The Sea and the American Revolution

Greetings, Round Tablers and friends!  Our indefatigable commentator Lynne Saginaw sent in this post just before Thanksgiving.  

Thank you, Lynne.

The Revolution At Sea (Part I)
Published last year, The Sea and Civilization, Lincoln Paine’s “Maritime History of the World” has a few things to say about the role of seafaring in the run-up to American Revolution. See if you agree with him.

Image via Wikipedia Commons/Charny

He writes, “The proximate cause of the American Revolution can be traced to crown policies implemented in the wake of the Seven Years’ War, but the roots of the colonists’ self-confidence can be traced to the previous century. All but ignored by king and Parliament during the English Civil War of the English Civil War of the 1640s, merchants and cod fishermen in British North America had carved out a place for themselves in the trade with the West Indies, which, stripped of their forests to make way for sugarcane depended on North America for much of their food and virtually all of their wood. 

"As a result, the eighteenth century saw an explosive growth in shipbuilding in British North America, which accounted for about one-third of the ships in the British merchant marine. American shipwrights launched about a thousand vessels in the 1660s, the majority of them relatively small by the standards of the day, and not competitive with larger English-built vessels but more than adequate for the trade of the western Atlantic and Caribbean. Colonial seamen and shipwrights benefited from the Navigation Acts because they were allowed to serve under the British flag and to build ships for British owners. 

"On the whole, however, the colonists deeply resented the prohibitions in the Navigation Acts, the expectations of which were unrealistic for the simple reason that there were not enough ships to serve all of Britain’s far-flung colonies. Moreover, by law European goods imported into the colonies had first to be unloaded and reloaded in England. This re-exportation caused unnecessary delays, drove up handling costs, and resulted in the imposition of double duties on some goods – for import to and export from England. The number of enumerated goods that could be exported only to England and not to other British colonies, much less to foreign ports, increased steadily. By the 1750s, these included sugar, molasses and rice, copper and iron ore, tobacco and cotton, and naval stores like tar, lumber, pitch and hemp, and as a result, smuggling was rampant”  (Paine, 485-86).

You can see where this is going. A neglected colony creates a profitable industry, and then finds the mother country, suddenly hard up for funds, trying to cut in on the action.

Source: 
Paine, Lincoln, The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.

What were the Navigation Acts?
Wikipedia.com states:  "Navigation Acts were a series of laws that restricted the use of foreign ships for trade between Britain and its colonies. They began in 1651 and ended 200 years later. They reflected the policy of mercantilism, which sought to keep all the benefits of trade inside the Empire, and minimize the loss of gold and silver to foreigners. They prohibited the colonies from trading directly with the Netherlands, Spain, France, and their colonies. The original ordinance of 1651 was renewed at the Restoration by Acts of 1662, 1663, 1670, and 1673 subsequently subject to minor amendment. These Acts formed the basis for British overseas trade for nearly 200 years. Another way to define this is laws created by England to limit their colonies' trade with other countries."

Next up in Part 2: More on how an argument about trade policy became a shooting war.

Up for review on December 2:  Send Me A Fast Ship by Tim McIntyre
Would-be reviewers are hereby advised that the December 2 distribution of books for review will include Send Me a Fast Ship by Tim McIntyre, a brand new history of the American Navy in the Revolution. 

Only members not currently on assignment may qualify to review.

Next Meeting: December 2, 2014

Greetings to all!  Our next Round Table meeting is Tuesday, December 2, 2014, at 6:00 p.m. in the Coffee House Club, 20 West 44th Street, 6th Floor.  For all the details, please visit our website at http://arrt-ny.org/meeting.html

It is sure to be a lively meeting, and we hope to see you there!

BAND OF GIANTS

Round Tabler Jack Kelly's new book, Band of Giants, garnered a wonderful review in the Wall Street Journal on November 5.  Read all about it here: http://bandofgiants.org/reviews/

Thanks to Tom Fleming for the tip.  And congratulations to Jack for a job well done!

Happy Halloween!

Hello, Round Tablers. My quest to get spooky stories for this week's blog has meet with some success. Here is a quotation to get us started.

From The Reverend Ewald Shewkirk via Michael Newton:

"It was a wettish day, and it looked as if all was dead in the town." Mr. Shewkirk in New York, July 14, 1776." Now that sounds like it's worth investigating!

From Lynne Saginaw: The Rest of the Story: The Vilest Villain ...

