U. S. S. Providence
By Rear Admiral A. Farenholt (M.C.), U. S. Navy (Retired).—The first regular legislation of Congress in reference to a naval force to resist aggressions of the British Parliament dates from a resolution of that body Passed October 13,1775. This directed a committee “to fit out two swift sailing vessels to cruise to the eastward to intercept supplies and transports intended for the British army at Boston.” Under this original law the sloop Providence, ex-Katy, the first of the name, and the Lexington were bought and equipped. It is not known which vessel was the first to get to sea but these two ships were the first to sail against the enemy.
The Providence was included in the first squadron to sail and on February 12, 1776, under Commodore Hopkins, proceeded to the British island of New Providence in the West Indies and captured “near 100 cannons and a large quantity of stores . . . the Providence and Wasp covered the landing of 300 sailors and marines.” On the return voyage, April 4, this first squadron fell in, off Long Island, with several British men-of-war and in the action which followed a bomb brig and two tenders were captured and a frigate disabled. In this latter encounter the Providence “got under the stern of the British ship and enabled our heavier ships to come up and engage.” On May 10, this vessel under the command of Captain Paul Jones was directed to proceed to New York to “return the borrowed soldiers, enlist a regular crew and return.” In July he was ordered to cruise in the Atlantic from Nova Scotia to the West Indies and succeeded in obtaining the greatest number of captures of merchant vessels (16) brought in during the war. While off Bermuda in this cruise Jones was overhauled by H.B.M.S. Solebay, frigate, and would have been captured by much superior force had he not outwitted the enemy by luring him into a disadvantageous position, “when the Providence suddenly went off dead before the wind, setting everything that would draw,” and escaped. She also had a brush with the frigate Milford off Cape Sable.
In November of the same year Jones was ordered to proceed to Nova Scotia with the Providence and Alfred to “distress the British trade” and fisheries and to attempt the rescue of 100 American prisoners held “in the coal pits.” After capturing eight vessels, one of them the very valuable Army transport Mellish loaded with materials for General Burgoyne, the vessels returned to Boston. On January 27, 1778, the Providence captured and looted a second time the British fort at Nassau, New Providence Island, and obtained arms and ammunition, beat off the sloop of war Gray ton, burned two prizes, captured five others and released twenty American prisoners. On May 7, 1779, she captured H.B.M.S. Diligent, brig, in the Atlantic, which vessel was subsequently taken into our general service. On August 14, 1779, while in the unfortunate squadron of Commodore Saltonstall, she was overpowered off Bagaduce peninsula at the mouth of the Penobscot River and to prevent her falling into the hands of the enemy she was run up the river and destroyed by her crew, Captain Hacker and his men making the best of their way overland to Boston. Thus ended, according to Cooper, “one of the first cruisers ever sent to sea by the United States and which had become noted for exploits greatly exceeding her force.”
The second Providence was a gondola carrying 45 men and a battery of three 2- to 12- pounders and eight “swivels” in General Arnold’s fleet on Lake Champlain. She was burnt by her own officers near Crown Point to prevent her falling into the hands of the enemy after the drawn battle with the British Fleet off Valcour Island October 11, 1776.
The third Providence was classed as a frigate, ship-rigged, of 28 guns, probably none of them over 12-pounders, and was built at Providence, Rhode Island, during 1776-77. This vessel was one of thirteen “cruisers” of frigate type authorized by Act of December 13, 1775, the first regular vessels to be built by the resisting colonies. These vessels differed in general appearance perhaps less from that of the Mayflower, over 150 years before, or even from those of the Armada of 1588, than they did from those appearing during and subsequent to the War of 1812 only 40 years later, when the high square stern, the round ball-like bow with its ornate and cutaway false work, and the lateen sail and spar which was lopped off to become a gaff and a boom for the spanker, had undergone rapid transformation. The ordnance of that day would have excited little comment from the men of the Elizabethan navy.
The frigates of that day were usually vessels of from 600 to 1,000 tons and rarely carried on their main deck batteries guns of a metal heavier than 18-pounders. There was customarily no spar deck but the forecastle and the quarter-deck extended a considerable distance toward the midship section and were connected by gangways with gratings, spare spars, boats, etc., to cover a part or even all of the intervening space. It was from this beginning that the real “spar deck” was evolved. This Providence, for lack of labor, stores, and the blockading British, did not get to sea until early in 1778 when she proceeded with dispatches to Europe. There she met the Ranger, Captain Paul Jones, who had commanded the first Providence, and in company with that vessel and the Boston returned to home waters during the late summer of that same year.
