Ever heard of a brig (that’s a kind of ship, also known as a brigantine) named the Washington? Probably not, but she was historic, in a small way: she was the first American warship captured by the British in the Revolutionary War, and she gave King George III a chance to look at a rebel flag.
Commanded by Captain Sion Martindale, the Washington set sail on November 23, 1775, and captured at least one ship with supplies bound for the British troops in Boston. But then the crew refused to work. One of their grievances was that they didn’t have enough clothing. What exactly they were lacking, I’m not sure, but in the late fall in the North Atlantic, proper clothing is something you can’t very well do without. At any rate, once they were supplied with the clothes they needed, “the whole Crew to a man gave three Cheers & declard their readiness to go to Sea next morning.”
They set sail again on December 3, and were run down the very next evening by the British ship Fowey, commanded by Captain George Montagu. The Fowey fired a few cannon as a warning, and the Americans gave up — which was probably a wise thing to do, since they were outgunned and outmanned. The odds against them were increased when another British ship, the Lively, showed up later that night.
The next morning, Captain Montagu’s men took possession of the Washington and headed to Boston. It wasn’t much of a ship that they got, but they did get more than 70 prisoners.
When they got to Boston, British Admiral Graves wanted to send the Washington back out with a British crew, as a decoy, to catch other American ships. But when some of the British ships’ carpenters and captains examined her, they all agreed that the ship was unseaworthy.
The American prisoners put on board the British ship Tartar and sent to England, where they arrived in early January 1776. Some of them got sick on the way; more of them got sick, and some died, after being placed in a hospital in England. Some apparently joined the Royal Navy — probably because they didn’t have much choice. The officers were sent to prison in Halifax, where a few of them, including Captain Martindale, made their escape a few months later.
Along with the prisoners, the British brought the rebel ship’s flag back to England, and Lord Sandwich (the Secretary of the Navy) sent it to the king, thinking he might want to get a look at it. What was on the flag? A white background, with a pine tree and the words, “Appeal to Heaven”. This was only one of the flags used by the American forces; they didn’t have a standard flag at this time.
- Notes
- The pine tree had been used on other New England flags prior to the Revolutionary War.
- During the course of the war, there were multiple other ships named Washington.
- The reason the Washington was the first American warship captured was not because the Americans and their ships were better than the British; it was because there were hardly any American warships at the time.