The American Revolution and Privateers - Book Report/Review Example

[Teacher 20 March Privateers and the American Revolution Patriot Pirates: The Privateer War for Freedom and Fortune in the American Revolution by Robert H. Patton tells the story of the privateers who fought many of the sea battles during the American Revolutionary War. Patton asserts that not enough has been written about this aspect of the history of the War for Independence. The privateers were essentially pirates who plundered British ships for their own profit, with the side benefit of helping the war effort for a price. Patton points out that George Washington hoped the privateers would make the war too costly for the British to continue fighting, as the loss of goods piled up and made trade with the American colonies an impossible endeavor. Privateering was not only condoned by the fledgling American government but sponsored by it. Privateers were licensed to serve as mercenaries who fought in the Revolution for profit, and paid by the government to plunder cargo ships, steal the goods within the ships’ holds, and sell the goods back to the American government, in the process often killing the crews of the British supply ships. Patton tells the story of the privateers in a series of shorter stories about the various men involved that are centered in different locations in the American colonies. Over time, the stories of the men intertwine as their actions begin to affect one another and their paths begin to cross. He begins with Rhode Island and the story of John Brown, a wealthy merchant turned ruthless privateer. As Britain made restrictive trade laws that made it more and more difficult for American traders to export and sell their own goods through American ports, American merchants began to grow increasingly angry with British rule. The British sent Royal Navy patrol ships including the Gaspee to stop Americans from shipping and selling their own goods and confiscate the products American traders were attempting to sell. In retaliation, John Brown and a crew of raiders attacked the Gaspee. Brown knew that a ship going through the harbor at that time would become stranded on a sandbar, because he had been stranded on that same sandbar a year earlier. Brown and his cohorts waited for the ship to become stuck, then rowed to the ship in longboats and boarded the Gaspee. The raiders left the Gaspee’s crew on the shore, the captain suffering from gunshot wound to the leg that John Brown had inflicted on the captain himself. The marauders and looted and burned the ship. The Rhode Island government made a show of official disapproval while simultaneously doing everything possible to slow down the legal prosecution of Brown and his accomplices. Brown spent the next several years living in fear of being arrested for piracy. Fortunately for him, the colonial government appreciated his efforts against the British navy and made the process of charging Brown so difficult that the British finally gave up on the idea. Brown became a powerful merchant and smuggler. He once famously denied weapons and gunpowder to George Washington because a local colonial government had more money to spend on the items. In order to supply Washington’s troops with supplies, Congress began secretly funding Brown and others like him to pay for his piracy and ensure that the supplies would go to the Continental Army. Because Congress did not have much money, they paid the privateers in barter goods. Next Patton tells the story of Machias, Maine. A Royal Navy captain named James Moore attempted to acquire lumber in the town, but the locals refused to trade with him. In defiance they raised a special tree called a liberty pole. Moore ordered the town to take it down and give him lumber under the threat of his ship’s guns. In response, the townspeople attacked one of the supply ships with farm implements including scythes, pitchforks, and axes, took over the ship, and used it to ram Moore’s ship, the Margaretta. Moore fired on the raiders, but he was unable to stop them from taking his ship and killing several of his crewmen. As a reward, Jeremiah O’Brien, who led the attack, was given one of the ships and commissioned in the Massachusetts navy to attack more British supply ships. During the following years, the privateers became a powerful force in American waters. Patton states that the cost to the British government was six million pounds a year, which caused many British politicians to criticize the King and begin to question if the war to hold on to the American colonies was worth the expense. Patton goes on to tell the story of Silas Deane, a social climber who married a rich widow and added an ‘e’ to the end of his name to appear more nobly born. Deane was sent to France by the burgeoning US government to acquire weapons from French arms dealers. Given little to negotiate with, Deane began handing out officer commissions in the US navy to sons of the European families he dealt with in order to satisfy their desires for higher social positions. Deane used his skill as a trader to secure arms for the American army using the only thing he had to offer. Ultimately Deane stepped down from the position as Benjamin Franklin, a much more skilled diplomat, took over for him. Deane began to deal with a man named Edward Bancroft, a man who was later revealed to be a British spy. Deane unwittingly became a valuable asset to Bancroft. Bancroft cultivated a close friendship with Deane, and offered support to him in times of crisis. Yet in the end, Bancroft seems to have been responsible for Silas Deane’s murder. The next story in the book focuses on John Langdon, Esek Hopkins, and John Paul Jones, who objected to the privateers and their lawlessness. Langdon oversaw the construction of ships for the US navy. He found it increasingly difficult to properly outfit his ships, and he blamed the profiteers. Langdon was outraged by the fact that the privateers exploited the American government and its military forces by jacking up prices for weapons and taking the majority of the weapons for their own ships. The delay in preparing navy ships drove potential recruits to join the privateers instead. Esek Hopkins, a commander of naval forces, tried to get Congress to stop all privateering operations until he was able to recruit enough crew for his fleet. He deliberately disregarded the privateers’ requests for payment, which resulted in the town of Newport being virtually undefended when the British attacked. The attack was successful, and Hopkins was blamed for the defeat. Jones was also critical of the privateers, although he was accused of being a hypocrite in that regard, as he sometimes engaged in the very practices he condemned the privateers for participating in. As the war continued, the British began to have more luck in capturing privateers, and they sent their own privateers to confiscate American cargoes. Patton states that “More than 120 American vessels were captured in the West Indies between November 1776 and April 1777. Losses ran into millions of dollars” (139). Yet the British were suffering much greater financial losses, due to the fact that their ships carried greater volumes of more valuable cargo. Not all privateers were treated as heroes by the American government. Gustavus Conyngham was an Irish immigrant who became a privateer. He was caught by a British patrol that was searching for arms dealers. Conyngham managed to retake his ship and escape to Holland, where he sold his ship before heading on to France. There Benjamin Franklin made him a commander in the Continental navy. Conyngham proved to be so prolific in his ability to capture ships, often the wrong ships from a diplomatic viewpoint, that he ended up being tried for piracy in both Britain and the United States. Patton argues that the lessons learned from privateering were responsible for the principles that shaped American capitalism. Towards the end of the war, the American economy saw a huge financial boom. But in the aftermath of the war, the economy took a downturn, and the new country struggled with war debt. This helped spur on the slave trade, which was run largely by the same men who had been privateers during the war. According to Patton: Roughly a hundred slave voyages, with th capacity of ten thousand Africans, are known to have sailed from North America in the 1780s. The actual number is certainly greater; there are many examples of the ships registering as whalers and cargo ships to disguise their purpose. […] A British visitor counted six ships “from Boston and its vicinity” waiting offshore “to take slaves only, and more daily are expected.” (238) Patton tells a fascinating and little-known story about our country’s founding years. He uses the personal stories of the individuals involved to make the story seem more immediate and real. He paints a complex portrait of the privateers. The moral ambiguity of these men raises interesting questions about the nature of war and history’s views of war heroes. Some of the men whose stories Patton tells were patriots who fought for the love of freedom and their county. Others were calculating mercenaries who fought only for their own personal profits. Works Cited Patton, Robert H. Patriot Pirates: The Privateer War for Freedom and Fortune in the American Revolution. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 2008. 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