Patriot Pirates (20 page)

With the “three American privateers” having taken a hundred captives in their European sorties, Franklin offered a prisoner exchange to Stormont, whose snippy reply conveyed his frustration on many fronts. “The King’s ambassador receives no applications from rebels, unless they come to implore His Majesty’s mercy.”

Franklin’s response was no less astringent. “We received the enclosed indecent paper as coming from your Lordship, which we return for your Lordship’s more mature consideration.”

Unsurprisingly, it would be almost two years before the two sides got together to exchange Americans held in Britain for Britons held in France. The deals would be grudging and the numbers skimpy even then.

1780

N
EWFOUNDLAND
, C
ANADA

The 18-gun sloop
Ranger
, outfitted at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, by John Langdon in 1777, had wreaked havoc off Scotland and Ireland under John Paul Jones. After Jones was detached to command
Bonhomme Richard
two years later,
Ranger
returned to refit for a cruise to the Caribbean.

Visiting the town waterfront with his father one day, young Andrew Sherburne found it a stirring pageant of color and industry. “Ships were building, prizes taken from the enemy unloading, privateers fitting out, standards waved on the forts and batteries, the exercising of soldiers, the roar of cannon, the sound of martial music and the call for volunteers so infatuated me that I was filled with anxiety to become an actor in the scene of war.”

His father let him join
Ranger
’s crew only because it was “in service of Congress” and not a seedy privateer. Despite the precaution, life on shipboard introduced the boy to boxing, drinking, and the “abominable practice” of cursing. “There was a necessity for it,” Andrew wrote in his memoir many years later. “To counterbalance my guilt I became more constant in praying. I prayed every night to atone for the sins of the day.”

Seasick most of the time, he waited on
Ranger
’s officers and “in time of action” carried ammunition to “the third gun from the bow.” One prize, the three-deck
Holderness
loaded with cotton, sugar, rum, and spices, made the voyage a hit. And because it was armed with twenty-two cannon (“her crew was not sufficiently large to manage them”), the transport was designated a warship and thus awarded 100 percent to its captors.

Sherburne’s naval salary was $6.66 a month. His share of
Holderness
’s loot was “one ton of sugar, from thirty to forty gallons of fourth-proof Jamaica rum, about twenty pounds of cotton, approximately twenty pounds of ginger, logwood, and allspice, and about $700 in paper money equal to one hundred dollars in specie.” At age fourteen, he’d become his family’s star breadwinner.

In the spring of 1780
Ranger
took part in the failed defense of Charleston against an assault of British land and naval forces. It was Sherburne’s first heavy combat. The explosion of an artillery shell “within a few feet of me” left him “much alarmed” and “in continual apprehension” for the much of the battle. Captured, he was shocked by the spectacle of redcoats “hurried into eternity” by accidentally sparking a storehouse of gunpowder. “I saw the print of a man who had been dashed against the end of a brick church thirty feet above the ground.”

Since orderlies were paroled along with their officers, Sherburne got back to Portsmouth within a few months. He found his family in shambles. His father and older brother had been lost at sea aboard trade ships. His mother, now that “the avails of my former cruise were pretty much exhausted,” was working as a seamstress to support her two daughters and youngest son.

“Almost sixteen and pretty well grown,” Sherburne gave in to a recruiter’s persuasion to “take a short cruise in a fine schooner and make your fortune.” He joined the “jovial company” of the privateer
Greyhound
. “She had a full complement of officers, two or three ordinary seamen before the mast, and between twenty and thirty boys, some of them not a dozen years old.”

Dispatched with a small crew to sail
Greyhound
’s first prize back to port, Sherburne soon detected that his prizemaster was “completely deranged,” tending to bark out orders to imaginary subordinates and then replying “as though they answered him.” The man had deserted from the Royal Navy and was consumed with dread of recapture. His anxiety drove him to fold his clothes neatly on deck one night and jump naked over the side, never to be seen again.

Run down and boarded by British privateers whose threats to execute them were defused at the last moment by their captain, “who appeared more rational,” Sherburne and the rest of the prize crew were incarcerated in a Canadian village previously “visited” by American raiders who’d plundered its stores and terrorized its citizens, an affront that disposed Sherburne’s jailors to starve him to death in retribution. Fortunately a Royal Navy ship,
Duchess of Cumberland
, came to take the prisoners to Newfoundland for exchange.

