"A Very Warm Engagement"

British General Charles Cornwallis said it best: “The Rivers of Virginia are advantageous to an invading army.” In the spring of 1781, the Royal Navy and loyalist privateers raided along the major and minor waterways of the Chesapeake. The April 1781 log of the British war sloop HMS Savage offers a glimpse of the destruction wrought along the Potomac to warehouses, manufacturing facilities, homes and outbuildings, and it counts 50 or more enslaved Africans and African Americans who escaped slavery aboard the marauding British ships. In April 1781, Richard Henry Lee was home at Chantilly overlooking the Currioman Bay, and from there he monitored British activity in the Potomac. Taking charge of the undermanned and ill-equipped Westmoreland County militia, Richard Henry organized local efforts to repel what he called a “contemptible collection of Pirates” and “freebooters.” Those efforts included a skirmish on April 9 he later described as a "very warm engagement." Tune in to Stratford Mail season 3, episode 2: A Very Warm Engagement to hear tales of the Potomac Raids of 1781!

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Transcript

SM 3:2 “A Very Warm Engagement”

Intro

In this episode, we set sail into the high-stakes world of privateering, where profit met patriotism—and cooperation between the British Navy and loyalist entrepreneurs in spring 1781 threatened to crash the Chesapeake economy and reduce the Potomac riverfront to ashes.   

In 1776 the British Royal Navy was ‘top gun’ on the high seas, sorely outnumbering by about 10 to 1 the Continental Navy, which was still in its infancy. What Continentals lacked in a professional naval service, they made up for in an abundance of merchant vessels engaged in domestic and foreign trade. In early spring 1776 the Continental Congress wisely took advantage of this abundance by authorizing privately-owned, lightly to moderately armed, ships to attack and seize British merchant ships. Called privateers, these privately-owned ships disrupted British commercial shipping and supply lines, all the while dodging engagements with British warships on convoy or blockade duty. Commerce raiding in war both materially diminished the enemy’s ability to wage war and, ideally, drained the resolve of the civilian sector, whose losses prompted them to apply  political pressure on the government to end the war in the interests of economic stability and prosperity.  

A privateer was licensed per cruise with a Letter of Marque and Reprisal issued by Congress or the States. Without a Letter of Marque, a ship engaged in commercial raiding was reckoned to be a pirate and prosecuted as such. Britain did not recognize the authority of Congress or the States to issue Letters of Marque, and, in its 1776 Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, Parliament asserted Britain’s right to detain without bail or trial captured American privateers. But the prospect of huge profits offset the risk of capture. In his July 1779 letter to John Adams, James Warren complained, With regard to our Naval affairs … I am still drudgeing at the Navy Board for a morsel of Bread, while others, and among them fellows who would have Cleaned my Shoes five Years ago have Amassed fortunes, and are riding in Chariots. Ships and cargoes seized by privateers were said to be ‘taken as prize,’ and once a prize court determined a prize had been taken lawfully (not always an easy task), it could be distributed or sold and the proceeds shared by privateer owners and crews. For some privateers, profit and patriotism overlapped; for others, one or the other was sufficient (cha-ching). In his 1806 autobiography, American privateer Christopher Prince of Massachusetts recalled: Through the whole course of the war, I have had two motives in mind, one was for the freedom of my country, and the other was the luxuries of life. Prince captained the privateer Neptune when it took the merchant brig Bellona, fat with a cargo of rum, sugar, and cotton valued around £22,000 pounds sterling. Prince earned (and this is a conservative figure) around £1250 pounds Sterling from Bellona, then equivalent to many years of wages for a skilled worker and today equivalent in purchasing power to around $300,000 US dollars. Continental Navy Captain John Paul Jones observed that privateer prize shares disincentivized naval service (where prize shares were far more meager); but financial reward wasn’t the only advantage to privateering. Privateer crews enjoyed a less hazardous service and more relaxed discipline than aboard naval frigates and ships of war.

By June 1777, Boston’s Continental Journal and Weekly Advertiser calculated that Massachusetts provincial privateers had seized more than £1.5 million pounds sterling worth of ships and cargoes, principally from the West Indies trade. In response to American privateers, insurance underwriters in Britain raised premiums by as much as 30%, adversely impacting the profits of British merchants, raising import prices for British consumers, and ultimately souring public opinion on the American war. During the Revolution more than 1200 privateers took to the seas and seized more than 600 British ships, exacting a bitter toll on British trade to the tune of what would today be hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars. Widespread reporting of privateer prizes often provided an encouraging counterpoint to the early misfortunes of the land war against British forces. And while neither the Continental Navy nor American privateers made inroads on British naval supremacy, American privateers contributed integrally to the success of the American cause by seizing munitions, arms, men, and materials shipped in support of British forces, destabilizing British trade in the Atlantic, and harnessing private enterprise to advance loftier American ideals. 

