The American Navy
During the Revolution (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1976), 25-43.
[ii]
Nathan Miller,
Sea
of
Glory
: A Naval History of the American Revolution (Charleston,
South Carolina: The Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of
America, 1974), 41. Also,
see Raymond G. O’Connor, Origins
of the American Navy: Sea Power in the Colonies and the New Nation
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), 15; and Frank C.
Mevers, “Naval Policy of the Continental Congress,” in Maritime
Dimensions of the American Revolution
(Washington, D.C.: Naval History Division, Department of the
Navy, 1977), 3.
[iii]
O’Connor, Origins of the
American Navy, 14; Fowler, Jr., Rebels Under Sail,
29; Miller, Sea of Glory,
60-61; George Athan Billias, General John Glover and His
Marblehead Mariners (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1960),
73; William Bell Clark, George Washington’s Navy: Being An
Account of his Excellency’s Fleet in New England (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1960), 3; Samuel Eliot Morison, John
Paul Jones, A Sailor’s Biography (Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 1959), 35; and Dudley W. Knox, Naval Genius of George
Washington (Boston: Printed by the Riverside Press for Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1932), 8.
[iv]
Chester Hearn credits
Washington and John Glover, a
Marblehead
fish merchant, with the idea. Chester
G. Hearn, George
Washington’s Schooners: The First American Navy (
Annapolis
: Naval Institute Press, 1995, 10.
For his part,
Vincent Dowdell, Jr., claims
Marblehead
merchants in general helped the commander-in-chief develop the idea.
Vincent Dowdell, Jr., “The Birth of the American Navy,”
U.S.
Naval Institute Proceedings, LXXXI (November, 1955),
1251-1257.
[v]
Mevers, “Naval Policy of the Continental Congress.”
Also, see John B. Hattendorf, “Americans and Warfare at
Sea, 1775-1783,” unpublished manuscript, 12-14.
I am grateful to the author for providing me with a copy of
this paper.
[vi]
Hearn, George Washington’s
Schooners.
[vii]
Mevers’ dismissive view
is typical on this score: “It is doubtful that
Washington
intended the squadron to do any more than harass, and it is probably
that by this direct action he was demonstrating to Congress his
belief in the possibilities of action at sea through a larger
maritime force.” Mevers,
“Naval Policy of the Continental Congress,” 3.
[viii]
Thomas Paine, Common Sense
(New York: Penguin Books, reprint, 1986, orig. pub. 1776), 104-106.
[ix]
“John Adams to Elbridge Gerry,
Marblehead
,”
Philadelphia
, June 7, 1775, NDAR, Vol.
1, 628-629.
[x]
“Journal of the Provincial Congress of
Massachusetts
,”
Watertown
, June 20, 1775, NDAR,
Vol. 1, 724. Emphasis my
own. O’Connor contends
“this proposal was never implemented.”
O’Connor, Origins of
the American Navy, 14. But,
he has not considered the conversion of fishing vessels.
[xi]
Guerre de course is
customarily equated with privateering.
See, Gardiner, ed., Navies
and the American Revolution, 1775-1783, 66-69; Fowler, Rebels
Under Sail, 22-23; and
Albion
and Pope, Sea Lanes In Wartime,
25-26. Mevers argues
that the first American naval strategy “relied heavily on
privateers to harass British vessels,” rather than to capture or
destroy British seapower. Mevers,
“Naval Policy of the Continental Congress,” 5.
For a discussion of guerre de escadre, using large warships to fight fleet engagements
against enemy fleets, see Kenneth J. Hagan, This
People’s Navy: The Making of American Sea Power (New York:
Free Press, 1991), xi. Hagan
counters Alfred T. Mahan’s argument that American sea power was
built on a strategy of guerre
de escadre. For
Hagan, American sea power has been predicated upon guerre
de course, prosecuted first in the Revolutionary War.
I agree with Hagan that smaller vessels have played an
important, even formative, role in the history of American sea
power. We part ways in
defining the naval strategy Americans pursued in the Revolution as guerre
de course. Commerce-raiding
was only part of the strategy.