On the way, a gale whipped up and drove the vessel onto the rocks. “Her decks began to open.” A column of seawater “eight or ten inches in diameter” gushed into the hold. The ship pitched so violently its officers started “raving and swearing, crying and praying.” The helmsman was thrown overboard and crushed between the hull and the rocks “as quick as you could crush an egg shell in your hand.”

Two sailors swam to shore clinging to a wooden spar to which a rope was tied. After the rope was looped around a boulder, Sherburne was the fifteenth man to pull himself along it through the raging surf; ten had made it alive so far. The survivors from among the ship’s company then trudged to the nearest port, where the Americans were remanded to a British transport bound for Plymouth, England.

There, a court of “elderly judges, and all wore large white wigs,” sentenced Sherburne to Mill Prison “for rebellion, piracy, and high treason on His Majesty’s high seas.” When released in the spring of 1781 malnutrition had taken its toll. “I walked poorly even with two canes.”

Disembarking in Salem, he learned that
Greyhound
had taken a valuable prize and its original crewmembers were entitled to “sixty-three pounds sterling each.” But having left his mother power of attorney in his absence, he found that she’d drawn his money and spent it.

Still lame and gaunt from his captivity, he signed on to
Scorpion
, a transport carrying eight small guns and a letter of marque permitting it to take prizes during its trade run to the West Indies. He would have preferred to remain on land and convalesce, “but this business would not do to live by.”

Eighteen months later he would return to Portsmouth after trekking overland from Rhode Island. Meeting him at the outskirts of town, his younger brother almost fainted at the sight of “my bones projecting” beneath the skin. Sherburne staggered the rest of the way home on his brother’s arm and collapsed into bed, where he remained for twenty days. “I was very unwell,” he wrote.

Nine

The equipping of armed vessels in the ports of France to act under commissions from the Congress against the English, being contrary to treaties and therefore disagreeable to government here, cannot possibly be complied with.

—Benjamin Franklin to a French merchant, August 1777

England is extremely exasperated at the favor our armed vessels have met with here. To us, the French court wishes success to our cause, winks at the supplies we obtain here, privately affords us very essential aids, and goes on preparing for war.

—Benjamin Franklin to Congress, September 1777

I
rish-born Gustavus Conyngham was twenty-eight when he’d skippered a powder voyage to Holland for his cousin’s Philadelphia trading firm in late 1775. The experience gave a glimpse of commerce raiding as seen from the other side when his vessel was captured and placed under the command of a Royal Navy prize crew. En route to Plymouth, England, Conyngham and his men retook the ship by force and sailed on to Amsterdam. But thwarted by British officials from exchanging his cargo for munitions, he’d sold his vessel and journeyed to Dunkirk in search of a job.

Located on France’s northwest coast near the narrowest point of the English Channel, Dunkirk was unique among French ports in that a British commissioner resided there with international authority to make sure it wasn’t fortified against amphibious attack. The stipulation was part of agreements signed after France’s defeat in the Seven Years’ War and aimed to prevent Dunkirk from arming and harboring privateers so near the British coast. Britons had a proprietary view of the place as a result, which gave treaty violations occurring there an especially irksome sting.

William Hodge, another young go-getter attached to the American mission, went to Dunkirk in early 1777 on assignment from Deane and Franklin to procure two packet boats to improve communications with Congress. Hodge recently had arrived in France via Martinique bearing blank congressional privateer commissions. Having observed Bingham’s daring deployment of privateers, he was eager to convert one of the new vessels to a warship.

John Ross, the Scotsman in Robert Morris’s employ, recommended Conyngham as a captain, and in March Franklin commissioned him as a Continental commander. The appointment proved problematic. Though it placed Conyngham in government service, his ship and crew were 50 percent financed, due to the mission’s chronic lack of funds, with private money. The pitfalls of this hybrid arrangement loomed large when disputes later arose over his expeditions’ prize payouts. “I always acted under the orders of the commissioners and none other,” the captain later testified in a bid to claim his share. “I understood (merely by hearsay) that money was advanced by private persons but did not know the terms of such advance.”

After buying the mail boat
Peacock
, Hodge snuck aboard four cannon and ten swivel guns at night outside Dunkirk harbor, then renamed it
Surprise
. He was one of its investors—as possibly was Deane, though the only evidence is testimony given by Carmichael to Congress eighteen months later. Carmichael had brought Conyngham his sailing orders from Deane. His later suggestion that his boss held a stake in
Surprise
was officially discounted due to its basis in hearsay. Deane’s critics, however, never doubted that he’d taken “an active part in this piratical enterprise.”

