The Case of the Stolen Fishing Boat

Ashley Bowen was a sailrigger in Marblehead who kept a diary for many years, published in print and online by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

On 29 February 1776, Bowen recorded a waterfront crime:

This night some seamen took Eleazer Ingalls’s boat and went to the Nautilus.

H.M.S. Nautilus was a Royal Navy sloop, rated for sixteen guns, under the command of Cdr. John Collins. It patrolled outside Marblehead harbor, hunting for the Continental schooners and trading ships. Or, as Bowen wrote on 1 March:

The Nautilus layeth a mile below our Fort. Much ice about her. Ingalls’s boat astern.

The next day the warship sailed out of sight “and carried Ingalls’s boat with her.”

A month later, Bowen started to record details about the Loyalists captured on the Elizabeth:

5 [April:] … Admiral John Manley arrived at Beverly [other sources say Gloucester] with 13 of the King’s troops on board, prisoners whom he had taken out of a brig he took bound from Boston for Halifax and carried in to Portsmouth, laden mostly with English dry goods, one [William] Jackson merchant. . . .

9 [April:] … I find Captain Samuel Tucker hath brought the inhabitants that was taken by Manley from Cape Ann and landed them here, and they are housed at Mr. William Rogers’s house at Nick Cove. . . .

10 [April:] Sam Tucker went out and returned to Beverly as his cruise is up. Passed a ship for Boston. The 3 men are taken up that stole Eleazer Ingalls’s boat and carried her to the ship.

The authorities had cracked the case of the missing boat! On 17 April Joseph Orne reported to the Massachusetts Council on behalf of the Marblehead committee of safety:

The Committe of Correspondence upon a ReExamination of the Prisoners, (taken by Capn Manly on board the Brig Sally [sic] bound to Hallifax) have made a Discovery of Joseph Wheaton & his Brother Caleb Wheatons Stealing & Carrg away a Fishing Boat in the night of the 28th Feby last, from Eleazer Ingalls of this Town, & then made their Escape to one of the Men of Warr Station’d here—

An Acct of the Boats amount with stores &c, Will be forwarded by the Owner who also Attends to Wait your Honours Determination respecting what Steps He shall pursue in the Recovery of his Intrest Again—

We are with the Greatest Respect
In behalf of the Committee
Joshua Orne Chairm.

P S Phineas Jones one of the Prisoners & who was also concerned in the above Theft Eloped the 10th Inst—notwithstandg he was under the Care of the Guards

Before reading these sources, I pictured Caleb Wheaton, Sr., going into Boston just before the war began or shortly afterward, and his wife and family joining him there (perhaps reluctantly for some) in the spring or summer of 1775.

The way Orne wrote about this theft suggests a different scenario: Phineas Jones, Joseph Wheaton, and Caleb Wheaton, Jr., stole Ingalls’s boat in order to get to H.M.S. Nautilus and thus into Boston. If so, those Wheaton brothers were inside the besieged town for only a couple of weeks before it was time to leave.

TOMORROW: A summons to Watertown.

Eight Runaway Men in a Boat from Boston

Capt. Richard Dodge was a Continental Army officer stationed in Chelsea during the second half of 1775. Like his regimental commander, Lt. Col. Loammi Baldwin, he sent periodic reports to Gen. George Washington’s headquarters about what he saw in Boston harbor.

On 16 December, Dodge reported some exciting news: “Last Eveing Eight men Runaway in a bote from Boston to our guard at the farry.”

Following recently enacted protocol, Dodge sent those men to a local health committee who “Clensed them by Smooking them” against the smallpox.

Six (or seven, according to the 25 December Boston Gazette) of those eight men were “masters of Vassels” captured by the Royal Navy and brought into Boston over the preceding months.

One, Capt. James Warden, had sailed for the Philadelphia merchant Thomas Mifflin and was anxious to renew their acquaintance now that Mifflin was the army’s quartermaster general. Naval Documents of the American Revolution reports that Warden was commanding the schooner Tryal on 22 August when it surrendered to H.M.S. Nautilus under Capt. John Collins.

The Essex Journal of Newburyport identified another of those ship’s captains as named Nowell, possibly Silas Nowell (who wouldn’t have been held that long). He came out with a copy of the Boston News-Letter, the only newspaper still being published in the town, and the news that Gen. John Burgoyne had sailed for England.

On 17 December, 250 years ago today, Dodge wrote out a précis of what those men told him about life inside Boston. The prices for food were high. One escapee reported that “he Dined with a man that Dined with Lord parsey a feu Day ago upon horse beaff.”

