In Harm’s Way

Thomas Chase and the Rise of American Sea Power, 1773-1781
by Elizabeth W. Trotter

Sometimes great events call men to great destinies and sometimes a man’s destiny leads him to great events. Such were the times that ebbed and flowed around the island of Martha’s Vineyard during the latter half of the 18th century. The men and women who participated in the events surrounding the Revolution were called to action in ways we can only imagine, and found destinies we can only admire. The Revolutionary War was a catalyst for the birth of the United States Navy—a navy that, especially in its early years, drew its strength from men of the sea who had spent years packeting, piloting, whaling, and (in wartime) privateering off the coastlines of the North American colonies. The skills of their trade and the circumstance of their times meshed in ways that allowed them to shape the country, its emerging navy, and the course of history.

Our island was no exception, the truth of which was evident to me when I recently opened the door on the long-forgotten story of one such islander: Thomas Chase. The thread of his life that I stumbled on seemed modest at first, but as I traced his path through the tumultuous years of the Revolution, it wove a tale worthy of Odysseus. His story begins before the war, in a chance meeting with the man who would become America’s first naval hero. It continues—for Chase and three shipmates from Holmes Hole—through a privateering coup, a two year stint in England’s infamous Mill Prison (complete with escape attempt), a surprise reunion, the greatest
naval engagement of the war, and a turbulent sail home under the command of a deranged captain. Sit back, put your feet up, and enjoy the tale of four Vineyard sailors’ journey through “the times that try men’s souls”.

A Coffin for the Mate

The story began, as Thomas Chase would explain to his grandson long after the war, in 1773.1 Thomas Chase was then 18, and his fellow adventurers to be Thomas Luce and Samuel Lambert were teenagers as well—18 and 16, respectively newly reveling in being a part of the voyages that anchored the world of their coastal village home. They learned, from their fathers, older brothers, and neighbors, the skills of helmsmanship, sail handling, and carpentry, along with the intricate knowledge of winds, currents, and obstacles, required of pilots: local men hired by the captains of passing vessels to guide them in and out of the unfamiliar harbors and through the treacherous shoals of Vineyard Sound. One can easily imagine these young men joining the crowd that must have gathered in at Holmes Hole the day an unfamiliar ship dropped anchor in their harbor and a dashing young sea captain rowed ashore with some of his crew to ask for assistance. Thomas Chase, according to his personal account, was there with the others and heard the captain ask if anyone could build a coffin for one of his mates who had died on the passage. Already in possession of strong carpentry skills, Thomas stepped forward and offered his services. The coffin was built in the next few days, and the dead mate was laid to rest in Holmes Hole, but the black ship did not immediately depart. John Paul Jones, being young and adventurous, enjoyed some time exploring, fishing, and “gunning” for waterfowl on the Island. Thomas Chase accompanied him, on at least one occasion, as a guide and shooting partner.2 One of Jones’ shipmates Joseph Frederick, born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1748—evidently fell in love not only with the Vineyard but with young Jerusha Pease, for he had made the decision to leave Jones’ ship, Marry Jerusha, and build a life on the Island.

John Paul (as he was christened) had been born in Scotland on July 6, 1747, less than a year after the Duke of Cumberland’s redcoats had crushed theScottish rebels loyal to Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden. 4 His boyhood home was a small cottage at Arbigland—an estate on the shores ofSolway Firth where his father worked as gardener—but by the age of 13 he had gone to sea, an apprentice seaman aboard an 85 foot merchant brig named the Friendship. At 21, already an experienced seaman, he was aboard the 60 ton brigantine John when the captain and chief mate died of natural causes. He took command, brought her safely to port, and later sailed her on a voyage to the West Indies. In 1772 he was ap pointed master of a full rigged ship Betsy out of London, but an altercation occurred the following year when the ship took on some new crewmen in Tobago, one of whom attempted to stir up the crew in a dispute over wages, and threatened to seize control of the ship. John Paul ran his sword through the would be mutineer’s body, killing him, but claimed that the sailor had attacked him and he had acted in self-defense. Rather than face a jury trial that could lead to a conviction for murder, John fled the port, leaving considerable wealth behind, and as he later claimed in a letter retelling the incident to Benjamin Franklin made his way to America “incog.” It was also during this period when he adopted the surname of Jones as a ruse to throw off those who might be looking for him.