[xiii]
“Journal of the Provincial Congress of
Massachusetts
,”
Watertown
, June 20, 1775, NDAR,
Vol. 1, 724. Glover had
been assigned to guard
Washington
’s headquarters and the Provincial Congress at
Watertown
early in 1775. For more
on Glover, see Billias, General John Glover and His Marblehead
Mariners. Also, see the biographical
information compiled in Smith, ed., The Journals of Ashley
Bowen (1728-1813), Vol. 2, 657.
At some point he became involved in the search for vessels to
convert into warships, although no official document has survived to
date Glover’s assignment. The
Provincial Congress was certainly aware very early on of Glover and
his position of authority in the foremost commercial fishing port in
New England
, and they had relied on him in the past.
See, for example, “Minutes of the Massachusetts Committee
of Safety,”
Cambridge
, April 27, 1775, NDAR,
Vol. 1, 229. The
Committee, which was affiliated with the Provincial Congress,
ordered “That Colonel John Glover” use his authority in
Marblehead
“for the prevention of Intelligence” leaking to the British
patrol vessels in the port’s harbor.
[xiv]
The Hannah is described in
subsequent sections. The
Franklin, Hancock, Lee,
and Warren were owned by, respectively, Archibald Selman, Thomas Grant,
Thomas Stevens, and John Twisden, all
Marblehead
fish merchants. The Hancock was described during the Revolution as “Seventy two Tuns;
Taken up for the Service of the united Colonies of
America
…worth Three Hundred Thirty one pounds Six Shillings & Eight
pence.” “Appraisal
of the Speedwell [renamed Hancock],”
Beverly, October 10, 1775, NDAR,
Vol. 2, 387. At the same
time, the
Franklin
was described as “Sixty Tuns; Taken up for the Service of the
united Colonies of
America
…worth three Hundred pounds three Shillings and Eight pence.”
“Appraisal of the Eliza [renamed
Franklin
],”
Beverly
, October 10, 1775, in ibid. The
Lee was described as
“Seventy four Tuns; taken up for the Service of the united
Colonies of
America
…worth three Hundred and fifteen pounds Eight Shillings.”
“Appraisal of the Two
Brothers [renamed Lee],”
Beverly
, October 12, 1775, in ibid., 412.
The
Warren
was described as “Sixty four Tuns; taken up for the Service of the
united Colonies in
America
…worth three Hundred & forty pounds ten Shillings.”
“Appraisal of the Hawk [renamed
Warren
],”
Beverly
, October 12, 1775, in ibid., 412-413.
According to the later testimony of a Revolutionary War
pensioner, the Franklin
and the Hancock “were Fishing Schooners & had no Bulwarks more than
common vessels except Nettings with which they were accustomed to
put their clothes in time of Action.”
Cited in Smith and Knight, “In Troubled Waters,” 27.
All except the Hannah
were re-named, in patriotic fervor, after revolutionary leaders.
Washington and his military secretary, Colonel Joseph Reed,
mistakenly referred to the Hancock as Lynch in late
1775. For a discussion
of these clerical errors, see Billias, General John Glover and
His Marblehead Mariners,
216, footnote #19. Such
errors led later historians to make the same mistake.
See, Howe, Beverly Privateers In The American
Revolution, 325.
It
is not known precisely when the Franklin,
Hancock, Lee, and Warren were armed
and officially taken under
Washington
’s command through Glover. Most
scholars assume that the appraisal dates of October 10 and 12
represent the commission dates.
See, Billias, General John Glover and His
Marblehead
Mariners, 78, 82.
However, Reed’s letter described below in footnote #143
disputes these October dates. It
is probable that the October appraisals were ordered after the
vessels had already been secured in
Beverly
’s harbor. Such was
the case when the British Navy captured the ship Charming Peggy
on July 15, 1775 and sent her into
Boston
, where the “Two Thousand one hundred & seventy three Barrels
of Flour” could be confiscated for the Army.
