“The Spies of 1775” in Acton, 31 Mar.

On Monday, 31 March, I’m returning to Acton to speak in the town’s series of Sestercentennial lectures.

My topic this time is “Spies and Military Intelligence,” though I’m titling it “The Spies of 1775” for the assonance.

In my previous visit last spring I talked about the story of The Road to Concord: the Patriots’ effort to build an artillery force and Gen. Thomas Gage’s desire to thwart them.

That talk covered the Boston militia men who smuggled cannon away from the redcoats, the British officers scouting the countryside, and the still unidentified spy sending Gage messages from Concord in bad French.

I don’t want to go over the same ground again, so for this talk I’m collecting the stories of other intelligence sources active from late 1774 to early 1776. One I’ve mentioned only once on this blog is John Skey Eustace, represented above by his coat of arms.

Eustace arrived at Gen. George Washington’s Cambridge headquarters in December 1775, one of several Virginians whom Capt. John Manley had captured on a British ship. He’d been sent north to Boston by his mentor: Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia.

Within weeks Eustace was giving Gen. Washington useful tips about Dunmore’s agent Dr. John Connolly. Washington had already collected information on Connolly’s plan to recruit a Loyalist regiment, and at his warning Patriot authorities in Maryland had locked the man up. On 25 December, Washington warned John Hancock there was more to find:

I have received undoubted Information—that the genuine instructions given to Conolly, have not reached your hands—that they Are very artfully Concealed in the tree of his Saddle & coverd with Canvas So nicely, that they are Scarcely discernable—that those which were found upon him are intended to deceive—if he was caught—you will Certainly have his Saddle taken to pieces in order to discover this deep Laid plot.

Washington repeated that intelligence at the end of January 1776:

You may rely that Conolly had Instructions concealed in his Saddle—Mr Eustice who was one of Ld Dunmores family, & Another Gentleman who wishes his Name not to be mentioned, saw them cased in Tin, put in the Tree & covered over—he probably has exchanged his Saddle, or withdrew the papers when It was mended as you Conjecture—those that have been discovered are sufficiently bad, but I doubt not of the Others being worse & containing more diabolical & extensive plans

That information must have been deemed reliable because on 13 June Richard Henry Lee wrote to Washington:

I am informed that a certain Mr Eustace, now in New York, but some time ago with Lord Dunmore, is acquainted with a practise that prevailed of taking letters out of the Post Office in Virginia and carrying them to Dunmore for his perusal and than returning them to the Office again. As it is of the greatest consequence that this nefarious practise be stopt immediately, I shall be exceedingly obliged to you Sir for getting Mr Eustace to give in writing all that he knows about this business, and inclose the same to me at Williamsburg. I wish to know particularly, what Post Offices the letters were taken from, by whom, and who carried them to Lord Dunmore.

What’s striking about John Skey Eustace eagerly sharing what he knew about Lord Dunmore’s plots is that he was only fifteen years old.

And he’s just one of the people I’ll cover in this talk.

Monday, 31 March, 7 to 8:30 P.M.
The Spies of 1775
Acton Town Hall, Room 204

This event is free to all. It will be livestreamed on ActonTV.org and recorded for posting on the Acton 250 YouTube channel.

“Utmost Endeavors to have all such Articles convey’d from this Place”

Here’s merchant John Rowe’s diary entry for Sunday, 10 Mar 1776:

Capn. Dawson is Returnd with Two Vessells—he has had a severe Brush with four Privateers.

George Dawson commanded H.M.S. Hope, a schooner with four guns and thirty crewmen. On 30 January he had nearly caught or killed the first Continental naval hero, John Manley, as described here.

Rowe seems to sympathize with Dawson rather than the Patriots on the two ships he had captured, or the four “Privateers” that had tried to capture him. He went on:

I staid at home all Day—

A Proclamation came Out from Genl. How this day a very severe one, on Some People

In writing he stayed home, Rowe meant he didn’t go to church, though he did have the Rev. Samuel Parker over that evening.

That proclamation from Gen. William Howe appears here at the Journal of the American Revolution:

As Linnen and Woolen Goods are Articles much wanted by the Rebels, and would aid and assist them in their Rebellion, the Commander in Chief expects that all good Subjects will use their utmost Endeavors to have all such Articles convey’d from this Place:

Any who have not Opportunity to convey their Goods under their own Care, may deliver them on Board the Minerva at Hubbard’s Wharf, to Crean Brush, Esq; marked with their Names, who will give a Certificate of the Delivery, and will oblige himself to return them to the Owners, all unavoidable Accidents excepted.

If after this Notice any Person secretes or keeps in his Possession such Articles, he will be treated as a Favourer of Rebels.

So now we know what happened to the Minerva, the ship that Rowe had noted the army had impressed the day before.

When Rowe called Howe’s proclamation “very severe…on Some People,” he was downplaying how that could be severe on him. As a merchant, he owned a lot of cloth. But perhaps he thought he could get away with keeping most of it.

The general’s order not to leave any cloth in Boston sheds light on the rest of Rowe’s diary entry for 10 March:

John Inman Went on board this day—with his Wife he has in his Possession three Watches of mine & Sundry Pieces of Checks which was to be made into Shirts—

Jos Goldthwait Mrs. Winslow went on board this day—he has Carried off Capn. Linzees horse witho. Paying for him

John Linzee was a captain in the Royal Navy who had married Rowe’s niece and remained a good friend. Goldthwait wasn’t just a horse thief; he was commissary for the king’s troops, and undoubtedly wanted to preserve that animal from the rebels as well.

TOMORROW: A brush with Brush.

Back in Halifax Harbor

As described yesterday, on 8 July 1777, after a chase and running battle lasting almost forty hours, H.M.S. Rainbow captured the Hancock, the Continental Navy’s leading frigate.

The Hancock was on its maiden voyage, less than two months out of Boston. It was commanded by Capt. John Manley, the first naval hero of the U.S. of A. There were more than two hundred American sailors on board.

Also captured on that ship was the surgeon, Dr. Samuel Curtis of Marlborough. (Following his story is how I embarked on this voyage.)

The Rainbow’s victory did set some people free: the commander of the captured British privateer Fox and about forty of his crew, being held on the Hancock while a Hancock lieutenant and crew took over the Fox.

Cdr. Sir George Collier, master of the Rainbow, did the same with his new capture. He sent Lt. Thomas Haynes and a prize crew to take control of the American ship.

Once Collier realized there were almost as many American crewmen present as British, he decided both ships should head for Halifax to unload their prisoners before those men got any ideas about retaking their vessel.

