LAMBERT WICKES: SEA RAIDER AND DIPLOMAT. By William Bell Clark. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1932. $5.00.
Reviewed by Captain D. W. Knox, U. S. Navy (Retired)
This book is “The Story of a Naval Captain of the Revolution” and is a notable contribution to the American naval history of that war, especially in that it brings to light much newly discovered material regarding the initial operations of our navy in European waters, and finally does justice to a hitherto obscure officer of superlative abilities.
The account of Wickes’s epic raid around Ireland, in the face of large British naval forces forewarned and on guard against him, has heretofore only been sketched in outline from insufficient data. Still less has been known of the all but insuperable obstacles overcome by Wickes in maintaining his ships on the European coast for nearly a year. The author’s assertion that Wickes deserves recognition from his country on a par with that accorded to Paul Jones is well supported.
While Wickes never had the opportunity to demonstrate the heroic fighting qualities of Jones he gave every indication of possessing them in several eagerly sought encounters where victory turned out to be assured with less heroism.
On the other hand Wickes’s successful raiding operations close under the British coast were accomplished despite much greater difficulties than those subsequently confronting Jones, who did not arrive in Europe until seven months after Wickes had sailed in the Reprisal for home late in September of 1777. In the early period France was still neutral, so that harboring in her ports was most precarious and required resourcefulness, subterfuge, and diplomacy of a high order to obtain the essential logistic support to naval operations. Wickes was further hampered by unsuspected traitorous spies who gave much advance information of his plans to the British, and he was gravely handicapped by the presence of most of the British Navy in home waters, whereas it will be recalled that Jones was favored by the absence of a large part of the opposing forces in distant quarters.
It is made apparent that Wickes had a dual purpose in his daring operations. The most obvious one was injury to the commerce of his enemy and the corresponding diversion of British naval forces to the defensive so as to aid the forwarding of supplies to America. Less apparent but seemingly of greater importance in his eyes was an intention to embroil France and England in war from the friction caused by his use of French ports as bases for raiding British commerce. This was a difficult undertaking considering the constant danger of turning French provocation severely upon himself, and upon the American commission in Paris headed by Franklin. Yet he avoided the pitfalls remarkably well and at the same time came within an ace of bringing on a war between the European powers in August, 1777. Mr. Clark deserves great credit for the way in which he develops this hitherto obscure fact.
The fame due to Wickes has previously been denied from a variety of causes. He was innately a very modest man and a poor correspondent. His most brilliant operations were conducted unobserved by superior authority, and so early in the war that records were indifferently kept. The most voluminous collection of documents which would disclose his achievements went down when the Reprisal foundered with Wickes on board during the voyage homeward in the autumn of 1777. Franklin and his fellow commissioners, under whose general direction Wickes operated in Europe, were compelled to observe the greatest caution, to reduce records to a minimum, and to minimize and even misrepresent facts related to Wickes’s proceedings. The dishonesty of the American commercial agent charged with the disposal of prizes led him to cover up all of his transactions and avoid the preservation of records. Wickes’s principal consort, the Lexington, under Captain Henry Johnson, was captured on her return voyage to the United States at about the same time the Reprisal foundered. The papers taken in her were sent to British archives, where they have been but recently discovered through the painstaking efforts of Mr. Clark.
This is but one example of the monumental research of the author, to whom the navy and the country are deeply indebted for “discovering” Lambert Wickes and adding so much to the inspiring naval traditions of the Revolution. From a thousand or more sources, collected and studied over a long period of years, he has unraveled much that could not have come to light in any other way. Moreover, his story is told in a delightful, gripping style, all the more entertaining from the realization forced upon the reader that no liberties are taken with a wealth of facts which in themselves cannot be improved upon to compel interest.
