John Loring, Prisoner of War

In April 1776, fourteen- or fifteen-year-old midshipman John Loring was headed back to Boston on board the Valent, a merchant schooner that H.M.S. Scarborough had captured earlier in the year. The schooner was under the command of Edward Marsh, a Royal Navy mate working as prize-master. His mission was to bring food to the besieged British troops in Boston.

Unfortunately, by that time there were no besieged British troops in Boston. They had all left on 17 March. According to the 26 Apr 1776 Essex Journal:

The schooner...on last Friday se’nnight (not knowing the ministerial fleet and army had evacuated the town) meeting with a heavy gale of wind, she put into the Vineyard, where she was properly taken care of by some boats from thence.

In other words, provincial militiamen from Martha’s Vineyard recaptured the Valent, and took the British naval officers commanding her as their prisoners.

On 16 April, Maj. Barachiah Bassett of the Vineyard wrote to the commanding officer at Boston:

I have sent you, under the care of a Sergeant, four prisoners, taken aboard the Schooner Valent, at Martha’s Vineyard, bound for Boston, viz: Edward Marsh, Master; the Mate, and two passengers in the employment of the Ministerial Forces.

The sergeant was named Samuell Bassett, and the Massachusetts Council reimbursed him for bringing those men to their meeting-place in Watertown, at the Edmund Fowle House (shown above).

On the 20th, the Council examined the four prisoners and issued these orders:

That they be sent to Concord Jail; Edward Marsh and John Loring, two of said Prisoners, not to have the privilege of pen, ink, or paper, nor any person to be suffered to speak to them, but in the presence of the Keeper of said Jail.

The other two persons, viz: Basil Cooper and David Lang, to have the liberty of that part of the Jail yard that is enclosed, during their good behaviour, and giving their parole in writing not to depart without the limits of the same, in failure of which, they are to be committed to close prison; and that a mittimus go out accordingly.

So off the prisoners went to Concord. But it turned out young Loring still had influential friends.

TOMORROW: John Loring gets out of jail, and gets into trouble.

John Loring, Midshipman

John Loring was born in 1761, one of the younger sons of Commodore Joshua Loring and his wife Mary. He and his twin brother Thomas may well have been the first children born in the Loring-Greenough House, built in 1760 and still standing today in Jamaica Plain. Thomas died at age seven.

Commodore Loring got his naval title from service to the Crown on Lake Ontario during the French and Indian War. His oldest son, also named Joshua, was a lieutenant in the army’s 15th Regiment during that same conflict. When the next war came around, young John decided to enter the British military as well, but he chose the saltwater navy.

John Loring was commissioned as a midshipman at age fourteen in 1775. I’m not sure what month he entered the Royal Navy, but his first assignment was apparently on the man-of-war Scarborough, commanded by Capt. Andrew Barkley, and that ship wasn’t in Boston for the first seven months of the year. It was patrolling the harbor of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, disabling the defenses at Fort William and Mary and seizing ships with any sort of food. In August the Scarborough returned to Boston, bringing along royal governor John Wentworth and his family. Presumably Midshipman Loring went on after that.

In early January 1776, the Scarborough captured a schooner named Valent that was said to be heading from Salem to Winyaw, North Carolina. (Winyah Bay is actually in South Carolina, so I can’t explain that.) Barkley apparently made that schooner part of a little fleet he took down to Georgia.

There Capt. Barkley rescued another royal governor, James Wright. In March 1776, the Royal Navy and the local Patriots fought over some rice ships on the Savannah River. Barkley’s forces seized a lot of supplies, but the Georgians burned other vessels to keep them out of royal hands and felt that they had won a great victory.

Barkley sent the Valent back to Boston with a cargo of “rum, sugar, &c.” from Georgia. According to the usual procedures for capturing a ship, he had replaced its captain, who was named Cleveland, with some of his own officers. The two “prize masters” on the schooner were mate Edward Marsh, and young John Loring.

TOMORROW: Midshipman Loring returns home.