British General Thomas Gage then hired four local merchants
to appraise the flour on August 19, in order to reimburse the
flour’s owners. The
four merchants submitted their appraisal two days later, more than a
month after the ship’s capture.
“General Thomas Gage to Four
Boston
Merchants,”
Boston
, August 19, 1775, NDAR, Vol. 1, 1180.
[xv]
John Glover’s Colony Ledger, MDHS, item #729½.
There has been a disagreement about the schooner’s size.
Fowler describes the Hannah as “a typical
New England
fishing schooner of about seventy tons.”
Fowler, Rebels Under
Sail, 29. Hearn,
Billias, and Clark follow Glover’s Colony Ledger in listing her at
“seventy-eight tons.” Hearn,
George Washington’s
Schooners, 10; Billias, General John Glover and His
Marblehead Mariners,
74; and Clark, George
Washington’s Navy, 3. Philip
C. F. Smith and Russell W. Knight have questioned the use of
seventy-eight tons, preferring the much smaller figure of forty-five
tons. Philip C. F. Smith
and Russell W. Knight, “In Troubled Waters: The Elusive Schooner
Hannah,” The American
Neptune
, Vol. 30, No. 2, (April, 1970), 15, 22, Appendix II, 41.
They base their argument for forty-five tons chiefly on the
fact that the terms of Glover’s lease add up to around £63,
rather than his account of £32.8.0.
Here, Glover’s words pertaining to his own vessel in his
own ledger are taken at face value, and his math skills are
discounted.
[xvi]
Smith and Knight, “In Troubled Waters,” Appendix II, 41-43.
[xvii]
John Glover’s Colony Ledger, MDHS, item #729½.
While the amount and the form of payment varied from vessel
to vessel, and colony to colony, the rate “per ton per month”
was standard. See, for
example, “Minutes of the Connecticut Council of Safety,”
Lebanon
, August 3, 1775, NDAR,
Vol. 1, 1054; and “Stephen Moylan and Colonel John Glover to
George Washington,”
Salem
, October 9, 1775, NDAR,
Vol. 2, 368.
[xviii]
John Glover’s Colony Ledger, MDHS, item #729½.
[xix]
Ebenezer Foster’s blacksmith bill, MDHS, item #5786.
According to revolutionary leaders in Connecticut, the
materials used to convert a trade ship to a warship in 1775 included
“sails, rigging, and furniture, and also all proper and necessary
ship-stores and provisions, and…the necessary cannon, swivels,
small arms, pistols, shot, powder, &c.”
“Minutes of the
Connecticut
Council of Safety,”
Lebanon
, August 3, 1775, NDAR,
Vol. 1, 1053.
[xx]
Washington
took the occasion to remind Captain Nicholson Broughton that, as
“a Captain in the Army of the United Colonies of North America,”
Broughton personally fell under the commander-in-chief’s
authority. Moreover, as
“the schooner Hannah”
had been “fitted out & equipped with Arms, Ammunition and
Provisions at the Continental
Expense,” Broughton was doubly beholden to
Washington
. See “George
Washington’s Instructions to Captain Nicholson Broughton,”
September 2, 1775, NDAR, Vol. 1, 1287, emphasis my own.
Broughton had been commissioned a captain in Colonel John
Glover’s regiment on May 19, 1775.
Ibid., 1289n.
On
October 4, 1775,
Washington
assigned Stephen Moylan, the Muster Master General, to assist Glover
in arming vessels for war. Both
men were to report either to Colonel Joseph Reed,
Washington
’s military secretary, or to the commander-in-chief directly.
“Colonel Joseph Reed to Colonel John Glover,” Head
Quarters,
Cambridge
, October 4, 1775, NDAR,
Vol. 2, 289-290; and “Colonel Joseph Reed to Colonel John Glover
and Stephen Moylan,” Camp at
Cambridge
, October 4, 1775, in ibid., 290.
