The Continental Risque (46 page)

‘It was our duty to support a fellow officer. Instead, we … no, I … made him into an outcast, a pariah, just because I didn't care for his company.'

‘That's no excuse for what he done,' said Rumstick, ‘for undermining the authority of the captain.'

‘I don't believe he knew what he was doing. It's no wonder he was starting to see Yankee plots everywhere. He was just looking for someone to support him. If I had done so, this all might never have happened.'

‘He never supported you, or any of us.'

‘That did not relieve me of my duty to him.'

The officers of the
Charlemagne
were silent for a moment. ‘Well, he's dead now,' said Rumstick at last, ‘and he'll be remembered as a hero, and I suspect that's the best any of us can hope for.'

Breakfast came at last: fresh eggs, fresh bread, fresh beef sliced thin, fresh butter. It was a feast the likes of which they had not seen in some time, and they turned to it with the appetite of sailors, an appetite that even the gravest adversity could not quash.

But satisfied as his stomach was, Biddlecomb's mind could find no peace. Sure, he was more than content at the moment; he loved his tiny great cabin, and he loved the men with whom he shared this meal: Rumstick, his friend from those fine days as a merchant seaman; Weatherspoon, with whom he had shared so much aboard the
Charlemagne
; Faircloth, with his irrepressible humor and unflinching courage and rather skewed vision of the events in which he participated.

But Biddlecomb could not stay in the great cabin forever. There would be a captains' meeting soon, he had no doubt, and he would once again have to stand in front of Commodore Hopkins and explain his failings.

And he would have to go ashore eventually. He would have to walk among the crowds in the streets, crowds that had once hailed him a hero, and explain again and again why the entire American fleet had failed to stop one British frigate, why they had failed to get most of the gunpowder for which they had gone to New Providence, why his crew had twice risen up against him.

By the time he poured his last cup of coffee he was in a thoroughly foul mood, and the others, sensing that, engaged in some inane discussion in which he need not participate. He stared out of the great gap in the stern window at the water swirling away past the
Charlemagne
's hull.

And suddenly a boat was there, ten yards away, a big boat with six oars per side and crammed with people. Biddlecomb blinked in surprise at the craft's sudden appearance. He thought at first it was the flagship's longboat, but it was gleaming in the morning sun with fresh white paint and was beautifully tricked out with green along the gunwale, far more pristine than any of the much abused boats of the fleet.

‘Here, backwater!' shouted the man in the stern sheets, and Biddlecomb realized that the boat was crammed with civilians, men and women, in fine silk coats and dresses. He could see the blink of silver and gold buttons and buckles. He frowned as the boatload of grinning, chatting sightseers came to a stop under his transom.

‘Ahoy, there!' the man in the stern sheets shouted with a self-conscious tone, half mocking his own use of the word, the way a landsman will when hailing a vessel, uncertain if that was what sailors really said. ‘Are you Captain Biddlecomb?'

‘Yes. Who in the devil are you?'

But the man did not answer. Rather he turned to the people in the boat and pointing right at Biddlecomb shouted, ‘There! That's Captain Biddlecomb, the one who chased the
Glasgow
clear into Newport harbor!' The others in the boat, those who were not already doing so, turned and looked up through the windows, waving like idiots and grinning at Biddlecomb as if he were there on display.

‘What in all hell …' Biddlecomb said, getting to his feet just as Faircloth, Rumstick, and Weatherspoon crowded around to stare back.

‘Huzzah, the Argonauts!' shouted a man in a gold-trimmed cocked hat, and the others in the boat followed his lead with lusty ‘Huzzah!'s.'

‘What in the hell!' Biddlecomb said, louder this time.

‘Listen, sir,' said Faircloth, cocking his head to the open skylight above. ‘Do you hear it?'

Biddlecomb listened. There was something, a sound like rustling leaves or water moving past the hull. ‘I hear something … Come, let us go topside,' he said, directing one last scowl at the wealthy fools in the boat and pushing past his officers to the door of the great cabin. The last thing he heard before stepping past the marine sentry was a feminine voice from the boat saying, ‘Look how that horrid frigate has shot out all of the poor captain's windows.'