Firewood was even scarcer with winter coming on. Gen. William Howe had ordered the Old North Meeting-House and empty houses torn down for fuel. We also know Howe told London that he might have to order wharves torn up next.

Citing Capt. Nowell, the newspapers added that “all the drugs and medicines in the town have been seized for the use of the army.”

TOMORROW: Tales of the searcher.

“The Only Method to secure peace in the Town”?

At the end of his 23 Apr 1775 letter to George Rogers, and in a second, undated letter preserved in the same archive, Lt. John Bourmaster, R.N., turned from reporting stories he’d heard from army officers back to a topic he was experiencing first-hand: what it was like inside besieged Boston.

Bourmaster wrote:

The number of the Country People who fired on our Troops might be about 5 Thousand ranged along from Concord to Charlstown but not less than 20 Thousand were that day under Arms and on the March to join the Others. their loss we find to be nearly on a footing with our own

This count of militiamen who had turned out was reasonably accurate. However, the Crown had lost about three times as many men killed, wounded, or missing as the provincials.

three Days have now pass’d without communication with the Country; three more will reduce this Town to a most unpleasent situation; for there dependence for provision was from day to day on supply from the Country that ceasing you may conceive the consequences.

preparations are now making on both sides the Neck for attacking and defending the Hampshire and Connecticut Militia have join’d so that Rebel Army are now numerous. Collins is well and stationed between Charls Town and the end of this Town to assist in the defence. The General [Thomas Gage] and Earl Percy shall have the perusal of your Letter.

John Collins and Bourmaster had both been lieutenants on HMS Valiant years earlier. Collins had become commander of HMS Nautilus, which arrived in Boston harbor in early April.

Under the date of 20 April, Adm. Samuel Graves wrote in his Narrative:

The Captain of the Nautilus off the Magazine point, was directed to arm a flat bottomed Boat, and with the assistance of Boats from other Ships to take care that Guard should be rowed every night as high up the [Charles] River as possible.

In his later letter, Bourmaster discussed Gage’s quandary of how to deal with Boston’s civilian population. Was it safer to let them leave or to keep them in town to forestall a provincial attack, knowing most were hostile to the occupying army and had militia training?

Propositions have been made on the part of the General to the Select Men for disarming the Inhabitants but this I find they are unwilling to comply with; so that if we begin at the Lines we shall have it on both sides of our Ears they being at least 3000 strong in Town, with Arms in their possession; a pretty pass we are come to, Ah poor Old England how my heart feels for her present dishonourable situation—

Ultimately Gage and the selectmen reached a deal: once Bostonians had stored their firearms in Faneuil Hall, they could leave. Later Gage curtailed the departures, prompting complaints. Later still, Gen. George Washington grew suspicious of people leaving the town, worrying they were meant to spread smallpox or collect information.

Bourmaster shared his own idea for how to deal with this set of zealous civilians:

The following I have proposed as the Only Method to secure peace in the Town there are Churches and meetings sufficient to contain all those before mentiond, they with the Select Men, and Preachers, should be put in their at daylight in the Morning, their doors well secured, a strong guard round each, with Bagonets fixt; and then would I begine the Attack on Roxbury and Open a way again for us besieged Britons, but this is only a little presumption in an Old Valiant who becaus he has seen great things don expects to see such days again.

That plan was never implemented, of course.

Again, the surviving text of Bourmaster’s letters, as copied for the Marquess of Rockingham, was published in the William & Mary Quarterly in 1953.

“A Stampman hanging on a Tree”

This is the 250th anniversary of Boston’s first public demonstration against the Stamp Act, which set off a wave of similar protests in the other ports of British North America.

One of the best sources on that event is a letter from Boston merchant John Avery (1739-1806) to his brother-in-law John Collins (1717-1795) of Newport, Rhode Island. A copy of that letter survived and was published in the papers of the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles of Newport, suggesting that Rhode Islanders passed it around as news.

Boston Aug. 19, 1765.

Brother,

The last Week A[ndrew]. O[liver]. Stamp man was seasonably taken out of this troublesome World by an ignominious Death, he was found early in the Morning of the 14th. Instant hanging on the Trees South End with this Inscription on his Breast in Capital letters, Viz.

Fair Freedoms glorious Cause I meanly Quitted,
Betrayed my Country for the Sake of Pelf,
But ah! at length the Devil hath me outwitted,
Instead of stamping others have hanged my Self.

Upon his right Arm A O at large; on his left these lines, viz.

