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THE NAVY OF THE
AMERICAN REVOLUTION
The University of Chicago
FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER
The Navy of the
American Revolution
Its Administration, its Policy and
its Achievements
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Faculty of the
Graduate School of Arts and Literature
In Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of History
By
CHARLES OSCAR PAULLIN
CHICAGO
1906
Copyright, 1906
by
The Burrows Brothers Company
REPUBLICAN PRINTING COMPANY
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA
PREFACE
Several narrative accounts of the navyof the American Revolution have beenwritten. These usually form the introductorypart of a history of the AmericanNavy since 1789. The earliest of these accountsis that of Thomas Clark, publishedin 1814, and probably the best that of JamesFenimore Cooper, first printed in 1839. Laternarratives are rather more popular thanCooper’s. Many sources of information,which were not accessible to the earlierwriters, and were not much used by thelater, were drawn upon in the writing ofthis book. Moreover, the information thatis here presented is of a somewhat differentsort from that of previous writers; and themethod of treatment is new.
This book is written from the point ofview of the naval administrators; hitherto,historians have written from the point ofview of the naval officers. Their narrativestreat almost exclusively of the doings atsea, the movements of armed vessels, andthe details of sea fights. They have theadvantage of dealing primarily with picturesque,and sometimes dramatic, events.Their accounts, however, lack unity, since[Pg 6]they consist of a series of detached incidents.
In the first place an attempt has been heremade to restore the naval administrativemachinery of the Revolution. The centerof this narrative is the origin, organization,and work of naval committees, secretariesof marine, navy boards, and naval agents.Next, inasmuch as the men who served asnaval executives administered the laws relatingto naval affairs, and indeed often preparedthese laws before their adoption bythe legislative authorities, it was thoughtbest to give a fairly complete resume of thenaval legislation of the Revolution. Thoselaws with which the naval administratorswere chiefly concerned have received mostattention. The legislation with referenceto prize courts and privateering has beentreated more briefly. As the privateers donot, properly speaking, form a part of theRevolutionary navy, no attempt to writetheir history has been made. In order thatthe subject may be seen in its true relations,some statistics and other interesting factsconcerning this industry have, however,been introduced. An account of the StateNavies is now given for the fir