[ante March 25, 1777]
The Examination of John Grannis on the Subject Matter of the Petition of several officers of the Frigate Warren agst Commodore Hopkins and Papers therein inclosed.2
Question. Where do you live?
Answer. In Falmouth in the County of Barnstable in the Massachusetts Bay.
Qu. Are you an Officer of the Warren Frigate, and what Officer, and how long have you been an Officer on Board said Frigate?
A. I am Capt. of Marines, have been so from the 14th June 1776, was sometime recruiting, and have been on board her from Time to Time upwards of Three Months.3
Q. Are you the Man who signed the Petition against Esek Hopkins Esqr. by the Name of John Grannis?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you know the other Subscribers to said Petition?
A. Yes.
Q. Are any of them Officers of the Warren, and if Officers what Offices do they sustain?
A. John Reed is Chaplain and belongs to Middleborough, and James Sellers is Second Lieut. of the Warren and of Dartmouth, both of Massachusetts-Bay, Richard Marvin is Third Lieut. and of Providence, George Stillman first Lieut. of Marines, Barnabas Lothrop Second Lieut of Marines & both of Barnstable. Samuel Shaw is a Midshipman of BridgeWater, Roger Haddock is Master of the Frigate and formerly was of New
York, and John Truman is Gunner and James Brewer Carpenter and both of Boston in the State aforesaid.
Q. Have you a personal Acquaintance with Essek Hopkins Esqr?
A. Yes I have had a personal Acquaintance with him since I came on board the Ship.
Q. Did you ever hear him say any Thing disrespectfull of the Congress of the United States, and what and when?
A. I have heard him at different Times since I belonged to the Frigate speak disrespectfully of the Congress, have heard him say that they were a Sett or Parcel of Men who did not understand their Business, that they were no Way calculated to do Business, that they were a Parcell of Lawyers Clerks, that if their Measures were followed the Country would be ruined and that he would not follow their Measures. I have heard him say the above in Company on Ship Board and Words to the same Effect on Shore. Sometimes the above was spoken of Congress in general, but more frequently of the marine Committee.
Q. Did you ever hear him speak disrespectfully of Congress or the Marine Committee before Prisoners?
A. No. I never was in his Company when Prisoners were present.
Q. Do you know any Thing about his Treatment of Prisoners?
A. I was on board the Frigate Providence when there [were] about Twenty Prisoners on board. They were called into the Cabin where I was and were asked by Capt Whipple4 whether they would do Ship’s Duty? They answered No. Capt. Whipple said it was his Orders from the Commodore to put them in Irons, to keep them on Two Thirds Allowance and by God he would obey the Commodore’s Orders. They were sent out of the Cabin with an Officer, who returned & said he had put them in Irons. There were also some Prisoners sent on board the Frigate Warren, who were forced to do Ships Duty by Commodore Hopkins Orders, and he refused to exchange them when a Cartel was settled and other Prisoners were exchanged, but don’t know that it was their Turn. The Reason he assigned for not exchanging them was that he wanted to have them inlist on board the Frigate.
Q. Do you know any Thing about a British Frigate being aground last Winter in the River or Bay leading up to Providence in the State of Rhode-Island &c and what?
A. I did not see the Diamond Frigate when She was on Shore in Jany. last.5 I was then on board the Warren. which with the continental Fleet lay just above a Place called Fields Point. Commodore Hopkins went down the River in the Sloop Providence and sometime after he returned I heard him say that the People in Providence blamed him for not taking the Diamond, but that the Men were not to blame for they went as far as he ordered them, and would have gone further if he would have permitted them, but that he did not think safe to go nearer with that Sloop, for that the Diamond fired over her. I heard a Number of People who said they were at Warwick Neck when the Diamond was aground there say that Commodore Hopkins was so far off the Ship that his Shot did not reach her, that the Ship lay so much on a Careen that She could not bring any of her Guns to bear upon the Sloop. And further I heard some American Seamen, who were Prisoners when the Diamond was aground, say after they were exchanged that the Ship lay so much on a Careen that She could not have hurt the Sloops People so long as they kept out of the Reach of her Small Arms. They also said that it was the Intention of the Enemy to have fired the Ship and left her if the Sloop had come near enough to have played upon her. One of the Seamen who told me the above was one Weeks and another of them was named Robinson Jones, both of Falmouth aforesaid and young Men of good general Reputation.
Q. Were the Frigates manned when you came from Providence?
A. No. There were then about One hundred Men on board the Warren, and I heard some of the Officers of the Frigate Providence say that in last December they had on board about One hundred and seventy Men, and the last of February I heard them say that so many of their Men were dead & run away that they were then not better of[f] for Men than the Warren.
Q. Commodore Hopkins is charged with being an Hindrance to the proper Manning of the Fleet. What Circumstances do you know relative to this Charge?
