U.S.S. Hancock and H.M.S. Rainbow

We now return to the sea battle between Capt. John Manley of the Continental Navy’s Hancock and Cdr. Sir George Collier of the Royal Navy’s Rainbow.

Manley was concerned about getting away from the more heavily armed British warship, especially after the other vessels in his fleet, the Fox and the Boston, sailed off in different directions. Before then, he had had a 3:2 advantage over the British, but that was gone.

Collier aimed to capture the Hancock, which one of his officers recognized as a new American vessel commanded by a top American captain, so he kept up the chase.

Capt. Manley ordered his crew to shift his water supply forward, hoping to make the Hancock sail faster. But this was a miscalculation. While the American frigate had “appeared to outsail the Rainbow,” in Collier’s estimation, it was now “out of Trim.”

As night fell on 7 July 1777, the Hancock was still ahead of the Rainbow, but by a shorter distance. Collier and his crew kept his enemy in sight “by Means of a Night-Glass.” This was a telescope with large lenses. In The Panorama of Science and Art (1828), James Smith explained:

The telescope called a night glass is nothing more than the common astronomical telescope with tubes, and made of a short length, with a small magnifying power. Its length is usually about two feet, and it is generally made to magnify from six to ten times. It is much used by navigators at night, for the purposes of discovering objects that are not very distant, but which cannot otherwise be seen for want of sufficient light, such as vessels, coast, rocks etc. From the smallness of its magnifying power, and the obscurity of the objects upon which it is employed, it admits of large glasses being used, and consequently has an extensive and well enlightened field of view.

The example above is offered by Fleaglass.

“At Dawn of Day,” Cdr. Collier wrote of Manley, “he was not much more than a Mile a-head of me; soon after which we saw a small Sail to Leeward.”

Remember the brig Victor, which Collier had left behind the previous morning because it was slowing him down? Under command of Lt. Michael Hyndman, it had caught up with the fight at last! Or rather, the fighting ships had come across it.

As the Hancock swept past the Victor, it fired its guns “and killed one of the Men at the Wheel.” The Victor wasn’t fast enough to remain in the action, but it did damage.

At this point the Rainbow was firing regularly from its bow guns, “with occasional Broadsides loaded with Round and Grape.” Suffering damage in its rigging and sails, the Hancock was moving even more slowly.

“At Half an Hour past Eight I was so near as to hail her,” reported Cdr. Collier, “and let them know, that if they expected Quarter, they must strike immediately.”

Capt. Manley didn’t answer right away. Sensing a new breeze, he had his crew “set some of the Steering Sails” on the side away from the Rainbow. Collier responded by firing another broadside. Manley finally “struck the Rebel Colours.”

TOMORROW: In the wake of the battle.