The two men reported to Washington on October 9, 1775 that
the terms of the contracts they had negotiated with vessel-owning
merchants included the contentious fact that merchants were required
“they shall put their vessels in the same good order &
Condition which they would be obliged to do, were they hired to take
in a Cargo for the West Indies or elsewhere.”
For their part, Glover and Moylan agreed “that what extra
expense may accrue from the nature of their present employment must
be a public Charge.” The
vessel owners wanted any extra sails, over and above “three sails,
Mainsail, foresail, & jib…sufficient for the Voyages they
usually Make,” to be “a public Charge.”
“Stephen Moylan and Colonel John Glover to George
Washington,”
Salem
, October 9, 1775, in ibid., 368.
[xxi]
The Hannah is widely
touted as the first armed vessel fitted out in the service of the
United States
. See, Hearn, George Washington’s Schooners, 10; Billias, General John Glover
and His Marblehead Mariners,
73; Clark, George Washington’s Navy, 3; The American Navies of the Revolutionary War, 22; Smith and Knight,
“In Troubled Waters,” 29-30; and Knox, The
Naval Genius of George Washington, 8.
Fowler points to earlier “naval actions” off Cape Cod in
Buzzards Bay as the genesis of
America
’s naval history. Fowler,
Rebels Under Sail, 26.
The owners of
Washington
’s schooners do not seem to have received prize shares.
One-third of the value of the captured vessel and its cargo,
whether it was a commercial or a military prize, went to the crew,
while two-thirds went to the Continental Congress in order to repay
the cost of outfitting and manning the schooners.
Washington
did not make the distinction between commercial and military prizes
that the Continental Congress later did.
“George Washington’s Instructions to Captain Nicholson
Broughton,” September 2, 1775, NDAR, Vol. 1, 1288.
[xxii]
William Falconer, A New
Universal Dictionary of the Marine (
London
, 1769), 353. Gardiner
defines privateers as “free-enterprise warships, armed, crewed and
paid for by merchants who gambled on the dividend of a valuable
capture.” Gardiner,
ed., Navies and the American
Revolution, 1775-1783, 66. According
to
Albion
and Pope: “profits were the raison
d’être of privateers.”
Albion
and Pope, Sea Lanes In Wartime,
23-24.
Beverly
merchants printed and made public the following handbill on
September 7, 1776: “Now fitting for a Privateer, In the
harbor
of
Beverly
, the Brigantine
Washington
….Any Seaman or Landsman that has an inclination to make their
Fortunes in a few months may have an opportunity by applying to John
Dyson.” Cited in Howe,
Beverly Privateers in the American Revolution, 338, footnote #2.
Boston
merchants printed a similar advertisement in the local newspaper on
November 13, 1780. “An
Invitation to all brave Seamen and Marines, who have an inclination
to serve their country and make their Fortunes” was the title of
the ad. The
Boston
merchans shrewdly added that those who signed on for a cruise with
the privateer would receive “that excellent Liquor called Grog,
which is allowed by all true seamen to be the Liquor of Life.”
Boston
Gazette, November 13,
1780.
[xxiii]
Manly.
A favorite new song, in the American fleet.
Most humbly addressed to all the jolly tars who are fighting
for the rights and liberties of
America
. By a sailor. (
Salem
,
MA
: Printed and sold by E. Russell, upper end of Main-Street, 1776), Early
American Imprints, 1st Series, Evans #43057.
Captain Manley’s surname may have been deliberately
misspelled in the song-title in order to rally men for war.
[xxiv]
“George Washington to Colonel Joseph Reed,” Camp at
Cambridge
, November 20, 1775, NDAR,
Vol. 2, 1082.
[xxv]
Gardiner references the “handful of
Marblehead
fishing schooners, armed with four or six tine 4pdrs and 2 pdrs,”
in his discussion of “the privateering war,” or guerre
de course. He argues
that these schooners do not represent “the beginnings of a
national navy,” as “it was conceived with a specific raiding
purpose in mind.” Gardiner,
ed., Navies and the American Revolution, 1775-1783, 66-67.
Thus, the schooners were nothing more than commerce raiders.
