Intercepting the Sugar Fleet
29 APRIL 1777
INTERCEPTING THE SUGAR FLEET
In the earliest days of our nation, the Marine Committee of the Continental Congress was not hesitant to give tactical direction to our naval forces afloat. On this day, the Committee instructed that an American squadron rendezvous off the Bahamian island of Abacoa on 25 July, with the intent of intercepting the annual “sugar fleet.” Each year more than 100 sail carried a Caribbean sugar bounty to England and, according to the Committee, usually departed Jamaica the last week of July. USS RANDOLPH, 32, ANDREW DORIA, 14, SURPRIZE, 12, and COLUMBUS, 24, were detailed to the mission.
The Marine Committee’s quite prescriptive resolution directed the senior officer at Abacoa to assume command, work out signals, and arrange patrols. The squadron was to set out in the direction of Havana, the presumed path of the Jamaica fleet. While anticipating contact they were to practice signals, exercise the guns, and safeguard the health of the crews by taking, “infinite pains on board every Ship to sweeten the Air, and keep not only the ship clean but the Men so in their Cloathing [sic] and Persons.” The squadron was to send what captured ships they could to Georgia or the Carolinas and burn the rest. The captains were reassured that the British usually sent convoy escorts that had long been on station and were foul and due for overhaul. The resolution concluded with a statement prescient for its day, “The Navy is in its infancy and a few brilliant strokes in this Era would give it a credit and importance that would induce seamen from all parts to seek the employ for nothing is more evident than that America has the means and must in time become the first Maritime power in the world.”
COLUMBUS, SURPRIZE and ANDREW DIRIA never cleared port. CAPT Nicholas Biddle aboard RANDOLPH opened his sealed orders on 10 July as instructed, but that date found RANDOLPH in Charleston for repairs rather than cruising off Hispaniola as expected. Biddle did put to sea promptly, but a lightning strike during a storm split his mainmast and forced him back to port.
The grand rendezvous never occurred–indeed fate had already condemned the enterprise. On 28 April, the day before the Committee’s resolution, the Charleston Gazette of the State of South-Carolina ran the news that 176 sail were to leave Jamaica on or about 1 May, richly laden with sugar, rum, cotton, coffee and a quantity of Carolina indigo. It seems that had the American squadron been able to execute their orders, the larger than expected sugar fleet would have passed already. We can only hope that the failure of this endeavor on several counts did not impede the US Navy on her ascent to primacy!
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 4 MAY 25
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
“Continental Marine Committee to Captain Nicholas Biddle,” letter dtd. 28 April 1777. IN: Morgan, William James, (ed.), Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Naval Documents of the American Revolution Vol 8 1777. Washington, DC: GPO, 1980, p. 471.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 1 “A”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1991, p. 294.
Gazette of the State of South-Carolina, excerpt dtd. 28 April 1777. IN: Morgan, William James, (ed.), Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Naval Documents of the American Revolution Vol 8 1777. Washington, DC: GPO, 1980, p. 460-61.
Miller, Nathan. Sea of Glory: A Naval History of the American Revolution. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1974, pp. 226-27.
“Resolutions of the Continental Marine Committee, 29 April 1777.” IN: Morgan, William James, (ed.), Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Naval Documents of the American Revolution Vol 8 1777. Washington, DC: GPO, 1980, p. 468-70.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: The reason the departure of the Jamaica fleet was newsworthy in Charleston was the mention of Carolina indigo in British hands. In that day rice, lumber, and indigo (used for making dyes) were the major exports of the southern colonies, and this particular shipment had been sold in the French West Indies and there acquired subsequently by the British. The intelligence reported by the Charleston newspaper was specific even as to the names of the “sugar fleet’s” five Royal Navy escorts: HMS MAIDSTONE, 26, WICHELSEA, 26, BADGER, 16, PORCUPINE, 14, and RACEHORSE, 10.
The Continental Navy frigate RANDOLPH was named for the patriot Peyton Randolph, a Virginia lawyer who served as the King’s Attorney for Virginia and Speaker of the House of Burgesses prior to the Revolution. He became devoted to the cause of American liberty, protesting the Stamp Act in 1764 and serving as the President of the First Continental Congress in 1774. He died unexpectedly of “apoplexy” (stroke) 22 October 1775.
