“Went in pursuit of these royal pirates”

After setting the stage for the fighting over Hog Island, Noddle’s Island, and Chelsea 250 years ago this month, I should catch up on a couple of other shoreline skirmishes in May 1775.

One fight took place in the waters between Fairhaven and Martha’s Vineyard on 14 May. I wrote about that event starting here, and Derek W. Beck went into more detail in this article.

Today I’ll comment on a couple of sources.

First, Peter Force’s 1833 American Archives included an “Extract of a Letter from Newport, Rhode-Island, dated May 10, 1775” about the action.

That letter described that event as starting “Last Friday,” which is probably why Richard Frothingham writing in the mid-1800s misdated the fight by a week. Naval Documents of the American Revolution reprinted the letter from American Archives with the same date.

However, that passage first appeared in the 26 May Pennsylvania Mercury, and there it’s actually labeled as “Extract of a letter from New-Port, Rhode-Island, May 15,” meaning “Last Friday” was 12 May. That matches up with the other sources. The ship-seizing began on 12 May, and the fighting occurred on 14 May.

Second, here’s the report on the fight from Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, published 24 May in Worcester:

The week before last the Falcon sloop of war, was cruising about Cape-Cod, and meeting with a wood sloop, in ballast, seized her, but promising the skipper to release him and his vessel if he would give information of any vessel that was just arrived from the West-Indies with a cargo on board, he at length told the Captain of the Falcon [John Linzee] that there was a sloop at Dartmouth, which had just arrived;

Significantly, the owner of that wood sloop, Simeon Wing, later told Massachusetts authorities that ”an indian Fellow on board” had offered information about the other sloop, not “the skipper”—who was Wing’s son Thomas. Scapegoating a man of color?

whereupon the Captain of the Falcon, instead of releasing the wood sloop, armed and manned her, and sent her in search of the West-Indiaman;

Other sources show that the prize crew put onto the wood sloop consisted of Midshipman Richard Lucas (called in some New England sources as mate or lieutenant), surgeon’s mate John Dunkinson, gunner Richard Budd, eight seamen, and three marines.

they found the vessel lying at anchor, but her cargo was landed; however, they seized her and carried her off after putting part of their crew and some guns and ammunition on board.

Notice of this getting on shore, the people fitted out a third sloop, with about 30 men and two swivel guns, and went in pursuit of these royal pirates, whom they come up with at Martha’s Vineyard, where they lay at anchor at about a league’s distance from each other; the first surrendered without firing a gun, our people after putting a number of hands on board, bore down upon the other, which by this time had got under sail, but the people in the Dartmouth sloop coming up with her, the pirates fired upon them; the fire was immediately returned, by which three of the pirates were wounded, among whom was the commanding officer;

Massachusetts Provincial Congress documents preserved the names of the two wounded seamen as Jonathan Lee and Robert Caddy.

our people boarded her immediately, and having retaken both sloops, carried them into Dartmouth, and sent the prisoners to Cambridge, from thence nine of them were yesterday brought to this town.

Other newspapers say those prisoners of war were sent to the jail in Taunton, but that might have been only overnight. Authorities kept the three wounded men in Dartmouth along with the surgeon’s mate “to dress their wounds.”

Capt. Linzee never recorded losing the wood sloop and his prize crew in the log of the Falcon. But according to a report out of New York, he later told a passing ship’s captain that he understood Midn. Lucas had “lost an arm.” Locals involved in the fracas, quoted here, recalled that Lucas was wounded in the head with buckshot and recovered.

The 15 May letter from Newport printed in Pennsylvania Mercury (cited above) said one of the wounded men was “since dead.” That appears to have been another false rumor since follow-up newspaper stories and government sources don’t mention any dead at all.

After the actual fighting there were protracted disputes on the provincial side. What to do with the prisoners? What to do with the ships? I discussed those debates back here.

The Fight off Fairhaven

Fort Phoenix in Fairhaven overlooks the site of what’s often called, especially in Fairhaven, the first naval fight of the Revolutionary War. (People in Machias, Maine, disagree.)

