Continental Joint Operations in the Revolutionary War
The MOC
By
Dr. Steven Wills
July 4, 2024
Figure 1: The Continental gunboat Philadelphia, sunk at the Battle of Valcour island in 1776, and raised nearly intact in the 1930’s. Now on display in the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History.
On Independence Day, it is fitting to remember those who fought to free the Thirteen Colonies from British imperialism. With the traditional focus on George Washington and the Continental Army’s battles on land, the Continental Navy is often overlooked. The exploits of Captain John Paul Jones in both the ships Ranger and Bonhomme Richard are well-known, but Continental combined arms missions are largely ignored, even by Revolutionary War enthusiasts. At multiple points throughout the war, the Continental Navy and Army worked together to stage daring combined arms operations. Although met with mixed results, they paved the way for future expeditionary efforts from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. The late Jack Coggins’ Ships and Seaman of the American Revolution is one of the best sources on Continental naval operations; much of the information conveyed here is courtesy of that work.
Neutralizing Nassau
The Continental Navy and Marine Corps’ first expedition was commanded by Commodore Esek Hopkins, a member of the Continental Naval Committee who had commanded a privateer in the French and Indian War. It included eight warships including the 24-gun flagship Alfred. The expedition was the combat debut of John Paul Jones as First Lieutenant of Alfred . Jones had the privilege of hoisting the first Continental battle flag—the famous “Don’t Tread on Me” banner—aloft, however he cared little for the new flag stating, “I could never see how or why such a venomous serpent should be the combatant emblem of a brave and honest folk fighting to be free. I abhorred the device.”
When the squadron reached the Bahamas, Marines under Captain Samuel Nichols landed and seized Fort Montague on the island of Nassau on March 3rd, 1776. The booty included seventy-one cannon, fifteen brass mortars, and twenty-four barrels of gunpowder; however, the British had managed to hide most of the gunpowder and other stores. A failed attempt to capture the plucky British warship Glasgow caused damage and casualties on several Continental warships but the complete squadron returned to New London, Connecticut on April 8th. While the Continental Army appreciated the much-needed guns and powder, the engagement with Glasgow showed the Americans had a long way to go before fielding a true fighting navy.
Valor at Valcour Island
The Colonials’ next significant joint operation involved the creation of a naval squadron on Lake Champlain in the summer of 1776 soon after Hopkins returned from the Bahamas. British forces in Canada threatened to march south through New York and split the colonies in two. Future traitor Benedict Arnold was assigned to build a “fleet” to foreclose the lake as a possible invasion route. Arnold recruited a small army of coastal shipwrights in New England and marched them to Lake Champlain to build warships to supplement the tiny Continental squadron already in place on the lake. A strange group of warships were constructed to include 70-foot row galleys with mixed armaments, equipped with both oars and lateen sails, and a force of flat-bottomed gunboats with three small guns each. Arnold’s fleet of scratch-built warships crewed with mostly soldiers was ready by August 1st, 1776, but with less than half the firepower of the British Lake Champlain squadron he could not attack his opponent directly.
Arnold instead lay in wait at anchor near Valcour Island hoping to surprise the British. Despite Arnold’s low opinion of the men under his command, he boldly engaged the British fleet trying to traverse the lake on October 11th, 1776. The engagement was a Continental disaster—Arnold lost eleven of his sixteen ships in the battle and was forced to beach and set fire to his flagship to avoid her capture. Eighty of his men were casualties. However, because of the engagement came so late in the campaign season, the British could not march on American-held Fort Ticonderoga before winter and had to postpone their campaign until the following year when more Continental troops and militia were available for defense. British forces in the 1777 campaign were defeated at the Battle of Saratoga and a large number of British troops were captured, including their commander General John Burgoyne. Arnold’s tactical defeat ultimately ensured a strategic victory when success at Saratoga convinced France to enter the war against the British.