Jones’ whereabouts between the fall of 1773 and the winter of 1774 (when he turned up in Virginia) are sketchily documented, but we know from Thomas Chase’s narrative, and from the separate testimony of “Aunt Sally” Claghorn, who kept a tavern in Holmes Hole5—that he spent time in New England waters, and at least a brief time on the Vineyard. Thereafter he made America his adopted home, by which time revolution was in the air: the Boston Tea Party took place in December 1773, and the battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. For a young Scottish buccaneer, born with the fallen rebels of Culloden still freshly in their graves, the stirrings of rebellion for a nation’s independence were hard to resist. As 1775 came to an end the Continental Navy was beginning to take shape, and on December 22, its first officers were commissioned—among them Lt. John Paul Jones. The following year, a squadron of eight ships under Commodore Esek Hopkins of Rhode Island, the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Navy, embarked on the high seas to “seize crucial military supplies for the Continental Army and harass British bases and supply routes in the American theatre. Jones sailed with them as commander of the 30 gun frigate Alfred, beginning an illustrious naval career.

British ships along the New England coast. The supplies seized in such raids were a tiny fraction of what British forces in the colonies required, and their loss was more an annoyance than a crippling blow. They were a windfall, however, to the colonists, helping to make good the shortages caused by British blockades and self imposed boycotts. Along the way, they also enriched the privateer crews who risked their lives for a share of the booty. Above all, however, they wounded British pride and boosted colonial confidence. From Salem and Gloucester to New Bedford, Newport, and points south, therefore, there was no shortage of brave men willing to sign on to this informal, inshore navy for a chance at wealth, glory, and adventure. So it was on the Vineyard where members of Captain Nathan Smith’s “seacoast defense” militia company went to war in a whaleboat. Thomas Chase, Thomas Luce, Samuel Lambert and Joseph Frederick were, by January 1776, all members of Smith’s company.8 They were likely present when, on April 12, 1776, fate presented them with an irresistible opportunity to strike at the British.9 As Shubael Cottle described the action in a September 10 petition to “the Honourable the Council and House of Representatives for the State of Massachusetts Bay” seeking compensation for the company: “Captain Nathan Smith spotted the Volante, a schooner of the British man of war Scarborough, coming into range. Loading his militia in three pilot boats Captain Smith took his crew to sea and in a sur prise and valient [sic] attack boarded and captured the Volante with all its haul.” A contemporary report in the Boston Gazette described the capture: The Schooner (Violenti) capt. (Stephen) Cleveland, which sailed from Salem for Winyaw, in North Carolina, the beginning of January last, was taken on her passage by the Scarborough man of war, and sent to George, where after lading with rum, sugar, &c. She proceed ed for Boston, when on last Friday 7 night (not knowing the ministe rial fleet and army had evacuated that place) meeting with a heavy gale of wind, she put into the Vineyard, where she was properly taken care of by some boats fro[m] thence.10 The rum and sugar from the Volante’s hold would have been welcome sights to Smith and his men—useful if kept, and valuable if sold—but it was not the extent of the “haul.”