What greater Joy did ever New England see
Than a Stampman hanging on a Tree

Behind him was a Boot [a reference to Earl Bute] with a Devil peeping his Head out; and there they Hung to the View of the Joyous Multitude, the whole Day or to the Ridicule of all Collours proclaiming Liberty Property & No Stamp, down with all Placemen &c. you would have laughed to have seen two or three hundred little Boys with a Flagg marching in Procession on which was King, Pitt & Liberty for ever, it ought to have been Pitt, Wilks & Liberty. The Governor [Francis Bernard] & Council sent several Times in order to have it cut down by the Common Hangman, alias the Sheriff [Stephen Greenleaf]. But he could get no Body that dar’d to attempt it.

Avery did not state that he was a leading member of the Loyall Nine, the small group of young businessmen who organized that demonstration.

The 19 August Boston Gazette added this detail:

The Diversion it occasioned among a Multitude of Spectators, who continually assembled the whole Day, is surprising; not a Peasant was suffered to pass down to the Market, let him have what he would for Sale, ’till he had stop’d and got his Articles stamp’d by the Effigy.

That action drove home the message that the Stamp Act affected every transaction (even though it didn’t) and every American. Benjamin Edes, co-publisher of the Boston Gazette, was another member of the Loyall Nine.

TOMORROW: The action after nightfall.

[The picture above, engraved by Paul Revere at the end of 1765, actually shows a later effigy-hanging at Liberty Tree. But it’s the only visual depiction of this spectacle by someone who probably saw it himself.]

Benjamin Franklin Loses a Friend

At a meeting of writers last night, one person shared a story about Benjamin Franklin learning to swim. That reminded me of this anecdote from the great man’s Autobiography, in which a 1724 episode which must have been riotously funny to a bunch of rowdy teenaged apprentices becomes a Serious Lesson for Us All. But then that’s the way the Autobiography works.

There was another bookish lad in the town [Boston], John Collins by name, with whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond we were of argument, and very desirous of confuting one another, which disputatious turn, by the way, is apt to become a very bad habit, making people often extremely disagreeable in company by the contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice. . . .

I had caught it by reading my father’s books of dispute about religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinborough.

Collins helped Franklin run away from his older brother and master. Franklin established himself as a journeyman in Philadelphia, and sent such happy reports home that Collins, by then “a clerk in the post-office,” decided to join him. But their relationship wasn’t the same.

While I liv’d in Boston most of my hours of leisure for conversation were spent with him, and he continu’d a sober as well as an industrious lad; was much respected for his learning by several of the clergy and other gentlemen, and seemed to promise making a good figure in life. But, during my absence, he had acquir’d a habit of sotting with brandy; and I found by his own account, and what I heard from others, that he had been drunk every day since his arrival at New York, and behav’d very oddly.

He had gam’d, too, and lost his money, so that I was oblig’d to discharge his lodgings, and defray his expenses to and at Philadelphia, which prov’d extremely inconvenient to me. . . .

We proceeded to Philadelphia. Collins wished to be employ’d in some counting-house, but, whether they discover’d his dramming by his breath, or by his behaviour, tho’ he had some recommendations, he met with no success in any application, and continu'd lodging and boarding at the same house with me, and at my expense. . . .

His drinking continu’d, about which we sometimes quarrell’d; for, when a little intoxicated, he was very fractious. Once, in a boat on the Delaware with some other young men, he refused to row in his turn. “I will be row’d home,” says he.

“We will not row you,” says I.

“You must, or stay all night on the water,” says he, “just as you please.”

The others said, “Let us row; what signifies it?”

But, my mind being soured with his other conduct, I continu’d to refuse. So he swore he would make me row, or throw me overboard; and coming along, stepping on the thwarts, toward me, when he came up and struck at me, I clapped my hand under his crutch [i.e., crotch], and, rising, pitched him head-foremost into the river.

I knew he was a good swimmer, and so was under little concern about him; but before he could get round to lay hold of the boat, we had with a few strokes pull’d her out of his reach; and ever when he drew near the boat, we ask’d if he would row, striking a few strokes to slide her away from him. He was ready to die with vexation, and obstinately would not promise to row.

However, seeing him at last beginning to tire, we lifted him in and brought him home dripping wet in the evening.

We hardly exchang’d a civil word afterwards, and a West India captain, who had a commission to procure a tutor for the sons of a gentleman at Barbadoes, happening to meet with him, agreed to carry him thither. He left me then, promising to remit me the first money he should receive in order to discharge the debt; but I never heard of him after.

When we consider the older Benjamin Franklin and his lessons, it’s often wise to consider what the younger Benjamin Franklin would have thought of them. Probably something like this.