Authors: Kevin Phillips
The pair were busy men. Between May and July 1776, they reportedly shipped 20 tons of gunpowder to Virginia and somewhat less to Maryland.
9
No records compare Virginia’s overall volume to Maryland’s, but clearly the gunpowder trade was a priority in both provinces.
Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay did not start seizing every American ship as a prize until March 1, 1776, pursuant to the Prohibitory Act passed by Parliament in December.
10
Until September 1775, outbound vessels might well have been carrying lawful cargoes of tobacco (or something else) bound for Britain. As confrontations between Dunmore and Virginia Patriots increased in the autumn of 1775, few warships would have been available to keep watch at the Virginia Capes, the ten-mile-wide gap through which the lower bay empties into the Atlantic. Revealingly, in 1777, when Britain did have enough vessels on station to make the blockade work, shipping into and out of the bay declined by roughly three quarters.
11
Had the Admiralty in early 1775 thought to find and employ four or five more large sloops and small frigates to blockade the entrances to the Chesapeake and the Delaware River, much more tobacco could have been kept from being sold for vital munitions.
Effective blockade or not, Patriots needing to move goods did have alternative routes. Produce could be sent by river or wagon 40 miles across the Delmarva Peninsula to one of the small, unblockaded ports on Virginia’s Atlantic side, often Chincoteague. A second route, which involved a twelve-to-fifteen-mile wagon trip, traversed the peninsula’s narrow northern isthmus to reach Delaware Bay, and thence goods went by boat to
Philadelphia. Flour, pork, and beef shipments for the American army normally took this route and avoided the Virginia Capes.
In 1775 and much of 1776, though, Patriot vessels could often slip past the few British guards, especially when captained by local men able to use the creeks and inlets for ducking enemy patrols. One way or another, Chesapeake tobacco and grain got through in sufficient quantity.
Chesapeake Patriots Prepare for War
South of New England, Virginia was the colony that moved most quickly toward a shooting war. Dunmore’s belligerence was matched on the Patriot side by Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, and many more.
Maryland, for its part, had been unusually bold in 1774, endorsing nonexportation of tobacco, then embracing incendiary behavior in mid-October when radical Patriots torched the British tea ship
Peggy Stewart
near Annapolis. This aggressive mindset continued in December at the Provincial Convention, which advised all the counties to organize militia forces and to publish the names of individuals reluctant to serve. In January 1775, radical Patriots in the Annapolis area pronounced that anyone refusing to aid “the purchase of arms and ammunition is and ought to be esteemed an enemy of America.”
12
The Convention had suggested county-by-county outlays that totaled £10,000.
13
Overall, though, the Maryland Convention’s military bite was weaker than its bark. Tories openly worked to break up militia musters in Anne Arundel, Frederick, Caroline, and Kent counties during 1775.
14
In December 1775, the Convention authorized 1,444 troops and in June 1776 raised the number to 3,405.
15
On the Eastern Shore in particular, though, many of those enrolled were unreliable. On top of which, militia units in the Patriot-minded Baltimore and Annapolis areas were roiled by radical demands akin to those being voiced in Pennsylvania and Virginia. Some militiamen, angry over the requirement of property to vote, threatened to quit if officials barred their ballots for delegates to the Constitutional Convention. As that voting approached in the summer of 1776, the Anne Arundel (Annapolis) County militia proposed a democratic and popular version of government resembling the program being implemented that summer in Pennsylvania.
16
In Maryland, though, conservatives wound up drafting the new constitution, which foreclosed Philadelphia-style radicalism. Militia
dissatisfaction continued, with some men refusing to muster, others grousing about elite-minded officers (and seeking to elect new ones), and still others threatening to lay down their arms unless the fines supposed to be levied on nonenrollers were collected.
17
Popular reluctance to enlist was also a dilemma in Virginia. In March 1775, the Second Provincial Convention had recommended that each of the 60-odd counties enroll at least one company of infantry and one troop of cavalry to prepare for any emergency. Two to three regiments were expected. Then during the summer, the Third Convention called for raising 3,000 men to defend the tidewater region, with another 425 men to man the western forts and “watch the motions of the Indians.” Each county was also told to gather and train companies of minutemen.