In July, 1779, while in company with the Queen of France and Ranger, she cut out and captured from a Jamaica fleet eleven large merchantmen off the Banks of Newfoundland; eight of these vessels reached our ports and were estimated to be worth in excess of $1,000,000. In November a squadron consisting of the Providence, Boston, Queen of France, and Ranger left Nantasket Roads under orders to proceed to Charleston, South Carolina, where it arrived shortly before Christmas. Unfortunately soon afterward a British Fleet under command of Admiral Arbuthnot consisting of vessels of much superior force arrived from New York to co-operate with General Clinton and our vessels were trapped in the harbor. Fort Moultrie, the chief defense of the city, fell on May 7, 1780, and on May 12, Captain Whipple, the senior American officer afloat, “finding escape impossible, carried his squadron into the Cooper river, sank several vessels at its mouth and landed all the guns and crews for the defense of the town except those of one ship.” The Providence was refitted and taken into the British Navy under her own name.
The fourth Providence is the present light cruiser Number 82.
That Mysterious Torpedo Boat
Did the Japanese Send Naval Vessels to the North Sea in 1904?
By Joel W. Hedgpeth.—On October 21, 1904, the First Battleship Division of the Russian Fleet, on its way to the disastrous Battle of Tsushima, was crossing the Dogger Banks off the coast of England. It was a dark night: the fog that slowed the progress of the fleet during the day was thickening and the swell was rising. Everyone on board, from Admiral Rozhestvensky down to the inexperienced peasants of the deck watch, was apprehensive. There had been numerous rumors of Japanese ships, vessels of war or disguised merchantmen, waiting in European waters to attack them at the first opportunity. Although many of the Russian ships were new, they had many defects, especially in their wireless, which aggravated the Admiral’s anxiety.
The larger part of the Russian Fleet, including a division of torpedo boats and auxiliaries, had gone on ahead. The supply ship Kamchatka had developed engine trouble, however, and had fallen far behind the advance divisions, when she reported, at 8:45 in the evening, that she was being trailed by unidentified torpedo boats. Shortly after this first report, she wirelessed that she was being attacked.
Admiral Rozhestvensky expected an attack on the battleships. He ordered all ships to look out for Japanese vessels. Shortly after this order there came a request from the Kamchatka asking the flagship Suvaroff to turn on her searchlight to reveal her position. This aroused the Admiral’s suspicions, particularly so when subsequent messages from this source became an incomprehensible jumble. Soon after this, about 1:00 a.m., a green flare shot up, revealing several fishing vessels. The Russians turned on their searchlights. A torpedo boat was sighted to starboard, behind the fishing boats.
Immediately the Admiral ordered the ships to action. There was a confusion of searchlight beams in the murky fog, a rattle of rapid fire guns and the heavier sound of the secondary batteries. One of the fishing boats was sunk; two fishermen were killed and several injured. But the confusion had barely started. Searchlights flickered into the Russian ships from their port quarter. Firing was resumed with furious abandon. In a few moments the Russians realized that they were firing on their own ships, and the firing ceased. Then came a message from the Kamchatka. She was still being followed by torpedo boats.
In the ten or fifteen minutes of this confusion in the fog on the Dogger Bank one of the Russian ships had been hit several times, her chaplain seriously wounded, and the already dubious reputation of the Czar’s navy sadly damaged. On shore there was great excitement: newspapers made a laughing stock of the Russians, and damages out of all proportion to the circumstances were demanded by the English, who held a Cabinet meeting over the incident and dignified it with debates in Commons. War between Britain and Russia seemed imminent. Declarations by members of the fishing fleet that a torpedo boat had remained on the scene of the action for several hours without offering to help aroused more indignation.
In the meanwhile, Admiral Rozhestvensky had not touched any port to file his version of the incident. By the time the Russian Fleet reached a Spanish port for coaling, the affair had grown quite serious, so serious in fact that the Russians were to have difficulty in refueling on their long voyage around Africa and into Asiatic waters, since the English were determined to make matters as inconvenient for them as possible.
An international investigating committee was named to study the Dogger Bank Incident, as it became known. The fishermen insisted they had seen a torpedo boat. Perhaps they had seen the Kamchatka, the committee suggested. Perhaps the Russians had never seen any torpedo boats at all, or perhaps they had suffered a mass hallucination. Although no satisfactory explanation was ever made of the affair, the committee decided that the action of the Russian ships had been a justified war-time precaution. But the Czar’s government paid an indemnity of £65,000 to Great Britain. The British praised the action of the committee as an example of international co-operation to avert a conflict.
During all this, the Japanese said nothing. The Russians were convinced that Japanese torpedo boats had been actually sighted on that foggy night. Captain Semenoff, one of the survivors of the Battle of Tsushima, while recovering in a Japanese hospital, heard that there was a Japanese torpedo boat commander in the hospital, suffering from the effects of a cruise in European waters. He had been there in October, he told the Russians, but not under Japanese colors.
This seemed proof enough for Captain Semenoff, who suggested that the Japanese flotilla may have made the voyage under American colors because of certain “vague paragraphs” in European papers about four torpedo boats built in Europe, en route to reinforce the U. S. Far East squadron. Whether or not this is the true explanation of this incident, it is not out of keeping with Japanese conceptions of naval strategy.