The Saber and Scroll
be Suffered to be hurt in Case they make no Resistance . 18
While this echoed the tone of the messages sent to the town by Captain Nicholas , Governor Montfort Brown was determined to resist anyway . No armed attack was made against the Continental Marines holding Fort Montague , but the governor arranged to have 150 half-barrels of gunpowder removed from Fort Nassau and secreted aboard a sloop that easily eluded Hopkins ’ s squadron , which had not blockaded the harbor . According to John Paul Jones , second-in-command of Alfred at the time , “ This was foreseen , and might have been prevented , by sending the two brigantines [ Andrew Doria and Cabot ] to lie off the bar .” 19 Writing in 1974 , Nathan Miller was more direct : “ The commodore ’ s carelessness cost him the bulk of the powder that had brought him to New Providence in the first place .” 20
After spending the night at Fort Montague , Captain Nicholas and his men marched into town , seized Government House , and demanded the keys to Fort Nassau . The local defenders did not fire a shot to prevent the Americans from taking possession from the fort . Therein they found a veritable treasure trove : seventy-one cannon from 9- to 32-pounders , fifteen mortars from 4 to 11 inches , thousands of shells and various types of shot , 140 “ hand Grenadoes ,” assorted military implements and provisions , and twenty-four half barrels of gunpowder . When Hopkins and Nicholas learned that Governor Brown had gotten most of the gunpowder away during the night , they placed him under arrest along with his secretary , James Babbidge , and Thomas Arwin , the Inspector General of His Majesty ’ s Customs in North America . 21
The Continental crews spent two weeks following the capture of Fort Nassau loading their captured munitions . They had taken so much ordnance that Commodore Hopkins had to hire a privately owned sloop to carry a portion of it to Rhode Island . 22 An outbreak of disease delayed the squadron ’ s work . Hopkins later reported that four of his ships had many men sick with smallpox when they first set sail , and the disease had spread during the intervening weeks . Andrew Doria served as a hospital ship for a time , as Captain Biddle previously had his crew inoculated . Protecting against smallpox did little against the wave of tropical fever that spread throughout the squadron in early March , and soon Biddle had a long sick list of his own . When the squadron arrived at New London in April , Andrew Doria reported three men dead and forty-nine sick out of an original complement of 110 . 23 Other ships in the squadron reported illness in similar proportions ; difficulties in replacing men discharged sick resulted in significant delays to future deployments of Hopkins ’ s ship , which was a factor in his eventual censure and relief .
The squadron departed New Providence on 18 March , passing Georgia , the Carolinas , and Virginia again without a thought of stopping ; if it had been unwise for the Commodore to engage Dunmore ’ s forces in February ,
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