They stepped through the gunroom, through the scuttle, and aft to the quarterdeck. The sun was well up now, revealing a perfect spring morning. The water was a deep blue, far deeper than the robin's-egg sky, and the fields that ran down to the river were a vivid green, broken here and there by tilled patches and stands of trees.

The town of New London was a quarter mile off the larboard side, close enough that the four men on the quarterdeck could make out the finest details of the brick buildings, the storefronts and wharves, the wagons and coaches that filled the streets.

But they were looking at none of that. They were looking, rather, at the crowd.

The waterfront, from the north end of town to the south, was packed with people, and from that mob, which jostled and waved and clambered down into boats along the docks, came an almost continuous cheering. Men were waving their hands, waving flags, and women waved handkerchiefs and children raced around. Boats crammed with people, such as the one under the
Charlemagne
's transom, swarmed around the anchored fleet like mosquitoes. Biddlecomb had seen nothing like it since the day in Philadelphia when the fleet had gotten under way.

‘By God, it would appear that we are heroes, sir!' Faircloth said, grinning from ear to ear. Biddlecomb met Rumstick's eye, and Rumstick grinned, and quite despite himself, Biddlecomb grinned as well.

Faircloth was right. They were heroes, all the brave men of the Continental navy. Word of what they had done, the taking of New Providence, the battering, if not the capture, of the
Glasgow
, must have spread like fire in a bosun's locker, and the town of New London had turned out to hail their conquering countrymen.

‘Good Lord in heaven,' Biddlecomb said, still grinning and shaking his head. The yelling from the crowd redoubled, surged and fell like a crashing wave, then surged again.

Whatever did these people think? Biddlecomb wondered. Did they have any idea how little had been accomplished, and at what a price? Did they understand how much more was left to do? How much blood and misery would be involved in winning liberty of these … what was it that Adams had insisted on calling them? For these United States?

THE END

Continued in
Lords of the Ocean

The men of the first American fleet were indeed hailed as heroes after their return from New Providence. When Hopkins's report of the voyage was read to Congress and published in various papers throughout the colonies, it generated great excitement and pride at what had been accomplished. President of the Congress John Hancock wrote, ‘Your Account of the Spirit and Bravery shown by the Men, affords them [the Continental Congressmen] the greatest Satisfaction; and encourages them to expect similar Exertions of Courage on every future Occasion.'

Not until a month or more after their return did the bloom come off the rose and Congress begin to question just what it was that Hopkins had done.

Sectional differences, suspicions between the Northern colonies and the Southern, had long been a problem with any organized efforts in America. The Continental Army was constantly plagued by infighting along those lines, though the appointment of a Virginian to the post of commander in chief and a strong Southern military tradition did much to assuage Southern concerns.

The same was not true for the navy. It is hardly surprising, of course, that the majority of captains should come from New England, as that region had the greatest maritime tradition in Colonial America. Still, the preponderance of Yankee captains made the Southern colonies suspicious of that branch of the armed forces, and most opposition to the creation of a navy came from the South.

Hoping to allay Southern fears, Congress ordered the navy to first relieve the Chesapeake Bay of the despised Lord Dunmore and his small fleet. They were then to make themselves ‘master of such forces as the enemy might have both in North and South Carolina.' It may have been a tall order for that small fleet, but it was a politically astute one.

By ignoring those orders, Commodore Hopkins (about whom Henry Knox said he would have ‘mistaken him for an angel, only he swore now and then') did nothing to assuage Southern feelings. Why Hopkins chose to ignore the directions of Congress will never be known. In his own defense he said that, after putting to sea, he had ‘many sick and four of the vessels had a large number on board with the small pox … I did not think we were in a condition to keep on a cold coast.'