Two British officials were travelling aboard the Volante as passengers, and they, along with two members of the schooner’s crew who Smith deemed to be of interest to the rebel forces in Boston, were handed over to Major Barachiah Bassett of Falmouth. Born in Chilmark in 1732, Bassett had settled on the Cape after serving with distinction in the French and Indian War, and was a member of the Committee of Correspondence as well as Smith’s ranking officer in the state militia. On April 16, 1776, he wrote to the commander of the colonial armies in Boston: Sir I have sent you under the Care of a Sergeant four prisoners taken aboard the Schooner Valenti at Martha’s Vineyard bound for Boston Viz: Edward Marsh, Maste the Mate, & two passengers in the employent of the Ministerial Forces I am Sir (&c.) Bar Bassett Majr in the Provincial Forces11 The Gazette reported their arrival, and identified the two crewmen by name: “One Marsh, the master’s mate, and a son of commodore Loring, as master’s mate, with two passengers on board, were bro’t to town for examination on Saturday last.”12 “Commodore Loring” was Josiah Loring, a prominent Boston loyalist who had retired to a farm outside of Boston when a French cannonball cut his distinguished naval career short in 1760. His youngest son, 16 year old John, had been in the naval service for two years before being taken prisoner in the raid on the Volante. Loring was initially sent to the town jail in Concord, and kept under close guard, but the pleading of a well connected uncle brought him a transfer to the home of a senior colonial officer (whose neighbors threatened to demolish it when young Loring denounced them as “rascally rebels”). By year’s end, he was on his way to England, released as part of a prisoner exchange. In the years to come, Thomas Chase would not be so lucky. The Scarborough moved on without her attending schooner, and the men of Captain Smith’s company including Chase, Luce, Lambert and Frederick moved on with their lives, no doubt keeping a watchful eye out for other potential British prizes. The chance to annoy, surprise, and wear down the British forces, as well as to interrupt their supply lines, was too good to pass up, and the coup of seizing a vessel and forcing officers of the Royal Navy to strike their colors too thrilling to let go. The exuberance felt by the Vineyard men would have lingered, and perhaps heightened their willingness to take advantage of another opportunity that rode in with the tide in the waning months of the year.

Charming Sally and Mill Prison

The Charming Sally—a Rhode Island privateer sloop of 116 tons, carrying six guns and a crew of fifty—sailed into Edgartown harbor in November 1776, looking for men to sign on to her crew. A dozen Vineyarders answered the summons: Thomas Chase, Thomas Luce, Samuel Lambert, and Joseph Frederick, along with Barzilla Crowell, William Harden, John Lot, Jeremiah Luce, Abisha Rogers, Eliphalet Rogers, Cuff Scott and Manuel Swasey. The farewells that heralded their departure in Island homes, and the rounds of drink that toasted their success in Island taverns, were doubtless numerous and full of pride at the Vineyard’s contribution to the cause. The Charming Sally weighed anchor on the morning of November 27th, and Commander Francis Brown announced for the first time—and to the dismay of some— that they were bound for European waters.13 The cruise began promisingly. On December 6, they captured the 30-ton schooner Betsey, bound for Ja- maica, and on December 24 narrowly escaped an ill-advised engagement with a 16-gun transport filled with soldiers.

Then, on January 16, the Charming Sally’s luck ran out. At 3:00 AM, the darkest depths of the night, the lookouts spotted a large vessel that followed them until daybreak. It was the 64-gun British man-of-war Nonsuch, commanded by Captain Walter Griffith, and by 7:00 AM it was firing on the American privateer. Another round of fire raked the Charming Sally at 8:00, and by 9:00 Captain Brown felt the misery of defeat as the British pulled alongside and demanded his surrender.14 Hopelessly outmatched, unable to run or to fight, he complied.

Brown and the crew, including the twelve Vineyard men, were charged with “treason on the high seas.” The charge reflected the fact that, in 1777, Britain had yet to recognize the colonies as an independent nation, and treated prisoners from American ships as “rebels” and “pirates”—criminals rather than prisoners of war. The men from the Charming Sally transferred to HMS Queen and then to HMS Blenheim. Captain Brown managed to escape from the Blenheim in May, but the rest remained aboard until June 6, when they arrived at Plymouth. Once at anchor, Thomas Chase and Joseph Frederick tried, along with two other men, to make good their own escape. Thomas Chase the younger retold his grandfather’s tale this way.

