An American ship carrying 38 men and 16 cannons faced a British privateer with 130 men and 43 guns off the coast of Spain in June 1780.
Captain Jonathan Haraden could have fled. Instead, he ordered his crew aboard the General Pickering to stand firm and fight.
Author Eric Jay Dolin used the dramatic encounter to open his September 16 presentation at the Mattapoisett Free Public Library. About 40 people attended the program on his 2022 book Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution.
The event was supported by a grant from the Mattapoisett Cultural Council, a local agency supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. Betsy Dumais, the library’s adult and teen services librarian, introduced Dolin.
Mixing history, humor and frequent tangents, Dolin argued that privateers played a critical but often overlooked role in the American victory.
Privateers were privately owned ships authorized by the government to capture enemy vessels and sell their ships and cargo. They were not simply pirates, Dolin emphasized.
Nearly 2,000 American privateering vessels operated during the Revolution, crewed by an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 men. They captured between 1,600 and 1,800 British prizes worth millions of pounds.
Privateers drove up British maritime insurance rates, forced the Royal Navy to divert ships to protect merchant traffic and brought supplies and money into the colonies. Their success also helped draw France into the war on the American side, Dolin said.
Massachusetts was the first colony to authorize privateering, doing so in November 1775. Other colonies followed before the Continental Congress approved privateering throughout the colonies in March 1776.
Dolin said the men who served aboard the ships were motivated by both patriotism and the possibility of earning money. He quoted privateersman and soldier Christopher Prince, who described his two wartime motives as “the freedom of my country” and “the luxuries of life.”
The tone became more somber when Dolin described the British prison ships anchored in New York Harbor. Between 15,000 and 22,000 men were held aboard 19 ships during the war, he said, with American privateers making up much of the prison population.
The worst was the HMS Jersey, a former British warship that held as many as 1,200 prisoners at a time. Confined below deck in overcrowded and disease-ridden conditions, between six and 12 prisoners died aboard the ship each day.
Each morning, guards called, “Rebels, bring up your dead.” Prisoners then carried the bodies of fellow Americans ashore for burial in shallow graves.
Dolin’s one-hour presentation prompted numerous questions about the early American Navy, captured sailors, Black privateers and whether privateering could ever return.
Following the question-and-answer period, Dolin signed and personally dedicated copies of his books for attendees.
By Jeanne Hopkins