“I had the great Satisfaction on my Arrival,” Collier then wrote from that port, “to find the Flora and the Fox both here; she had retaken the latter shortly after I passed her.” Capt. John Brisbane’s Flora had forced the surrender of the American prize crew on the Fox and brought it into the same harbor.

Thus, on 6 July Collier had spotted four vessels in American hands, and two days later two of those ships were under British control and a third destroyed. Only the U.S.S. Boston had escaped. The Royal Navy had suffered minimal casualties.

In addition, the American Tartar, the largest of the privateers to leave Boston at the same time as the Hancock, was captured by H.M.S. Bienfaisant on 28 August with about 130 more men.

Though the spring 1777 cruise had started out well for the Americans, with several captures, it ended in failure. The losses were especially hard on New England since so many of the men on those ships came from the region.

U.S.S. Hancock and H.M.S. Rainbow

We now return to the sea battle between Capt. John Manley of the Continental Navy’s Hancock and Cdr. Sir George Collier of the Royal Navy’s Rainbow.

Manley was concerned about getting away from the more heavily armed British warship, especially after the other vessels in his fleet, the Fox and the Boston, sailed off in different directions. Before then, he had had a 3:2 advantage over the British, but that was gone.

Collier aimed to capture the Hancock, which one of his officers recognized as a new American vessel commanded by a top American captain, so he kept up the chase.

Capt. Manley ordered his crew to shift his water supply forward, hoping to make the Hancock sail faster. But this was a miscalculation. While the American frigate had “appeared to outsail the Rainbow,” in Collier’s estimation, it was now “out of Trim.”

As night fell on 7 July 1777, the Hancock was still ahead of the Rainbow, but by a shorter distance. Collier and his crew kept his enemy in sight “by Means of a Night-Glass.” This was a telescope with large lenses. In The Panorama of Science and Art (1828), James Smith explained:

The telescope called a night glass is nothing more than the common astronomical telescope with tubes, and made of a short length, with a small magnifying power. Its length is usually about two feet, and it is generally made to magnify from six to ten times. It is much used by navigators at night, for the purposes of discovering objects that are not very distant, but which cannot otherwise be seen for want of sufficient light, such as vessels, coast, rocks etc. From the smallness of its magnifying power, and the obscurity of the objects upon which it is employed, it admits of large glasses being used, and consequently has an extensive and well enlightened field of view.

The example above is offered by Fleaglass.

“At Dawn of Day,” Cdr. Collier wrote of Manley, “he was not much more than a Mile a-head of me; soon after which we saw a small Sail to Leeward.”

Remember the brig Victor, which Collier had left behind the previous morning because it was slowing him down? Under command of Lt. Michael Hyndman, it had caught up with the fight at last! Or rather, the fighting ships had come across it.

As the Hancock swept past the Victor, it fired its guns “and killed one of the Men at the Wheel.” The Victor wasn’t fast enough to remain in the action, but it did damage.

At this point the Rainbow was firing regularly from its bow guns, “with occasional Broadsides loaded with Round and Grape.” Suffering damage in its rigging and sails, the Hancock was moving even more slowly.

“At Half an Hour past Eight I was so near as to hail her,” reported Cdr. Collier, “and let them know, that if they expected Quarter, they must strike immediately.”

Capt. Manley didn’t answer right away. Sensing a new breeze, he had his crew “set some of the Steering Sails” on the side away from the Rainbow. Collier responded by firing another broadside. Manley finally “struck the Rebel Colours.”

TOMORROW: In the wake of the battle.

“We lost Sight of Capt. Manly”

We don’t have Capt. John Manley’s account of the 7 July 1777 sea battle I’ve been recounting, but we do have the entries from Capt. Hector MacNeill’s journal.

We even have MacNeill’s sketches, as published in 1922. The drawing above shows the situation after Manley set fire to a captured coal sloop and cut it loose as two British frigates approached.

Here’s what MacNeill wrote in that journal, spellings, abbreviations, and nautical terms intact:

Mounday, July 7, 1777. . . . two vesails [H.M.S. Rainbow and Victor] to the Eastward of us. At 4 a.m. see them again Bearring to the Eastwart. Still at 5 a.m. made a Saile [H.M.S. Flora] Bairing to W, we going WbS. She past us and gave us two guns, as soon as she got in our wake She put a Bout and stood for us and came up with us fast and we playd a way with our Stairn Chases.

At 11 a.m. Capt. Manly and the fox and frigate till Darck and could see the frigate two guns

after 11 we began to Engage and had it very warm, the fox being to Lewyard the frigat at hir and she Run be fore the wind. Ther was a two Decker [Rainbow] under our Lee, we ware a Stoping our Shot holes, we thought Not Safe to follow.

Tusday, July 8, . . . At 12 p.m. Capt. Manly put a Bout Stood after the fox, the two Decker gave Chace to him and fird Sevral guns. He stood away as fast as posable. The frigate [Flora] and fox made a Running fight, they stood away a Bout NNE, we stood about NWBN.

We lost Sight of Capt. Manly a Bout 4 p.m. But we keep Sight of the fox and our Ship put a Bout and stood for hir; at 35 Minnites shot off the fox, and thought the fox gaind of hir. The frigate mounted 32 or 36 Guns. We are Surrounded with Ships all Round.

At 5 a.m. we heard Guns for a Long time. We Expect some Engagement Soon. We had one [Gideon] Wasborn kiled out Rig[ht], one [Henry] Green a Quarter master wounded in the Leg, had it Cut of at 8 p.m., died at 4 A.M. See the Land.

Wednesday the 9. . . . The first part of this 24 hours Modrate pleasant we going under all the Saile that we Could Tack, the Latter part a fresh Gale in all Small Sailes. Expecting Every moment to make the Land. Saw a plenty of Rock wead and old Logs of wood. I Could hearitly wich the Hancock and fox was with us for we are all Most in a Good harbour thanks Be to God.

The bottom line was that MacNeill had engaged in the battle early on, but on the afternoon of 8 July the Hancock, Fox, and Boston sailed in different directions, and after four hours he “lost Sight of Capt. Manly.”

The next morning, Capt. MacNeill heard guns, so he knew there was a fight going on. But he didn’t head to the action to help. Instead, covinced there were “Ships all Round," he sailed as fast as he could for a safe harbor. “I Could hearitly wich the Hancock and fox was with us,” MacNeill wrote the next day. But the bottom line was that they weren’t.

In letters written a few days later, MacNeill emphasized some details not in his journal, such as Manley letting some captured sailors go, thus alerting the British of his fleet’s presence, while declining MacNeill’s advice to sail down to South Carolina instead.

As for his departure from the action, MacNeill told the Continental Congress’s marine committee: “We were constrain’d to keep the Wind for our own Security being neither able to Run from nor fight such force as then appear’d to Leward.” On Tuesday, 8 July, he now recalled, “I saw five Sail of the Enemy to the Leward of me three on the Lee bow and two on the Lee Quarter”—details not in his journal.