As Derek W. Beck described in this article for the Journal of the American Revolution, the action started on 11 May 1775 when “a barge from Capt. Linsey’s brig”—H.M.S. Falcon under Capt. John Linzee—stopped a sloop in Buzzard’s Bay. (Linzee shown here courtesy of the Linzee Family Association.)

That sloop was owned by Simeon Wing of Sandwich and commanded by his son Thomas. According to a June report from the Sandwich committee of correspondence, the Wings’ ship

hath been plying, as a wood boat, between Sandwich and Nantucket for some years, and it hath been the usual practice to settle with the custom house once a year, the officer always giving them their choice of paying twelve pence per trip, or the whole at the year’s end: and this hath been, we find, on examining, the common practise with other vessels which have followed the same business at the same place.

That arrangement meant, however, that the sloop had no clearance papers for that particular voyage. Linzee seized it. The historian Richard Frothingham later understood that the captain planned to use vessels he captured to “freight sheep to Boston” from Martha’s Vineyard, feeding Gen. Thomas Gage’s besieged garrison.

Following normal protocol, Linzee transferred some of his crew onto the Wings’ sloop to sail it into a friendly harbor. Midshipman Richard Lucas was put in charge of “eight seamen, three marines, a gunner, and a surgeon’s mate,” as Beck (using British naval sources) recounts.

Then the British officers learned about another vessel ripe for seizure. The Sandwich report stated: “An Indian fellow, on board of Wing’s vessel, informed Capt. Linsey of said [Jesse] Barlow’s vessel, which had brought a cargo lately from the West Indies, and was laden with provisions, in Buzzard’s Bay.” That Native American sailor evidently saw a better future allying with the Royal Navy.

Linzee sent the Wings’ sloop after “Barlow’s vessel” and the provisions it carried, quite possibly intended for the provincial army. But by the time Midn. Lucas had caught up with that ship in Dartmouth harbor, it had been unloaded. He seized it anyway. Then “both vessels, with all the crews and passengers, were taken, and proceeded to the cove to Captain Linsey.”

Barlow, a young man from Sandwich, was determined to get his sloop back. He “made application to some people at Dartmouth” for help. At the time, that town still encompassed modern New Bedford, Acushnet, and Fairhaven. Dartmouth was dominated by Quaker merchants who were not enthusiastic about the war and how it disrupted their trade. Barlow therefore went to men in the Fairhaven village, who were reportedly having a militia drill on the afternoon of Saturday, 13 May.

Barlow offered to put up half the money to arm the 40-ton whaling ship Success with two swivel guns and an extra large crew for fighting. Two militia officers—Daniel Egery and Nathaniel Pope—gathered twenty-five to thirty volunteers, including drummer Benjamin Spooner. In the shorter of two accounts later published by local historians, Pope’s son related that the bulk of the men hid below deck as the Success sailed out of Fairhaven on Sunday morning:

Father had the deck, managing affairs there, and Captain Egery, with the drummer, was in the cabin. Captain Egery came on deck to counsel, at father’s foot-rap. There was one other man and a boy, I think, on deck.

The Success spotted Barlow’s sloop in the waters between Buzzard’s Bay and Martha’s Vineyard. Only one sailor and one armed Marine were on deck. Pope steered his ship close before stomping for Egery. Spooner’s drum sent the militiamen charging up onto the Success’s deck.

The Marine set down his gun and ran to cut the anchor cable of the prize sloop so it could move off, but the Success was too close. Pope shouted for the British men to stay still or be shot. His crew grappled the two ships together and boarded the prize. Pope’s son wrote, “the thirteen prisoners were disarmed and placed below, their position secured by the weight of cable and anchor put over the gangway.”

Egery and Pope then consulted on what to do next. Pope’s son later wrote that they sent the recaptured prize back to port, but British sources suggest that the provincial officers took the Success and Barlow’s sloop together out to look for the other captured ship—the Wings’ firewood boat. Midn. Lucas was on board that sloop along with most of his loyal sailors and Marines.

TOMORROW: Shots fired, and the aftermath.