The Continental Navy on the Monmouth Shore

In the fall of 1776, as the British Army defeated the Continental Army on land and the British Navy extended a blockade across the Atlantic Seaboard, trade with Europe and the Caribbean became increasingly dangerous. But that trade was essential to a fledgling United States dependent on foreign markets for key provisions including guns, gunpowder, textiles, salt, and sugar.

The fledgling Continental Navy was unable to protect the New Jersey shore. Though it scored a few victories around Cape May in the first months of the war it could not check British patrols north of Egg Harbor. As discussed in a prior article, in the summer of 1776, the New York State Navy assigned two vessels to defend American ships along the Jersey shore. But the New York ships were an ineffective check against larger British vessels.

That fall, at the prompting of New Jersey and New York delegates, the Continental Congress’s Marine Committee turned its attention to better protecting the Jersey shore.

Continental Navy Sails the Monmouth Shore in 1776

On November 1, the Marine Committee ordered the captains of the Continental Navy sloops Fly and Wasp to cruise the Jersey shore. The captains were ordered to hire local pilots and stay close to shore in order to avoid a fight with British frigates. They were told that the could rely on shore residents for support:

You must be careful not to let any British frigate get in between you and the land, and then there is no danger, for they cannot pursue in shore and they have no boats and tenders that can take you; besides, the country people will assist you in driving them from the shore, if they [British] should attempt to follow you in.

But the Continental captains were also encouraged to be bold in determining when to attack British ships, "We should deem it more praiseworthy in an officer to lose a vessel in a bold enterprise than to lose a good prize by too timid a conduct."

Ten days later, the Marine Committee wrote to Lt John Baldwin of the Continental Navy's Wasp about an agent it had placed at Shrewsbury. "We expect this letter will be sent to you by Mr. James Serle who is at Shrewsbury.” Baldwin was also reminded to "run into some inlets on the Jersey shore" in preference to facing larger British ships.

Serle, the Continental Navy’s Agent, sent his first letter from the Monmouth shore from Long Branch on November 13:

I have dispatched Lt [John] Cook of the militia quartered here with two letters enclosed from Toms River; the commanding officer here, immediately upon your application, gave orders to Mr. Cook to proceed down with the letters.  Mr. Cook is a very careful young man & has a brother at Toms River [Major Thomas Cook] (hearty in the cause of American freedom) who will give any assistance that may be necessary.

Serle also noted the movement of the British fleet at Sandy Hook but "unfortunately as I have no spy glass, I cannot as yet distinguish their motions." The next day, Serle noted receiving intelligence on the movements of the British fleet from Pennsylvania Flying Camp in the area—evidence that Pennsylvanians continued to defend the Raritan Bayshore even as the Continental Army was getting pushed out of New York and into New Jersey.

The presence of Pennsylvanians and New Jersey militia impacted British attempts to take beached vessels. On November 12, Captain George Elphinstone of the HMS Perseus, recorded an attempt to take a beached vessel three miles west of the Sandy Hook on the Raritan Bayshore. “Sent our boats arm'd and manned to retake the prize, but finding them too strongly possessed, and great numbers of people on shore, made the signal with several guns for the boats to return."  Unable to carry off the vessel, Elphinstone destroyed it instead:

Fired many shots at the rebels; sent all our boats manned and armed to destroy the prize. At 6, our boats boarded her and set her on fire, at the same time some guns and several volleys of small arms were fired from the same shore.

The British returned to Sandy Hook without any casualties.

Historian Donald Shomette wrote of another British cruise down the Jersey Shore on December 7. Captain Andrew Snape Hammond ordered HMS Camilla, Pearl, Perseus, and Falcon "to proceed along the coast southward… Looking into Egg Harbor on your way." The activity of this flotilla is mostly unknown. However, on December 18, it came on Wasp bringing a prize to Egg Harbor and chased it. Wasp had to cut loose its prize in order to escape.

The Fly and the Wasp continued to operate along the Jersey shore. On December 23, Robert Morris wrote John Hancock [both delegates to the Continental Congress] about two vessels taken by the Wasp and the resulting difficulties:

The schooner Wasp commanded by Lt. Baldwin has brought into Egg Harbor a schooner loaded with Indian corn and oats… As there is no judge of the Admiralty in the Jersies & Judge Ross is at Lancaster, I think it advisable to send wagons to Egg Harbor for the corn & oats to feed the Continental horses of this city.