TOMORROW: Back in the action.

“Manly and McNeal do not agree”

As documented yesterday, there were a lot of people that Capt. John Manley of the Continental Navy didn’t get along with.

One of the most prominent was the navy’s next most senior captain, Hector MacNeill. Their animosity was actually a matter of public concern in the spring of 1777, when they were both in Boston preparing frigates for cruises.

On 23 March, state official James Warren wrote to his friend John Adams, who had been on the Continental Congress’s marine committee but was now on the board of war:

The Hancock, Boston, Alfred and Cabot are all yet in port. It is said the Hancock [Manley’s ship] is ready to sail and was to have gone yesterday but remains here yet. I fear the Consequences of their going out single, but McNeil and Manly it is said like the Jews and Samaritans will have no Connections or Intercourse. They will not sail together.

The Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper sent a similar warning on 3 April:

Manly and McNeal do not agree. It is not I believe, the Fault of the first. They ought to sail together with all the Force they can obtain here to join them—a large Privateer would have readily done it. McNeal is inclin’d, and has obtain’d Liberty from Congress it is said, to sail alone. All may be lost in this Way. Jointly they might take single Frigates of the Enemy, or oblige them to sail in Fleets, which would greatly open the Ports for the Supplies from France and evry Quarter. Pray let some Orders be taken in this Matter as early as may be.

Later in the same letter Cooper returned to that theme:

Manly and McNeal are now, like Matthews and Lestac [two feuding British captains in the 1740s]. If they are not better united, infinite Damage may acrue. The latter hardly brooks the Superiority of the former—tho no Man has merited more, in the marine than Manly, or promises better.

It’s not clear how Warren and Cooper knew about the captains’ animosity. Were there open arguments? Grousing behind each other’s backs? However the rift opened, a lot of people knew about it.

For his part, MacNeill later insisted that in this period he’d been on his best behavior:

The General opinion which had prevail’d, that I was dissatisfied with being under Manley’s Command, made me sett up a resolution to obey implicitly every one of his Commands, (as for Signals, I never could get any from him) to the utmost of my power. I did however endeavour to advise him now and then when in a good mood, and he often appear’d to attend to what I said; but the unstableness of his Temper led him rather to do as he pleas’d. Nevertheless I follow’d him as the Jackall does the Lyon, without Grumbling except in my Gizard.

I find it striking that each of those writers reached for a metaphor as the best way to convey the depths of the two men’s relationship.

After the Hancock and Boston left port in May, the two captains managed to work together well enough to make some captures and avoid being captured themselves. But people back in Boston remembered the bad blood between Manley and MacNeill.

TOMORROW: Back into battle.

Captain Manley’s Temper

One of the striking details of Cdr. Sir George Collier’s account of the sea battle on 6-8 July 1777, recounted yesterday, is how his ship had almost no coordination with the other Royal Navy frigate in the fight.

Capt. John Brisbane had sailed the Flora up from New York on orders of Adm. Lord Howe. He happened to intersect the three Continental ships that Collier’s Rainbow was chasing down from Nova Scotia.

Brisbane and Collier didn’t expect to see each other. At first Collier thought Brisbane’s ship was an enemy vessel only pretending to be British. At one point in the maneuvers, Brisbane’s sailing master warned him that they might be so far north as to be out of their station.

I also wonder if the two Royal Navy officers were wary of giving up authority to the other. Collier was in home territory and (at least when the chase began) overseeing two ships, but as a captain Brisbane outranked him.

But the British captains weren’t the only ones who had trouble coordinating their attack.

Capt. John Manley on the Hancock was the star of the young Continental naval forces. Starting with command of one of Gen. George Washington’s schooners out of Beverly, Manley had racked up more and richer captures than any other captain. There was even a broadside ballad about him, illustrated with the engraving above.

But Capt. Manley also had a temper, and he was in continual conflict with other Continental naval officers. In October 1776 he complained about being ranked as second most senior captain in the navy, thus being “under the Command of one man, whose Ability I had reason to doubt.”

In April 1777, as I recounted back here, Manley insisted on a court-martial for his lieutenant, Joseph Dobel, for disobedience.

Then in early May, Manley summoned other captains onto his ship for a court-martial of eight men, including his pilot, ”for Mutiny.” 

One measure of Manley’s anger about those eight men is that the captains he summoned included Hector MacNeill and John Paul Jones, and they hated him.

TOMORROW: Divided command.

Commander Collier and “Part of the Rebel Fleet”

On the morning of 6 July 1777, H.M.S. Rainbow sailed out of Halifax harbor. It was a fifth-rate frigate equipped with 44 guns. Behind the Rainbow came H.M.S. Victor, a brig carrying 10 guns.

In command of that little Royal Navy fleet was Commander Sir George Collier (1738-1795, shown here).

That afternoon, the Rainbow “discovered Three Sail,” Collier reported. He “could form no Judgement of their Force, or what they were,” so he “immediately gave Chace.” After all, he was the navy.

The Victor was lagging three or four miles behind, so Cdr. Collier sent a signal to its captain to make more sail and speed up. As the day ended, the Rainbow’s crew could see they were chasing “large Ships” which looked “bound to some of the Ports of New England”—enemy territory.

Collier wrote, “I followed them with all the Sail I could croud.” At dawn his crew made out three ships plus a sloop “about 5 or 6 Miles distant.” Meanwhile, the Victor had fallen so far behind it was no longer in sight.

At this point Cdr. Collier was convinced he’d spotted the “Part of the Rebel Fleet, which had sailed some Time before from Boston.” Despite being outnumbered, he continued the pursuit. 

The Rainbow had indeed found Capt. John Manley’s growing fleet, consisting of his Continental frigate Hancock, U.S.S. Boston under Capt. Hector MacNeill, a captured British privateer named Fox, and a recently seized sloop carrying coal.

The last vessel didn’t last long. Manley ordered it set on fire and cut loose. Then he gave orders for “setting Top Gallant Royals and every Sail that could be useful.”

Collier wrote:

A little after Six we discovered another Sail standing towards the Rebel Ships; she crossed us on the contrary Tack at about Four Miles Distance, and put about when she could fetch their Wakes; from her not making the private Signal to me, I concluded that she was another of the Rebel Frigates, and therefore paid no Regard as to an English Red Ensign she hoisted, and two Guns she fire to Leeward.

Ships didn’t have to display their true colors until they actually went into battle. Until then, captains could run up any nation’s flag to bluff another ship into thinking they were friendly or neutral or whatever seemed advantageous. Collier therefore suspected there were four enemy vessels ahead of him, but he kept chasing.