Having been frozen in the Delaware River for seven weeks had not helped conditions aboard the fleet. And indeed the orders he was given were more than could reasonably have been expected of a small squadron of converted merchantmen. Congress, however, must have considered their orders reasonable, and after sober reflection they were not pleased that those orders had been so thoroughly ignored. Hopkins did not help things as far as the Southern colonies were concerned when, after anchoring in New London, he sent some of the guns taken from New Providence to Connecticut and Rhode Island without even asking permission of Congress to do so.

More questions were raised as to why the
Glasgow
was able to escape from the entire American fleet. The answer, in hindsight, is obvious: the American attack was piecemeal and uncoordinated, and the
Glasgow
was allowed to take on the
Cabot
and the
Alfred
one at a time, while those ships in turn prevented the
Columbus
and the
Andrew Doria
from joining in the fight until it was too late.

Hopkins was blamed by Congress for the debacle and has been blamed by historians for failing to coordinate the attack while it was taking place. But in fact he had provided himself with no means to do so, even if he had so desired. The signals that he devised prior to leaving Philadelphia were crude at best. The only relevant signal he had created for such a situation was for the fleet to attack an enemy, and giving that signal would have been pointless. Beyond that, Hopkins could have done nothing, except hope that his captains would make the best of it.

Nor did the
Glasgow
escape unscathed. Unfortunately, for the sake of morale, the Americans were not aware of how much damage they had inflicted. In a letter to Philip Stevens, secretary of the admiralty, Vice Admiral Shuldham, the commander of British naval forces in North America wrote:

His majesty's Ship
Glasgow
having on the 6th. Instant off Rhode Island fallen in with and been attack'd by several Armed vessels of the Rebels, in which Action she received so much damage that she was thought unfit to proceed on the execution of the Orders Captain Howe had received for carrying General Howe's and my Dispatches to the Southward, which were unluckily thrown into the sea … I find the
Glasgow
is in so shattered a Condition and would require so much time, and more stores than there is in this Yard to put her in proper repair, I intend sending her to Plymouth as soon as she can be got ready.

It is clear that Captain Howe, in command of the
Glasgow
, did not consider his escape to be a foregone conclusion. Only a captain who believes himself to be in imminent danger of capture throws his orders and dispatches over the side.

Though they failed to capture or sink the frigate, the Americans did accomplish the next best thing: they knocked her out of action. It is too bad for Hopkins's career and the reputation of the other captains that the Continental Congress and the nation as a whole did not know that.

Oddly, little seems to have been made of what was arguably Hopkins's biggest blunder: his failure to seal off Nassau harbor and prevent the escape of the
Mississippi Packet
, the
St John
, and the vast majority of the gunpowder on New Providence. The brief reprieve from criticism that Hopkins enjoyed was largely due to the quantity of military stores he brought to the war effort. Had he also brought New Providence's entire store of one hundred and eighty-five barrels of gunpowder, that lifeblood of all eighteenth-century warfare for which the Americans were always in such desperate need, he might well have escaped further censure. Unfortunately, his numerous mistakes, tactical and political, along with his subsequent inactivity, were enough to put him in disfavor with Congress. On January 2, 1778, Hopkins was dismissed from the service, and for the rest of the war no one was to hold so high a rank in the American Navy.

Just as inexplicable as the behavior of Esek Hopkins was the behavior of Gov. Montfort Browne of New Providence, Bahamas. On February 25, more than a week before the Americans' arrival, Capt. Andrew Law warned Browne that the rebels were coming. How Law knew that is a bit of a mystery, particularly considering that Hopkins seemed to have come up with that destination entirely of his own accord. Perhaps it was a lucky guess on Captain Law's part.

In any event, Browne made no preparations for their arrival and mounted no defense as the American marines splashed ashore near East Point. Not surprisingly, the New Providence militia, were not enthusiastic (‘rather Backward in their assistance' is how Browne phrased it in a subsequent report) about attacking the Americans once they were landed and formed up. The defense of the island devolved into a series of retreats, with the number of militiamen quickly dwindling. The conquest of New Providence was made without a single casualty.