Conyngham and his twenty-five-man crew sailed on May 2. One day later he snagged his target,
Prince of Orange
, the “royal packet” plying between Holland and the British port of Harwich. Its hoped-for cache of £10,000 in government gold wasn’t on board; still the capture brought headlines if not treasure. London’s
Public Advertiser
railed, “The capture of the
Orange
is a complete refutation of what we have been so often told of the reduced state of the Americans. They have hitherto kept us in sufficient play on their own coasts, and now, in their turn, they even venture to assail ours.”

Benjamin Franklin was seemingly available to every portraitist that asked him to take time out for a sitting—he’s depicted here in Paris during the war. Franklin’s casual manner belied his crafty manipulation of privateers to stir up mistrust between France and Britain, and he was tireless in working behind the scenes to aide American privateersmen in British prisons facing the hangman’s noose as “pyrates.”

Rumors flew in Britain of “no less than thirty” privateers fitting out in France with international crews said to include “a number of our best seamen, allured by the prospect of getting a great deal of prize money.” Insurance rates on shipments across the Channel jumped another 10 percent as unverified sightings of privateers “infesting” waters from Ireland to Spain poured in.

Rancor mounted in Britain’s maritime community as merchants criticized local privateers for avoiding battle with their American counterparts and preferring instead to “cruise the latitudes of the enemy, where they joyfully succeed in taking prizes.” And British newspapers mocked “the secretary and clerks of the Admiralty” for their rosy war reports and began highlighting demeaning incidents such as transports surrendering to privateers armed with wooden guns “for deception” and a Royal Navy frigate accidentally discharging a celebratory holiday volley into an adjacent troop ship.

When Conyngham returned to Dunkirk with
Prince of Orange
and one other prize in tow, a storm of diplomatic fury greeted him. Dunkirk’s delicate political status made the move “imprudent” in Franklin’s view and “stupid” in Vergennes’s. On Louis XVI’s decree,
Surprise
was confiscated, its prizes restored to Britain, and Conyngham thrown in jail. This pleased Stormont (“a temporary triumph,” Deane shrugged) and drew praise from George III, who called it “strong proof that the Court of Versailles means to keep appearances.”

Many Britons were less sanguine, deeming Conyngham’s “mock confinement” a phony gesture. Vergennes didn’t care. “It matters little to His Majesty whether His determination has or has not excited the gratitude of the English.”

Confident of his nation’s dominant position in its negotiations with Congress, Vergennes saw no rush to enter the war. “Whatever may be the strength of the English army, it appears that the Americans are in a position to face them.” Time seemed on France’s side. A year earlier, he’d downplayed the need to help America win at any cost. “If they fail, we will have entertained with them, at least momentarily, a trade exchange which is obviously to our advantage.” He still held that view, noting that Britain’s woes presented a rare opportunity for France’s maritime interests. “It is to be hoped that our sailors will have the good sense to profit from the circumstance.”

This languid pragmatism worried the Paris commissioners. Knowing the precariousness of America’s finances and fighting ability, the commissioners resolved to push British pride beyond its limit by perpetrating more treaty violations under French auspices. After all, it made no difference whether France or Britain initiated hostilities against the other as long as one of them pulled the trigger soon.

Franklin continued to play a double game with his hosts. He privately cheered reports of British privateers snatching French transports; it was another pinprick that might “occasion the two powers to stumble on a war whether either really intends it or not.” But his official response was to express deep regret for any inadvertent part played by American mariners in provoking such illegal reprisals. Likewise, after directing Deane to entreat French authorities to release Conyngham on grounds that his return with prizes to Dunkirk had been merely an error in judgment, Franklin excitedly wrote Congress that it was “an act so notorious and so contrary to treaties, that if suffered must cause an immediate war.”

When it didn’t, Deane and Hodge began outfitting another, larger warship in Dunkirk in anticipation of Conyngham’s release in June. The financing was murky. Half the proceeds from the vessel’s eventual voyages went to the government, even though, for appearances’ sake, Hodge was listed as the vessel’s sole owner. His actual share was one half. Deane may personally have taken a percentage of that. John Ross, for one, referred to him as “part owner.” Arthur Lee carried the presumption further, asserting beyond question that Deane bought his stake with public funds.

