Glasgow vs Esek Hopkins’ Squadron – 6 April 1776
In early April 1776, the British sixth-rate Glasgow fell in with an American raiding squadron near Rhode Island. Fighting against the odds, she managed to make good her escape, resulting in much criticism of the rebel officers.
On the clear morning of Saturday 6 April 1778, the sixth-rate Glasgow 20, Captain Tyringham Howe, was about 25 miles to the south-east of Block Island off Newport, Rhode Island, sailing on a westerly course for Charleston with dispatches, when at 2 a.m. some seven or eight sail were discovered to windward. Captain Howe ordered the decks cleared for action, tacked ship, and steered towards the strangers, the nearest vessels of which he identified as two ships, two brigs and a sloop. These five vessels would prove to be the Alfred 24, Colombus 20, Andrea Doria 14, Cabot 14 and Providence 12, all forming part of Commodore Esek Hopkins’ rebel squadron which had recently staged a raid on the Bahamas, and which had then taken several prizes whilst cruising between Block Island and Long Island.
Constructed at Kingston-Upon-Hull, the Glasgow had first been commissioned almost twenty years earlier and had seen service through the Seven Years War and the ensuing peace in the Mediterranean, West Indies and North America. She carried an armament of twenty 9-pounder cannons and had a design compliment of 160 men. Salvaged after striking rocks at Cohasset, Massachusetts in late 1774, her captain, William Maltby, had been dismissed by a court martial in January 1775 and replaced by the newly posted Captain Howe. The latter officer, who appears not to have been related to Vice-Admiral Lord Howe, was in his thirtieth year and had spent the previous three years on the North American station in command of the small sloop Cruizer.
In a light breeze and calm sea, the brig Cabot, commanded by Hopkins’ son John, came within hail of the Glasgow, and at 2.30, after providing evasive answers to Captain Howe’s inquisitions, announced that her two main consorts were the Continental ships Columbus and Alfred. This declaration was accompanied by the launch of a hand grenade from the Cabot’s fighting top. Broadsides were immediately exchanged of which the smaller Cabot suffered the more, receiving damage aloft and sustaining casualties of four men killed and seven badly wounded, including her commander. She then ran on ahead to commence a raking fire whilst a larger vessel with a top light, supposed to be Commodore Hopkins’ Alfred, took her place alongside the Glasgow, and a third, the Colombus, ran under the Glasgow’s stern, raked her, and luffed up on her lee beam. Next, a brig, the Andrea Doria, took her station on the British shop’s larboard quarter, whilst the distant Providence joined the melee whenever she could find a clean line of fire.
Fearing that his ship could be boarded by his overwhelming opponents, Captain Howe ordered his clerk to weigh the dispatches down with shot and hove them overboard. For the next hour the action was fought at close quarters, during which the Glasgow’s principal opponent, the Alfred, had her tiller damaged, causing her to swing around to suffer a raking fire, whilst also hampering the fire of her consorts. Meanwhile, the Columbus dropped back on the Glasgow’s other quarter, although the brig kept her fire up from astern at musket shot.
At 4.30, with daylight breaking, the beleaguered Glasgow broke off the action and tried to make sail for Rhode Island where a British squadron under Captain James Wallace was patrolling. Shifting two stern chasers into Howe’s cabin, a running fight continued which saw the American squadron yawing to pour in their raking fire, often at musket shot. Eventually at 6.30 a.m. the rebels, harbouring concerns that the continuous firing would bring the British squadron in Newport out in chase, and anxious therefore not to risk their prizes, hauled to the wind. An hour and a half later they tacked and stood away to the south south-west.
By now, the Glasgow’s signal guns had alerted the squadron in Newport, and at 11 a.m. she came to off Rhode Island where she spoke with Captain Wallace’s Rose 20, the Nautilus 16, Commander John Collins, and the Swan 14, Commander James Ayscough, which were standing out after the enemy in what was fresher weather. Yet despite having come to anchor just over half a mile from Brenton Point, the Glasgow was still not safe from the Americans, for the next morning she was driven upriver by a battery, including an 18-pounder cannon, which rebel troops had erected overnight.
During the action with Hopkins’ squadron the Glasgow had lost one marine killed and three men wounded to the enemy’s musketry. All her lower masts were reported disabled, and her rigging was in shreds. When she was docked at Plymouth some months later, the sheer number of shot and musket holes in her stern would prove a source of astonishment. In addition to the Cabot’s losses, the Alfred had suffered six men killed and another wounded, whilst the Andrew Doria had just one man wounded.
Unsurprisingly, there was much criticism in revolutionary American circles regarding the failure to make a capture of the Glasgow, with Commodore Hopkins being castigated for neglecting to order a line of battle or apparently even provide any instructions to his commanders. Captain Abraham Whipple of the Colombus suffered under the shadow of cowardice before being cleared by a court martial that nevertheless criticised his conduct, whilst the captain of the Providence was relieved of his command to be replaced by a certain Lieutenant John Paul Jones.
Captain Howe was rewarded for his successful defence of the Glasgow by being appointed to the frigate Thames 32 in August 1776, with which vessel he remained until paid off in the autumn of 1781. Suffering from a long period of ill-health, he died in 1783 in the course of his 38th year. At the end of 1776 the Glasgow departed for Jamaica, to which station she also sailed in March 1779 after docking at Chatham, only to be destroyed by fire in Montego Bay on 1 June whilst under the command of Captain Thomas Lloyd.