“Arrived here a Sloop from Bermuda”

As I quoted yesterday, on 4 Aug 1775 Gen. George Washington wrote to the governor of Rhode Island about what he’d heard about Bermuda from a man he called “One Harris.”

The editors of The Revolutionary Correspondence of Governor Nicholas Cooke identified Harris as “Captain Benjamin Harris,” but I don’t see what they based that on. I can’t find other mentions of Benjamin Harris in connection with Rhode Island or Bermuda.

I found clues in newspapers pointing in another direction. Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer for 15 June reported: “sloop Bittern, Harris, [cleared for] Bermuda.” And on 27 July: “Bittren, Harris, Bermuda” was among the inward entries, the only one from that island. The 31 July New-York Gazette reported that sloop as “Brittain, W. Harris.”

In addition, the 24 July New-York Gazette reported:

Friday Night last [i.e., 21 July] arrived here a Sloop from Bermuda: By Letters from thence we learn, that the Inhabitants of that Island are greatly alarmed at the present Situation of publick Affairs, being under the most dismal Apprehensions of Starving; to prevent which they have passed a Law, that no Provisions should be sent off the Island at any Rate whatsoever; and were about dispatching a Vessel to Philadelphia, to request the Honourable the Continental Congress to take their Case into their most serious Consideration.

That was reprinted in the 27 July New-York Journal and from thence in the 2 August Massachusetts Spy and the 3 August New-England Chronicle.

Thus, we have a ship’s captain named “W. Harris” arriving from Bermuda on a ship named something like the Bittern, probably bringing political news, in time to make his way to Gen. Washington’s headquarters in Cambridge with an offer.

Another clue about Harris appears in Gov. Cooke’s 8 August response to Washington saying that he didn’t know where the man was. Washington’s agent Elisha Porter was “bound as far as New-London to endeavour to meet with him,” indicating that people perceived Harris as most likely to surface in New London, Connecticut.

That took me to my favorite smuggling merchant, Nathaniel Shaw of New London. His letter book shows he employed two captains named William Harris in the early 1770s. He wrote sometimes of William Harris, sometimes William Harris, Jr., and most often simply ”Harris.”

The 10 May 1771 New-London Gazette reported among the ships cleared out of that harbor “Sloop Bittren, Harris [to] New York.” On that same say Shaw sent a letter to Peter Vandervoort in New York with a shipload of molasses overseen by “Wm. Harris Junr.” The 6 Dec 1770 Pennsylvania Journal likewise links a “W. Harris” with the “Sloop Bittern” traveling between New York, Philadelphia, and New London. Several newspapers in 1770 render Harris’s ship as the “Bittren.”

Two years later, the 23 Apr 1773 New-London Gazette shows “Capt. William Harris, late of New-London,” had died and one of the estate administrators was “William Harris”—no doubt formerly Jr.

Thus, I propose that the “One Harris” who visited Gen. Washington in August 1775 with a proposition regarding gunpowder was William Harris of New London, Connecticut, a ship captain recently returned from Bermuda on a sloop called something like the Bittern.

COMING UP: Mission to Bermuda.