They took to the water by star-light, keeping together, their es- cape not being noticed at first. The water was cold, and they had been starving for some four weeks, and were quite unfitted for swimming a mile at that time of night, and in cold water. One of the four sunk to rise no more. My grandfather found his strength fail- ing, when close to another vessel at anchor, and put up to it, getting hold of something to support him. “Joe Frederick,” who was a stout, powerful man, and the fourth still more enduring, reached the shore, but not until after the alarm was given, and Plymouth harbor was covered with boats, cruising in every direction. The fourth took his legs and was off…Joe Frederick attempted to do the same, but could not stand. He tried to roll himself into a secret place, but could find none, and they recaptured him. After my grandfather had held on as long as he well could, he called for “a rope” and was taken on board, and, with Joe Frederick, taken back to the prison- ship. They were “put in irons.

The “prison-ship” was one of Britain’s notorious prison hulks: worn out, multi-decked warships stripped of their masts and rigging and anchored near shore. As the war dragged on, however, more prisoners arrived in Britain than even their notoriously overcrowded decks could hold. Mill Prison was the answer. Built in Plymouth in 1777, it was designed to accept the overflow from the hulks: American, and (after 1778) French and Spanish prisoners as well. A period illustration shows a square brick structure: high walls on two sides and two-story cell blocks on the other two, surrounding a large central yard. Over 10,000 men were held there during the war.

Mill Prison became, upon its completion, the quarters for the crew of the Charming Sally for the next two years. For men used to the open air of the sea it must have felt like entering Hell as they walked through the gates of the prison and into a tightly enclosed world with illness and starvation lurking in its corners. Over time, the ranks of the twelve Vineyarders, thinned. John Lot, the first to go, succumbed to illness on December 14, 1778. Fellow prisoner Charles Herbert, captured on the American brigantine Dolton, noted the event laconically in his prison diary: “December 15—Last evening John Lott died with fever; he was an Indian that was taken with Captain Brown, in the sloop Charming Sally.”16 William Harden also died, of unknown causes, while confined. The fate of Manuel Swasey remains a mystery: His death is not recorded, but he was not listed (as the rest of the Sally’s crewmen are) among the prisoners exchanged in 1779.

There were many escape attempts from the prison—some successful, most not. One escape attempt described independently by Thomas Chase and Charles Herbert involved hand-digging a tunnel from the prison yard, under the fence, across the street and past a garden wall. The digging commenced at night and prisoners had to hide sand in their pockets to discard the next day without detection. Some 80-100 prisoners, including Herbert, left Mill Prison through the tunnel, but all except three were captured within days, and the last holdouts before a week had passed. One of the escapees was shot, and his body hung in the prison yard, as a warning to others.17 Chase’s shipmate Cuff Scott was one of the lucky few who, in his own escape attempt, got cleanly away. For the rest there was nothing to do but wait for a change of fortunes. That change arrived, in the spring of 1779, from a welcome, though unexpected, source.

The Return of John Paul Jones

While the men of the Charming Sally were suffering in prison, Benjamin Franklin was busy in France trying to muster French support for the cause of the colonists. John Paul Jones, in command of the Continental ship Ranger, was racking up prizes, and hoping to exchange members of their captured crews for Americans languishing in British jails. Franklin and Jones arranged, in March 1779, for the release of 100 prisoners from Mill Prison, the price of their freedom being the release of 200 British sailors. Other prisoner exchanges followed, and in 1780 legislation was introduced in Parliament to treat American captives as prisoners of war, tacitly recognizing America as a sovereign nation and improving the lot (perhaps even saving the lives) of many Americans suffering in British jails. For this, too, Franklin and Jones deserve credit.