Syrett similarly refers to
Washington
’s schooner fleet as “the American cruiser offensive.”
Syrett, “Defeat at Sea,” 16.
Also, see Howe,
Beverly Privateers In The American Revolution.
[xxvi]
On November 25, 1775, the Continental Congress established formal
rules regarding prize shares for privateers, colony/state naval
vessels, and Continental Naval vessels.
The owners of privateers were to get all of the prize money
associated with their captures, military or commercial.
The colony/state was to get two-thirds of the prize money,
and the crew the remainder, for their vessels.
This same distribution applied to Continental Naval vessels,
with the Continental Congress getting two-thirds of the prize
shares. If, on the other
hand, “the Capture be a Vessel of War,” then in the case of the
colony/state or the Congress, the captors received one-half of the
prizes. NDAR,
Vol. 2, 1133.
[xxvii]
Albion
and Pope, Sea Lanes In Wartime, 23.
[xxviii]
The Spanish Armada, which remains one of the most famous flotillas
in all of recorded history, included Basque, Portuguese, and Spanish
fishing vessels. Michael
Barkham, “Spanish Ships and Shipping,” in M.J. Rodríguez-Salgedo,
ed., Armada, 1588-1988 (London: Penguin Books in association with the
National Maritime Museum, 1988), 151-163.
England’s Rump Parliament relied upon “shallops and
ketches,” vessels primarily used to catch fish, in addition to
ships of the line, to defend its newfound sovereignty from Royalists
at home and abroad. Bernard
Capp, Cromwell’s Navy: The Fleet and the English Revolution,
1648-1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 4.
[xxix]
See,
Hearn
,
Washington
’s Schooners; and
Fowler, Rebels Under Sail.
[xxx]
For the number of workers, see Robert G. Albion, William A. Baker
and Benjamin W. Labaree,
New England
and the Sea (Mystic, Connecticut: Mystic Seaport Museum,
Inc., 1972), 29-30.
One contemporary estimate placed the number of workers “employ’d
in the Cod fishery” as
high as 13,000.
Boston
Evening Post, January 20, 1766.
For the population figure, see McCusker and Menard, The
Economy of
British America
, 1607-1789, 103, Table
5.1. The 8%
calculation was made following Vicker’s method of first factoring
a 55% male population and then factoring a 40% demographic of men
aged 15-45: “the male working population.”
Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen, 194n.
[xxxi]
For the size of the workforce, see Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of
State, Report on the State of the Cod Fisheries, 1791, American
State Papers: Commerce and Navigation, I:13, Table 2.
For the population figure, see Robert V. Wells, The
Population of the British Colonies in
America
before 1776: A Survey of Census Data (Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1975), 79.
[xxxii]
For more on these military accomplishments, see George Athan Billias,
General John Glover and His Marblehead Mariners (New York:
Henry Holt and Company, 1960); and Christopher P. Magra,
“‘Soldiers…Bred to the Sea’: Maritime
Marblehead
,
Massachusetts
and the Origins and Progress of the American Revolution,” New
England Quarterly, Vol. LXXVIII, No. 4, (December 2004),
531-562. Billias
presents a traditional regimental history that focuses on Glover’s
leadership. Billias
notes that many of the Marbleheaders may have been fishermen, but he
neither verifies this assertion nor does he provide a comprehensive
analysis of the commercial fishing industry’s military conversion.
[xxxiii]
Higginbotham, The War of
American
Independence
, 389-390.
[xxxiv]
Walter Leslie Sargent, “Answering the Call to Arms: The Social
Composition of the Revolutionary Soldiers of
Massachusetts
, 1775-1783.” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2004),
226, Table 6.5, 228, Table 6.8, 229, Figure 6.9, Table 6.10, 232,
Table 6.12; and William Arthur Baller, “Military mobilization
during the American Revolution in
Marblehead
and
Worcester
,
Massachusetts
.” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Clark University, 1994), 20, 27-28, 366,
Figure 4, 367, Figure 5. Neither
Sargent nor Baller examine the occupational identities of
Revolutionary soldiers. Nor
do they look at how the nature of work in the commercial fishing
industry shaped military experience.