Reviewed by Charles Lee Lewis, Associate Professor, U. S. Naval Academy
Unless one uses the term “diplomat” in the sense of Nelson’s famous saying, “A fleet of British ships of war are the best negotiators in Europe,” one cannot very logically append the word to the name of Lambert Wickes. The attempt of his biographer to show that this sea raider was the originator of a plan for destroying British commerce with the fundamental purpose of embroiling France and Great Britain in war is not successful (pp. 189, 327). That Robert Morris and other members of the committee of secret correspondence were not cognizant of such a purpose when they issued their instructions to Wickes on his departure from the United States is incredible. That Franklin, the astute diplomat, should have thought Wickes’s only mission to be “crippling British commerce at its source through the complaisance of French neutrality” (p. 189), with no thought as to its effects on Anglo-French relations is, if possible, even more difficult to believe. It is evident, however, that Wickes was extraordinarily diplomatic in his dealings with French authorities regarding privileges accorded his vessel as well as the many prizes which he either brought or sent into the seaports of France.
It is indeed in the scholarly presentation of the state of affairs in France during the year 1777 that Mr. Clark has made a real contribution to American naval history. This was the year during which the French government was straining its neutrality to the breaking point in order to aid the American colonies, while the British ambassador, Argus-eyed, was indefatigably doing his utmost to checkmate every move made by the French or the Americans in France, and Paris was honeycombed with spies and traitors of every stripe. Only by fully realizing the obstacles which Wickes then had to overcome can one now properly estimate his remarkable achievements, which Clark thus summarizes:
The gallant captain who had brought Franklin to France, who had been first in European seas with the Continental flag, who had taken a king’s packet off Falmouth, who had devastated the Irish Sea, who had eluded the overpowering forces of the enemy, and come within a hair’s breadth of bringing on a war between France and England (p. 359).
It should be borne in mind that these stirring deeds were all performed before John Paul Jones reached France in the Ranger. In fact, Wickes’s “tall-masted black ship,” Reprisal, was the first American man-of-war to arrive in European waters. Without subtracting one iota from the fame of Paul Jones, Mr. Clark makes the reader realize fully that Wickes has by no means deserved the comparative obscurity to which history has relegated him for so many years.
After reading this scholarly work, one has, in spite of its well authenticated background, but a dim picture of the man Wickes. That he was courageous, resourceful, and modest is made clear, but the intimate details which one expects to find in biographical portraiture are lacking. Actually, the personalities of Wickes’s stepbrother, Joseph Hynson, and another trouble maker, Arthur Lee, are more forcefully impressed on the reader’s mind than is the character of Wickes himself. This is due probably to the scarcity of source material bearing on Wickes’s early life, Mr. Clark having as a consequence restricted his biography to the short period extending from March, 1776, to October, 1777. Even during that time Wickes wrote comparatively few letters, having been a man of little formal education as is evident from his picturesque spelling. Moreover, it should be remembered that valuable sources of the nature of letter-books, logbooks, and letters were irretrievably lost when Wickes went down with his ship in a storm off Newfoundland, and other material was lost when many of the papers of Arthur Lee disappeared after his death in France. Not even the date of Wickes’s birth is now known with exactness, and no portrait of him nor likeness of any kind seems to have escaped the ravages of time. If, however, Mr. Clark could have made an extensive perusal of Maryland newspapers prior to 1776, he would doubtless have uncovered facts relating to Wickes’s connection with the Colonial merchant service. For example, the Maryland Gazette of Annapolis reveals that Wickes played an important rôle in the famous Peggy Stewart tea affair which occurred in Annapolis in October, 1774. This appears to have escaped Mr. Clark’s notice.
On the whole, one feels after reading this biography of Wickes deeply grateful to its author for his contribution to the naval history of the American Revolution, a work characterized by patient and extensive research and sound scholarship.
THE NAVY: DEFENSE OR PORTENT? By Charles A. Beard. New York: Harper and Bros. 1932. $2.00
Reviewed by Lieutenant G. W. Akers, U. S. Naval Reserve
It is distressing to friends of the Navy that one as gifted as Mr. Beard should attack the Navy and everything it stands for, and assume to dictate what the armament policy of the United States should be, while, at the same time, he bitterly assails “navy bureaucrats” for suggesting such policies at the request of Congress. Throughout his book he holds propagandists up to the most sarcastic scorn; yet it is significant that the publication of his book comes just at the time when the whole question of appropriations for defense is in such an unstable and uncertain state in the Congress that committees hesitate to report out bills of which they unanimously approve.
