“His Majesty’s Ship under my Command ran on the Rocks”

On 11 Dec 1774, Capt. William Maltby of H.M.S. Glasgow wrote from off Cohasset to his commander, Adm. Samuel Graves, with some bad news:

His Majesty’s Ship under my Command ran on the Rocks at this Place Yesterday Morning at 5 O’Clock.

She is now at an Anchor in a very narrow Place environ’d with Rocks and about half her Length from some of them, her Rudder is lost and she has received very considerable damage, if timely Assistance arrives, I hope She will be saved, She now makes as much Water as all the Pumps can free, I am taking every Method for her Preservation, but want Craft for Her Guns &ca.

as there is a little more Water than She draws at Low Water, but it would be very dangerous to throw her Guns Overboard here as She would strike on them at Low Water; for other particulars I refer You to the Bearer who seems to be a very communicative and civil Person.

The man Maltby entrusted with that message was Ebenezer Dickinson. He evidently did his job since the next afternoon Maltby could file this report:

Sir, I have your favor by Mr Dickinson, Lieutenant [Alexander] Greme is arrived in the Sloop; Lieutenant [Joseph] Nunn in the Halifax; Mr [William] Lechmere by Land; You may be assured I shall lose no time or Opportunity in doing everything in my power for the Preservation of the Ship,

an able Carpenter with two or three of that Profession would be of great Service in constructing a Rudder of this Plan.

I purpose to get the Ship in safety to Night if possible, until I can get. her in a Condition to come to Boston; If the 40 Men are completed to a 100. it will vastly contribute to forward the Ship as her Men are much fatigued already; I must refer You to Lt Lechmere for particulars of which he has heard and seen

In a postscript the captain added: “the reason I mention the Men after what You have said in your Letter, the Officers are of Opinion that the King’s Men are more to be depended on than Others.”

Graves’s letter doesn’t appear to have survived, but I’m guessing Maltby wanted men already in the Royal Navy to help with the salvage effort, not trusting locals, even if they were experienced sailors. In late December, there was already an open split between rural Massachusetts and the Crown.

Graves was especially displeased about this accident since H.M.S. Glasgow had just been refurbished in Halifax. It was, he wrote, “a clean Ship, compleatly stored and victualled.” And it had nearly reached Boston. As Capt. John Barker of the army wrote in his diary, the Glasgow ran aground “within two or three Leagues of the Light House.” But that proximity also meant the navy was able to hurry resources out to Maltby. The frigate was refloated, moved into Boston, and slowly repaired by early March.

At the time of the accident, the Admiralty office had sent orders for Capt. Maltby to report to Spithead because he had “served three years successively.” He was in line for a new command. However, the grounding spelled the end of Capt. Maltby’s naval career.

On 10 Jan 1775 the merchant John Rowe wrote in his diary:

Capt. Maltby of the Glasgow Man of Warr was try’d this day by a Court Martial on board the Somerset & suspended.

The Glasgow’s gunner was court-martialed at the same time. Presumably Maltby sailed home to Britain shortly afterward, but I can’t trace him.

Adm. Graves reassigned the Glasgow to Capt. Tyringham Howe. During the Battle of Bunker Hill, the frigate fired shot across Charlestown Neck to discourage more provincials from going onto the peninsula.

Meanwhile, Lt. William Finnie, whom Maltby had wounded in a duel on Noddle’s Island back in 1773, was serving with the Marines’ 61st Company, also listed as grenadiers. He was among the many Marine officers killed in the Bunker Hill battle.

(The map shown above, viewable at Boston Rare Maps, was published in 1774. It includes at the bottom right “Konohasset Harbour” and the “Konohasset rocks.”)

A Duel on Noddle’s Island

On 9 Oct 1773, 250 years ago today, two British military officers fought a duel on an island in Boston harbor.

The Boston Evening-Post published two days later reported:

Last Saturday towards Evening, a Duel was fought on Noddle’s Island, with Pistols, between Captain Maltby of the Glasgow Man of War, & Mr. Finnie, late Lieutenant of Marines on board the same Ship, when the latter received a Ball thro’ his Neck, but it is thought will not prove mortal.

