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Late in 1775, Colonel Patrick Henry, on his own initiative, commissioned James Barron to arm a vessel and pursue two suspicious ships. In December, Virginia’s Committee of Safety was authorized to arm as many vessels as necessary to protect Virginia’s rivers. The Committee of Safety immediately purchased five vessels including two small boats, a somewhat larger schooner and two large brigs. Virginia also bought vessels to serve as state-owned traders sent on voyages to the West Indies and Europe to procure gunpowder and other war materiel.
Throughout the war,
vessels were bought and built.
Particularly popular were row galleys, shallow draft vessels that could
maneuver using both oars and sails.
These vessels were particularly well suited to coastal and river
defense.
Manning the vessels
proved difficult because the Navy had to compete with privateers for manpower.
The Virginia Navy officially commissioned seventy-seven vessels during the war,
while a hundred Virginia vessels sailed as privateers, attacking enemy shipping
for personal profit. The Navy’s view on prize distribution became more liberal as
the war progressed and the manpower crisis grew worse. The percentage of a captured vessel’s value
going to the crew that took the prize rose from one third for unarmed
merchantman and one half for an armed vessel to one half for a merchantman and
the entire value for a naval vessel. By
October 1780, Virginia promised crews the full value of any vessels they
captured.
Nevertheless, the
Virginia Navy always had more vessels than it could adequately crew. The Navy
could never compete with privateers who from the first had the right to keep a
hundred percent of the value of the prize and could devote their full energies
to taking prizes. The initially stingy Navy was furthered hobbled by non-income
producing official tasks such as convoy duty, transporting troops, and carrying
messages, all tasks not likely to result in capturing rich prizes.