The prisoners released in the March 1779 exchange were chosen by lottery. Prisoners stood in line as names were drawn and called out, and Thomas Chase, Joseph Frederick, Samuel Lambert and Thomas Luce were among them. 18 The quartet said their goodbyes to their fellow islanders (Jeremiah Luce, Abisha Rogers, Barzilla Crowell and Eliphalet Rogers would all gain their freedom in later prisoner exchanges) and boarded a “cartel” ship bound for Nantes, France. Upon arrival, they were offered the chance to enlist in the Continental Navy; each of the four accepted, and they were posted to the new frigate Alliance, part of a new squadron being assembled under Jones’ command to attack British shipping. Serving under Jones, already famous for his exploits in the Ranger, as well as being the architect of their release from Mill Prison, was doubtless a point of pride for all four, but it would have held special meaning for Chase, who had met the great man six years earlier, on a small island an ocean away. The Continental Navy that Thomas Chase and his comrades now joined was very different than the one that had existed when they had taken up arms under Nathan Smith in 1776. Then, the rebels’ naval strategy had been focused on aggressive guerrilla tactics off American shores with the aim of disrupting Britain’s force and gathering supplies for Washington’s troops. Now, John Paul Jones was taking the fight to Britain, attacking British ports as well as British ships, and waging psychological warfare by disrupting British citizens’ complacency about their own safety. Jones himself had risen from the rank of lieutenant to that of commodore, and now commanded not just a single ship but a small squadron. He flew his flag in the 42-gun Bon Homme Richard: a vessel originally built in 1765 (as the Duc de Duras) as an armed transport for the French East India Company, that had been bought by the Crown, renamed in honor of Benjamin Franklin, and placed at Jones’ disposal in February 1779.19 The brand-new Alliance, mounting 36 guns, was the pride of the rapidly expanding Continental fleet, just off the ways of a new shipyard created for the express purpose of building American warships. Alliance was, like the prisoner exchange that brought Chase and his friends to her, a product of the emerging relationship between American colonies and pre-Revolutionary France. It was, in her case, “all in a name,” as Jones himself recounted.

When the treaty of alliance with France arrived in America, Con- gress, feeling the most lively sentiments of gratitude towards France, thought how they might manifest the satisfaction of the Country by some public set. The finest frigate in the service was on the stocks, ready to be launched, and it was resolved to call her Alliance.20 Alliance’s maiden voyage was, appropriately, that which conveyed the Marquis de Lafayette back to France. There, she joined the Bon Homme Richard, the frigate Pallas (30 guns), and the smaller vessels Cerf (18 guns) and Vengeance (12 guns). The five ships left France on June 19, 1779, head- ing north . . . toward Britain.

“I Have Not Yet Begun to Fight!”

Jones took his squadron into the Irish Sea and, in time, around the northern tip of the British Isles and into the North Sea. There, off Flamborough Head on the Yorkshire coast, he sighted a British convoy of nearly forty merchant ships, on their way from the Baltic to ports in the British Isles, on September 23, 1779. The convoy’s escorts, the frigate HMS Serapis (50 guns) and the armed auxiliary vessel Countess of Scarborough (22 guns) intervened, allowing the merchant ships to escape, and the single most famous battle of the Revolutionary War began around 7:00 that evening. It was the battle that secured Jones’ reputation as a naval hero, and where he-when Captain Pearson of the Serapis, seeing no flag flying aboard the Bon Homme Richard, asked if Jones was surrendering-is purported to have uttered the immortal phrase: “I have not yet begun to fight!” Each of the four men from Holmes Hole took care to mention their participation in the famous battle in their postwar petitions. Joseph Frederick, for example, served as boatswain aboard the Alliance and received a gunshot wound in the leg that compromised his use of it for the rest of his life.21 Chase, who described the battle in detail to his grandson, was a gun captain: an experienced seaman who directed the loading, aiming, and firing of one of the ship’s cannon.22 A brief 1842 newspaper story hailing him as “the last of John Paul Jones’ men” describes him as having suffered severe hearing loss from his proximity to the great guns.23 The battle, like most naval engagements of the era, was a complicated affair in which ship-handling and shifting winds played as great a role as gunfire. Its details are amply recorded in books devoted to naval history, but the role of the Alliance—which carried Thomas Chase and his shipmates from Holmes Hole—deserves our attention here.24 The battle commenced with the Serapis and the Countess of Scarborough turning to engage the three larger ships of Jones’ squadron. Jones had commanded his captains to form a line behind the Bon Homme Richard, hoping to sail past the British ships and rake them with continuous fire from all four of his own vessels, but Pierre Landais of the Alliance had other ideas. Landais, plucked from an undistinguished career in the French navy by American envoy Silas Deane, was no asset to Jones’ squadron. John Adams, after dining with him, confided to his diary that he had no gift for command, and “exhibited an inactivity, an indecision, that will ruin him.”25 Naval historian Evan Thomas notes that: “If he was not the worst of the frigate captains appointed by Congress, it was only because, with a few notable exceptions, so many of them were incompetent.”