The merchant John Rowe recorded this duel in his diary, saying: “Lieut. Finney is wounded in the Breast & t’is thought mortally,” but the newspaper had better information.

I haven’t found a clue about why those two officers quarreled. The Boston Post-Boy ran the same paragraph about their duel and immediately added:

This Morning the Glasgow Man of War, Capt. Maltby, sailed for South-Carolina.

Presumably Lt. Finnie was left behind to recover, and everyone was happier. The Glasgow arrived in Charleston harbor on 22 November.

Lt. William Finnie had joined the Marines on 30 Sept 1759, according to the 1773 Army List. I’ve found nothing else definite about him.

William Maltby (c.1725–1793) had joined the Royal Navy by 1751 and passed the lieutenant’s exam in 1758. Over five years he had commanded the Nautilus, Favourite, and Aquilon before being assigned the Glasgow at the end of 1771.

Capt. Maltby’s most prominent act in those years was evacuating the small British force at Port Egmont when the Spanish Navy showed up in force in June 1770. The British eventually regained that first perch on the Falkland Islands.

Capt. Maltby later brought the Glasgow back to New England in 1774, but ran into trouble again. Before dawn on 10 December, the frigate ran aground near Cohasset.

TOMORROW: On the rocks.

“Safely delivered of three Male Children”?

On 4 Dec 1752, Thomas Bourne and Susannah Beal married in Hingham’s second parish meetinghouse. In 1765 that community was designated as a district, and ten years later it became the independent town of Cohasset.

Susannah was born in February 1737, making her fifteen years old when she married. Calculating back from Thomas’s reported age at death, he was twenty-two.

Thomas and Susannah Bourne did not have their first child within seven months of their wedding. In fact, they didn’t have their first child within seven years. This was apparently a great disappointment.

On 5 Nov 1764, the Boston Evening-Post ran this article:

We hear from the second Parish in Hingham, that one Mrs. Bourne of that Place (a Person peculiarly fond of Children) was on Monday Evening [i.e., 29 October], to the great Joy of herself and Friends, safely delivered of three Male Children, after having lived upwards of Eleven Years in the connubial State without Offspring with one of the kindest Husbands, and enjoying with an unblemished Reputation every other Species of Earthly Felicity.

This is where the story turns sad. The Cohasset vital records say that all three of the Bournes’ babies died on Tuesday, 30 October. A local history says they were baptized that day and died “soon” after.

Either way, by the time the announcement of the birth of triplets appeared in Boston, those babies were dead. They had no recorded names.

This is where the story turns happy again. Exactly three years after the Evening-Post article, on 5 Nov 1767, Thomas and Susannah Bourne had a son they named Thomas, Jr. He grew up as an only child.

In 1774 and the early years of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Bourne, Sr., served on Cohasset’s governing committees. He turned out with the local militia to guard Hull beach in the winter of 1775–76. He died in 1796 at the age of sixty-six.

Thomas, Jr., grew up and married Jane Doane in 1786, when they were both still in their teens. Her uncle, the Rev. John Brown, performed the ceremony, as he had done for Thomas’s parents.

Jane died giving birth on 9 June 1787. Thomas, Jr., named their baby after her mother.

In April 1790, Thomas Bourne, Jr., married twenty-year-old Betty or Betsy Tower. That September, she gave birth to twin boys who died as infants—the family history seemed to be repeating. The following year, they had a daughter, Priscilla, who died at fourteen months. Then, however, Thomas and Betsy Bourne had a series of daughters and sons:

• Eliza, 1793.
• a second Priscilla, 1797.
• Mary, 1799.
• a new Thomas, Jr., 1803.
• Elias, 1807.
• Marshal, 1811.

The Doane genealogy says this Thomas Bourne became a physician; the local history says he was a farmer like his father. Public records show he served Cohasset as a church deacon, a coroner, a selectman, and eventually a representative in the Massachusetts General Court.

Susanna Bourne, widow of the older Thomas, died in 1819. She was thought to be ninety, but she was really eighty-two. Betsy Bourne, widow of the younger Thomas, died in 1846 at the age of seventy-six.