The vessel,
Greyhound
, was registered as a transport, albeit a singular one, “painted blue and yellow, built for the smuggling trade, and reported to be a fast sailer.” Fourteen cannon and twenty-two swivels were hidden in its hold. Before approving its departure, local authorities certified that no Frenchmen were among its crew. When on the eve of its launch British officials lodged a last-minute protest of Hodge’s earlier connection to
Surprise
, Hodge countered by immediately selling
Greyhound
to one Richard Allen, a little-known English sea captain of apparently spotless reputation.

The vessel sailed. Once offshore, its guns were mounted, the forty-man crew was augmented with sixty-six French “desperadoes,” and
Revenge
became its new name. Under carefully worded orders conveyed by Carmichael from Franklin and Deane, the vessel was to return straight to America, “notwithstanding which if necessity obliges you to obtain provisions either in making prizes for your own preservation or in making reprisal for damages sustained.”

Lest the commissioners’ meaning still be unclear, Carmichael offered “verbal explanations that could not be committed to paper.” As intended, this got the crew clamoring for an all-out hunt for British plunder. Having “no interest in diplomacy,” their new commander readily agreed. It wasn’t Richard Allen—there was no such person.
Revenge
’s captain was Conyngham.

“By his bold expeditions,” Deane wrote Robert Morris six weeks later, “he is become the terror of all the eastern coast of England and Scotland. But though this distresses our enemies,” he cautioned, “it embarrasses us.”

The embarrassment was diplomatic. Stormont, whose fulminations had inspired French officials to turn his name into a verb,
stormonter
, was again demanding penalties against the commissioners. “There are some things too glaring to be winked at.”

Vergennes at first tried to pin Conyngham’s voyage on “the inter-position of an English subject named Richard Allen,” but the secret of that alias was out. Compelled to throw the ambassador a bone, he had William Hodge locked up in the Bastille for “changing the ownership” of his vessel in order to get it to sea.

Franklin sought his release. Vergennes refused. “I know not whether such tricks are allowed in America, but in France and Europe it is a very serious fault to tell the king a falsehood.”

Commissioner Arthur Lee had been left out of the doings at Dunkirk. Now that the “illegal transaction” had soured relations with the French government, he was quick to lay blame. Speaking for himself and Franklin (who in truth had supported Conyngham’s cruise), he assured Robert Morris, “It was done by Mr. Deane without our knowledge.” For good measure he wrote his brother Richard as well. “Mr. Deane seems desirous of persuading us and others to be in ill-humor with the Court for taking violent measures to which they have been compelled by his unwarrantable conduct.”

Lee was distancing himself from Vergennes’s public displeasure—but in private the foreign minister was less adamant. He cautioned Louis XVI that “declaring them and their countrymen to be pirates and sea robbers” risked “implanting in the breasts of the Americans a hatred and a desire for revenge which the lapse of centuries will perhaps not eradicate.” His point was that Americans wouldn’t soon forgive, if it came to pass, France’s failure to stand by them in their bid for independence. And the beneficiary of their resentment would be Britain.

This acknowledgment heralded a shift in the ongoing negotiations. While still awaiting the right moment to exploit it fully, Franklin had understood from the beginning that France needed an American alliance. Now Vergennes understood it, too.

On September 25, the foreign minister issued revised instructions which Stormont tersely conveyed to London:

“Hodge is set at liberty.”

R
evenge
took twenty prizes in fourteen months of operation in European waters. Its captain became “the Dunkirk pirate” in the British press, a “nightmare figure” who burned or sank an additional two dozen vessels and ransomed several others.

Ransoming, legal at the time, enabled a captor to set free a prize in exchange for a negotiated fee to be paid on the prize’s safe return to its owner. (Conyngham asked that his fee be sent to the Paris commissioners.) Often the prize’s captain, who signed the pledge in his employer’s name, was held prisoner till payment arrived.

Britain was ransoming’s leading proponent. The law helped the Royal Navy to collect on the value of a captured ship without having to spare a prize crew to sail it home for settlement. But in 1782 Parliament would declare it “unlawful for any British subject to agree to ransom any British vessel” on penalty of £500. The privateers’ success forced the change in policy. “Now it was Britain’s enemies whose cruising range was extended by ransom practice.”