Possessed of a faster, more maneuverable ship than Jones, and believing himself to be a better tactician, Landais sailed away to windward in the Al- liance. Fearing that he would circle around the escorts and attack the con- voy, Captain Pearson dispatched the Countess of Scarborough to chase the Alliance while Serapis concentrated on the Bon Homme Richard. Jones did not see the Alliance for another two hours, by which time the Richard and the Serapis lay side by side, facing in opposite directions, locked together by tangled rigging and grappling lines deliberately tied into place by Jones crew as they blasted away at each other. The Alliance then reappeared and fired a broadside that, although Landais insisted that it was aimed at the bow of the Serapis, smashed with even greater violence into the broad, unprotected stern of the Richard. Unbelievably, ignoring the shouts of Jones’s crew, Landais carefully circled around the two ships and fired another broadside into the paired ships. This time, her cannonballs struck the bow of the Richard and the stern of the Serapis, and so probably did more damage to the British than the Continental ship. Alliance then sailed away again, missing the decisive phase of the battle when Jones and his men boarded and captured the Serapis, forcing Pearson to strike his colors.

Badly damaged and afire, the Bon Homme Richard went down on the eve- ning of the 24th, despite her crew’s best efforts to save her. Thomas Chase’s grandson, in his book on Jones, summed the engagement up succinctly: “Jones took the Serapis, but Captain Pearson sunk the Bon Homme Richard.” Pearson, however, had received more than a little help from Captain Landais of the Alliance, whose two ill-timed broadsides had made a bad situation worse. Joseph Callo, himself a retired U. S. Navy rear admiral, writes that “the evidence that emerged after the battle suggested that it was Landais’s intention to actually assist in the sinking of the Bon Homme Richard and then cap- ture the exhausted and damaged Serapis himself.”26 Jones may have suspected something similar. Writing to Franklin after the battle, his description of Landais suggested deliberate betrayal rather than simple incompetence. “His conduct,” Jones seethed, “has been base and unpardonable.”

What Chase and his fellow Vineyarders thought, history does not record. The newspaper story that mentions Chase’s hearing loss, however, notes that his ears were damaged when he thrust his head out an open gun port during the battle. Why he might have done so is, likewise, unrecorded. It is almost irresistible to speculate, however, that—doubtless like Jones himself—he was desperately trying to figure out what Pierre Landais was up to.

How important, in the scheme of the revolution, was the duel between the Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis? On a purely tactical level, it was insignificant. Jones’ flagship was sunk, and the rich convoy he had set out to attack escaped, undamaged. In terms of timing and motivation, however, the battle ranked with the land victory of Gates over Burgoyne at Saratoga two years earlier. The French felt more secure in their alliance, seeing that the American forces could claim victory against the British naval might. The Americans, for their part, felt a surge of pride and reassurance at a much needed point in the war. The impact on the British was psychological, but cannot be overstated. If the greatest navy in the world could not hold its own against a man they derided as a “rebel” and a “pirate,” leaving him free to attack their well-defended merchant ships and coastlines at will, then the Americans might, after all, have the tenacity and audacity to win.

The Long Way Back

Jones and his surviving crew, now aboard the Serapis, made a clean getaway with the Countess of Scarborough and the surviving ships of the squadron. They arrived at Texel Roads, the deep-water anchorage off the coast of Amsterdam, on October 3rd, with (according to rolls dated that day) Chase and his fellow Holmes Hole men still aboard.27 The Dutch— officially neutral but notably pro-American—cheered Jones in the streets of Amsterdam and wrote songs celebrating his victory, while deflecting British demands that he be arrested. With British ships blockading the approaches to Texel, he had little choice but to stay, and as he did his problems multiplied.