A remnant of Arnold’s fleet survives to the present day. The gunboat Philadelphia was sunk during the battle but was discovered by divers and raised in the 1930’s almost intact. The oldest viewable U.S. warship is on display at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
“Peril on the Penobscot”
Unlike Arnold’s defeat, the combined Continental Army and Navy expedition to Penobscot Bay in 1779 was an unmitigated disaster. The expedition’s goal was to secure Massachusetts from coastal raids and provide a springboard from which to again invade Canada. In Coggins’ assessment, it was “the greatest naval effort the colonies put forth during the whole war.”. The Continental Navy’s 32-gun frigate Warren served as Commodore Dudley Saltonstall’s flagship, leading a motley fleet of commissioned warships and privateers from various state navies. Twenty-two transports carried 2200 Massachusetts and Continental Army soldiers. Their goal was to capture the fort being built by the British in the remote Penobscot Bay.
The Continental fleet arrived at Penobscot in July 1779 and commenced bombardment of the British fort whilst landings troops ashore. Coordination between naval and ground forces was poor. Army commander General Solomon Lovell refused to attack the fort until Commodore Saltonstall silenced its guns with naval bombardment. The siege continued for two weeks without result as bickering continued. Artillery commander Paul Revere (of midnight ride fame) described one so-called council of war as more like a “meeting in a coffee house” than a military council.
The fort’s garrison was able to warn the British naval command in New York of the American attack and a strong force of heavy warships including the 64-gun ship of the line HMS Raisonnable soon arrived to break the siege. The relieving Royal Navy squadron appeared at Penobscot on August 13thand immediately attacked the outgunned Americans. The disorganized Colonial ships retreated in disorder up the Penobscot river rather than fight and were all destroyed to avoid capture. The Americans lost five hundred men and the survivors were forced to march overland back to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Saltonstall was court-martialed and dismissed from the Continental Navy, while the land commanders including Revere were acquitted. It was, as one reference described, “a sorry chapter in America’s naval history.”
The End of the Beginning
Continental Navy and Army joint and combined operations were far from uniformly successful, but they did secure needed ordnance at the start of the war, and the entry of the French as allies later in the conflict. They also set the stage for future, more successful joint operations during the Mexican War and American Civil War where Union Army and Navy forces on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts and the Mississippi, Missouri and Red Rivers mounted numerous successful campaigns. While we remember George Washington and John Paul Jones as Revolutionary War heroes, it is also good to remember the difficult beginnings of Colonial joint operations that also made their mark and set the stage for successful American operations over the next 250 years.
Dr. Steven Wills, Navalist
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
Center for Maritime Strategy
By Dr. Steven Wills
Figure 1: The Continental gunboat Philadelphia, sunk at the Battle of Valcour island in 1776, and raised nearly intact in the 1930’s. Now on display in the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History.
On Independence Day, it is fitting to remember those who fought to free the Thirteen Colonies from British imperialism. With the traditional focus on George Washington and the Continental Army’s battles on land, the Continental Navy is often overlooked. The exploits of Captain John Paul Jones in both the ships Ranger and Bonhomme Richard are well-known, but Continental combined arms missions are largely ignored, even by Revolutionary War enthusiasts. At multiple points throughout the war, the Continental Navy and Army worked together to stage daring combined arms operations. Although met with mixed results, they paved the way for future expeditionary efforts from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. The late Jack Coggins’ Ships and Seaman of the American Revolution is one of the best sources on Continental naval operations; much of the information conveyed here is courtesy of that work.
Neutralizing Nassau
The Continental Navy and Marine Corps’ first expedition was commanded by Commodore Esek Hopkins, a member of the Continental Naval Committee who had commanded a privateer in the French and Indian War. It included eight warships including the 24-gun flagship Alfred. The expedition was the combat debut of John Paul Jones as First Lieutenant of Alfred . Jones had the privilege of hoisting the first Continental battle flag—the famous “Don’t Tread on Me” banner—aloft, however he cared little for the new flag stating, “I could never see how or why such a venomous serpent should be the combatant emblem of a brave and honest folk fighting to be free. I abhorred the device.”
When the squadron reached the Bahamas, Marines under Captain Samuel Nichols landed and seized Fort Montague on the island of Nassau on March 3rd, 1776. The booty included seventy-one cannon, fifteen brass mortars, and twenty-four barrels of gunpowder; however, the British had managed to hide most of the gunpowder and other stores. A failed attempt to capture the plucky British warship Glasgow caused damage and casualties on several Continental warships but the complete squadron returned to New London, Connecticut on April 8th. While the Continental Army appreciated the much-needed guns and powder, the engagement with Glasgow showed the Americans had a long way to go before fielding a true fighting navy.