(The photo above shows Cohasset’s First Parish Meeting House, its oldest part built in 1747.)

“Jury went out after noon and did not agree all night”

On 20 Apr 1770, Benjamin Lynde, acting chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court, wrote in his diary:

Fair. Richardson and Wilmot’s tryal, begun morn. and Jury went out after noon and did not agree all night.

As recounted yesterday, Lynde indeed presided over the trial of former Customs employees Ebenezer Richardson and George Wilmot for murder.

The jury actually started deliberating about 11:00 P.M. Per the rules of the time, they were shut into a room of the courthouse and not given any food or drink or allowed to sleep. That was to encourage them to reach a verdict. (And of course it saved the government money.)

Those jurors had been drawn from Suffolk County outside of Boston, on the assumption that Bostonians might be biased. We have their names, and I wish I knew which towns they came from in order to nail down their identifications. I’m going to assume they’re the most prominent men of those names from Suffolk County outside Boston since a man had to be at a certain economic level to be on the jury list. (And because it’s easier to search where the light is best.)

The foreman was Jonathan Deming. A man of that name lived in the part of Needham that eventually became Wellesley. He was born in Boston in 1723, possibly son of a sea captain from Wethersfield, Connecticut, who later retired to the country. From his twenties Deming filled various town offices in Needham. In November 1768, Boston ministers published his intention to marry Elizabeth Clark, but that doesn’t appear to have worked out since in November of 1770 Deming went to Charlestown and married Esther Edes. He was in his late forties, but she was sixteen years younger, and they had three children over the next few years. Jonathan died in 1791 and Esther in 1792.

Apparently Deming and all the other jurors quickly agreed that Wilmot was innocent of the charge of murder. Most also agreed that Richardson was guilty. There were two holdouts from a quick unanimous verdict, Deming later testified:

Mr. Lothrop was satisfied as to Fact, but not Law. Mr. Clap not so fully satisfied as to Law.

Thomas Lothrop was from Hingham, the portion that became Cohasset in 1770. He had been born in 1738. After his father died and his mother remarried, he went to live with a rich uncle who left him an estate. Lothrop served in the French and Indian War, becoming a lieutenant, and in town government his neighbors chose him to be clerk, moderator, selectman, and eventually representative to the Massachusetts General Court. He married Ruth Nichols in 1760; they moved into a big house “near the cold spring” and raised twelve children.

Notably, as Massachusetts’s conflict with Britain heated up, Lothrop was active on Cohasset’s committee of correspondence and committee of inspection. He was also a militia officer, rising to lieutenant colonel in the 2nd Suffolk regiment during the war. Lothrop lived until 1813.

Seth Clap was born in Dedham in 1722, two years before part of that old town broke off to become Walpole, where he lived the rest of his life. Clap married Mary Bullard in 1745 and they had ten children before she died. In February 1769 Clap married Elizabeth Weatherbee, and they got right to having more children, the first arriving in November. Ultimately they had six. Clap served Walpole in various ways: as a schoolteacher as a young man, as a town clerk in his fifties, and in 1758 by “making a place in the meeting-house to secure the town stock of ammunition.” He died in 1788.

There’s no sign that Lothrop or Clap supported the royal government in 1770. In other words, their reluctance to convict Ebenezer Richardson wasn’t due to their politics. They were sincerely concerned about whether he should be convicted of murder for shooting at a crowd attacking his house. Lothrop later said, “I did not fall in so soon as some, for I thought the time might be as well spent in Argument.” Clap agreed, “At first going out I was not so clear as afterwards.”

In the wee hours of 21 April, 250 years ago today, Deming and the rest of the jury worked at winning over those two men. Clap apparently noted that under British common law a man was not guilty of murder if he killed someone breaking into his house. But that was only at night, other jurors replied. Richardson had shot young Christopher Seider “in the Day,” and that won Clap over. Deming assured him that “the Court knew the Law.”

What finally moved Lothrop was his fellow jurors’ belief that “if the verdict was not agreeable to Law the Court would not receive it.” The judges had already made clear they believed Richardson did not commit murder. Thus, a man could vote to convict him of a capital crime and not feel that he was necessarily sending the man to his death.