Mr. Beard starts his book with a vigorous condemnation of the propagandists of the “right” and the “left” for beclouding the issue of “adequate preparedness for national defense.” He then immediately and enthusiastically takes up cudgels for the “lefts” and, with much superior scorn of “naval intelligence,” drags out all the mistakes (and no doubt there have been many) that he can find made by the so-called “big-navy” people and ends with no concrete nor detailed recommendations as to the size or composition of the Navy.
While repeatedly ridiculing the assertions of others as lacking definite proof, he assumes to say that our national policies are such that defense and protection measures should be absolutely limited to this continent, and states these policies to be the will of the American people. Definite proof is completely lacking. It is to be wondered if Mr. Beard, eminent historian that he is, has read of the tributes we paid to North African countries early in the nineteenth century and that we not only paid the indemnities, but suffered the most humiliating indignities until we were able to build up and send ships over there under Decatur and others to stop them. Perhaps Mr. Beard thinks such things could not happen in the twentieth century, but from 1914 to 1918 and since 1900 in China we have had plenty of examples that they can. He blandly asserts that, “Soldiers and sailors become restless when their weapons rust,” another statement questioned by many, and lacking “definite proof.” The statement that the propaganda of the Navy League and the navy bureaucrats really means that we must have an Army and Navy strong enough to enforce our decisions against any power or combinations of powers on earth is another utterly unproved one.
As a terrific argument, a table is included showing yearly naval appropriations since 1800 with a growth from $3,448,716 to $374,052,691 in 1930. Either the Navy is an insurance, or it is a useless waste. If it is an insurance, what is more natural than growth of appropriations, and how could it be otherwise with our population, our national wealth, and our commerce growing at an even greater percentage in the same period?
Mr. Beard says that the two major issues are, “Who in reality is to control the armament development of the United States?” and, “Exactly what is to be defended and by what instrumentalities of diplomacy and arms?” After much “verbiage,” to use his own words, he arrives at the answer to the first issue that, “Civilian supremacy is indispensable to national security.” When have we ever had anything else? Does he know that the “navy bureaucracy, in particular the General Board of the Navy” that he accuses of dictating to the civil heads always appears at congressional hearings upon such subjects by request? He certainly must know that the money for the Navy is voted by Congress, and that the combined political power of all the officers in the Navy is a negligible factor in determining the votes and actions of congressmen.
In speaking of the Merchant Marine Act he says,
Although patriotic purposes are behind these laws and their advocates allege that they bring economic advantages to the country at large, it is also a fact that shipowners and shipbuilders have derived profits from them.
Well, why not? Many manufacturers and workingmen derive profits from the post-office department, yet we will be satisfied with nothing less than adequate postal service. If that argument is carried to its logical conclusion and all government activities represent a profit to no one, then the government must necessarily get into all contingent activities and we approach the Russian system of the people for the state and get away from the American principle of the state for the people.
Certainly no one with the interests of the Navy at heart is proud of Mr. W. B. Shearer or his actions at the Geneva conference. Yet a good share of Mr. Beard’s book is devoted to an expose of Shearer, his activities and his character, as if that had anything to do with the civilian determination of national policies that Mr. Beard so vociferously proclaims.
The book can be considered as nothing else but a tirade throughout, an attempt to prove that armament is a disease and that patriotic Americans that advocate anything towards the maintenance of armed forces must have ulterior motives. The fact that armament is a result of, and not a cause of, political and economic policies and troubles is completely overlooked and scorned. Anyone wishing to read a typical example of the unrestrained arguments of pacifists will find it in this book.