Valor at Valcour Island
The Colonials’ next significant joint operation involved the creation of a naval squadron on Lake Champlain in the summer of 1776 soon after Hopkins returned from the Bahamas. British forces in Canada threatened to march south through New York and split the colonies in two. Future traitor Benedict Arnold was assigned to build a “fleet” to foreclose the lake as a possible invasion route. Arnold recruited a small army of coastal shipwrights in New England and marched them to Lake Champlain to build warships to supplement the tiny Continental squadron already in place on the lake. A strange group of warships were constructed to include 70-foot row galleys with mixed armaments, equipped with both oars and lateen sails, and a force of flat-bottomed gunboats with three small guns each. Arnold’s fleet of scratch-built warships crewed with mostly soldiers was ready by August 1st, 1776, but with less than half the firepower of the British Lake Champlain squadron he could not attack his opponent directly.
Arnold instead lay in wait at anchor near Valcour Island hoping to surprise the British. Despite Arnold’s low opinion of the men under his command, he boldly engaged the British fleet trying to traverse the lake on October 11th, 1776. The engagement was a Continental disaster—Arnold lost eleven of his sixteen ships in the battle and was forced to beach and set fire to his flagship to avoid her capture. Eighty of his men were casualties. However, because of the engagement came so late in the campaign season, the British could not march on American-held Fort Ticonderoga before winter and had to postpone their campaign until the following year when more Continental troops and militia were available for defense. British forces in the 1777 campaign were defeated at the Battle of Saratoga and a large number of British troops were captured, including their commander General John Burgoyne. Arnold’s tactical defeat ultimately ensured a strategic victory when success at Saratoga convinced France to enter the war against the British.
A remnant of Arnold’s fleet survives to the present day. The gunboat Philadelphia was sunk during the battle but was discovered by divers and raised in the 1930’s almost intact. The oldest viewable U.S. warship is on display at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
“Peril on the Penobscot”
Unlike Arnold’s defeat, the combined Continental Army and Navy expedition to Penobscot Bay in 1779 was an unmitigated disaster. The expedition’s goal was to secure Massachusetts from coastal raids and provide a springboard from which to again invade Canada. In Coggins’ assessment, it was “the greatest naval effort the colonies put forth during the whole war.”. The Continental Navy’s 32-gun frigate Warren served as Commodore Dudley Saltonstall’s flagship, leading a motley fleet of commissioned warships and privateers from various state navies. Twenty-two transports carried 2200 Massachusetts and Continental Army soldiers. Their goal was to capture the fort being built by the British in the remote Penobscot Bay.
The Continental fleet arrived at Penobscot in July 1779 and commenced bombardment of the British fort whilst landings troops ashore. Coordination between naval and ground forces was poor. Army commander General Solomon Lovell refused to attack the fort until Commodore Saltonstall silenced its guns with naval bombardment. The siege continued for two weeks without result as bickering continued. Artillery commander Paul Revere (of midnight ride fame) described one so-called council of war as more like a “meeting in a coffee house” than a military council.
The fort’s garrison was able to warn the British naval command in New York of the American attack and a strong force of heavy warships including the 64-gun ship of the line HMS Raisonnable soon arrived to break the siege. The relieving Royal Navy squadron appeared at Penobscot on August 13th and immediately attacked the outgunned Americans. The disorganized Colonial ships retreated in disorder up the Penobscot river rather than fight and were all destroyed to avoid capture. The Americans lost five hundred men and the survivors were forced to march overland back to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Saltonstall was court-martialed and dismissed from the Continental Navy, while the land commanders including Revere were acquitted. It was, as one reference described, “a sorry chapter in America’s naval history.”
The End of the Beginning
Continental Navy and Army joint and combined operations were far from uniformly successful, but they did secure needed ordnance at the start of the war, and the entry of the French as allies later in the conflict. They also set the stage for future, more successful joint operations during the Mexican War and American Civil War where Union Army and Navy forces on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts and the Mississippi, Missouri and Red Rivers mounted numerous successful campaigns. While we remember George Washington and John Paul Jones as Revolutionary War heroes, it is also good to remember the difficult beginnings of Colonial joint operations that also made their mark and set the stage for successful American operations over the next 250 years.
Dr. Steven Wills, Navalist
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.