Accidents and Humiliations Plague the British at Sandy Hook

In January 1783, Lt. Colonel William Martin wrote to General Guy Carleton, the British commander in chief, about the posts necessary to protect British assets in greater New York City as they drew down their forces and shipped Loyalists to Canada. Martin concluded:

The post called Flagstaff Hill on Staten Island may be rendered very respectable, but Sandy Hook is thought by good judges to be the most important spot to Great Britain of any connected with this communication.

Despite this and other indications that Sandy Hook was critical to protecting British shipping in and out New York, Carleton had neither the forces nor desire to heavily fortify “the Hook.” On most days, the military presence at Sandy Hook consisted of a guard ship anchored on the bayside of the Hook and a company of New Jersey Volunteers stationed at the lighthouse. By the end of the war, the size of the ships had dwindled from a frigate early in the war to only a sloop of war in 1783. Similarly, the guard at the lighthouse dropped to as little as 25 men (roughly half a full company). The once formidable shore battery and fire ships at the tip of the Hook were removed.

In 1782, New Jersey’s most successful privateer, Adam Hyler, made several descents on Sandy Hook that included taking a number of prizes within sight of the guardship, capturing men on Sandy Hook, and defeating the guard and capturing its captain. Loyalist fisherman, peacefully fishing the banks off Sandy Hook, were often preyed upon and taken prisoner by privateers. Despite these humiliations, the British were disinclined to better fortify Sandy Hook—setting the stage for new humiliations in 1783.

Continued Humiliations in 1783

While Hyler was dead, other New Jersey privateers continued to prey on British and Loyalist vessels near Sandy Hook. This admiralty court announcement in the New Jersey Gazette on April 16 is one example. The court would hear “the bill of Tunis Vorhees, commander of the armed sloop Revenge against a certain sloop called the Nancy and a certain sloop called the Rachel... which said vessels were captured near Sandy Hook and brought into the port of New Brunswick."

The Connecticut Journal printed a May 24 letter describing the sinking of a transport vessel carrying Loyalists to Canada. The letter reported "a considerable number of dead bodies from both sexes were lately driven on shore on the outside of Sandy Hook and others near Black Point near Shrewsbury. They are thought to have belonged to a vessel that lately sailed from New York to Nova Scotia which is reported to have foundered one day's sail from the Hook." The reason the transport sank is not stated, but it is noteworthy that the vessel left Sandy Hook without as escort, further evidence of British weakness.

Another letter more explicitly demonstrated British weakness at Sandy Hook. On July 11, Lt. John White of sloop-of-war Vixen, serving as the guard ship at Sandy Hook, wrote directly to Colonel David Forman at Freehold. Forman was well known for supporting extralegal retaliation against Loyalists and British. White wrote:

Yesterday morning, at eleven o'clock, I sent three men in a small boat for a cask of water, near the watering place, near Mr. Stout's at the Highlands; on their arrival they were made prisoners by a party of armed men, one of the men has been liberated and is since on board, who informs me that he has been beat most unmercifully, indeed his bruises are sufficiently conspicuous; what has become of the other two I cannot learn, I have therefore taken the liberty of acquainting you with the matter, as I am confident you would never give sanction to such an affair, and in the fullest hope that you will take the proper methods to bring the offenders to punishment, and to prevent the retaliating that might be the consequence of such unwarrantable proceedings.

Years earlier, the beating of British sailors for peacefully drawing water would have prompted a powerful reprisal from British regulars. But by July 1783, White was forced to flatter Forman and hope for the return of his men.

The situation on the Vixen worsened. The crew mutinied a week later, an event likely exacerbated by a lack of potable water and the humiliating capture of its sailors. The Salem Gazette printed a July 19 letter based on an account from two sailors who deserted the Vixen. The sailors deposed that:

The greatest part of the crew of the galley, chiefly Americans, rose up upon the officers and having confined them, and rendered the cannon and small arms useless, came off in the two boats belonging to the vessel and landed on the Jersey shore, 24 in number.

The Vixen had just completed escorting a Loyalist transport vessel out of Sandy Hook when the mutiny occurred.

Bad luck for the British continued. On November 12, a large fleet evacuated the thousands of German and British soldiers remaining in New York. The fleet cleared the Hook on November 12; it was then hit by a severe storm. German Quarter Master Johann Georg Pfaff recorded that "the fleet entered the ocean [but] during the evening the wind increased and the fleet so scattered during the night that in the morning only seven ships were sailing together."

George Washington entered New York City on November 25. The Treaty of Paris was signed, the British agreed to American independence, and the war was over. However, the British navy continued to hold Sandy Hook in order to alert and redirect ships still arriving at Sandy Hook, unaware of the evacuation.

