Free Patriot Pirates by Robert H. Patton

including names and cargo lists, of multiple American vessels that had loaded up with munitions at the port of Saint-Pierre on Martinique.
    Young challenged the island governor, “I cannot suppose a person of your high rank and equitable way of thinking would act with duplicity in a matter of such consequence.” The governor, “astonished” by the allegation, assured Young that Martinique merchants dealt in “grain, flour, and vegetables,” and that any suggestion of illicit arms sales could only have reached the admiral “through means which I flatter myself to believe that his delicacy would not permit him to make use of,” that is, by the vulgar tactic of spying. This exchange of archly polite charges about violations that were blatantly obvious to all sides would continue for two years.
    On March 23, 1776, Congress issued a proclamation formally targeting “all vessels” belonging to Britain as fair game for civilian and Continental warships. After months of deliberation during which time New Englanders had leaped into privateering, leaders in Philadelphia finally embraced the enterprise in a big way, going so far as to distribute preprinted, preauthorized commission forms complete with blank spaces where names of ships, captains, and owners could be inserted with minimal fuss. John Adams was jubilant. “It was always a measure that my heart was much engaged in.”
    This latest shot in the ongoing tit-for-tat signaled open season on British shipping. From Antigua, Admiral Young entreated his superiors for reinforcements, stressing the threat indicated by “intelligence from America that ships of force are arming there which are said to be intended to intercept the homeward bound West India ships both from these islands and Jamaica.”
    His point, dismissed by the admiralty, was that rebel mariners no longer would limit themselves to powder voyages and hijacking inbound supplies to British forces in America. With the entire ocean now in play, they would prowl the European coast and the mid-Atlantic for British vessels bearing goods from anywhere in the world, further pressuring a British economy already squeezed by the loss of its American market.
    In response to Young’s plea came a single armed sloop which carried word from London that no others were forthcoming. Blind to the impending onslaught, the admiralty informed him that that HMS
Shark
would be sufficient “to reinforce your squadron, intercept the ships and vessels belonging to the North American colonies in rebellion, and also to give proper protection to the homeward bound trade.”
    By the time these orders arrived in May, more than a hundred privateers had launched from New England and set course for the West Indies. Young’s squadron had only four vessels on active duty due to maintenance breakdowns caused by heavy service.
Shark
brought that number to five.
    His orders concluded with a stern warning to steer clear of “foreign islands” so as not to give “just cause of complaint” to France or the Netherlands, a condition the admiral can only have found exasperating given his knowledge of their flourishing trade in munitions meant expressly to spill British blood. But with its empire strained and its military overstretched, the crown chose to balance strategic and diplomatic priorities with the result that it fell short in both. Young in his Antiguan outpost sensed this early on. So did British merchants abroad and at home.
    The potential trade loss due to the war was estimated at £6 million annually. Little wonder, then, that the merchants’ response to their government’s rosy posturing was cynical and shrill. They peppered newspapers and politicians with dire alarms that “the precarious and defenseless situation of His Majesty’s servants will entirely ruin the people and trade of this government.” And despite admiralty claims of the rebels’ maritime impotence, they began collecting “private surveys and attestations” of