About 10:45 A.M., Collier was surprised to see this new ship and one of the original three exchange fire. He ordered his crew to raise the Union Jack. The match had turned out to be three American ships against two British.

The other Royal Navy frigate was H.M.S. Flora, a 32-gun fifth-rate that had started as the French warship Vestale. Its captain was John Brisbane (1735-1807).

One of the American ships split off from the other two. Brisbane on the Flora “exchanged a Broadside with each.” The Rainbow also fired on one that had fallen behind, seemingly “uncertain which to steer,” but “had not the good Fortune to bring down either a Mast or Sail.”

Cdr. Collier watched “the headmost Rebel Frigate put about,…just out of Gunshot to Windward.” He judged it “a very fine Ship of 34 Guns, with Rebel Colours flying.”

An officer on the Rainbow’s quarterdeck recognized that ship from when he had been a prisoner in Boston. It was the Hancock, and its master was Manley, “the Sea Officer in whom the Congress place great Confidence, and who is the Second in Rank in their Navy.”

Cdr. Collier realized he stood at a decision point. Of the enemy ships, he thought, “one of the three must unavoidably escape, if they thus steered different Courses.” The Flora had apparently picked its target, which turned out to be the prize ship Fox.

Collier decided to “put about and follow the Hancock, which appeared the largest Ship,” as well as the most important—and most dangerous.

TOMORROW: Commanders clash.

Six Weeks on the U.S.S. Hancock

Soon after Capt. John Manley guided the Hancock, Boston, American Tartar, and eight other ships out of Boston harbor in May 1777, the privateers sailed off in different directions.

After all, privateer captains didn’t owe Manley any obedience. Capt. John Grimes on the American Tartar, the largest of those ships, headed across the Atlantic and in July captured several British vessels off the Shetland Islands and the coast of Norway. The little ones stuck to the New England coast.

In contrast, Capt. Hector MacNeill on the Boston was in the Continental Navy under orders to stick with Manley. Their target would be British fishing vessels and unaccompanied merchant ships in the north Atlantic.

Within days the Hancock and Boston caught a prize: a small brig carrying cordage and sailcloth.

On 30 May the two frigates spotted some military transports. Unfortunately for Manley, those ships were guarded by H.M.S. Somerset, the same 70-gun warship that had sat in the Charles River in the spring of 1775 (and that wrecked on Cape Cod in the fall of 1778).

The Somerset went after Manley’s Hancock, which had only half as many cannon. MacNeill’s Boston then closed on the more lightly armed transport ships. That forced the Somerset to break off and return to protect the convoy, allowing both Continental ships to sail away intact.

On 7 June, Manley and MacNeill’s frigates chased another promising ship. The Hancock caught up first, and Manley discovered his quarry was the Fox, a British privateer carrying 28 guns. The two ships fought for half an hour. Then the Boston arrived. Between them, Manley and MacNeill forced the Fox’s surrender. Its mainmast and wheel were shot off, four men killed and eight wounded.

On board the Hancock, a black sailor named John Brick “on fortunetly Lost his Left Legg” in this fight, as a second lieutenant attested. Dr. Samuel Curtis thus did his first major operation as a combat surgeon.

Capt. Manley took a few days to make repairs to the Fox. He put a prize crew aboard and divided its crew as prisoners between the Hancock and Boston. This three-vessel Continental fleet then captured a coal sloop off Cape Sable Island at the southwestern tip of Nova Scotia.

By Sunday, 6 July, Manley’s four ships were near Halifax, a major British base. Two large warships came out of the harbor. Capt. Manley turned and headed back toward New England as fast as his fleet could sail.

TOMORROW: Commander over the Rainbow.

Dr. Samuel Curtis Goes to War

When, last September, I left Dr. Samuel Curtis of Marlborough, his wife Lydia and their two babies had all died in December 1774.

Lydia Curtis had been married before, to Dr. Ebenezer Dexter. Three teen-aged sons from that first marriage were still alive. The oldest, William Dexter, married in Shrewsbury in early 1775, so he was probably already in that town, training under another medical doctor.

I suspect the younger two boys were living with Lydia’s parents, who were wealthy and influential in Marlborough.

Dr. Curtis had served on Marlborough’s committee of correspondence since 1772 and represented the town at the 1774 Middlesex County convention. After his wife’s death, he may have thrown himself even more into the Patriot movement. In March 1775, as I recounted here, Curtis took the lead in hunting for British army spies seeking refuge at Henry Barnes’s house.

There are no records of how Curtis responded to the outbreak of war the next month. His name doesn’t appear in militia records. He continued to serve on town committees, and in the fall of 1775 the Massachusetts legislature appointed him a justice of the peace.

(Dr. Curtis was a son of the Rev. Philip Curtis of the second precinct of Stoughton, which in 1775 became the new town of Sharon. Late the following year, Samuel’s younger sister Susanna Curtis married his former trainee, Dr. Daniel Cony [1752-1842, shown above later in life], whose family had moved out to Shutesbury. Dr. Cony spent chunks of the next few years in military service. Eventually the Conys moved up to Maine, where one of his medical colleagues was the midwife Martha Ballard. But I digress.)

William Dexter turned twenty-one in 1776. I believe that meant he came into his mother’s Marlborough property, where Dr. Curtis had been living as a widower. That gave the doctor three reasons to make a life change:

• psychological, after his wife and children’s deaths.
• domestic, as his stepson was taking over the family home.
• political, to help fight the war.

And impulse control might not have been Curtis’s strength.

In March 1777, Dr. Samuel Curtis signed on to be surgeon aboard the Hancock, the first frigate built for the Continental Navy. He would serve under Capt. John Manley, who in the fall of 1775 had proved to be the most stealthy and successful naval officer in the Continental military, winning several important prizes. Manley had been granted the authority of a commodore, meaning that in company with other Continental vessels he could boss their captains.

The Hancock was an excellent product of Newburyport shipwrights. Some British officers would even deem it “the finest and fastest frigate in the world.” It carried 24 twelve-pounder cannon and 10 six-pounders, plus a crew of 290 men. Dr. Curtis spent his first two months in the navy collecting medical supplies for that vessel.

On 21 May the Hancock slipped out of Boston harbor, past the Royal Navy patrols lurking in the ocean. Along with it came the Continental frigate Boston, 30 guns, commanded by Hector MacNeill; the privateer American Tartar, 24 guns, under John Grimes; and eight other, smaller privateers. Manley’s target was British fishing vessels and unaccompanied merchant ships.

TOMORROW: Dr. Curtis’s first fights at sea.