AMERICA’S SIBERIAN ADVENTURE. By Gen. William S. Graves. New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1931. $3.50
Reviewed by Lieutenant Philip P. Welch, U. S. Navy
In addition to giving the commanding general’s history of the American Siberian Expeditionary Force from its inception, this book is of particular interest to those who are interested in the Far East. It lifts the veil and exposes to full view the intrigues and the designs, the plots and counter-plots, and the double-crossings that occurred in this zone of turmoil, and which undoubtedly have not materially changed in the intervening period. Furthermore, it is one of the very few books, which, relying neither upon prejudice nor imagination, gives a true picture of the ruthlessness of the White Russians during the last days of Kolchak. You are left with a feeling of sympathy for the Reds, or at least a feeling that the Whites were as bad as the Reds. But of even more interest to naval officers is the conflict exposed between the State Department and its representatives and General Graves. The latter writes that certain representatives of the former “with the full support of the Russian section of the State Department” were using their efforts in support of Kolchak, contrary to the explicit orders from the President to his representative, General Graves, that the policy of the United States was one of neutrality in Russian affairs. In one instance General Graves was told by our ambassador to Japan, in Siberia at the time, “The State Department is running this, not the War Department.” To which General Graves replied, “The State Department is not running me.” The lack of co-ordination revealed between the two government agencies is one which in the future may have serious consequences. The revelations of General Graves show the necessity of co-operation in the principle of paramount interest, now recognized by the War and Navy Departments. In a situation, which has reached the extreme stage, where a military or naval force has been called, surely the military or naval service becomes the paramount service. If this principle had been recognized during this period, both the efforts of the State Department and the War Department would have been united in the person of the military commander, either through mutual recognition or by executive order.
THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF JOHN, EARL OF SANDWICH, FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY, 1771—1782. Edited by G. R. Barnes and J. H. Owen. Vol. 1. London: Navy Records Society. 1932. (Navy Records Society Publications, Vol. 69.) 25/6.
Reviewed by Louis H. Bolander, Assistant Librarian, U. S. Naval Academy
This volume, the latest in a long series of scholarly publications by the Navy Records Society, is a notable contribution to the history of both the British and the American navies during the War of American Independence. For here are published for the first time the letters and private papers of the man on whose shoulders rested the final responsibility for the administration of the British Navy during the Revolution. Through the courtesy of the present Earl of Sandwich, the editors were allowed to examine and publish the correspondence of his distinguished ancestor, a correspondence which covered a period of nearly fifty years, from 1744 to 1792. Sandwich, himself, the fourth Earl, came from a distinguished line. His great-grandfather was Pepys’ hero, Edward Montagu, general-at-sea, who was created Earl of Sandwich in the year of the Restoration, and who went down with his ship at the battle of Solebay, in 1672. Sandwich was three times called to be First Lord of the Admiralty, the last time being in 1771, where he remained until 1782. His correspondence over these eleven years, so eventful in English history, would naturally be extensive, and its publication uncovers a rich vein of source material for the use of the future historian of the Revolution. This first volume covers the period from the summer of 1770 until the spring of 1778, that is, until the consummation of the French alliance with America.
The letters themselves are filled with matters of fascinating interest to students of the naval history of the Revolution. For example, an account is given by Admiral Palliser of the capture of the brig Washington of 20 guns, commanded by Sion Martingale, on December 5, 1775, together with detailed written instructions for Martingale’s guidance, signed by General Washington himself. The letters tell of the raising of the siege of Quebec, of the fitting out of Hopkins’ fleet, of the capture of New York, and of the operations of the British fleet in the Hudson River. An extensive report is given by a British spy of his visit to Boston during the siege, and the reports are recorded of both Sir Guy Carleton and Captain Pringle concerning their operations in Lake Champlain, and the battle off Valcour Island. Sandwich’s correspondents tell of the depredations of Conyngham, Wickes, Johnson, and Nicholson in the English Channel, and of the capture of H.M.S. Drake by the Ranger, “An American Congress ship commanded by one Jones.” This account is most interesting, and as far as the reviewer knows, is now for the first time published.
Junior officers wrote to the First Lord with the greatest freedom, and their opinions and comments on passing events add a vivid, picturesque quality to the volume. Major Pitcairn, of the Battle of Lexington fame, writes to him from Boston telling him of his troubles in keeping his battalion of marines sober, and adds in the most naive way, “The people swear at us sometimes, but that does us no harm.” One is impressed with the very great difficulty experienced by the officers in keeping their men supplied with rations, though we have generally been led to believe that both the British Army and Navy were provided for abundantly. The editors are to be congratulated on bringing out a most scholarly production, exhibiting the highest quality of meticulous historical research.