I perhaps should save this tale for this fall when we reach the 250th anniversary of the event. But I was just recounting it during a recent lecture, and with the details still fresh in my mind, I figured I should write a post…

In the fall of 1775, with the Siege of Boston at a stalemate, New Englanders in port towns did what they had always done…they looked to the sea. In Plymouth and elsewhere, owners of merchant fleets began outfitting their vessels as private warships. And General George Washington, commanding the Continental Army outside British-occupied Boston, eagerly encouraged them to do so. He needed to disrupt British shipping and the supply lines feeding British soldiers in the besieged town. To that end, Washington authorized a small fleet of armed privateers – sometimes called “Washington’s Navy” – to cruise the New England coast in search of enemy ships.

One such vessel was the brigantine Washington, originally a 160-ton Plymouth schooner named Endeavor. In early October 1775, Washington’s agents acquired the Endeavor from Plymouth owners and refitted her in Plymouth Harbor as a brigantine (and the first American vessel to be named “Washington”).[1] The new privateer carried ten carriage guns, eight swivel guns and a crew of about 75 men, many of them drawn from Plymouth and nearby towns.[2] Command was given to Captain Sion Martindale, a Continental Army officer from Rhode Island, while two Plymouth mariners (23-year-old Consider Howland as Sailing Master and 46-year-old Jacob Taylor as Mate) served as his principal officers. These men embarked on their mission in late November 1775 with high hopes, unaware of the harrowing ordeal that awaited them.

The Washington sailed with the Continental schooner Harrison (possibly the Plymouth privateer owned by Ephraim Spooner and William Watson) but soon hit trouble. After chasing British provision ships off Cape Ann, the vessels were separated in a gale. Washington captured the 80-ton sloop Britannia, yet disputes over prize shares, poor clothing, and the crew’s complaints about serving at sea when they had volunteered to serve as soldiers caused discontent. Most of these matters were soon resolved and the Washington set out again on December 3, 1775 in search of British prey once more.[3]

Barely 24 hours after sailing from Plymouth, the brigantine crossed paths with the HMS Fowey, (a 20-gun sixth-rate frigate) and the HMS Lively in Massachusetts Bay. Hugely outgunned, Martindale wisely tried to flee but the Fowey soon closed within range. The British commander, Capt. George Montagu, fired several warning shots and Martindale surrendered without engaging in a hopeless fight.

The captured brigantine and her crew were delivered into British hands at Boston, where British examiners found her unfit for Royal Navy service (she was likely too lightly built). The vessel reportedly rotted away, abandoned in Boston Harbor.[4]

A grim fate awaited the Washington’s crew. The war had not yet reached a point of formal prisoner exchange and the British were disinclined to treat these Americans as legitimate POWs. Instead they were treated as pirates. The Washington’s entire company of officers and sailors—including Martindale, Howland, Taylor, and roughly 72 others—were confined aboard HMS Tartar and shipped to England. Also aboard was famed Vermont militia leader, Colonel Ethan Allen, captured during a failed attack on Montreal. The prisoners’ crossing was horrific. Crammed in squalid quarters, half of the crewmen died of smallpox before reaching England. At least 15 of the abled bodied were pressed into service in the British Navy. By the time they reach England, only 21 of the crew were left, including Consider Howland and Jacob Taylor of Plymouth.[5]

Their ordeal was far from over. Rather than try them for piracy, British authorities, fearing American retaliation against British soldiers held by the rebels, decided to ship the remaining crew back across the Atlantic to be held in Halifax, Nova Scotia to await possible prisoner exchange. Martindale, Howland, Taylor and others survived another journey and now faced indefinite imprisonment in a Halifax jail.

By June 1776, four grueling months into their Halifax imprisonment, Captain Martindale, Master Howland, Mate Taylor, and a dozen fellow Americans engaged in a desperate plan to break out of the jail. They managed to “find means to cut a passage out” of their cell, according to General Nathanael Greene who heard the tale directly from Capt. Martindale.[6] It seems that partway through the escape, they were discovered. Capt. Martindale managed to slip away into the Nova Scotia woods and after an astounding trek, eventually made it to safety in Maine. Consider Howland and Jacob Taylor, however, were recaptured.[7]

During the autumn of 1776, they were transferred with other high ranking prisoners (including Ethan Allen) to prisoner ships in New York harbor. Conditions aboard those prison ships were notoriously squalid, turning them into floating hulks of misery. But the transfer at least meant that their release might soon be negotiated. Ethan Allen was permitted on November 2, 1776, to write General Washington and mentioned that the remaining crew of the Washington, including its Master and Mate, were with him.[8]

By late December 1776, one full year after the Washington’s capture, Consider Howland was finally released on parole, allowed to return home on the condition that he not take up arms again. After the horrors he had survived—battle, disease, imprisonment, and a failed escape—Howland must have been immensely relieved to step foot again in his hometown and reunite with family. He was fully released from the terms of his parole in 1777, when officials arranged a prisoner exchange. After lengthy negotiations, Howland was traded, ironically, for his first cousin, Gideon White Jr., who had an extraordinary tale of his own. An ardent Loyalist, White fled from Plymouth to Nova Scotia in 1775. He was later captured aboard a supply vessel, returned to Plymouth under arrest, and spent a year under house confinement as a traitor before his exchange.[9]

Jacob Taylor’s release from captivity is not well documented, but it seems he was paroled or exchanged around the same time as Howland and returned to Plymouth. He survived the war, raised a family, and suffered the tragedy of losing both sons to drowning—a cruel fate for a mariner.[10] His house still stands on North Street though it has fallen into sad condition.

The brigantine Washington’s 1775 cruise from Plymouth became a deadly ordeal with barely two dozen of its original 75-man crew surviving. Among them, Captain Sion Martindale, Consider Howland, and Jacob Taylor endured months of hardship before returning home. Remarkably, both Martindale and Howland soon resumed privateering with renewed determination. News of the crew’s mistreatment spurred American leaders to demand reciprocal treatment for prisoners, prompting the British to abandon the practice of sending captives to England. Though little remembered today, the perseverance of Plymouth’s Consider Howland, Jacob Taylor, and their shipmates had lasting repercussions for the treatment of prisoners of war.

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[1] Naval History and Heritage Command, “Washington I (Brigantine),” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships

[2] J. L. Bell, Boston 1775 blog, “Endeavour’d to Escape by Flight,” describes Martindale’s outfitting struggles, crew disputes, capture by HMS Fowey, etc.

[3] Pilgrim Hall Museum, “Sailing Off to Serve;” and Naval History and Heritage Command, “Washington I”.

[4] Naval History and Heritage Command, “Washington I”.

[5] Pilgrim Hall Museum, “Sailing Off to Serve.”

[6] J. L. Bell, “Endeavour’d to Escape by Flight.”

[7] National Archives, Founders Online, “To George Washington from Lt. Col. Ethan Allen, 2 Nov. 1776,” see footnote 3.

[8] National Archives, Ethan Allen letter.

[9] Naval Historical Center, Naval Documents of the American Revolution, vol. 9 (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, [year]), 934.

[10] Pilgrim Hall Museum, “Sailing Off to Serve.”