And they do not fully probe the wartime mobilization of labor
and capital in the fishing industry.
[xxxv]
Christopher Paul Magra, “The New England Cod Fishing Industry and
Maritime Dimensions of the American Revolution,” (Ph.D.
Dissertation,
University
of
Pittsburgh
, 2006), 271.
[xxxvi]
R.C. Simmons and P.D.G. Thomas, eds., Proceedings
and Debates of the British Parliaments respecting North America,
1754-1783, Vol. 5, (Millwood, NY: Kraus International
Publications, 1985), 584. The
twenty-one dissenters included four dukes, a marquess, seven earls,
three viscounts, and six barons.
Ibid., 589. The
Act was previously approved by the Commons on February 28, 1775, by
a vote of 97 to 24. Ibid.,
480.
[xxxvii]
The
Newport
Mercury, 5-8-1775; and Virginia
Gazette, 18 May 1775.
[xxxviii]
The
Norwich
Packet and the
Connecticut
,
Massachusetts
, New-Hampshire, and Rhode-Island Weekly Advertiser, April 7-14,
1776. Emphasis in the
original.
[xxxix]
See, Magra, “‘Soldiers…Bred to the Sea’,” 538-539.
[xl]
Smith, ed., The Journals of Ashley Bowen (1728-1813), Vol. 2,
440.
[xli]
To date, the most comprehensive study of Revolutionary soldier’s
pre-war occupational identities relies on a data set of 43 men.
Edward C. Papenfuse and Gregory A. Stiverson, “General
Smallwood’s Recruits: The Peacetime Career of the Revolutionary
War Private,” William and
Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 30, No. 1 (January, 1973),
117-132.
[xlii]
Sargent, “Answering the Call to Arms,” 226, Table 6.5, 228,
Table 6.8, 229, Figure 6.9, Table 6.10, 232, Table 6.12; and Baller,
“Military mobilization during the American Revolution in
Marblehead and Worcester, Massachusetts,” 20, 27-28, 366, Figure
4, 367, Figure 5. For
the typical town mobilization percentages outside
Marblehead
, see Higginbotham, The War of
American Independence, 389-390.
[xliii]
Compare the peacetime wages listed in Schooner Molly, 1751-57, Box 7, Folder 10, Timothy Orne Shipping Papers, JDPL;
and Schooner Polly,
1771-1776, Box 1, Folder 4, Joshua Burnham Papers, 1758-1817, JDPL,
with the wartime wages listed in “Rules for the Regulation of the
Navy of the United Colonies,”
Philadelphia
, November 28, 1775, in NDAR,
Vol. 2, 1178.
[xliv]
Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the
Deep
Blue
Sea
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 121-124.
Vickers maintains that prior to the Revolution merchant
mariners in
Salem
were not given higher wages during wartimes, as opposed to their
counterparts in
England
. This contrast, he
believes, was due principally to the fact that the British Navy
sailed out of
England
each year and frequently pressed workers from the merchant marine in
local, not colonial, ports. Daniel
Vickers, Young Men and the Sea: Yankee Seafarers In the Age of
Sail (
New Haven
,
Conn.
:
Yale
University
Press, 2005), 81-82.
[xlv]
EVREC, Vol. 1, 527; and MPR.
[xlvii]
Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen,
178-180, esp. Figure 2.
[xlviii]
Soldiers were also supposed to be taller than 5’2.”
Higginbotham, The War of American
Independence
, 391.
[xlix]
See the first-hand accounts described in “Journal of Rev. Joshua
Wingate Weeks, Loyalist Rector of St. Michael’s Church,
Marblehead, 1778-1779,” Essex Institute Historical Collections,
Vol. 52, (Salem, MA: Essex Institute Press, 1916), 1-16, 161-176,
197-208, 345-356; and “Essex County Loyalists,” Essex
Institute Historical Collections, Vol. 43, (Salem, MA: Essex
Institute Press, 1907), 289-316.
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