A Review of Neptune's Militia: The Frigate South Carolina during the American Revolution
by James A. Lewis, Kent State University Press, 1999, 235 pp.
Published in Pennsylvania History, 2001
This book is, above all else, a biography of a ship. The subject is the South Carolina, "the largest man-of-war under American command during the American Revolution, carrying 550 men when fully manned" (1).
The story of the ship began in the diplomatic efforts of the Continental Congress in France, where
Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee searched for sea power with which to defend the new
republic. The American commissioners signed a contract with a French naval officer and engineer, Jacques
Boux, who built the ship, first called L'Indien, in Amsterdam. When it became clear that the Americans
could not afford the vessel, the French government took charge and eventually granted control to Anne Paul
Emmanuel Sigismond de Montmorency, the Chevalier de Luxumbourg, who in turn made a three-year
agreement with Alexander Gillon, a multi-lingual Charleston merchant of Scottish parentage and Dutch
birth, who had been sent by the state of South Carolina to Europe to procure a naval vessel. Summarizing
the ship's accomplishments under Commodore Gillon, Lewis writes that the South Carolina "captured
nearly a dozen prizes, took New Providence (in partnership with the Spanish) from the British, refitted in
Philadelphia, fought off numerous efforts by envious bureaucrats to give her to someone else, and ended
her career in battle with three British cruisers off Long Island. While she had a short life by modern
standards, the ship's career was eventful and significant" (2). In writing the biography of the ship, Lewis
demonstrates two of the greatest strengths of the old-fashioned maritime history: his research is
impressively wide-ranging and his writing is clear, vigorous, and engaging.
No small portion of the tale's drama came from the international intrigue that surrounded the vessel from
its beginning until well past its end. The building of the ship mobilized British spies in Amsterdam who
worried that the powerful new warship under construction was meant to be used against them. Once Gillon
got the South Carolina to sea, he fought bitterly with a group of gentlemen passengers, patriots like
himself, about the route, purposes, and leadership of the ship. After the vessel was captured by the British
in December 1782, sailors and their families wrangled with the government of South Carolina for wages,
pensions, and their rightful share of prize money. Soon followed a tidal wave of other claims, as
merchants, lawyers, agents, and governmental officials from France, Spain, Russia, Portugal, and Holland
descended on Charleston, all demanding to paid for credits and investments in the South Carolina. The
final claims on the ship were not settled until 1856. Lewis has reconstructed the ship's complex
international financial affairs with patience and skill.
It must also be noted that Neptune's Militia demonstrates one of the main weaknesses of the old maritime
history. Although the book's title and jacket promise discussion of the "citizen-sailor" in the age of
revolution, and although Lewis announces in his introduction a concern with the "polyglot crew recruited in
some of the most cosmopolitan ports of the Atlantic" (3) - the English, French, German, Dutch, Irish,
American, and African-American sailors and marines who manned the South Carolina - the promise
proves false and the concern proves limited: Lewis does not draw upon the rich social and cultural histories
of seafarers that have been written in recent years, nor does he attempt any serious analysis of the workers
aboard the South Carolina. This is especially unfortunate because their resistance, expressed through
desertion, conspiracy, and mutiny, constitutes one of the most important themes of the book.
In the end the South Carolina proves too frail a vessel for the author's ambitions. Lewis understates the
case when he says that the South Carolina exhibited a certain "lack of ferocity" in its naval campaigns
(105). It captured fewer than a dozen prizes, a pitifully small number for a ship of such size and firepower.
Moreover, it is difficult to understand by the evidence presented how Lewis can claim in his ultimate
sentence that the South Carolina "performed astounding feats during the war" (134). The only thing truly
astounding about the ship was the differential between the mammoth expense in building and operating it
and its paltry military results. It is also hard to accept the positive reassessment of Gillon's naval career.
Although Lewis has researched and told his story well, he cannot quite overcome previous interpretations
that have seen Gillon as a flawed minor figure and the South Carolina a huge waste of time, energy, and
money.
Marcus Rediker, University of Pittsburgh
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