Patriot Pirates by Robert H. Patton Read Free Book Online

at anchor, though not “without an advantage in proportion to the service I may do.” To discuss his fee, he could be contacted at a local coffeehouse “care of Mr. Hugh James, the barkeeper.”
    Congress had specified in its rather nervous appointment of Washington as commander in chief that he be circumspect and receptive to advice. Accordingly he hesitated to make decisions “under the sole guidance of my own judgment and self-will” and instead consulted with officers and political leaders. When seeking some way to break the stalemate of the Boston siege, he “deliberated at intervals of three weeks with Massachusetts lawmakers and Congressional delegates.” Their counsel invigorated his efforts to make real what had seemed mere fancy when he first surveyed the bustle of enemy vessels in Boston Harbor. “A fortunate capture of an ordnance ship would give new life to the camp, and an immediate turn to the issue of this campaign.”
    It wasn’t a new notion. Massachusetts skippers, armed with neither legal authority nor heavy weapons, had been converting their fishing and cargo boats to bare-bones warships for several months now. On June 20, 1775, the colony’s Provincial Congress had resolved to outfit its own navy to counter British “piracies.” One week later, Nicholas Cooke, a Rhode Island distiller soon to become governor when revolution fever deemed Joseph Wanton insufficiently pro-war, called for other colonies to follow suit as “a great means of protecting our trade and also of picking up many provision vessels.”
    Not waiting for outside approval, the Rhode Island Assembly had chartered two sloops under the command of John Brown’s
Gaspee
cohort, Abraham Whipple, whose first capture was one of the small tenders accompanying HMS
Rose
, the frigate that earlier had brought Brown in irons to Boston.
Rose
’s captain, James Wallace, vowed to hang Whipple “at the yard arm” for his thievery, to which the latter taunted, “Always catch a man before you hang him.”
    When Rhode Island formally urged Congress to finance “an American fleet” on August 15, debate commenced full tilt. Many members thought the idea of taking on the Royal Navy insane. Still hoping for “a speedy reconciliation,” they feared that mobilizing Continental warships would incite enemy blockades of the Delaware and Chesapeake bays, strangling commerce in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Virginia. John Adams and two others, Silas Deane of Connecticut and John Langdon of New Hampshire, were assigned to review the matter and make a recommendation to Congress.
    Merchants by profession, Deane and Langdon favored an aggressive buildup. (Deane proposed New London, Connecticut, as the future navy’s home base—a nice central location, plus he had business interests there.) Adams conceived the Continental fleet as strictly defensive, keeping “our harbors and rivers” as safe havens for vessels of the foreign trade so crucial to America’s survival. Leave the perils of open ocean to private adventurers, he cautioned. “To talk of coping suddenly with Great Britain at sea would be quixoticism indeed.”
    While Congress debated launching any navy at all, the issue in Massachusetts, where commerce raiders had enjoyed just enough success to whet visions of big gains to come, was whether to follow through on the proposed provincial navy or turn loose the citizenry’s “pecuniary zeal” by legalizing privateering. The second course promised an instant navy at no cost to the government. Two points argued against it. If privateering flourished, fewer sailors would sign up for government service. And it had the potential, in the minds of some, to encourage social unruliness. Advocates sneered. In the face of British aggression, they said, “The delicacy is absurd surely.”
    Discussion in Philadelphia and Massachusetts followed parallel tracks for much of that fall. Congress moved to establish a Marine Committee to oversee the