How Angry, Out-of-Work Fishermen Saved the Patriots During the American Revolution

The British punished rebellious New Englanders by depriving them of their livelihood. This led unemployed mariners to enlist in the patriot cause

Christopher Magra, The Conversation

June 22, 2026 7:45 a.m.

Share

Copy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrint

Add as preferred source

George Washington knew that his forces couldn’t win the American Revolution without some measure of sea power. “It follows then, as certain as that night succeeds the day,” the commander in chief wrote in a 1781 letter, “that without a decisive naval force, we can do nothing definitive, and with it everything honorable and glorious.”

There was just one problem: The United States didn’t have a navy yet.

As a professor of early American history, I have taught courses on the Revolution for more than 20 years and written two books on the war’s maritime dimensions. My research shows that Washington’s solution wouldn’t come from a French shipyard or a congressional committee. It would come from a group of angry, out-of-work New England fishermen.

Supplying the army from the sea

In 1775, American ground forces laid siege to the British Army in Boston. But Washington needed provisions and military stores to sustain pressure on this key commercial hub. Looking out across the Atlantic Ocean, he noticed supply ships arriving in droves from Great Britain—unescorted—to supply the British soldiers in Boston with guns and ammunition.

Unbeknownst to the incoming vessels, the British had already handed the American general the ships and mariners he needed to capture those resources.

The Sons of Liberty, a network of political activists, had already angered the British government by resisting taxes and commercial regulations, from the 1765 Stamp Act, which taxed printed documents, to the 1773 Tea Act, which controlled what tea leaves made their way into North American cupboards.

To punish the rebels for their treason, Parliament passed the New England Restraining Act of 1775, banning locals from fishing in the Atlantic Ocean. Overnight, thousands of skilled mariners—men who spent their lives wrestling cod out of the freezing, storm-tossed North Atlantic—were out of a job. They weren’t just unemployed; they were furious. These fishermen left their work tools and ships behind, picked up weapons, and joined the siege of Boston alongside American farmers.

As Ashley Bowen, who lived and worked in Marblehead, Massachusetts (the principal fishing port in America at the time), wrote in his journal on May 22, 1775, “The fishermen are enlisting quite quick.”

A letter from a French diplomat to the foreign minister in Paris confirmed the report several weeks later, noting that “4,800 sailors, seeing they were going to be deprived of their fishing rights, deserted their ships and joined their compatriots under arms.”

Creating the first navy

Washington, who was commissioned by Congress as commander in chief of the American armed forces in June 1775, saw an opportunity. He didn’t wait for Congress to build new frigates. Instead, he reached out to John Glover, a fish merchant from Marblehead and a commissioned officer under his command.

Washington’s plan was simple: Take the sturdy, salt-stained schooners used for fishing and turn them into armed, seagoing predators.

The first of these was Glover’s own fishing vessel and trade ship, the Hannah. It was not a formidable man-of-war but a large workhorse that spent summers at the Grand Banks and winters hauling rum and sugar from the Caribbean. Washington armed the trade ship with a few cannons, manned it with fishermen and sent it out to hijack British supply ships to help his army win the siege of Boston.

Just two days after the Hannah got underway in September 1775, its crew captured the Unity, a sloop loaded with naval stores and lumber, supplies sorely needed by the British forces in Boston.

Between August and October of that year, Washington outfitted a fleet of schooners, at Congress’ expense, to intercept British supply ships off the coast of New England. These vessels and crews, whose wages were paid by the American government, constituted what many historians consider the country’s first navy.

Washington reminded each captain that they sailed “at the Continental expense.” These orders from Washington and the payments made by Congress rendered the vessels official American warships, operating under the authority of what would become the federal government.

The new recruits didn’t need nautical training; they were seasoned seafarers who had battled rough waters and gale-force winds. On October 13, 1775, Washington wrote to his brother John Augustine Washington, describing the fishermen as soldiers “who have been bred to the sea.”

In 1776, Washington informed the governor of Connecticut, who had asked to draft seamen from the Continental regiments for his own naval expedition, that he couldn’t spare any sailors. “I must depend chiefly upon them for a successful opposition to the enemy,” Washington explained.

Keeping the Revolution alive

This fleet of converted fishing boats punched above its weight: In the early years of the war, the sailors captured 55 British vessels. One such prize, the Nancy, was transporting 2,000 muskets, 31 tons of musket balls and a massive 15-inch brass mortar—supplies the Continental Army desperately needed for the war effort.

Because the British Navy was spread too thin, with too few warships available to police the Atlantic coastline, the armed fishing vessels were able to disrupt supply lines and keep the Revolution alive through its infancy. By the time the British realized the threat, the damage was done.

On February 26, 1776, just a few months after Washington launched his fleet, British Admiral Molyneux Shuldham wrote in a report to his superiors that his forces in Boston were low on everything from naval supplies to weapons. What little they could find had to be purchased “at the most extravagant prices.”

The British government hadn’t assigned military convoys to trans-Atlantic shipments at the start of the conflict. Now, Shuldham recommended arming the supply ships themselves because valuable stores were being intercepted by rebels in small vessels, “however attentive our officers to their duty.”

The admiral explained that he simply did not have the resources to do everything that was being asked of him. Shuldham concluded the report with an ominous note:

I must beg leave to observe to you the very few ships I am provided with to enable me to cooperate with the army, cruise off the ports of the rebels to prevent their receiving supplies, or protect those destined to this place from falling into their hands.

This article is republished from the Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Christopher Magra is a professor of early American history at the University of Tennessee and the director of the Center for the Study of Tennesseans and War.