All Aboard the Elizabeth

When Cdre. John Manley captured the brigantine Elizabeth, evacuating from Boston, in April 1776, he saw that he’d hooked an important—and potentially lucrative—prize.

Manley sent some of the people aboard that ship to Gloucester on the Lee under Capt. Daniel Waters. He kept the rest on the Elizabeth and escorted that ship to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  

That harbor was appropriate since it was the Elizabeth’s home port. Back in October 1775 H.M.S. George had captured that brig on its way back from Montserrat. The local merchant Richard Hart (c.1744–1820) was glad to see his ship return.

The Elizabeth was still carrying the seventeen hogsheads of rum and four hogsheads of sugar that it had picked up in the West Indies. And it was loaded with other cargo. There were household and mercantile goods that passengers were taking with them from Boston and, most valuably, a large quantity of linen and woolen cloth.

Sadly, the property on board the ship also included four enslaved people, listed in a public document a couple of months later as:

A negro man named Adam, John Rowe, Esq owner.
A negro man named Scip, Harrison Gray Esq: owner.
A negro woman named Belinder, Benjamin Austin Esq: owner.
A negro woman named Brada, a widow Kitpath, owner.

Rowe, Gray, and Austin were all rich Boston merchants, but they were in different political situations. Gray, also royal treasurer of Massachusetts, had left with the fleet. Austin was on the Patriot side. And Rowe was trying to find his usual place in the middle, having stayed in Boston through the siege but then stayed in town after the siege as well. (I can’t identify the widow.)

The Elizabeth was also carrying “a Serjeant & twelve privates of the 4th or Kings own Regiment,” who were now prisoners of war. At least some of those soldiers had wives and children with them.

In all, there were forty-six civilians on board the Elizabeth, including the ship’s captain, Peter Ramsey, and the crew. The most prominent of the Loyalist passengers were:

• William Jackson, brazier and importer, said by one newspaper to be the new owner of the Elizabeth. Yes, this story is another chapter in the Saga of the Brazen Head!
• Edward Keighley and Richard Newton, who appear to have been merchants.
• Caleb Wheaton, a trader and Customs officer in Machias, Maine, and three of his sons.
• Crean Brush of Westminster, New York, now Vermont.

And Brush had made himself notorious inside besieged Boston.

TOMORROW: Where those woolens came from.