18
Paper money totaling £300,000 was voted in support. Burgesses still wore hunting shirts, and
rage militaire
still filled the air.
But it cooled in autumn. The minuteman scheme did not work out in many areas, and late 1775 enlistments fell short. As we saw in
Chapter 6
, the Old Dominion’s militia reorganization bogged down in inadequate public funds and squabbling over conditions of service. Substantial black slave flight to the British now focused Virginia leaders on guarding and protecting plantations, but this priority soured poor and middle-class whites. In late October and November, as fighting began in Princess Anne and Norfolk counties and in nearby Hampton, Virginia’s self-defense posture was less than muscular. During this period, Dunmore seemed to be gaining strength with his several companies of redcoats, his 300-member Ethiopian Regiment, and his hundreds of Norfolk-area enlistees in the Queen’s Loyal Virginia Regiment. Hundreds of erstwhile Patriot militiamen took British loyalty oaths. By early December, as rebel Colonel William Woodford advanced on the Norfolk area at the head of one of Virginia’s (two) regular regiments, augmented by Culpeper sharpshooters, he accepted just one militia company, a unit from Smithfield, 30 miles west. Woodford thought it better not to rely on local militia.
19
Besides militia reliability, Chesapeake Patriots also began to think about provincial navies. As Dunmore’s threat became serious, Virginia’s naval weakness also pushed to the fore. From August to November, Royal Navy sloops like
Otter
and
Kingfisher,
with a half dozen small schooners and pilot ships as tenders, were able to maraud at will along the rivers near Norfolk and Portsmouth. Back in May, Dunmore had asked Admiral Graves for a large man-of-war, pointing out—quite accurately—that the Chesapeake’s
tidal rivers had great depth “even very high up,” and that a powerful ship “would strike Awe over the whole Country.” He added that more well-armed and well-manned tenders could stop ammunition running at the mouths of the major rivers.
20
Luckily for the Americans, the Chesapeake was not a British priority; no large frigate arrived until February.
During the late autumn of 1775, what was called “Dunmore’s navy” dominated not just 40 to 50 miles of coast but 15 to 20 miles inland from Norfolk. Moreover some 20 miles across the bay, residents in the colony’s two Eastern Shore counties, already half Tory by inclination, were cowed by the distantly visible mast tops and spread sails of British naval power. Tenders commanded by squeaky-voiced midshipmen or gruff petty officers visited the peninsula at will, often to demand (but also usually pay for) provisions. Eastern Shore residents expected a Dunmore-led or inspired invasion. As for local militia units, Patriot officers doubted their reliability. On top of which, a half million bushels of newly harvested wheat—the peninsula, too, was a famous granary—also had to be kept out of British hands.
The British never seized their Eastern Shore opportunity. Only 400 Patriot militiamen having been raised by November, Northampton County officials sought help from the Philadelphia Congress. Two companies of reliable Maryland minutemen from the upper bay marched down in February and bolstered tenuous Patriot authority.
21
On the Patriot side, turning small merchant vessels into small warships could be accomplished in a month or two. Thus the relatively rapid calendar of Patriot navy building: “The [Third] Virginia Convention authorized the Committee on Safety, on 24 August 1775, ‘to appoint a sufficient number of look-outs and advice boats,’ but did not try to organize armed vessels into a navy.” The Fourth Convention moved to rectify that omission in December, debating and then approving a resolution to create a navy “for the protection of the several rivers in this colony.” The Committee of Safety now had authority to fit out armed vessels.
22
In fact, the Committee, including such prominent leaders as Edmund Pendleton, George Mason, John Page, and Richard Bland, had already started. By December, two brothers, James Barron in
Liberty
and Richard Barron in
Patriot,
were operating from Hampton as captains of a pair of 60-ton pilot-boat schooners armed with swivel guns. The
Patriot,
procured by Patrick Henry on December 19, 1775, is generally recognized as the Virginia Navy’s first vessel.
