The Capture of the Betsy and Disappearance of its Cargo

In late September 1776, the schooner Betsy, under Captain Alexander Wilson, sailed from Boston bound for France. The vessel was soon captured by the British warship, Persia, which put a small prize crew on board and sent the Betsy for British-held New York. On October 14, the prize crew beached the schooner off Long Branch. The odd chain of events that followed, however, illustrates the turbulent times in which the capture occurred.

General Hugh Mercer, commanding Continental forces in New Jersey opposite the British Army on Staten Island, was the first to discuss the status of the Besty. On October 17, he wrote:

Colonel [George] Taylor, who commands the guards of New Jersey Militia is now just arrived from his post on the Shrewsbury shore with intelligence that on the 14th a vessel was stranded on that coast, which proved to be the schooner Betsy, commanded by Alexander Wilson.

The militia brought Mercer the prize crew: “The prize master is Hidgekiss and a mate, with four hands; these prisoners I have ordered on to Philadelphia." Mercer also noted that he had ordered George Taylor to inventory the cargo and vessel.

Two days later, George Taylor wrote the Continental Congress about the capture of the Betsy and the British prize crew. He had dispatched Captain Barnes Smock of Middletown to bring the six prisoners to the Continental prison in Philadelphia. He further noted, "I have orders from Gen Mercer to take care of this vessel until further orders. As to the vessel's hull, it lies exposed and [is] likely to be lost to the first eastwardly storm." Taylor requested permission to sell the vessel and cargo, as had been done with other vessels taken by the Monmouth militia. Congress did not respond to Taylor’s request, but forwarded it to New Jersey Governor William Livingston.

On October 22, Governor Livingston asked Francis Hopkinson of Bordentown to travel to Long Branch and take charge of the Betsy. Livingston’s order continued, the “schooner and cargo to be disposed of in the manner of security until the owners in Boston shall make proper application for the recovery of their property." The Governor’s action likely angered George Taylor: first, custody of the vessel and its valuable cargo was assigned to man who had no role in capturing the vessel; second, the Betsy and its cargo would not be sold as Taylor hoped, but would be secured and returned to its Boston owner. Taylor would not receive a windfall from selling the captured vessel.

After this order to Hopkinson, there is a break in the documentation about the Betsy. In November, the British Army invaded New Jersey and it is probable that Hopkinson never made it to Long Branch. On or about December 1, Loyalist insurrectionaries, backed by John Morris’s returning New Jersey Volunteers, took control of the Monmouth shore. George Taylor switched sides and was made the colonel of Monmouth County’s nascent Loyalist militia.

The next surviving document about the Betsy is a March 1777 letter from Nathaniel Scudder of Freehold to an unnamed correspondent associated with the vessel’s owners in Boston. Scudder noted that the Betsy was "stranded at Long Branch in Shrewsbury" and its cargo of potash (an essential ingredient for making gunpowder) was missing. Scudder had spoken with Colonel Francis Gurney (commanding a regiment of Pennsylvania troops that confiscated Loyalist stores at Shrewsbury) about the cargo, "I immediately applied to Col. Gurney and informed him it was part of the cargo of the schooner aforesaid, and put in a claim on behalf of the owners."

Scudder reported that he was rebuffed by a Captain Patten, serving under Gurney, who claimed the cargo was taken by Taylor’s Loyalists weeks earlier. "Col. George Taylor, in whose charge it was [to guard the cargo] and who has proven himself a traitor, and is gone over to the enemy, immediately seized the whole of said cargo in the King's name."  Scudder pledged to travel to Long Branch to secure whatever cargo remained, but raised the possibility that nothing would be there.

On April 24, 1777, the Betsy’s owner, David Dickson, wrote the Continental Congress about his schooner. He listed the cargo: 157 barrels of pearl ash, 76 of pot ash, 400 oak staves, 650 lbs. of whale bone, 940 lbs. of whale fin. He also described the fate of his ship:

The said schooner was stranded at Long Branch in the County of Monmouth, where the cargo was taken possession of, and carried ashore and guarded by a party of men under Lt Cook of Col George Taylor's Jersey militia. That upon the march of the British troops into Jersey, the guard who had charge of the cargo were obliged to abandon the same, and the aforesaid Taylor, who joined the British Army, took possession and disposed of part thereof in the name of his Britannic Majesty. That finally a detachment of Continental troops under the command of Col Francis Gurney regained possession of the rest of the cargo, a part of which has been brought to Philadelphia, and other parts to different places in Jersey.

Dickson asked for the Congress’s assistance in locating the remaining cargo and returning it to him. There is no documentation that the remaining cargo was located and returned.

Related Historic Site: New Jersey Maritime Museum

Sources: William H. Richardson's "Washington and the New Jersey Campaign of 1776," Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, vol. 50, no. 2 (1952) p 144. Peter Force, American Archives: Consisting of a Collection of Authentick Records, State Papers, Debates, and Letters and Other Notices of Publick Affairs (Washington, DC: U.S. Congress Clerk's Office, 1853), 5th Series, vol. 2, pp. 1093, 1192; Peter Force, ed., American Archives: Documents of the American Revolution 1774–1776, 9 vols. (1837–53), 5th Series, vol. 2, pp. 1093, 1129. Pennsylvania Archives, series 1, vol 5, p49-50; Carl Prince, Papers of William Livingston (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987) vol. 1, p 168-9; Gaillard Hunt, Fragments of Revolutionary History (Brooklyn: Historical Publishing Club, 1892) pp. 112-5; David Dickson to Congress, National Archives, Papers of the Continental Congress, reel 53, item 42, vol. 2, #281-2.