Two of the most pressing surfaced in a petition sent to Benjamin Franklin in late October. Signed by many of the Alliance’s officers and senior enlisted men, it expressed unqualified support for Landais’ actions at Flamborough Head, along with the hope that the crew would soon be allowed to sail—with Landais still in command—for America. Almost all in the crew, they explained, had “long since fulfilled our obligation” to the ship, and suffered from a “long absence from our distressed country and families, many of us by a tedious confinement in a British prison.”29 The polite language of the petition masked serious discontent among the crew of the Alliance, which encompassed twelve different nationalities and included men who had been with the ship since she sailed from America, as well as refugees from Mill Prison and the Bon Homme Richard. Close quarters led to misunderstandings and frayed tempers led to fights, made worse by the fact that the crew was owed their prize money from the Serapis and the Countess of Scarborough, along with a year’s worth of back pay.

The division between the men who had been on the Alliance and those who had been on the Bon Homme Richard was particularly acute. The former praised Landais (in the petition) for his “prudence, magnanimity, and vigilance,” but the latter made no secret of their anger over his actions at Flamborough Head, and even threatened his safety. Joseph Frederick of Holmes Hole was among the signatories, and Samuel Lambert was absent—detached by Captain Landais to bring one of a prize to Bergen, Norway and subsequently stranded there in the winter of 1779-1780. Luce and Chase were present at Texel, but their names were notably absent. Many of the crew are said to have declared themselves sick and unable to sign, and Chase and Luce may have been among them, or they may have refused on principle, not wishing to sign a document that was, by implication, severely critical of Jones. Jones, at last, had had enough of Landais. To avoid more problems, he ordered the insubordinate Frenchman relieved of command, and Alliance’s first officer promoted to acting captain. Landais reacted by challenging him to a duel, but Jones—aware that Landais was (unlike himself) far more skilled with rapiers than pistols—exercised his rights as the challenged party and selected the latter.30 Landais left Amsterdam in a huff, headed for France, and Jones—having assumed command of the Alliance—refitted and resupplied her before slipping past the British blockade and into open waters on December 27th, 1779. When he returned to L’Orient, France, after several fruitless months hunting for British merchant ships along the French and Spanish coasts, both he and the long-suffering crew of the Alliance were exhausted. Jones soon departed for Paris, to enjoy the accolades of French society and dalliances with French women, but Chase, Luce, Frederick and the rest—stranded in a foreign port without pay, prize money, or prospects—were left to wait and dream of home. Samuel Lambert, who returned from Norway with the rest of the prize crew in April 1780, signed onto a vessel bound for the United States, only to be—for the second time in the war—captured by a British war- ship and sent to Mill Prison.

American diplomat Arthur Lee came to L’Orient in the spring of 1780, finished with his term of service in France and eager to return home. Seeing the idle Alliance as a means of do- ing so while also embarrassing his political enemy, Franklin, and Franklin’s protégé, Jones, he persuaded Landais that Jones had had no authority to relieve him, and that Landais should return to “his” ship and depart im- mediately for America. When Franklin got wind of the plan in early July, he sent a terse letter chastising Jones for shirking his duty and urging him to return to his ship and crew. Jones complied, but too late. By the time he reached L’Orient, Landais had already taken command of the Alliance and set sail for America, with Lee aboard, on July 8, 1780. Jones followed, after another long delay, in a captured British sloop-of-war (the 20-gun Ariel) and loading it with arms and supplies for Washington’s army that were supposed to have crossed the Atlantic in the holds of the Alliance.

Once at sea, conditions aboard the Alliance quickly deteriorated. Landais ordered the men from Bon Homme Richard—who had caused trouble for him in Amsterdam—imprisoned for the duration of the trip, perceiving them to be the most loyal to Jones and a threat to his command. He grew steadily more unstable as the voyage unfolded, quarrelling with the ship’s officers, putting the First Lieutenant in irons, and even threatening his ally and benefactor Arthur Lee. His mental state—precarious in the best of times, as John Adams had realized—eventually deteriorated enough that his officers took matters into their own hands. Worried that Landais would lead the ship into mortal danger, they relieved him of command. When the Alliance docked in Boston Harbor on August 16, 1780, First Lieutenant Arthur Degge was in command, and Landais was carried ashore, delirious and incoherent, as the crew (including Chase, Luce, and Frederick) watched.