The British also used privateers; one maritime entrepreneur was John Goodrich of Nansemond County (now Suffolk), Virginia, who, after flirting briefly with the patriot cause, dedicated his fleet of 12 vessels to the service of King and country and participated in commerce raiding in Virginia, North Carolina, and elsewhere. After the war, Goodrich boasted that he took and destroyed more than 500 vessels…while giving employment to more than one thousand Americans or other Loyalists. In a 1776 report to American Secretary George Germain, the last Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, highlighted the activity of Goodrich and sons: I have now five of their Vessels employed constantly running up the Rivers, where they have orders to seize, burn or destroy everything that is water born, that they can get at. They often land and take off what Provisions they can get, which keeps the Rebels in constant motion, and I generally send a few of the 14th Regiment with them. They land only where they are not likely to meet with opposition, and have orders to retire on Board so soon as they see any force coming against them. Goodrich and sons escaped Virginia and resettled in British-held New York, from which they continued to conduct raids on their native Virginia. From his home Chantilly near Stratford, Richard Henry Lee complained about Goodrich’s privateering to Sam Adams in June 1779: I am this moment returned from an expedition with our militia to prevent the further ravage of a sett of Tory miscreants from New York who have clubbed their force for the purpose of plunder and revenge – Most excellent agents of George the third! They landed 60 men where there was no force collected to oppose them, and burnt the Warehouses on Wicomico river … and three private houses, carrying off a Gentleman from one of them with several Slaves from the neighborhood … These wretches have it in their power to create us great expence and much trouble, … without marine force sufficient to oppose even this contemptible collection of Pirates … these freebooters fly quickly with their canvas wings from one undefended place to another, burn what they find and retire before a force can be collected to chastise them.

Two years later (in April 1781) little had changed; British privateers were assailing Virginia’s economy by pillaging and destroying plantations and warehouses along the Potomac, and Richard Henry Lee again complained to Adams about it: our hands are full upon this river with the frequent calls made upon our shores by the piratical vessels of the enemy. I am at present lamed by my horse falling with me in a late engagement we had with the enemy who landed under cover of a heavy cannonade from three vessels of war upon a small body of our militia well posted. After a small engagement we had the pleasure to see the enemy, tho superior in number, run to their boats and precipitately reembark having sustained a small loss of killed and wounded. British strategy in the Chesapeake under commander-in-chief Sir Henry Clinton was to cripple American trade, interrupt supply routes, impede troop movements, and deflate rebel morale. In spring 1781 Clinton instructed British land and maritime forces to destroy public stores and magazines in any part of the Chesapeake as you shall judge proper. British warships joined British privateers on raids up the Potomac as far as Alexandria in late March through mid April 1781. As General Cornwallis put it to Clinton in April 1781: The Rivers of Virginia are advantageous to an invading Army.

On April 9, 1781 Prince William County lieutenant Henry Lee Sr., father to Lighthorse Harry Lee who married into Stratford in 1782, reported to Governor Thomas Jefferson that on the first of the month: a Small Schooner Vessel, tender to the Trim[m]er privateer belonging to Goodrich's Company, with 21 Men … went up to Alexandria and in the Night Attempted to Cut out before the town a Vessel belonging to Baltimore. The alarm was sounded and the offenders given chase, 16 men were captured, half of whom were locked in the Fredericksburg jail. One of the prisoners confessed that they intended to burn General Washington’s house. Trim[m]er and its schooner sailed in advance of a larger mixed navy-privateer flotilla sailing upriver, that would split and reunite as they assaulted various sites along Potomac. Henry Lee Sr confirmed significant chaos along the waterfront as the flotilla plundered and burned houses, stores, and carried off enslaved Africans and African Americans from those houses (many of whom self-emancipated or went voluntarily). Inadequately armed militia ranged the river banks tracking the flotilla’s movements and seeking to deter landings and raids. On April 10, Captain Edmund Read of Caroline County and the Continental Army dragoons reported to Gov. Jefferson that The whole of the fleete amounted to two twenty four [Gun Ships], two Eighteen [gun ships] and Six Transports and Tenders. They seem to be Crowded with men. In Read’s observations, the fleet stuck to the Maryland side of the Potomac as it steered upriver, but on April 9, Colonel Richard Henry Lee of Stratford and Chantilly posted this report to Gov. Jefferson: 

Dear Sir

Mr. Whitlock found me with the Militia on the Shore of Potomac where we had a very warm engagement with a party of the enemy, about 90 men, who landed from two Brigs, a Schooner, and a smaller Vessel under a very heavy cannonade from the Vessels of War. The affair ended by the enemy being forced to reembark with some haste. The loss on our part not any, but there is some reason to suppose that the enemy lost two or three men. Their Vessels are yet near the Shore, and by a Deserter from them during the action, I learn that these Vessels, with a Ship of 20 guns now laying off, are bound up the river, as high as Alexandria to interrupt the passage of Troops across Potomac. I am very sincerely dear Sir your most obdient & very humble Servant,

Richard Henry Lee

Since sealing this Letter an Express from the lower part of this county informs me that three large Ships more were in Potomak about 20 miles below this and that a Brig was working up the river Yeocomico on which are Tobacco Warehouses.

