Patrick Henry and the Frigate’s Keel: And Other Stories of a Young Nation (11 page)

Silently thanking God, Conyngham crossed his fingers, turned on his charm, of which he had plenty, and ordered two more bottles of wine—which he couldn't pay for. In an hour, Franklin's agent loved him, and in two hours they were discussing the naval future of the thirteen colonies.

“I want a boat,” Conyngham said. “Any boat, anything that will sail.”

“Boats,” the agent shrugged. “Do you think the French give boats away?”

“A lugger, a cutter, a sloop—anything,” Conyngham pleaded.

“Who are you?” the agent protested. “Who has heard of Conyngham?”

“Only give me a chance and you will all hear of me,” the boy pleaded. Then he ordered more wine.

In another hour, the agent began to soften. “We have no navy,” he said with tears in his eyes.

“That,” Conyngham pointed out, “is why I want a boat.”

“We will see Dr. Franklin,” the agent capitulated. And they left the tavern, Conyngham grinning like an imp, the agent paying the bill.

The next day Conyngham went out to see his boat. He had convinced the agent and he had convinced Franklin, and as a result he was now the master of a twelve-gun lugger called the
Surprise
. He stood on the wharf and looked down at it; the ironwork was rusty and the paint peeled from the boards. The sails were yellow and torn, and probably her bottom was foul. But Conyngham looked at her happily, and whispered:

“My beauty—my beauty.”

It took him some time to get a crew, stranded Americans, Frenchmen, Belgians, Dutch, a few Spaniards. He found a carpenter and a sailmaker, and one day he came down to the wharf with his arms full of red petticoats and blue shirts. After careful instructions, the sailmaker put together two flags, and after they had been run up on the masts, Conyngham gave his instructions to his crew:

“We have twelve guns. We attack anything up to twenty guns.” Conyngham never complicated things. He became a navy, and launched himself on a career that for audacity and sheer recklessness remains almost unmatched in all naval history; and for the first time the Stars and Stripes became known and respected in European waters.

Young Conyngham and his crew sailed boldly into the Channel, looking for prey with the coasts of France and England in full sight. Since Boulogne was a Channel port, he might have followed the course of most raiders and coasted to the larger safety of the North Sea or the Atlantic, but he wanted ships and decided the Channel was the place to find them.

Hardly more than hours had gone by before a brig, flying enemy colors, was sighted off the Isle of Guernsey. Without waiting to count the guns she carried, Conyngham bore down on her and boarded while the Island forts blazed away impotently. With that first victory he established his style of fighting—attack and count the guns later.

They were still counting the spoil of the brig and herding prisoners below, when Conyngham told his first officer, Harding, that they were going to land on the island and see what they could pick up.

“But the forts,” Harding protested.

“Damn the forts,” Conyngham said, unwittingly establishing another precedent for the navy.

That night the
Surprise
, which had lived up to her name, sent the ship's boat to shore, and Conyngham returned triumphantly with the lieutenant and adjutant of the fort, whom his party had intercepted returning from a rabbit hunt. There was rabbit pie that night to celebrate.

Twenty-four hours after they took the brig, the lookout spotted another vessel and Conyngham ordered chase. This time it was the French third officer who pleaded that the American think twice.

“Why?” Conyngham demanded.

“Because, Monsieur, it is King George's mail packet.”

“So much the better. It'll be worth something.”

“But, Monsieur, no one has ever dared to stop the mails. The French are not at war.”

“But I am,” Conyngham grinned.

“And will you bring her into a French port?”

“That I will,” Conyngham said. The French officer shrugged and spread his arms wide in despair.

Meanwhile, the
Surprise
had been bearing down on the packet, which, in its home waters, sailed along gaily and unsuspectingly. Again Conyngham's men boarded in a rush without stopping to count the guns. The packet had been sailing along, wrapped in the fancied security of the mails, so that it was taken almost before it had an opportunity to speculate on the strange red and white striped banner that flew from the
Surprise's
masthead; and Conyngham and his men, pistols in hand, burst into the main cabin while the British officers were uncertainly rising from their tea.