Joseph Dobel in the Continental Navy

Yesterday I discussed the early career of Joseph Doble, who followed his father in becoming a ship’s captain sailing out of Boston. Today I’ll skip over Owen Richards’s lawsuit and discuss Doble’s record in the Revolutionary War.

I’ll also switch from “Doble,” the spelling that the family used before the war, to Joseph’s preference of “Dobel.”

At least one of the Dobel brothers moved out to Braintree before the war. A man named Joseph Dobel enlisted in the Massachusetts army from that town in May 1775 and served most of the year as a private. It’s possible that was the sea captain, having moved out of Boston because of the Port Bill and the siege. But I suspect it was a younger relative.

The earliest I can definitely pick up Capt. Dobel’s trail is on 16 June 1776 when the Continental Congress commissioned him as second lieutenant on the warship Hancock, commanded by Capt. John Manley (shown here). During the siege, Manley had commanded one of the schooners that Gen. George Washington commissioned. He had streaks of cunning and good luck that let him capture several British ships and become America’s first naval hero. In April the Congress made Manley a captain in the Continental Navy.

Continental Navy officers spent as much time squabbling with each other as engaging the enemy. When the Congress issued a list of its captains ranked by seniority in October, Manley (number two) complained about being “under the Command of one man, whose Ability I had reason to doubt.” Meanwhile, Hector MacNeill (number three) called Manley “totally unequal to the Command with which he has been intrusted, he being ignorant, Obstinate, Overbearing and Tyranical beyond discription.”

By the spring of 1777 Dobel had risen to be first lieutenant on the Hancock, then docked in Boston. Also, in fine Continental fashion, he and Manley hated each other. Dobel laid out his side of the rift in a 2 July letter to another of Manley’s rivals, John Paul Jones:

…the 22d of april which day Capt Manley told me he had no further service for me without giving me any reason or making any enquirey into my conduct

all the reason I Can Assign is on that day he sent for to his house as soon as I enter’d the room he said to me God Damn you I order you on board the ship in half hour

the ship laying in congress road I told him I could not possibly get on board in the time

he replied that was all the time I should have

I told him I Could not go on board unless my Acct was settled as we was so near sailing and that I would be oblig’d to him to do it

he then replied God Damn you I will not pay you one farthing he then repeated the above order for my going on board

I then told him I did not understand the meaning of the words god damn you I order you on board

this answer and asking for a Settlement is all the reason of his behaveour to me that ever I knew of or ever heard, I then ask’d him if he would please to tell me where the ships Tender lay

he replied with an Oath that if I wanted her I Might go look for her, which I did and found her in order to go on board,

Capt Manley was along side of her[.] after walking on the Wharfe half an hour he said Mr Dobel, I have no further Orders for you on board the ship

I ask’d him if I was Clear of the ship

he replied no without you’ll give me your commission for which he said he would pay my wages and if not he would Try me by a Court Martial and that he would either disgrace me or I should him and still further he says he has taken Several Methods to Affront me and make me leave the ship but that he could not do it till now.

In a postscript Dobel added, “I Could Insert a great many more Abuses that I have met with but must Omitt them they being so Lengthy.” Which suggests that he and Capt. Manley had been feuding for a while and he couldn’t really have been surprised at his commander’s anger.

True to his promise, two days later Capt. Manley assembled “a Court Martial on my first Lieut for his continual neglect of Duty & possative Disobedience of Orders.” In fact, Manley was so determined to exert his authority over Dobel that he asked even Capt. MacNeill to serve on this board. I don’t know how that process worked out, but Dobel wasn’t on the Hancock when it sailed out of Boston harbor in June.

Instead, the Massachusetts board of war stepped in and gave Dobel a new assignment on 10 July:

You are hereby appointed to the command of the Guard Ship Adams now in this Harbour, by us provided agreeably to an Act of this State for the reception of all Persons convicted of being inimical to this & the other united States, & whose Residence in this State may be dangerous to the Public Peace & Safety; . . .

You are to receive Six Pounds per Month as Wages, & three Rations pr Day Subsistence…

Dobel thus got the rank of captain and his own ship to command—except the ship wasn’t supposed to leave the harbor. And his crew consisted only of a mate and four sailors. (If it was any consolation, that same July three British warships captured the Hancock, and Capt. Manley spent several months as a prisoner.)

In November, the board of war decided that the Adams would be better used as a trading ship, and better commanded by Capt. Isaac Phillips. It ordered Dobel to take his prisoners off. On 1 Jan 1778 he placed an advertisement in the Independent Chronicle:

FIFTY DOLLARS Reward.

RAN away from the House of the Subscriber, last Thursday, one CHARLES WHITWORTH, a noted Villain, who has for some Time, been confined for being an Enemy to the Thirteen United States of AMERICA; he is about five Feet 8 Inches high, light Complexion, long black Hair; had on when he ran away, a light coloured Coat and Jacket, black Breeches, a Pair light broad rib’d Stockings, and a light French Wrapper.

Whoever will take up said Run-away, and secure him in any of the Continental Goals, shall have the above Reward, and all necessary Charges paid by
JOSEPH DOBEL.

N.B. It is supposed he is gone towards Newport.

(Whitworth and his family settled in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, in 1782.)

Dobel kept his title of “Captain,” but his military service drained away on land. He witnessed the signing of papers for a Massachusetts privateer in 1777 but never commanded or owned one himself. Dobel appears as an inhabitant and property owner in the 1780 tax records of Boston. (Awkwardly, one of the properties he’d inherited from his father abutted the Boston home of John Manley.)

TOMORROW: Capt. Dobel in postwar Boston.

The Short Marriage of Dr. Samuel and Lydia Curtis

In March 1769, as I recounted yesterday, Dr. Ebenezer Dexter of Marlborough died. He left a wife, Lydia, and four young sons.

By July a young physician named Samuel Curtis was boarding in the Dexter house, treating the late doctor’s patients.

On 30 June 1771, the widow Lydia Dexter married Dr. Samuel Curtis. The bride was almost eleven years older than the groom.

The new couple’s neighbors wouldn’t have needed medical training to understand their reason for marrying. Their first child, Anna, arrived on 5 October, or three months and one week later.

Those necessary nuptials didn’t stop Dr. Curtis from gaining his neighbors’ respect, however. In 1772 the Marlborough town meeting put him on its committee of correspondence.

Unfortunately, the Curtis marriage didn’t last long. Not because of incompatibility but because of illnesses.

In August 1772 the Dexters’ youngest son, Jason Haven Dexter, died at the age of ten.

In March 1774, Lydia Curtis gave birth to her second child by Samuel, a daughter named Christian. (Was she named after Loyalist neighbor Christian Barnes?) But within one week in December, the Curtises’ first daughter, Anna; their new baby, Christian; and Lydia all died.