Mixed among the privateers were vessels of the Royal Navy, including the sloop HMS Savage, mounting 14 guns and under the command of Captain Thomas Graves. On April 9, the logbook for the Savage records:

At 3 Sent all our Boats on Shore Mann’d & Armed to dislodge Rebels and to distroy a Linen Manufactory–at the same time the Swift and Rambler under way to cover the Landing–at 2 AM the Boats returned having had the Misfortune to have Samuel Fuller Botswains Mate Killed in the Boat returning from the Shore & Thomas Smith Seaman Wounded on Shore–destroyed the greatest part of the Manufactory. 

It is unclear where this targeted Linen factory was–whether the textile factory on Robert Carter’s Aries plantation or Francis Lightfoot Lee’s Fulling Mill at the head of Nomony/-i creek–but it’s clear where the very warm engagement with Richard Henry Lee and the militia occurred, and where the Savage’s Fuller and possibly Smith were killed.  

From Fredericksburg on April 21, Brigadier General George Weedon wrote to Gov. Jefferson: 

On my leaving Williamsburg I pushed across the Country into the Northern Neck, and geting Intelligence of the Ships coming down proceeded to Hollis’s marsh where a body of Militia ware drawn together under the command of Colo. Richard Henry Lee. Two Ships, Two Brigs, a Topsail Schooner and two Tenders, lay oposite, at Blackstones Island. The whole Fleet that had been up the River consisted off Three Ships, Three Brigs, and Seven others of different Sizes. They landed on their way up at Stradford near the Marsh, and ware beat off by the Militia, this was the only place they landed at on the Virginia side as they went up the River.

Heavy traffic on the Potomac in spring 1781 included fortune-seeking pro-British privateers and warships of His Majesty’s Royal Navy seeking to impair American resources and morale. The pillaging and destruction of warehouses, manufacturing facilities, houses, and other property along both sides of the river was locally devastating, though Maryland was hardest hit. A significant number of enslaved African and African Americans self-emancipated to the marauding British ships. County lieutenants on the Virginia side were alert to the predatory flotilla and mustered county militias (badly or inadequately armed) to counter the threat. 

The flotilla menaced Alexandria for several days beginning on April 11th, but by April 13th the Savage under Graves stood off Mount Vernon, threatening to burn the house unless it surrendered provisions. This was not an empty threat: On the 12th, Savage burned the outbuildings of Colonel William Lyles of Prince George’s County, Maryland, for refusing the same demand. Washington’s cousin and farm manager Lund Washington appeased Graves in order to save Mt Vernon from the flames. From Alexandria, the Marquis de Lafayette apprised General Washington of the news from Mt Vernon: 

You Cannot Conceive How Unhappy I Have Been to Hear that Mr Lund Washington Went on Board the Ennemy’s vessels and Consented to give them provisions. This Being done By the Gentleman who in Some Measure Represents you at your House will certainly Have a Bad effect, and Contrasts with Spirited Answers from Some Neighbours that Had their Houses Burnt Accordingly. 

Lund’s account reached General Washington before Lafayette’s, and the General’s response was closer to regret than relief. From his headquarters in New Windsor, New York on April 30th, Washington wrote to Lund: 

Your letter of the 18th came to me by the last Post. I am very sorry to hear of your loss—I am a little sorry to hear of my own—but that which gives most concern, is, that you should go on board the enemys vessels & furnish them with refreshments. It would have been a less painful circumstance to me, to have heard, that in consequence of your non compliance with their request, they had burnt my House, & laid the Plantation in Ruins. You ought to have considered yourself as my representative, and should have reflected on the bad example of communicating with the enemy and making a voluntary offer of refreshment to them with a view to prevent a conflagration.

On April 21st, the very day Lafayette and his troops crossed the Potomac, and the day Savage exited the Potomac into the Bay having failed to impede Lafayette’s crossing, Brigadier General Weedon updated Jefferson on the flotilla’s movements: They are now all gone down. Indeed while sporadic raiding continued, the concerted Potomac raids of March and April 1781 were concluded: Stratford and its waterfront were spared by the quick action of Richard Henry Lee and the Westmoreland County militia; now in Virginia, the Marquis de Lafayette engaged British forces in small skirmishes and minor actions until Washington and the French navy were able to converge strategically on Yorktown; Graves was promoted to Post-Captain and served at the Battle of the Chesapeake on September 5, 1781, when the French Navy under Admiral Comte de Grasse prevented the Royal Navy from reinforcing the embattled Cornwallis at Yorktown, but that is a story for another day.   

Sound effects courtesy of Pixabay

Music is William Ross Chernoff's "In Shadows"
AI voices courtesy of Play.ht (except Dr. Steffey)

© Dr. Gordon Blaine Steffey, 2025