And afterwards Conyngham said, somewhat bewilderedly: “I spent months looking for my first ship, and here I've got two in as many days.”

The British did not take this interference with the King's mails lying down. They let out a furious uproar, condemned Conyngham as a pirate, and demanded that he be imprisoned and sent to England for trial—a trial which could only end in his being hanged. The British ambassador informed the French government in no uncertain terms that while the two countries were not at war, they might be soon unless such outrages stopped.

Thus, hardly had Conyngham sailed his two prizes victoriously into Dunkirk, when a French police officer boarded the
Surprise
and said to him:

“It grieves me, Monsieur, I am sorry, I apologize—but you are under arrest.”

“Arrest?”

“Monsieur, we are not at war with England. I am sorry—those are my orders.”

They took him to jail, and the jailer expressed his gratification at meeting the already famous Captain Conyngham. Nothing would be spared to make him comfortable.

They put him in their best cell, brought him a magnificent meal, a bottle of wine, and change of clothes—and after an hour the mayor of Dunkirk waited upon him in person. They were all terribly sorry; the worst of it was that the mail packet had already been returned to King George.

That night was Conyngham's worst. It seemed to him that in spite of the Franco-American friendship, his plan of declaring war on the enemies of his country singlehanded was doomed to sudden and inglorious failure, and that his career would come to a sudden end on an English gallows. And then, at the break of dawn, came a messenger from the venerable Dr. Franklin.

“We've arranged for you to escape,” the messenger informed him.

“How?”

The messenger smiled and held up the key to the cell. The jailer smiled and looked placidly in another direction; and as they left the jail, doors somehow opened and guards slept soundly.

When a British sloop sailed into Dunkirk harbor to take Conyngham back to England, the mayor spread his hands wide and told the officers:

“It is sad, but that Conyngham is a devil. He has escaped us.” An hour before the mayor had had dinner with Conyngham and told him: “Monsieur, you must hide.”

“Hide! I must find a ship.”

“You are mad. Anyway, you must disguise yourself.”

So Conyngham bought a pair of glasses, perched them on the end of his nose, and went snooping around the Dunkirk waterfront for a vessel to suit his taste. His fame had already spread through Dunkirk, and everywhere townsfolk greeted Monsieur Conyngham cordially. It got to the ears of the British and they buzzed at the Mayor, who called Conyngham and pleaded:

“Monsieur, hide or leave Dunkirk. Now I must be firm.”

“I shall leave Dunkirk,” Conyngham agreed pleasantly. The brig, his first prize, had not been returned to the enemy, and there was enough money from its sale to purchase a beautiful new cutter that lay in the harbor. “In my own ship,” he added.

The mayor's face went red with horror at the thought of what the English would say if Conyngham went privateering out of Dunkirk in a French ship. “Impossible!” he decided.

“But I've already ordered provisions to be delivered on board tomorrow,” Conyngham protested.

“And tomorrow a guard goes on board to prevent her from sailing,” said the mayor, delivering his ultimatum.

Conyngham shrugged and nodded, and that night rounded up his crew and sailed the cutter out of the harbor. She was trim, small, but fast. Standing proudly at her helm, Conyngham told Harding:

“I'm going to call her the
Revenge
.”

“Why?”

“For one thing, there was a British vessel of that name that was a fine fighting craft; for another, I'm going to pay them back for that mail packet.”

“And provisions?” Harding asked.

“The first British merchantman will take care of that,” Conyngham grinned.

For all his youth, his recklessness, and the offhand manner he went about commerce raiding, Conyngham was playing for keeps. To Franklin he had been a wild boy who might do the enemy some harm; to the French he was the sort of laughing fool they loved; to America and the Continental Congress, he was utterly unknown; to his crew he was a beloved if insane leader. Yet Conyngham was no fool; he was a born sailor, a clever captain and an utterly fearless fighter. He ran up the Stars and Stripes at a time when they were a completely unknown quantity and he defied the mightiest seafaring power on earth; he became in himself a navy, feared, hated, respected.