Dr. Samuel Curtis was now the widowed stepfather of three teen-aged boys from Lydia’s first marriage. I don’t know how much the doctor was involved in raising them after that, though. He was putting a lot of his energy into Patriot politics, serving on the town’s committee of correspondence and as a representative to the Middlesex County convention in August 1774.

On 1 Mar 1775, when Henry Barnes tried to shelter two British officers on a clandestine scouting mission, Curtis politely pushed himself into the house and quizzed Barnes’s young niece about those family guests. That September, the Massachusetts government appointed the doctor as a justice of the peace.

In March 1777, Dr. Curtis’s Patriotism took a new turn. He enlisted as a surgeon on the Continental Navy ship Hancock under Capt. John Manley. Joseph Ross has provided a long discussion of Dr. Curtis’s adventures in the navy. It doesn’t agree in all details with the profile of Curtis in Sibley’s Harvard Biographies, so I need more time to sort those out.

But I definitely plan to come back to Dr. Samuel Curtis. He seems to have found drama wherever he went, often by making it himself.

TOMORROW: The Dexter boys.

The Life of Owen Richards, Customs Man

Owen Richards was born in Wales, according to what he testified to the Loyalists Commission in 1784. Two years earlier he had told the royal government he was “now near Sixty Years of Age,” meaning he was born in the mid-1720s.

In 1744, again by his own account, Richards came to Boston. He had been “bred a Seaman” and made his living as a mariner of some sort. On 14 Dec 1745 the Rev. Timothy Cutler of Christ Church, the Anglican congregation the North End, married Richards and Rebecca Sampson.

Owen and Rebecca Richards had three children baptized at Christ Church, as preserved in its records:

• Elizabeth on 26 Apr 1752.
• James on 15 Feb 1756.
• Joseph Prince on 26 Feb 1758.

In addition, there were two older sons in the family: William and John Lloyd.

Owen Richards became a steady part of Boston’s Anglican community. At some point he bought pew #75 in Christ Church. He sponsored four baptisms at King’s Chapel between 1750 and 1769 and stood godfather to three babies at Christ Church in 1766 and 1767. (Notably, the third of those North End babies appears to have been the son of John Manley, America’s first naval hero.)

In 1759, Richards bought a house on North Street, showing that he had earned some money at sea—and in his thirties he was getting ready to settle down. That deed listed his profession as “rigger,” someone expert in rigging the ropes and sails of ships. In February 1761 Richards was one of two executors for the estate of another rigger named William Prince, whom Joseph Prince Richards might have been named after.

In early 1764, the Boston News-Letter ran a series of ads in which Owen Richards promoted his services as an auctioneer. At the “North End New-Auction Room” he offered “Sundry sort of Goods”: new and secondhand clothing, cloth, a mahogany table, tobacco, and so on. He promised people with goods to sell, especially in-demand “Checks and Linens of all Sorts,” that he would get them the best possible prices and prompt payment.

It wasn’t a good time to enter business. There was a postwar recession. By February, Richards had to assure customers, “The Small-Pox is not anywhere nigh to the North End New Auction-Room.” In January 1765 Nathaniel Wheelwright’s bankruptcy shocked the Boston business community.

At some point, Owen Richards gave up his own business and took a steady, if unpopular, government job: he went to work for the royal Customs service. Exactly when he became a Customs man isn’t clear in the sources.

• In 1782 Richards wrote that he had “been in the Service of his Majesty by Sea and Land near Thirty Years, the greatest part of that Time in his Majestys Customs at Boston.” That might have included some naval or privateering service during the 1750s, and he probably counted the Revolutionary War years when he wasn’t really able to do the job.
• Customs Commissioner Henry Hulton wrote that Richards “had been many years Tidesman in this Port” before 1770.
• However, in 1784 the earliest documentation for his Customs work that Richards could supply was an “Appointment & Deputation dated 8th of April 1768.” Now that might have been after a promotion or a new appointment under the Commissioners, who arrived in 1767.

As a Customs officer, Owen Richards became significant in the development of the American Revolution, as I’ll start to discuss tomorrow.

Returning to Richards’s personal story, his wife Rebecca died on 1 Sept 1758, leaving an infant and a two-year-old. Less than three months later, Owen remarried to Elizabeth Tucker at the Brattle Street Meetinghouse.

In February 1771, Richards, now listing himself as a “gentleman,” deeded the house he was still administering for the estate of William Prince to his sons William, John Lloyd, and James, the last then fifteen years old.

(As for daughter Elizabeth, she had married a man named Charles Perrin at King’s Chapel in August 1768, when she was sixteen. Their first child, George, was born the following June but died at four weeks. Their daughter Mary was baptized in 1771.)

On the list of Loyalists departing Boston in 1776, Richards appeared among other Customs employees as a “coxswain.” No family members were listed as leaving with him. However, in 1782 he told the government he had “a helpless Wife & four Children” to look out for.

The Loyalists Commission awarded Richards £120 in compensation for his property lost in Boston, plus a pension of £30 per year. He collected that until 1800, when he presumably died.

TOMORROW: Owen Richards and the Lydia.

Revolutionary Children in Cambridge, 16 Sept.

Tomorrow is Cambridge Discovery Day, when the city’s historical commission promotes a day of free walking tours in various neighborhoods (full schedule in this P.D.F. download).

At 3:00 I’ll kick off a tour called “Children of the Revolution: Boys & Girls in Cambridge During the Siege of Boston.” The description explains:

Children comprised more than half the population of colonial New England. Not only did they get caught up in the start of the Revolution, but some were drawn into the action. Hear the stories of boys and girls from 1774-1776—political refugees, members of the army, servants in the houses of generals, and more.

I’ll focus on the territory around Harvard Square, which was the center of Cambridge in the 1770s. We’ll start at the Tory Row marker on the corner of Brattle and Mason Streets, shown here.

One child I’ll talk about is John Skey Eustace. He was fifteen when he arrived in Cambridge in December 1775. He had been sent north by Gov. Dunmore of Virginia.

Why, you might ask, had the royal governor of Virginia, then on the run from rebels and forming an army of men escaping from enslavement, sent a teenager up to Massachusetts? Well, John Skey Eustace’s story starts with the story of his older sister Catherine, called Kitty.

Kitty Eustace had become Lord Dunmore’s mistress when she was still a teenager and he was governor of New York in 1770. On gaining his post in Virginia the next year, Dunmore arrived with Kitty’s little brother in tow. He arranged for young John’s education, first with a tutor and then at the College of William & Mary.

