Revolutionary War: The Serapis

Sources

War at Sea. From the beginning of the war the sea was a vital theater, giving the British navy an avenue for moving troops quickly and easily from the mother country to North America or from one colony to another. This meant that a great deal of the military action would occur around the great colonial ports: Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, and Charleston. Disrupting British control of the sea was a constant concern for the colonists, one expressed as early as 12 June 1775, when a party of lumbermen in Machias, Maine, boarded and confiscated the Margaretta, a British armed cutter. Soon seaside towns were seizing British vessels in port, sending boats out to harass shipping near the shore, and smuggling weapons. On 18 October Adm. Thomas Graves attacked what is now Portland, Maine, burned most of the town and captured or destroyed the ships in the harbor. No coastal community was safe from British sea power. Congress purchased eleven vessels to refit for the Continental Navy, but the effectiveness of the British blockade made many wonder if they would ever be able to put to sea. Therefore, Congress licensed privateers, private ships authorized by formal letters of marque and reprisal, to raid commerce.

A Heroic Career. On 6 August 1776 Lt. John Paul Jones was ordered to sea in his first independent command. His determination and audacity made him the greatest American naval hero of the war. Commanding the sloop of war Ranger, he took the fighting to the British Isles. When he sailed into the Irish Sea in the spring 1778, he was doing no more than Capt. Lambert Wickes in Reprisal and Capt. Henry Johnson in Lexington had done in 1777. Instead of merely raiding commerce, however, Jones raided ashore in Whitehaven Harbor (from which he had sailed for Virginia at age seventeen), spiking the artillery that defended the port, setting ships afire and hoisting a few glasses in the local pub. He followed on 23 April by landing on St. Mary’s Isle in Kirkcudbright Bay to take the Earl of Selkirk as a

hostage. Fortunately for the earl, he was not at home, and his wife refreshed the raiding party with a cup of wine. Insignificant raids though these were, they were an invasion of the British Isles and a great propaganda victory for Jones and the American cause. His finest moment came on 23 September 1779. Commanding Bonhomme Richard, a converted merchant ship with 42 guns, Jones did battle with the British 44-gun frigate, Serapis, commanded by Capt. Richard Pearson. Early in the battle, Pearson ran his bow into Jones’ stern and asked if the American was surrendering. Jones replied, “I have not yet begun to fight,” nor had he. For two hours the ships grappled together bow to stern, muzzle to muzzle, so close Serapis could not open her gun ports and had to blow them off from inside. Although the Bonhomme Richard was sinking, the British captain lost his nerve and surrendered. Having nailed his flag to the mast, he now had to tear it down with his own hands. Jones had achieved undying fame.

The French Fleet. When the French joined the war on Britain, they brought troops and military expertise, but, perhaps more important, they brought their fleet. From 11 July 1778, when Adm. Jean-Baptiste-Charles-Henri-Hector, comte d’Estaing, briefly blockaded the British in New York, the operations of the French fleet in North American and Caribbean waters altered the calculus of power. The Americans were assured of supply lifelines to the rest of the world; the delivery by the French of much-needed arms and ammunition; and a slackening of British ability to use the sea freely for military purposes. It was the French fleet sailing from the Caribbean under Adm. François-Joseph-Paul de Grasse that provided a copybook exercise in combined operations by landing troops to strengthen the siege of Yorktown, preventing the British fleet from interfering, ferrying American troops to the scene of battle, and doing all of these while maintaining constant, clear, and effective communication with the American land-based forces. Though fought largely on land, the Revolutionary War could not have been won without sea power.

Sources

Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, 1913);

Samuel Eliot Morison, John Paul Jones: A Sailor’s Biography (Boston: Little, Brown, 1959).