What happened
The Alliance came into the fight already damaged, and not by an enemy. Earlier in May a bolt of lightning struck her main topmast, carrying away the mainyard, springing the foremast, felling more than a dozen men and burning the skin off several. She was sailing on a shattered mainyard with temporary top and foremasts when she came across His Majesty's sloops of war Atalanta and Trepassey on 27 May.
The two British vessels were rated sloops but were a ship and a brig. The Atalanta carried sixteen six-pounders and a crew of one hundred and twenty-five men under Captain Sampson Edwards. The Trepassey mounted fourteen six-pounders with a crew of eighty under a Captain Smith.
At dawn on the 28th the English sloops hoisted colors and their drummers beat the crew to quarters. John Barry in the Alliance did the same.
There was almost no wind. The sea was mirror-smooth, the official history says, and a first-person account it quotes records that "by little puffs of wind we were enabled to get within short hailing distance at eleven o'clock."
As the distance closed, the Alliance opened the engagement with a broadside. Then the calm took the initiative away from her and gave it to the two lighter vessels.
Midshipman Kessler recorded what happened next. "Unfortunately, there was not wind enough for our steerage way and they being lighter vessels, by using sweeps got and kept athwart our stern and on our quarters, so that we could not bring one-half our guns out astern to bear on them and thus laying like a log the greatest part of the time."
Laying like a log. A frigate unable to point most of her battery at either opponent for the greatest part of the time.
The two sloops used their sweeps to keep athwart her stern and on her quarters, where most of her guns could not bear on them.
The official history describes the quarter deck. "The Alliance's quarter deck, swept by grape, and peppered by musket ball, was an inferno."
And then this: "There was not much protection for the Marines on deck and in the fighting tops, whose muskets sought a mark through the opaque clouds of smoke."
That sentence is the whole entry. Most of the battery could not be brought to bear, and the Marines working muskets on deck and in the tops had little protection.
The cost is listed by name. Lieutenant of Marines Samuel Pritchard was mangled by a six-pound shot and carried to the cockpit mortally wounded. Lieutenant of Marines James Warren took a severe wound in the right knee and later lost the leg.
"Sergeant of Marines David Brewer, son of Colonel David Brewer of Boston, died at his post, a musket ball through the head."
About two in the afternoon Barry himself was wounded in the shoulder by grape shot and went below, and the Alliance's colors were carried away. Kessler notes that at the same time the guns that would bear had been fired and were loading, which led the enemy to think the Americans had struck.
Using a mizzen-brail for a halyard, the Americans hoisted a new Continental ensign, "and our firing again began."
Shortly before three a wind sprang up and slowly swung the Alliance around. The entire starboard battery came to bear at last. The Trepassey's colors came down after one blistering broadside, the Atalanta still showed fight, and one more broadside ended her resistance.
The battle had lasted more than three hours and cost the Alliance five dead and twenty-two wounded. The Atalanta and Trepassey lost eleven killed and twenty-five wounded between them.
What is less known
The Alliance won, and she won at the end, when a wind sprang up and swung her round.
Most of what came before that was endurance. For the greatest part of the time the frigate could not bring most of her battery to bear, while two lighter vessels using sweeps kept athwart her stern and on her quarters.
Alongside the guns that could bear, what the source puts in that period is Marines with muskets on deck and in the fighting tops, with not much protection, firing through smoke.
The verb in that sentence is "sought." The muskets "sought a mark through the opaque clouds of smoke," and the sentence does not say they found one.
Of the three Marines named in that stretch of the account, Brewer died at his post, Pritchard was carried to the cockpit mortally wounded, and Warren later lost his leg. The biographical sketch of Pritchard in the same book, which Smith's preface credits to Richard A. Long, adds that three of the Alliance's wounded were wounded mortally, and that Pritchard, one of them, probably died on 30 May.
Smith's narrative describes Brewer as the son of Colonel David Brewer of Boston and gives nothing else about him beyond how he died. It does not say where on the ship his post was, and this entry will not fill that in.
The reading
Most of what holds a bad hour together is done by people who cannot see it working.
Believing that costs you the satisfying version of every story, because the recognition keeps going to the part at the end that worked. A wind sprang up and the battery bore, and that is the version of 28 May 1781 most easily told. The hours of men firing into smoke are a paragraph.
This lands hardest on the drill weekend tasks that produce nothing visible. The Marine who runs the same gear check every month and has never once found a fault has no evidence that the check matters. They are firing into smoke.
What I owe that Marine is not encouragement. It is the specific reason the task exists, said out loud, and a straight answer when they ask whether anyone reads the output. The reason does not have to be dramatic, only true.
The failure mode I have to watch in myself is that I know which tasks are load-bearing and I do not always say so. It feels obvious from where I stand. It is not obvious from where they stand, and if the only feedback available is silence, silence reads as pointless.
There is a harder edge to this one. Some of those tasks genuinely are pointless, and the honest move is to stop them rather than dress them up. A leader who tells every Marine that every task is vital has taught them that nothing they hear from him carries information.
Smith records that Brewer died at his post and does not record what, if anything, he was told about what that post was for.
The Marines in your section can be told what their unglamorous thing is for, or left to work it out from silence, and that is a choice their leader makes.
The question
Which task in your section produces nothing visible when it is done right? Before Friday, tell the Marine who owns it exactly what it is preventing, and ask what they have found doing it that nobody has ever asked about.
Sources
- Smith, Charles R. Marines in the Revolution: A History of the Continental Marines in the American Revolution, 1775-1783. History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1975. Chapter XII, "Charleston, 1780," the Alliance against the Atalanta and Trepassey, pp. 258-259; Appendix I, "Continental Marine Muster, Pay, and Prize Rolls," by Richard A. Long, the Alliance muster roll of 29 March 1781, p. 392; and Appendix J, "Biographies of Continental Marine Officers," the biographical sketch of Samuel Pritchard by Richard A. Long (credited in the author's preface), p. 466. Read at archive.org
- A Chronology of the United States Marine Corps, 1775-1934, Volume I. Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1965. Entry for 28 May 1781. Read at archive.org
Corrections
None.