First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [29]
With its prize of war material intact, the Americans made for New London, bringing the first Continental naval action to a successful, if not heroic, end. Officers in ex post facto critique were not satisfied with their performance. In Captain Biddle’s words, “a more imprudent ill-conducted affair never happened.”
Other encounters followed off the Delaware Capes and Bermuda and Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, of no great concern to this story except insofar as they made the Continental flag known to its enemies and no doubt to neutrals.
After her fight with the Glasgow, the Andrew Doria, repaired and refitted at her home port in Gloucester, New Jersey, sailed on October 23, under a new captain, Isaiah Robinson, carrying sealed orders from the Marine Committee. Opened at sea, they gave him his destination as St. Eustatius and his mission to deliver a copy of the Declaration of Independence to Governor de Graaff and to buy cloth and a load of arms and ammunition for the Continental Army. With a new national navy under his feet and “conscious of conducting a diplomatic mission,” Captain Robinson wanted to make a noticeable entry. Sailing into the harbor, he ran up his striped flag and moved forward to anchor right below Fort Orange. Following custom, he dipped his flag to the fort and when the fort’s flag was dipped in return he fired his entering salute. Abraham Ravené, the fort’s commander, as he later testified, surmising the identity of his visitor and realizing that recognition would cause trouble with the British, was uncertain what to do. Sending hastily for the Governor, who lived close by, he was instructed to reply with two guns less than a national salute. The volley and the white puffs of smoke followed. Three English sailors aboard a sloop in the roadstead saw the whole scene and hurried afterward to discuss it with the excited townspeople of St. Kitts who had watched from on shore.
The colonial authorities, obviously pleased by the response gained by the Andrew Doria, were inspired to invite a repetition. In February, 1777, orders were issued by the Marine Committee to Captain Nicholas Biddle of the Continental frigate Randolf instructing him that “As you command the first American frigate that has got out to sea it is expected that you contend warmly on all necessary occasions for the honor of the American flag. At every foreign port you enter, salute their forts.…” No further salutes, however, were recorded.
Whether it was madness or not to launch a fleet, Congress made the naval challenge explicit on November 25, when it formally declared British warships, though not yet merchantmen, open to capture in retaliation for British attacks on American coastal towns. At the same time it issued naval regulations for action at sea by the United Colonies of North America.
V
Buccaneer—The Baltimore Hero
STRAINING for action, a privateer named the Baltimore Hero, not part of the Continental Navy but bearing a commission from the Council of Safety of Maryland, had not waited for formal authorization. On November 21, 1776, with more audacity than armament (between 6 and 14 guns), she captured a British-owned cargo ship, the May, three miles off the coast of St. Eustatius. The May, sailing out of St. Kitts, was taken within sight of both that island and St. Eustatius. A prize crew was put on board with orders to take her back to the Delaware in America. The owner, a British resident of Dominica, southernmost of the