The Final Indignity: The Halyburton Incident, December 31, 1783

On January 14, 1784, the Pennsylvania Gazette, reported the last British losses of the Revolutionary War, which occurred on December 31:

Six seamen belonging to his Britannic Majesty's ship Assistance, of 50 guns, lying at Sandy-Hook, and confederated to desert, jumped out of the ship into a yawl, and pushing for the shore, were pursued by a boat manned with the first Lieutenant, eleven other officers, and a private seaman; presently after they left the ship, a snow storm arose; they lost sight of the chase, as well as of the Assistance, and were all of them (one excepted, who is not yet accounted for) the next morning found dead on a beach near Middletown Point, in New Jersey. - The Lieutenant was the Hon. Hamilton Douglas Halyburton, brother to the Right Hon. the Earl of Morton; the other officers were in general related to some of the most dignified families in Great Britain and Ireland.

A second account of the incident, published in Scot Magazine in Great Britain added more detail about the deserters from Assistance: "about 3:00, six seamen of this ship being sent in a long boat, under the command of a midshipman, cut the rope and made for the Jersey shore." The captain of Assistance ordered Lt. Halyburton into a boat with thirteen men to bring them back, but the boat capsized in a storm and Halyburton’s entire party died.  A witness at the funeral the next day wrote:

I never saw so mournful an affair as yesterday, I attended their funeral at the Light House, where they were buried with full military honors of war, in one grave, tho' in ten different coffins... a most melancholy and awful procession.

The British built a memorial on Sandy Hook for the men who "perished off the coast, Sandy Hook."

Two other sources reported on the incident, including details about the corpses. The New Jersey Political Intelligencer, reported that the snow storm came on Halyburton’s party "before they got halfway to shore" and that Halyburton’s icy, snow-covered corpse was found on shore the next day. Great Britain’s Gentleman's Magazine, recorded: "A very melancholy accident” at Sandy Hook, writing of Halyburton’s lost crew:

Before they reached the shore, a snow storm came on which, as is common in the part of the country, overpowered them so that they lost sight of both the yawl and the ship, and were all except one, found dead on the beach near Middletown Point, New Jersey, most of them sticking in the mud.

The logbook of the HMS Assistance has survived. Here’s how it described the incident:

• Wednesday Dec. 31st, 1783 (Winds) NE b E - Moored in Sandy Hook Bay - First part moderate and cloudy with Snow. midday Weather - fresh Breezes & squally...  Sent the Launch on Board the Transport with 7 empty Casks [casks to fill with fresh water]. Found that the people had rose & taken the Boat. Manned & armed the Barge and sent her in Chase of her.

• Thursday Jan. 1st 1784 (Winds) NNE Moderate and cloudy with Snow... The Barge was not returned.

• Friday Jan. 2nd 1784 (Winds) N A.M. light Breezes and clear, sent the Cutter on Shore in Search of the Launch & Barge.

• Saturday Jan. 3rd 1784 (Winds) N b W. Slight Breezes & cloudy. at 4 the Cutter returned with the Barge. informing us that the Barge had swampt the Hon Hamilton Douglas Hallyburton 1st Lieut., Lieut. Champion of Marines and Messrs Haywood, Hamilton, Gascoigne, Spry, Towers, Faddy, Wood, - Tomlinson, Reddy, Johnstone, & Scott Midshipmen& Jno. McChien, Seaman, were perished & all picked up except Messrs Hamilto, Wood & Tomlinson. Sent on Board the Hermoine & Sophie for Carpenters employed making coffins. At 10 A.M. sent the deceased bodies on Shore to be buried.

Narratives of wars commonly end with a climactic victory on the battlefield. Inevitably, that victory is followed by months of wind-down activities that produce their own acts of bravery and tragedy. The British navy sailed from Sandy Hook, its last outpost in the original Thirteen States (though the British continued hold of several forts and outposts west of the Appalachians) in early 1784. The author is not aware of the exact date of their final departure.

Caption: In 1783, the British quit New York. The British navy suffered several setbacks at Sandy Hook, including losing 13 men from the HMS Assistance, sent to retrieve deserters on December 31.

Related Historic Site: Halyburton Monument

Sources: William Marton to Guy Carleton, David Library of the American Revolution, Great Britain Public Records Office, British Headquarters Papers, #5142; M3221, www.nmm.ac.uk/memorials; Lopez, John. “Sandy Hook Lighthouse.” The Keeper's Log, Winter, 1986, p 6; Samuel Smith, Sandy Hook and the Land of the Navesink (Monmouth Beach, NJ: Freneau Press, 1963) p 18; Connecticut Journal, May 24, 1783; Maryland Gazette, March 27, 1783; John White to David Forman, David Library of the American Revolution, Great Britain Public Records Office, British Headquarters Papers, #8405; Salem Gazette, November 19, 1783; Johann Pfaff’s letter in Bruce Burgoyne, Journal of the Prince Charles Regiment (New York: Heritage Books, 2007) p75-6; Pennsylvania Gazette, January 14, 1784; New Jersey Political Intelligencer, January 27, 1784; Gentleman's Magazine, January 1784, vol. 54, p223; George Moss, Nauvoo to the Hook - The Iconography of a Barrier Beach, 32; Log of the HMS Assistance in George Moss, Nauvoo to the Hook - The Iconography of a Barrier Beach, 32.