Abstract
Half a century ago, in 1973, University of Vermont historian Neil R. Stout (1932–2023) published The Royal Navy in America, 1760–1775. 1 Stout's work was the first major book-length study to explore in detail the subject that Phillip Reid further illuminates in this case study of HM Schooner Sultana.
In the wake of the Seven Years War, the government in London needed to both pay for the war that had just ended and expand the defences of British North America for future contingencies. The basic thought was that the colonies should pay more for their defence by, among other initiatives, enforcing customs duties on merchant shipping and stopping smuggling at North American and West Indian ports. In the summer of 1763, the ministry announced that 44 warships were to be assigned to the task; however, the ordinary warship was too large and too expensive to operate, and had too deep a draft to deal effectively with the small vessels that were the main culprits in smuggling goods in American coastal waters. To remedy this situation, the Admiralty ordered the commander-in-chief in the North American Station to acquire half a dozen locally built vessels, designed for local conditions. Quite separately, Benjamin Hallowell, the most prominent shipbuilder in Boston, Massachusetts, constructed a small schooner, probably on speculation, which he named Sultana. She was sailed to England to be sold, possibly as a yacht. Sir Thomas Hesketh, Bart., purchased her, but soon donated her to the Royal Navy. With the rising need for small enforcement vessels in American waters, the Admiralty purchased her, measured her, then outfitted her and armed her with just eight half-pound swivel guns. Thus, she became the smallest schooner ever commissioned in the Royal Navy. Manned with 25 men and commanded by an American-born Royal Navy lieutenant, John Inglis, Sultana returned to American waters for service between 1768 and 1772. This unique set of obscure circumstances established the basis for Reid's study, as well as the numerous questions it poses and answers.
It is highly unusual to have the precise measurements of an ordinary working merchant vessel built in an American colonial shipyard. Similar records were rarely kept, except for warships. The preservation of this record eventually led to the construction in 2001 of a full-sized replica of the vessel, which still sails as a school ship in Chesapeake Bay. With the plans, plus the archival records of the original ship's logs, reports and correspondence while serving with the Royal Navy, as well as a working replica, Reid saw an opportunity to tell a much broader story. It is not just the story of an obscure naval operation, but an insight into the wider Atlantic world.
The key technology behind the eighteenth-century Atlantic economy, Reid argues, was that of the small schooners like Sultana – typical, ordinary, unremarkable workaday vessels – which carried the cargoes of the day in coastal waters, to and from the islands, and across the sea. Understanding how Sultana and her crew operated provides an accessible explanation of how the wider early modern Atlantic maritime world and economy functioned.
Reid takes in all angles and points of view in this maritime case study. Starting with the ship's construction as a merchant ship in Boston, he then follows Sultana across the Atlantic to the Naval Dockyard at Deptford, where the Admiralty inspected, purchased and converted her. He examines the range of men who manned her and what they experienced and needed to do as seamen. With his study of the ship's only naval commanding officer, Lieutenant John Inglis, Reid both relies on and complements Jim Tildesley's recent biography, ‘I am Determined to Live or Die on Board My Ship’. 2 Proceeding with the study, Reid provides detailed descriptions of the crew's daily routine, as well as their activities in chasing merchant ships and inspecting their cargoes in the waters surrounding Narragansett, Delaware and Chesapeake bays.
What makes Reid's studies in these areas extraordinary is his quantification of various types of data and utilizing them to provide further substance and precision to his descriptions and analyses. He has created 33 tables and four appendices, each containing multiple types of data. For example, in seeking to understand the vessel's sailing performance, Reid has notably transformed the ship's log entries into tabular form, compiling facts on wind direction, wind strength and courses made good, the day's run for the ship, and what sails were set in what conditions. As a supplementary source, he was able to link the experience and insights from the modern replica ship. To do this, it was necessary in some cases to translate the data into more modern forms of measurement, such as the 360-degree compass rather than the 32-point compass. For wind strength, he used the contemporary descriptions in the logs, as he found it impossible to relate them to the modern Beaufort-scale descriptions.
To understand the 99 different men serving on board the ship over the years between 1768 and 1772, Reid has conducted similar work with the muster books, quantifying their countries of origin and ages, the number of days each man served, the number of desertions and cases of venereal disease. Additionally, he has compiled data on the vessels and cargoes that Sultana intercepted while carrying out her customs-enforcement duties. Here, he has quantified the types of vessels, the ports of origin and destination, and the types of cargo, as well as the number of times Sultana's crew boarded vessels and the reasons for doing so.
A Boston Schooner in the Royal Navy is a remarkably detailed case study of the experience of a small customs-enforcement vessel that provides much new insight not only into life on board a small warship, but also into the wider British Atlantic world in the period between the Seven Years War and the American Revolution.