Trumbull-Iris Engagement

TRUMBULL-IRIS ENGAGEMENT. 9 August 1781. Captain James Nicholson departed the Delaware Capes on 8 August, escorting a twenty-eight-sail convoy to the West Indies with his own twenty-eight-gun Trumbull and two privateers. The Trumbull, the last of the original Continental Navy frigates, had a crew composed for the most part of British deserters. The next day three British vessels gave chase, and the convoy scattered. The Trumbull was pulling away when a squall tore way part of two of her masts and left the rigging in shambles. Unable to get away, Nicholson tried to jettison the guns; but most of the crew refused to come on deck. The lead British frigate came up, the thirty-two-gun Iris. This vessel was the Continental Navy's Hancock, captured in 1777 by the Rainbow and taken into the Royal Navy under a new name. Nicholson, Lieutenants Richard Dale and Alexander Murray, and a small minority of the crew resisted for an hour and a half before being captured. The eighteen-gun General Monk came up at the end of the action but did not get a share of the prize money. Ironically, she had formerly been the American privateer General Washington.

SEE ALSO Trumbull-Watt Engagement.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fowler, William M., Jr. Rebels under Sail: the American Navy during the Revolution. New York: Scribners, 1976.

United States Navy. Naval Historical Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. 8 vols. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959–1981.

                          revised by Robert K. Wright Jr.