Meanwhile, Kitty Eustace married Dr. John Blair, a Virginian, which brought her conveniently close to the governor. After only a couple of years the Blairs’ marriage dissolved into lawsuits, which you can read more about in John L. Smith’s Journal of the American Revolution article “The Scandalous Divorce Case that Influenced the Declaration of Independence” and George Morrow’s little book A Cock and Bull for Kitty.

In late 1775, Gov. Dunmore sent John Skey Eustace on a ship to Boston with a letter to Gen. William Howe recommending him for a post in the British army. But the American commodore John Manley captured that ship. That’s how the fifteen-year-old ended up being marched to the headquarters of Gen. George Washington, the opposing commander-in-chief. What happened next? I’ll talk about that tomorrow.

How Many Cannon Did Washington Have in 1775?

On 20 Oct 1775, Col. Richard Gridley of the Continental artillery regiment presented his commander-in-chief, George Washington, with an “Inventory of Ordnance and Stores necessary for the present Army, supposing it to consist of twenty thousand Men.”

At the bottom of that sheet was a section headed “Ordnance, Shot, and Shells, now in Camp.” That listed:

Cannon:
24 pounders, 5; shot, 449.
18 pounders, 6; shot, 260.
12 pounders, 2; shot, 149.
9 pounders, 3; shot, 1,175.
8 pounder, 1.
6 pounders, 2.
5 1/4 pounders, 4; shot, 1,134.
4 pounders, 7; shot, 1,475.
3 pounders, 9; shot, 3,079.
2 1/2 pounders, 2; shot, 1,009.

Total number of cannon, 41.
Total number of shot, 8,730.
Carriages, ladles, rammers and sponges, &c., complete.

Mortars:
10 inch mortars, 3; shells, 374.
8 inch mortars 2; 8 inch howitzers, 3; shells, 452.
7 inch brass mortars, 2; shells, 641.

Total number of mortars, 10.
Total number of shells, 1,467.
With beds, carriages, and implements, complet.

That was more than a month before Capt. John Manley captured the British ordnance ship Nancy with brass cannon and mortars aboard, and three months before Col. Henry Knox, Gridley’s successor, returned from Lake Champlain with more heavy cannon.

I quote this inventory to refute the common idea that Washington’s army had no artillery until Knox came back. It had dozens of cannon, including some that shot balls as large as any from Crown Point and Fort Ticonderoga. Of course, like any good general, Washington wanted more.

William Russell’s Writing

Last month the Seth Kaller auction house alerted me to this collection of the Revolutionary War documents of William Russell (1748-1784), a Tea Party participant, charter member of Col. Thomas Crafts’s militia artillery regiment after the war began, privateer crewman under Capt. John Manley, and twice prisoner of war.

The collection includes a note from Crafts and several letters written home while Russell was in captivity in Britain or New York harbor. I see mentions of Benjamin Edes and James Brewer. Some of the material has been published in The Ships and Sailors of Old Salem, by Ralph D. Paine.

According to Francis S. Drake’s Tea Leaves, Russell was “sometime usher in Master Griffiths’ school, on Hanover Street, below the Orange Tree.” John Griffith was a private schoolteacher, rather than one employed by the town. I’ve long wondered how he had enough students to hire an usher, or assistant teacher.

Handwriting was a major part of the colonial curriculum, and Russell’s ability to write clearly was a big part of his military career. As sergeant major of Crafts’s regiment, he wrote out the first list of recruits. Later he was the regiment’s adjutant, or administrative officer, during an attempt to drive the British military from Newport.

On board Manley’s ship, Russell was a clerk. The captain was reportedly barely literate, so a clerk would have been a good thing. During his first stint as a prisoner, in the Mill Prison in England, Russell kept a detailed diary, which I believe is now at the Peabody Essex Museum. Someday I’ll quote from the published version.

Russell’s name appeared on the first published list of Tea Party members, in the back of Traits of the Tea Party (1835). One of Russell’s sons, John, had grown up to be an apprentice at the Massachusetts/Columbian Centinel; I’ve theorized that that newspaper’s publisher, Benjamin Russell, was the source of that first Tea Party list.

The same year that book came out, as the Boston Tea Party became famous, John Russell gave a lecture about the event in Salem, and of course he invoked his father’s name. I should note, however, that John Russell was born in 1779, so he had no first-hand knowledge of what happened in 1773. He was also only five years old when his father died, so he probably couldn’t sort out what he’d heard his father say from what he’d heard from other relatives. Still, Russell’s connections to Crafts and other activists make it likely that he did help to destroy the tea.

“Brave Manly’s Commodore”

Of all the captains Gen. George Washington ordered to sea in late 1775 and early 1776, one found spectacular success: John Manley (c. 1733-1793).

His schooner, the Lee, captured a string of British cargo ships in the fall of 1775, including the ordnance brig Nancy, as described back here. In February, Washington promoted Manley to commodore, telling all the other captains to follow his orders.

Manley became a national hero even before there was an official American nation. This image of him appeared on a broadside published in Salem above the following song. Join in if you know the tune!

MANLY
A FAVORITE NEW
SONG,
In the AMERICAN FLEET.
Most humbly Addressed to all the JOLLY TARS who are fighting
for the RIGHTS and LIBERTIES of AMERICA.
By a SAILOR.—It may be sung to the Tune of WASHINGTON

BRAVE MANLY he is stout, and his Men have proved true,
By taking of those English ships, he makes their Jacks to rue;
To our Ports he sends their Ships and Men, let’s give a hearty Cheer
To Him and all those valiant Souls who go in Privateers.

And a Privateering we will go, my boys, my Boys,
And a Privateering we will go.

O all ye gallant Sailor Lads, do’nt never be dismay’d,
Nor let your Foes in Battle ne’er think you are afraid,
Those dastard Sons shall tremble when our Cannon they do roar,
We’ll take, or sink, or burn them all, or them we’ll drive on Shore.

And a Privateering we will go, &c.

Our Heroes they're not daunted when Cannon Balls do fly,
For we’re resolv’d to conquer, or bravely we will die;
Then rouse all you NEW-ENGLAND Oaks, give MANLY now a Cheer,
Likewise those Sons of Thunder who go in Privateers.

And a Privateering we will go, &c.

Their little petty Pirates our Coast shall ne’er infest,
We’ll catch their sturdy Ships, Boys, for those we do like best;
Then enter now my hearty Lads, the War is just begun,
To make our Fortunes at their Cost, we’ll take them as they run.

And a Privateering we will go, &c.

While Shuldham he is flying from WASHINGTON’s strong Lines,
Their Troops and Sailors run for fear, and leave their Stores behind
Then rouse up, all our Heroes, give MANLY now a Cheer,
Here’s a Health to hardy Sons of Mars who go in Privateers.

And a Privateering we will go, &c.