Morris also wrote of the loss of a second capture:

Baldwin has retaken a French schooner, he was bringing her into Egg Harbor when a fleet of 15 sail hove into sight, two of which were two deckers, one or two frigates, and an armed brig pursued him so close he was obliged to abandon his prize & get into the inlet as fast as he could. On January 1, the Marine Committee of the Continental Congress recorded that Lt. Baldwin had brought another prize into Egg Harbor. The Committee dispatched a second agent to Little Egg Harbor to support the Continental vessels: "Mr. Patterson is now going down to Egg Harbor to take care & management of your prizes in that place."

Historian Shomette records that on March 21, 1777, the tender of the HMS Phoenix carried into New York the sloop Wanton, originally commanded by Loyalist, John Mount, until it was captured at Cranberry Inlet. That a small British tender was allowed to take and tow this prize halfway up the Jersey shore without opposition suggests that the Fly and Wasp were no longer operating on the Jersey shore by March. Indeed, that same month, a German officer in New York observed, "The English ships have been so active that this harbor is full of prizes. The Delaware is almost entirely blocked. Every ship that the fleet can dispense has been made ready to cruise."

There are just a few documents afterward that show Continental vessels active on the Jersey shore afterward. Four examples are provided below.

The Continental Navy on the Monmouth Shore in 1777 and Beyond

In August 1777, the Providence, operating in concert with American privateers, participated in a six-hour battle with a large Loyalist vessel off Sandy Hook. No prize was taken. The British vessel, Hume, was captured by an unnamed Continental vessel in March 1780 "just southward of Sandy Hook." In November 1780, John Nagle, aboard the 24-gun Continental sloop Saratoga, recorded a battle off Jersey shore:

We fell in with one of Gutterige's [Loyalist privateer William Goodrich] privateers. We being painted all black and our [gun] ports down, we appeared like a dull sailing merchantman... The privateer would sail all around us, thinking herself secure. [Then] we cut away our grating and the buoy [tied to the ship to slow it down and make it appear 'dull'] and was alongside of her before she could have time to make sail. We took her and brought her in. She was a beautiful brig of 16 guns.

Finally, in May 1782, the Continental Navy’s frigate, Enterprise, chased three smaller vessels (probably London traders) as they neared Sandy Hook. The small vessels beached near shore. The water was too shallow for the larger Continental ship to pursue them.

The infrequent appearance of Continental Navy vessels did not mean the British were unchallenged masters of the Jersey shore. With the entry of France into the war in 1778, British warships were needed elsewhere and the blockade weakened. This corresponded with a rise of American privateers, including New England privateers who took dozens of prizes near Sandy Hook and bold Pennsylvania privateer captains such as Yelverton Taylor and Stephen Decatur. New Jerseyans William Marriner and Adam Hyler menaced British/Loyalist shipping in Raritan Bay and several Monmouth County militia officers were also opportunistic privateers.

Related Historic Site: United States Navy Museum

Sources: Gardner W. Allen, A Naval History of the American Revolution (1912, 1940, reprinted New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1962), pp. 128-9; National Archives, Miscellaneous Papers of the Continental Congress, Marine Committee, p56; William James Morgan, Naval Documents of the American Revolution (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1969) vol. 7, p 120; William James Morgan, Naval Documents of the American Revolution (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1969) vol. 7, p 128; Library of Congress, George Washington Papers, series 4, reel 38, November 13, 1776; Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, v10 0437http://docsouth.unc.edu/csr/index.html/document/csr10-0437

American Memory Project, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collection/continental; William James Morgan, Naval Documents of the American Revolution (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1969) vol. 8, p 380; Charles Paulin, Out-Letters of the Marine Committee and Board of Admiralty (New York: Navy History Society, 1914) vol. 1, p 59. Paul Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1976) vol. 6, p 11; William Morgan, Naval Documents of the American Revolution (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1970), vol. 9, pp. 765, 853-4; John Brown to John Bradford, National Archives, Collection 332, reel 6, #247; Jacob Nagle, The Nagle Journal: A Diary of the Life of Jacob Nagle, Sailor, from the Year, 1775 to 1841, ed. John C. Dann (New York, 1988), p 26; Howard Peckham, The Toll of Independence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974) p 127.