After dawn, the twelve jurors finally agreed on a verdict. About half an hour later Deming announced their decision in the courtroom. Wilmot was free to go, but everyone really cared about the other defendant. As Judge Lynde wrote in his diary:

Fair; Jury agreed abo. 9; Richardson guilty.

Judge Peter Oliver later wrote of the Whig crowd: “the Courtroom resounded with Expressions of Pleasure; ’till, even one of the Faction, who had some of the Feelings of Humanity not quite erased, cried out, ‘for Shame, for Shame Gentlemen!’—This hushed the clamorous Joy.”

The judges then adjourned court until 29 May, when one of the first orders of business would be sentencing Ebenezer Richardson.

Mr. Shaw and Mr. Dumaresq

While Nathaniel Shaw, Jr., of New London, Connecticut, was speculating on the likelihood of war by buying gunpowder in the Caribbean in early 1775, as discussed here, he was still broadening his commercial network.

In particular, he made a new contact in Boston, a merchant of Huguenot descent named Philip Dumaresq (1737-1801). On 15 Mar 1775, Shaw wrote to Dumaresq:

A few days agoe our Mutual Friend Thomas Mumford shew me a Letter from you recomending to send a Vessell to Cohassett Rather then Salem with West India Goods for the Boston Markett.

I have by the bearer James Angell in the Schooner Thames Shipt a Cargo of Brown Sugars Consisting of Sixty seven hogsheads and two teirces, which Sell for my Accot. They Just now came in from Hispaniola, and I believe are of a good quality, we have not made any report at our Custom House and must leave the whole matter relative to the entry with you and paying the Duties, and would have you manage the matter so as to pay as little as possible for on that strong my buissiness with you with turn, and if I find you can do better or as well as any other Port, its very probably I shall send you Severall Cargoes during this Summer. . . .

Mr. Ferrebault who is on board the Schooner as a French Capt. has about one thousand wt. of Coffee which you will be so kind as to assist in Landing &c.

The next day Shaw sent a copy of that letter with another, talking about the possibility of future business. He concluded, “Let me hear from you the return of the post, with the price Current, Politiks &c.”

Capt. Angell returned on 9 April. Dumaresq wrote back that same day, indicating he had been too sick to go out for a while. Shaw replied on the 12th with a nudge to sell the sugar soon. “I shall want to pay about Six hundred pounds L[awful] Money ye. 1st. of next month and hope you’l be in Cash by that Time.”

Then the war broke out. But Shaw continued to manage this deal as if there wasn’t a battle front between him and his partner. On 18 September, Shaw told his contacts in Philadelphia: “I have Two Thousand pounds worth of Sugar their in Boston in Philip Dumaresque hands and I make no Doubt but I shall be able to git the Money Unlless Dumarisq Should prove Dishonest.”

Shaw’s outreach to Dumaresq is striking because Dumaresq was a known Loyalist. In May 1774 he signed the Boston merchants’ addresses to outgoing Gov. Thomas Hutchinson and incoming Gov. Thomas Gage. In June he signed the Loyalists’ protest against the Boston town meeting.

The Whigs responded with a broadside listing all of the “Addressers” and belittling them. That sheet called Dumaresq a “Factor,” or wholesaler, rather than a merchant. More important, the Patriots encouraged people to stop doing business with those men. John W. Tyler’s Smugglers and Patriots quotes Henry Bromfield at the end of October 1774: “The Country Traders carry abot. with them a printed List of the Names of the Addressers to Gov’r Hut’n & dare not buy a single piece of Goods of any of them.”

Nathaniel Shaw was a fervent Patriot. He was especially opposed to the Crown’s customs duties, and back in 1769 he’d even instigated a riot in Newport against the Customs service. From 1776 through the end of the war he would work as the naval agent in New London for both the state of Connecticut and the Continental Congress.

But Shaw evidently didn’t think a little thing like politics should get in the way of asking Philip Dumaresq to land his Haitian sugar at Cohasset and get him the best price for it.