A court-martial convened in Boston in September 1780 found both Landais and Degge guilty and dismissed both from the service.32 Captain John Barry, presiding officer of the court, was appointed commander of the Alliance, and set about overseeing the extensive work required to make her ready for another cruise. The crew, meanwhile, was paid off, and released to make their way home—in the case of Thomas Chase, Thomas Luce, and Joseph Frederick, to return to the Island they had left four long years earlier.

Home

Thomas Chase, Thomas Luce, and Joseph Frederick reached the Vineyard in September 1780. Samuel Lambert, eventually released from Mill Prison in another prisoner exchange, returned in 1782. A year later, the Treaty of Paris ended the war and Jones was sent to France in order to secure the prize money due to the crews in his squadron. A 1784 petition to the Continental Congress also sought compensation for Jones’ men, with Thomas Chase and Joseph Frederick among the sailors mentioned by name as being due money for their service in the Bon Homme Richard and the Alliance.33 Jones worked hard at his assignment, and at pursuing the money due to the prize crews of the ships sent to Bergen, and the money was eventually secured. Thomas Chase and Joseph Frederick, however, had long since gone on with their life. Chase’s grandson mentions in his book that both collected what was due to them, but did so many years after the war when a later Congress called their attention to the fact that the money—still unclaimed—was being held for them.

They can, after so many years away, be forgiven for having other things on their mind: wives, sweethearts, families, and the future. Joseph Frederick returned to his wife Jerusha Pease, whom he had married on August 1, 1774, and from whom he had been more absent than present. They remained on the Island until 1795, then departed with their children for the small farming village of Starks, Maine. Thomas Chase, who married Desire Luce on March 8, 1781,34 had relocated to Maine five years earlier, settling in the larger town of Livermore, 40 miles to the south. In 1782, Thomas Luce and his distant cousin Thankful picked an auspicious day to marry: July 4. They remained on the Vineyard to raise their family, as did Samuel Lambert, who returned to the Island that year and married Thomas Chase’s cousin Mary on April 4, 1787.

The long winter nights of those postwar decades must have been filled with the epic tales of sea adventures shared with family, friends, neighbors, and perhaps old shipmates. Thomas Chase lived well into his eighties, “surrounded by his children and grandchildren,” and his grandson Thomas describes (in the preface to his book on John Paul Jones), how he would call on the elder Luce and “from his own mouth take the story of his own adventures in ‘the times that tried men’s souls.’”35 The verse that began the book conveys a similar sense of awe.

We will speak of those worthies who fought for our freedom, And suffered, yet nobly they won; Though in dust they repose, in fond mem’ry we’ll heed them, While the earth shall as ever wag on.

Anthony Luce, writing in support of his neighbor Mary Lambert’s petition to continue receiving her dead husband Samuel’s naval pension, chose more sedate prose to convey a similar idea. For many years, he explained, he had “attentively listened to the frequent conversations between my late Father, [and] said Samuel Lambert…respecting their services together in the Revolutionary Navy, and all incidents connected therewith. The truth of which was never called in question by any person to my knowledge. And from hearing the circumstances often repeated for a long succession of years, they became imprinted in my memory.”

What stories they must have been, and what it must have been like to hear them first-hand, laced with details we can now only imagine! The militia exploits of Nathan Smith’s company, the short-lived cruise of the Charming Sally, escapes from the Plymouth hulks and Mill Prison, Jones’ triumph off Flamborough Head, and the strange tale of Landais and the Alliance were told around tavern tables and beside home fireplaces before they found their way into books, newspapers, and petitions. Others, doubtless, were lost along the way: buried, passed over, forgotten, or never told at all. Thomas Chase and his shipmates from Holmes Hole, who sailed to Europe and back in the service of a revolution that birthed a nation, had packed a lifetime of adventure into five short years . . . and witnessed the birth of a navy that would one day rival, and then surpass, Britain’s as the greatest in the world.