Loring admitted he had misappropriated two-thirds of the allowance for prison food. He had an assistant by the name of Sergeant O'Keefe, who was probably in charge of almost 300 private, unofficial hangings ordered without trial.

On the 18th of January, 1777, George Washington wrote to Lord Howe on the subject of naval prisoners:

“…that I am under the disagreeable necessity of troubling your Lordship with a letter almost wholly on the subject of the cruel treatment which our officers and men in the Naval Department, who are unhappy enough to fall into your hands received on board the Prison ships in the harbor of New York:

"From the opinion I entertain of your Lordship's humanity I will not suppose that you are privy of proceedings of so cruel and unjustifiable a nature and I hope that upon making the proper inquiry you will have the matter so regulated that the unhappy persons whose lot is captivity may not, in the future, have the misery of cold, disease and famine added to their other misfortunes.

"You may call us Rebels, and say we deserve no better treatment, but remember, my Lord, that we still have feelings as keen and sensible as Loyalists and will if forced to, most assuredly retaliate upon those upon whom we look as the unjust invaders of our rights, liberties and properties.

"I should not have said this much, but injured countrymen have long called upon me to endeavor to obtain redress of their grievances, and I should think, myself, as culpable as those who inflicted such severities, were I to continue silent.”

Lord Howe’s answer was an evasive general denial of the charges. Howe was a poor disciplinarian, naturally lazy, who preferred the luxury and self-indulgence, and did not want to bother with investigations that might take up his time or reflect on the British army's administration in New York.

Loring was finally relieved of his position on charges of corruption and sent to England during the war. He died there shortly afterwards. But the damage was done.

From Lower Manhattan, these photos of the long-ago Bridewell Prison

I recommend that you take a look for yourselves the next time you are in City Hall Park. Perhaps you'll feel the same tingle up and down your spine that I did.



Photos by Maria Dering

No Huzzahs Here for Joshua Loring, Jr.

Halloween is coming and our villains list features Joshua Loring, Jr.  Here is what Lynne Saginaw dug up about this nefarious scoundrel.  

The Vilest Villain of All: Joshua Loring, Jr.

Americans like to see ourselves as the good guys: occasionally mistaken, but always honest and well-meaning. The refutation of the argument goes back to the earliest days of America. It exists in the person of Joshua Loring, Jr. (1744-89), mass murderer and paragon of corruption.

Prison ship Jersey
In the public domain; courtesy of www.wikipedia.com

In the entirety of the Revolution, a total of 4,300 American men were killed in battle. Three times as many, roughly 13,000, died on the infamous British prison ships and in warehouses and factories commandeered by the British in New York and elsewhere. And Joshua Loring was largely to blame.

American prisoners died like rats, of disease and hunger. In summer, they suffocated and they froze to death or died of pneumonia in winter. With little food and water, prisoners had no strength to resist dysentery, typhoid, smallpox, yellow fever, and tuberculosis. The food was often putrid.

From Commissary Joshua Loring, Provost Marshal William Cunningham, and Naval Commissary David Sprout, down to the lowly prison guards, no one acted to prevent the virtual annihilation of these prisoners of war. The story differed little in prisons in Charleston and Savannah. The policy appears to have been a deliberate conspiracy not only among the prison commissaries, but actually by the British High Command.

Wallabout Bay
The victims were buried in the sands of the adjacent shore of Wallabout Bay, where the Navy Yard in Brooklyn is now located. Twenty years after the war, a vast number of the bones were dislodged. They were collected by Captain John Jackson, the proprietor of the neighboring land, and re-interred at his expense.

When they evacuated New York, the British tried to cover up their responsibility. But the evidence was there, contained in letters written by prisoners who survived. There was also the word of escaped and exchanged prisoners. And there was the report made by Elias Boudinot, appointed by Congress to secure the exchange of prisoners, provide them with clothing and food, and investigate the situation in some of the New York prisons.

Howe had a direct link with Commissioner Loring, whom he appointed. Loring was a Boston Loyalist and a contemptible example of greed and graft. He is perhaps most famous for selling his wife Elizabeth Lloyd Loring (1744-1838) to Howe to secure the appointment. This arrangement was widely known at the time, and made the Lorings the subject of some of the more ribald lyrics of the day.

Visit us on Halloween for the rest of the story.

