Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Review: "Give Me a Fast Ship," Tim McGrath

History review of Give Me a Fast Ship by Tim McGrath

By Paul Carrier

John Paul Jones, the most famous American naval hero of the Revolutionary War, wrote in 1778 that he wished to have “no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.” But as Tim McGrath makes clear in this compelling history of the war at sea during the American Revolution, the Continental Navy had not one father, but many.

And a difficult birth.

The beginnings were humble. Although John Adams repeatedly urged the Continental Congress to create a navy, his was an uphill fight. George Washington began to fill the void while in command of the Patriot army outside Boston. He took it upon himself to refit a schooner crewed by “webfooters” from Marblehead, Mass., and went on to create his own small naval force.

In Philadelphia, Adams and his allies eventually won out, but progress was sporadic and exultation quickly turned to frustration. Esek Hopkins of Rhode Island, the brother of Continental Congress delegate Stephen Hopkins and the commodore of the nascent American navy, proved inadequate to the task. Some of the earliest American captains were far from impressive. Infighting among captains was endemic. And the eventual decision to quickly build and launch 13 new frigates was wildly unrealistic.

In fact, some historians claim the Continental Navy cost more, in lives and money, than it delivered. As the war dragged on, there was heartbreak galore.

The British quickly captured the Hancock, a grand Massachusetts-built frigate, and added her to their fleet. In 1777, Patriots burned the new Continental Navy frigates Congress and Montgomery before they ever sailed, to keep them out of British hands. Two years later, the catastrophic failure of the Penobscot Expedition in Maine became the worst American naval disaster until the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

But McGrath argues that American victories at sea boosted Patriot morale, hiked insurance rates in Britain, unnerved Britain’s coastal towns and forced the Royal Navy to fight in two hemispheres. British losses fueled anti-war sentiment in Parliament and even helped persuade France to enter the war on the American side.

Clearly, the times demanded heroes, and heroes answered the call. Jones, a thin-skinned but fearless Scotsman, always comes to mind in this context, as well he should. But McGrath sets the record straight by documenting that Jones might well be described as the first among equals.

Nicholas Biddle (born in 1750) and Lambert Wickes (1735) made their mark as intrepid captains during the war. John Barry (1745) is credited as the father of the U.S. Navy, an honorary title he shares with Jones. In 18 months, Gustavus Conyngham (c. 1747) captured or burned 60 ships, a total unmatched by any other captain in the Continental Navy.

McGrath offers much to stir the blood. A reader would be hard-pressed to find anything in nautical fiction as inspiring as the 1781 encounter between the American frigate Alliance and two British men-of-war, the sloop Atalanta and the brig Trepassey, in which Barry managed to simultaneously subdue both of his adversaries even after he was wounded and his ship and crew had taken a terrible pounding.

Biddle was in command of the frigate Randolph in 1778 when he attacked the much more powerful Yarmouth. His men more than held their own in the battle that followed, firing broadsides much more swiftly than the Yarmouth, a 64-gun ship-of-the-line. Biddle even refused to leave his quarterdeck after he was badly wounded, only to die with most of his crew moments later when the Randolph’s magazine exploded.

When the smooth-talking Conyngham, in command of the Surprise, caught sight of the British packet Prince of Orange in 1777, he edged his ship ever closer without revealing her nationality, and engaged British Capt. William Story in “a pleasant conversation across the water.” Convinced that he could defeat the larger Prince of Orange if necessary, Conyngham quickly ran up the Grand Union flag and demanded that Story “surrender to the Congress of America.” The startled Story did just that.

And, of course, there is Jones, who may or may not have replied “I have not yet begun to fight!” when asked to surrender his badly damaged Bonhomme Richard as it began to sink during its 1779 duel with the Serapis. Some witnesses claimed Jones offered a different response, but one that was equally cocky: ”I may sink, but I’m damned if I’ll strike” my flag. Jones captured the 44-gun Serapis and transferred his men to her before the Bonhomme Richard slid beneath the waves.

McGrath’s meticulously detailed and deeply researched history is erudite, but graced with wit as well. The author examines virtually every aspect of the Continental Navy, including its captains and their battles, nautical and otherwise. “Few careers held more danger than the lot of sailors,” he writes. “Aboard ship, there were so many ways to die.” McGrath never loses sight of the political forces that created the fleet, managed its growth and — ostensibly, at least  — supervised its operations.

Above all else, McGrath makes it clear that although the Revolution is best remembered for the land war, the cause was blessed to have zealous, highly skilled Patriots who labored mightily in the “wooden world” as well. While few Continental Navy captains are remembered today, history has unfairly relegated several of these early American heroes to an undeserved obscurity.