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Tartar
War broke out with France in the early 1740s. It looked to Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts as if the French were on the verge of invading and conquering English America, so he planned to use New England amateur soldiers to attack the French fortress of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, in order to persuade the French to delay their invasion. The plan worked, and, with help from a few Royal Navy ships, Louisbourg was taken in June 1745. As a result of the capture of Louisbourg, the French delayed their invasion of British North America until 1747, when it was defeated at sea by British Admirals George Anson and Edward Hawke in two separate battles. The New England colonies built small warships to assist in the Louisbourg operation, and Rhode Island’s useful contribution, built in 1744, was the 14-gun brig Tartar. Some of her cannons survive at the Newport Historical Society. No clear pictures or exact dimensions of the brig have been positively identified, although she is possibly shown in a primitive sketch of the fleet near Louisbourg and she is described in prose. The Palladian stern and quarter-gallery windows reflect the fact that ship-captain/architect Peter Harrison (1716-1775) was active in Newport for part of 1744, and had provided Shirley with complete plans of the French fortress, thus enabling him to capture it. Tartar was sold out of the colony’s service shortly after Louisbourg had been captured. She is believed to have been placed in the Caribbean trade, where she would have brought back molasses (for making rum), sugar, coffee, and chocolate. Louisbourg, incidentally, once the third largest seaport in North America, is being beautifully restored by the Canadian government to its 1744 appearance, so that visits by the historic ships of the Colonial Navy are likely to be an exciting feature there.
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L’iroquoise |
The French in Canada built a number of warships in the 18th century, ranging from small corvettes up to two 74-gun battleships. Quebec oak, however, was a great disappointment, because it proved not to last as long as European oak. Just before the French surrendered their North American possessions, they built at least three identical brigs near Montreal in 1758-9, one of which was l’Iroquoise (“Iroquois girl”). L’Iroquoise was used to reinforce the French at Fort Niagara, New York (a fort that has been restored and is open to the public). Like her two sisters, she was of course captured by the British at the time of the fall of Montreal in 1760. The British renamed her Anson after the great British admiral. She had been patrolling the waters of Lake Ontario under British colors for only a short time before she ran on an uncharted rock and sank. Primitive paintings survive of two of her sisterships that were also captured by the British, l’Outaouaise (“girl from the Ottawa tribe”) and Le Montcalm (named after the French military commander who died at Quebec in 1759). |
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The first eight vessels authorized by Congress for the Continental Navy late in 1775 included the 14-gun brig Cabot (formerly a Maryland-owned merchant brig, Sally, that was likely in the Caribbean trade for sugar, coffee, and chocolate). Cabot, named after the explorer Giovanni Caboto who sailed from England to Newfoundland in 1496, was the second vessel authorized by Congress for the Navy late in October 1775. Commanded by Captain John B. Hopkins of Rhode Island in 1776 (he was nephew of former RI Governor Stephen Hopkins who founded the Continental Navy, in October 1775, and son of Commodore Esek Hopkins, first commander-in-chief of the Navy), she took part in the raid on Nassau and the combat with the 20-gun British frigate Glasgow off the coast of Rhode Island in April. In 1777, her captain was Joseph Olney of Rhode Island, but Olney’s ambitious scheme to capture the 28-gun British frigate Milford went wrong when two Massachusetts Navy brigs, supposedly assisting Cabot, fled the scene without firing a shot. Cabot was captured near Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, the first Continental Navy vessel to be captured; her crew fortunately managed to escape. While in the Royal Navy, she took part in the Battle of Dogger Bank against the Dutch in 1781, and was sold in 1783. Two portraits of her exist, an oil painting in England, and a watercolor by Randle in Canada. |
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The Museum of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis contains a beautiful, large-scale model (with sails that were added much later) of a jaunty 14-gun brig, Fair American. Researchers believe that, of all the vessels of that popular name, this one represents one built in Bermuda about 1776, using the long-life red juniper or cedar that grows there. She may have been employed for a time in the sugar, coffee, and chocolate trade in the Caribbean. By at least early 1778, she was a privateer out of Charleston, SC (sometimes under charter to the South Carolina Navy), commanded by Charles Morgan, and was present when the Continental Navy frigate Randolph tragically blew up in a night battle. For a time, she was a successful American privateer based in Philadelphia, but she was later captured, and sold to be a Loyalist privateer out of New York. The Naval Academy owns a painting of her stuck on a sandbar during a battle in the Delaware River in 1782. The Academy’s model, which now appears to be wildly inaccurate regarding the height of her quarterdeck, was presumably constructed in England from sketches but no real plans, to the order of the 1782 owner. The brig continues to be a popular subject for modern model-builders. |
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