He ranged through the Bay of Biscay, and when he sighted a sail, he never stopped to count the guns, and his prizes sailed into obscure French and Spanish ports in a steady stream. East Indiamen, brigs, luggers, sloops—all were his legitimate prey. At that time, the American Revolution needed money and financial backing more than anything else; there was no money to spare for Franklin and the diplomatic corps he had with him in France. Franklin, racking his wits for funds, was astounded when the prize money began to pour in from Conyngham's raids. There were thousands and then tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Three months went by, and all the coast of France, Spain and Portugal came to know that strange striped banner that flew over the
Revenge
. King George roared with rage, and the admiralty sent a frigate to hunt Conyngham down. Conyngham helped in the hunt, picked up the frigate, and merrily sailed circles around her with the little
Revenge
, and then took a prize right under her nose. The frigate's commander was dropped to the bottom of the captain's list, and the admiralty sent out a squadron. Again the tiny
Revenge
led them a fantastic chase, sailed circles around them, and led them into shoals off the Spanish coast where the bottom was ripped out of a brig. Another squadron was sent out, but the
Revenge
sailed away, took three prizes, and brought them safely into port.

Thumbing his nose at the mightiest fleet in the world, Conyngham sailed into the Channel and took prize after prize, while incredulous spectators watched from the coast of France and the Dover Cliffs. Then he sailed north and smashed English commerce with Holland.

He raced two frigates around the Shetland Islands, and left a trail of captured and wrecked ships down the Atlantic to the Azores. He became a myth, a legend, a demon, and he gave a navy still building a reputation that was to last untarnished until today. He himself was wounded half a dozen times; Harding was killed; his crew was decimated so many times that only a fraction of the original men were left, but his reputation made it easy for him to find replacements. Time after time, the little
Revenge
was shattered half to pieces, her decks running with blood, her masts splintered; yet always, through luck and seamanship, she managed to slip away and limp into some neutral port for repairs. And then she would be off again on one of her mad cruises.

As her toll of ships taken mounted, twenty, thirty, forty, then fifty, Conyngham's name became more and more known. All over Europe they were speaking of him, and if someone asked, “This new republic in America, has it a navy?” someone else would reply, “Conyngham, of course.”

There were bad moments. Once he took a full broadside from a frigate, and the
Revenge
lay becalmed like a shattered wreck. A storm saved him then. Another time he lost half his crew in one terrible battle boarding an armed East Indiaman. But he had the last say; he drove British shipping from European waters, and as the masts stood like a forest in their harbors, they turned from their fleet to diplomacy. Soon, Conyngham found himself and his ship barred from every port in France and Spain.

He shrugged and accepted the fact; he was homesick anyway. More than a year had gone by, and he had taken over fifty prizes and had sunk more than twenty other vessels.

Crossing the Atlantic, he livened the voyage by capturing two more merchantmen. The second of them had led him far southward, and he yielded to the temptation of the rich commerce that plied the Caribbean. Cautiously, he nosed into Havana, discovered that news of his ill repute with the Spanish government had not yet penetrated there, and took on stores and ammunition.

It took only a few weeks for news to spread through the West Indies that Conyngham was loose there. They didn't bother to send frigates or ships of the line after him; instead British shipping fled to the safety of port, and after taking half a dozen prizes, Conyngham gave it up and sailed home.

In February, in 1779, he took his ship up the Delaware to Philadelphia. News of his coming had preceded him, and for the first time he saw striped red and white and blue flags that were not his own tattered battle banners. He discovered he was a hero, the idol of his country; he was carried on the shoulders of a crowd, and his picture was everywhere. He was feted and dined.

But somehow, that Was all; his day had passed. His country had got over the edge of defeat, and from the drawing boards, a navy had become reality and sailed out to make the striped banner known in every corner of the world.

Conyngham was forgotten; even his name isn't in most histories. But the spirit that led him and his little
Revenge
is not forgotten; it still lives.