They talk of Sixty Ships, Lads, to scourge our free-born Land,
If they send out Six Hundred we’ll bravely them withstand;
Resolve we thus to conquer, Boys, or bravely we will die,
In fighting for our Wives and Babes, as well as LIBERTY.

And a Privateering we will go, &c.

While HOPKINS he is triming them upon the Southern Shore,
We’ll scour our Northern Coast, Boys, as soon as they come o’er;
Then rouse up, all my Hearties, give Sailor Lads a Cheer,
Brave MANLY, HOPKINS, and those Tars who go in Privateers.

And a Privateering we will go, &c.

I pray you Landsmen enter, you’ll find such charming Fun,
When to our Ports by Dozens their largest Ships they come;
Then make your Fortunes now, my Lads, before it is too late
Defend, defend, I say defend an INDEPENDENT STATE.

And a Privateering we will go, &c.

While the Surf it is tossing and Cannon Balls do fly,
We surely will our Foes subdue, or cheerfully will die,
Then rouse, all you bold Seamen, brave MANLY’s COMMODORE
Should we meet with our desp’rate Foes, bless us, they will be tore,

And a Privateering we will go, &c.

Then cheer up, all my hearty Souls, to Glory let us run,
Where Cannon Balls do rattle, with sounding of the Drum;
For who would Cowards prove, or even stoop to Fear,
When MANLY he commands us in our bold PRIVATEER.

And a Privateering we will go, &c.

“Shuldham’ was Adm. Molyneux Shuldham (c. 1717-1798) of the Royal Navy. He was the top-ranking British naval officer in America in the first half of 1776, between Admirals Samuel Graves and Richard Howe, which suggests this verse was written in those months, before Massachusetts had legally become “an INDEPENDENT STATE.”

“Hopkins” was Esek Hopkins (1718-1802) of Rhode Island, commander of the small Continental navy from February 1776 to January 1778. Legally, neither Manley nor Hopkins commanded privateers at this point in the war; Manley had an army commission from Washington, and Hopkins a naval commission from the Continental Congress. But everyone, even Washington himself, was casual about the line between privateers and publicly-funded warships.

More about that line, and Comm. John Manley, in my talk at Longfellow House on Saturday afternoon: “Cambridge: Birthplace of the American Navy?”

Escaping Tories Captured at Sea

While the British army and navy sailed away from Boston on 17 Mar 1776, they didn’t go far at first. Capt. John Barker reported the long departure in his diary:

After remaining 2 or 3 days at King Road and blowing up the Castle, the fleet fell down the Harbour to Nantasket; the Centurion left at King Road, the Rebels brought Guns [and fire]d at her without effect. The Fleet preparing for Sea, taking in Water, &c.

A naval officer patrolling the area wrote on 23 March:

The bay swarms with American privateers, but we hope to protect the transports, which are daily expected from the West Indies, and to send them safe to Halifax.

Inevitably, some of the evacuating merchant ships became separated from the main fleet and vulnerable to those New England privateers. Boston businessman and court official Ezekiel Price, still at his refuge in Stoughton, recorded this news on 6 April:

Ed. Quincy…came from Boston, and says that Captain [John] Manley was in Boston, and told there that he had taken out of the fleet a brig laden with Tories and Tory goods, and other effects, which they plundered in Boston. Among the Tories is Bill Jackson.

According to the 8 April Boston Gazette, William Jackson was the new owner of the ship Manly had captured, a prize estimated to be worth £35,000 with the goods aboard. A brazier, or maker and seller of brass goods, Jackson had become notorious for defying the Whigs’ nonimportation boycott in 1769-70. He may have been unpopular even before then since the fire that destroyed the center of town in 1760 had started in his store, the sign of the Brazen Head. However, Jackson had not held appointments under the royal government, and therefore the new authorities couldn’t convict him of anything. After getting out of jail, he tried to settle back into life in Boston.

Three days later, Price added:

At noon, a traveller from below says that he heard Captain [Adino] Paddock and Captain [John] Gore were among the Tories taken in the transport brig by Captain Manley. Afterwards several other travellers from below passed; but they did not hear of Paddock or Gore being in that vessel, and no other of note but Bill Jackson and Crane Brush.

Yesterday the remains of Dr. [Joseph] Warren were re-interred in Boston with every mark of honor and respect that was possible to be exhibited.

Paddock and Gore, two militia officers who had sided with the king, indeed avoided capture. They landed safely at Halifax, then sailed on to London, where they roomed together. Paddock eventually settled on the Isle of Jersey while Gore came back to Boston in the late 1780s.

Also on board that ship, according to the Gazette, were “a number of others, women and children,...besides a Serjeant and 12 privates of the king’s own [4th] regiment, who are made prisoners.”

But the really big prize was Crean Brush, who had been appointed by Gen. Thomas Gage to take charge of goods that might be useful to the military. The Patriot authorities clapped him in Boston jail and kept him there over a year, even though they were unable to convict him for looting because he’d had government authority.

I’ll have more to say on Jackson and Brush’s ultimate fates. You can track the story of Dr. Warren’s remains here. The engraving of Capt. Manly above comes from the Surface Navy Association’s Hall of Fame.

The Lee Captures the Nancy

As engineer Col. Archibald Robertson prepared to leave London for the theater of war in Massachusetts in July 1775, he asked Viscount Townshend, Master-General of the Ordnance, to arrange for a convoy of warships to protect the “several Ordnance transports with Artillery stores and men” from rebel attacks at sea.

However, Gen. Frederick Haldimand, who was just back from Boston, assured his army superiors, including Gen. Jeffery Amherst, that there were no American cruisers to worry about and plenty of Royal Navy ships around Massachusetts Bay. So the British military added no special protection to this transport fleet. Robertson felt a little vindication when he spotted “a Rebel privateer” as he arrived in Boston on 8 November in a fleet of twelve ships.

That ship may or may not have been the Lee, commanded by Capt. John Manley (1733-1793) of Marblehead. Before the war it had been the schooner Two Brothers, owned by Thomas Stevens; it had been renamed in honor of Gen. Charles Lee.

In any event, on 29 Nov 1775, Capt. Manley’s Lee captured one of the ordnance brigs from London, the Nancy, off Cape Ann. Col. Robertson’s fear had been realized.

In January 1776, Manley was named commodore of the small fleet of privateers Gen. George Washington had urged New Englanders to create; later he received the third U.S. naval commission as captain when the Continental Congress got around to adopting the same idea. During the war Manley and his crews captured ten British vessels and helped in seizing five more, while being captured and imprisoned three times. The engraving above comes from the Surface Navy Association’s Hall of Fame. (We hope his sword was in its scabbard.)

TOMORROW: What the Nancy was carrying.