23
On December 1, Richard Barron, under the orders
of the feisty Hampton–Elizabeth City Committee, had stopped the Loyalist sloop
Christian,
outward bound from Norfolk to Britain, and seized important letters. Hampton’s aggressive committee was the archfoe of Captain Matthew Squire of HMS
Otter,
who had already been repulsed attacking the town in October. After the
Christian,
some ten other suspected Loyalist vessels were also stopped or seized. On December 23, the Convention expressed approval of the Barron brothers’ activities.
24
Maryland more or less kept pace. On December 8, the Baltimore Committee, acting under provincial orders, began to refit a local merchantman, the
Sidney.
Renamed the
Defence,
it became the colony’s first warship. By mid-1776, Maryland would have several more. The
Defence
made its naval debut in March, being hurriedly completed and armed with fourteen six-pounders just in time to face the
Otter.
Captain Squire’s sloop had come to the upper bay, accompanied by two tenders, to capture or sink a pair of new Continental vessels, the
Wasp
and
Hornet.
No fight ever took place between
Defence
and
Otter,
though, because both commanders had orders to be cautious.
25
But when
Otter
returned south and was deemed to be retreating, Captain James Nicholson of
Defence
became a hero.
To the north, Philadelphia, having legislated the creation of the Continental Navy, now became the principal locus of its construction. Back in October, Congress had authorized four vessels. Through November and into December, workmen at Philadelphia’s Wharton and Humphrey shipyard labored to finish overhauling a 300-ton merchantman, the
Black Prince,
chosen to become flagship of the new Continental fleet under the lackluster name
Alfred.
*
Baltimore’s supporting role in naval construction reflected its emergence as a Patriot-faction stronghold.
In early December, Congress’s Naval Committee engaged Baltimorean Captain William Stone and his merchant sloop
Falcon
for a new plan to thwart “the cutters and armed vessels in Chesapeake Bay, under Lord Dunmore.” A naval agent arrived in Baltimore with instructions to “act in conjunction with the delegates of that colony to this Congress…to procure, with all possible despatch, on Continental charge, two or three armed vessels to proceed immediately to cruize on, take or destroy as many of the armed vessels, cutters and ships of war of the enemy as possible.”
26
If that phraseology appears too pompous for a minor maritime enterprise, the activities
did not remain minor. These are hallowed months in the history of the U.S. Navy.
The little
Falcon
took new guise as the
Hornet,
mounting ten six- or nine-pounders. A second vessel, the schooner
Scorpion,
became the
Wasp,
boasting—if that word is suitable—eight two-pounders. A third vessel, the brigantine
Wild Duck,
purchased in St. Eustatius by Maryland agent Abraham Van Bibber, arrived in Philadelphia on March 9 with a cargo of gunpowder. Somewhat larger, she was brought into the Continental service to sail under the name
Lexington,
carrying fourteen four-pounders and two six-pounders. One hundred and seventy years later, in the World War II Pacific, the namesakes of the three vessels spoke with more impressive thunder. The aircraft carrier
Wasp
was the eighth naval vessel to bear its name, and so was the carrier
Hornet.
Planes from the latter shot down a wartime total of 1,410 Japanese aircraft. The third carrier, the
Lexington,
had followed four other vessels honoring the same distant forebear. In 1775, what rebel could have imagined the succession?
In January 1776, the original
Wasp
and
Hornet,
their makeovers finished, escorted a group of small Patriot vessels south through the Virginia Capes. On February 14, they joined the rest of the fledgling Continental fleet in Delaware Bay. The Naval Committee’s early January orders, assuming winds and weather permitted, were for them to sail to Chesapeake Bay and to destroy Dunmore’s flotilla, if its strength, upon investigation, was “not greatly superiour to your own.” In fact, Dunmore was strengthened in February by Captain Hamond’s 44-gun
Roebuck.
With or without that knowledge, the little fleet—minus the
Hornet
—sailed instead for the Bahamas, where it captured cannon and some ammunition. Dunmore’s hold on lower Chesapeake Bay would continue for several additional months.