Sources:
http://longislandgeneaology.com by Brock Fleming
www.wikipedia.com
www.usmm.org (The Merchant Marine website has lists of the names of prisoners)

Our Meeting on Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Rarely do I add personal musings to a blog of this kind, but I would like to share my observations on Tuesday night's meeting.  

In my experience, groups interested in history (whether local, state, or national) tend to skew toward an older demographic.  In the past, the ARRT-NY was no exception to the rule. (That is just a statement of fact, not a value judgment.)  However, I have noticed over the past few years that we are -- happily -- attracting a much more diverse group in terms of age and background.  On Tuesday evening, we welcomed our youngest attendee ever, who even took a lively part in our book and flag auction.

It is a pleasure to see so many different kinds of people interested in American history, especially the history of the Revolution that often takes a back seat to the Civil War.  So please do encourage your friends, neighbors, colleagues, and family members to try a Round Table event soon.  You'll find us on Facebook, on this blog, and at our website, www.arrt-ny.org.  We are a friendly group!

From Our Library

Now that autumn is in full swing, why not take a break from your busy schedules and pick up a good book?  Our Book Review chair Lynne Saginaw shares her thoughts on a few good ones here.  Thank you, Lynne, for this very helpful list.

What I Read This Summer
Now that I’ve retired, I’m a full-time reader. Here is a partial list of Revolutionary War titles I read over the summer; they will make good reading for those fast approaching cold autumn evenings.

Pulitzer–Prize winner Joseph Ellis’ excellent Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence is just out in paperback from Vintage ($15.95). Those risky, dramatic days are brought vividly to life in a short, snappy text you’ll find hard to put down, even though you already know how it comes out. The summer of 1776, culminating in the Battle of Brooklyn, makes for thrilling reading. Originally published by Knopf at $26.95.

From great events to what the women of the era made of them: turn to Dear Abigail: the Intimate Lives and Revolutionary Ideas of Abigail Adams and her Two Remarkable Sisters by Diane Jacobs. You may never have heard of Mary Cranch and Elizabeth Shaw Peabody, the older and younger sisters, respectively, of Abigail Adams, but they lived lives of substance. All three were devoted correspondents, and their letters illuminate the times with an intimacy that is by turns touching and instructive.

This volume, published 2014 by Ballantine Books, suffers from some inconsistent editing, including a few wince-making spelling errors by the author (I don’t mean the oddities of Colonial–era spelling, well known to history readers), and some of Ms. Jacobs' conclusions strike this reviewer as naïve, but the life stories of the principals are so compelling that you shouldn’t let these lapses stop you from enjoying this book.

One of my favorite essayists, Simon Winchester, tackles the history of America’s infrastructure in The Men Who United the States. The colonial and immediate post-revolutionary periods are not a big part of this eccentric and charming volume -- part memoir, part history, part travelogue -- but you won’t want to miss Winchester’s section on George Washington’s efforts at canal-building. (HarperCollins, 2013)

When I was a kid, there was a saying: “make new friends but keep the old.” One old friend they’ll have to pry out of my cold dead hands is David McCullough’s classic John Adams. Published by Simon and Schuster in 2001 (at $35.00), this is a brilliant compendium of everything you need to know about this Founding Father, written with clarity, depth, and love for this difficult man. McCullough is rightly deemed the dean of popular historians. Even the most history-averse will fall for this one, assuming its heft doesn’t scare them off. Make it a dare, and win twice over.

Another past winner revisited was Richard D. Blackmon’s Dark and Bloody Ground, published in 2012 by Westholme ($29.95), a solid niche publisher of American history. This book was a finalist of ARRT’s book award that year. Not for the general reader, it details with exhaustive care the war along the southern frontier among Native peoples, colonists, and Europeans. If you are interested in the war in the South or in the beginnings of American policy towards the first Americans, this should be on your shelf. Otherwise, any one of the other books cited will serve you better.

Get thee to a library.
 Preview of Coming AttractionsPotential reviewers are hereby alerted that the October 7^th meeting will feature these four books for review. Only members not currently on assignment are eligible.

The Return of George Washington, 1783-1789 by Edward J. Larson
American Spring: Lexington, Concord and the Road to Revolution by Walter R. Borneman
Brandywine: A Military History of the Battle that Lost Philadelphia by Saved America, September 11, 1777 by Michael C. Harris
Band of Giants: The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America’s Independence by Jack Kelly (a Round Tabler himself!)
 
Hope to see many of you on Tuesday at our October 7th dinner meeting!