A. For my Part his Conduct and Conversation is such that I am not willing to be under his Command. I think him unfit for command, and from what I have heard Officers and Seamen say I believe that that is the general Sentiment of the Fleet, and his Conversation is at Times so wild and orders so unsteady that I have sometimes thought he was not in his Senses and I have heard some others say the same. And to his Conduct and Conversation it is attributed both by People on board the Fleet as well as by the Inhabitants of the State that the Fleet is not manned, and it is generally feared by People both on board the Fleet as well as ashore that his Commands would be so imprudent that the Ships would be foolishly lost, or that he would forego Opportunities of getting to Sea, or attempt it when impracticable. The Seamen belonging to the Columbus left her when their Time of Service expired, and went into the Army, and I heard some of them say that they would not inlist again into the Continental Fleet so long as Commodore Hopkins had the Command of it. The Character that Commodore Hopkins bore was a great hindrance to me in getting Recruits.6
Q. Had you Liberty from Commodore Hopkins or Capt. Hopkins to leave the Frigate you belong to?
A. No. I came to Philadelphia at the Request of the Officers who signed the Petition against Commodore Hopkins, and from a Zeal for the American Cause.
Q. Had you, or to your Knowledge either of the signers aforesaid ever any Difference or Dispute with Commodore Hopkins since your or their entering into the Service?
A. I never had, nor do I believe that either of them ever had.7 I have been moved to do and say what I have done and said from a Love to Country, and I verily beleive that the other Signers of the Petition were actuated solely by the same Motives. Jno. Grannis
The Sub Committee appointed to take the Examination of John Grannis have examined him as above and report the same to the Marine Committee accordingly.8
Manuscript, Papers of Continental Congress, item 58, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. Written by William Ellery and signed by John Grannis.
1 This document was written sometime after Grannis left Rhode Island about February 24 and before the Marine Committee submitted his complaints about Commodore Hopkins to Congress on March 25. See JCC, 7:202; and Morgan, Naval Documents, 7:1275 - 77.
2 Since Commodore Esek Hopkins’ censure by Congress on August 16 1776 - for which, see Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the Inquiry into Esek Hopkins’ Conduct, August 12, 1776 - congressional dissatisfaction with his performance as commander of the Continental Navy had grown. After returning to his command in the wake of that episode, Hopkins further offended many delegates by failing to carry out cruises off Nova Scotia and North Carolina ordered by the Marine Committee in August and October 1776, by allowing the fleet to be bottled up in Narragansett Bay in December of that year, and by failing to destroy the British frigate Diamond when it was temporarily aground off Rhode Island in January 1777. But Congress’ patience with Hopkins finally reached the breaking point after he came under attack by ten officers and men stationed aboard his own flagship, the Continental frigate Warren. As most of these men were natives of Massachusetts, they first turned for advice to Robert Treat Paine, a delegate from the Bay State who was then at home in Taunton, and around February 11 they sent him a list of charges against the commodore and his son Capt. John Burroughs Hopkins, which accused the former in particular of being irreligious, disrespectful to Congress, unprincipled, inhumane toward prisoners, incompetent, and an obstacle to naval recruitment. Paine evidently advised the discontented officers and men to drop their charges against Captain Hopkins and concentrate on the ones against his father. In any case, John Grannis, a captain of marines aboard the Warren, left Rhode Island near the end of February with a series of papers listing the complaints of the Warren’s officers and men against the elder Hopkins, which he brought to Philadelphia and presented to the Marine Committee. After interrogating Grannis about these charges, the Marine Committee laid them before Congress on March 25 and on the following day Congress suspended Hopkins from his command. It is a measure of Congress’ dissatisfaction with Hopkins at this time that it took this drastic step without giving him an opportunity to defend his conduct. After this it was not surprising that Congress dismissed him from Continental service altogether on January 2, 1778. See JCC 7:202, 204, 10:13; and Edward Field, Esek Hopkins, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Navy during the American Revolution, 1775 - 1778 (Providence: Preston & Rounds Co., 1898), pp. 162 - 76. The documents submitted to Robert
Treat Paine and to the Marine Committee are in PCC, item 58, fols. 225 - 33, and Morgan, Naval Documents, 7:1167 - 68, 1234 - 35, 1265, 1275 - 77. Other contemporary documents dealing with Hopkins’ efforts to defend himself against the accusations of his subordinates are in Field, Esek Hopkins, pp. 192 - 218.
3 According to Hopkins’ testimony in March 1777, however, Grannis "never has been onboard the Ship Warren three nights together, nor I believe ten days this five months past - and all that he can have against me as we are entire Strangers, is that after several times desiring him to go onboard and do his duty, as the ship was liable to be attack’d at any time; I at last threaten’d to break him and get another man in his Room if he did not - upon which he went onboard but staid only two nights." See Alverda S. Beck, ed., The Letter Book of Esek Hopkins, Commander-in-Chief of the United States Navy, 1775 - 1778 (Providence: Printed for the Rhode Island Historical Society, 1932), p. 138.
4 Abraham Whipple, commander of the Continental frigate Providence.
5 For other accounts of this incident, see Morgan, Naval Documents, 7: 845 - 46, 852 - 54, 891 - 92, 923 - 26, 959.
6 The fact that privateering was more lucrative than Continental naval service because the former offered one-half shares in prizes taken and the latter only one third was also a significant factor in the navy’s recruiting problems. Beck, ed., Letter Book of Esek Hopkins, pp. 22 - 23, 29 - 30.
7 See above, note 3, for evidence that there were indeed personal differences between Grannis and Hopkins.
8 Aside from Ellery, who kept the notes of Grannis’ interrogation, the identities of the members of this subcommittee are not known.
It should also be noted that on March 25 the Marine Committee approved three resolves pertaining to the distribution of prize money among the officers and crews of Hopkins’ fleet, in response to a letter of February 14 from the commodore to the committee. The resolves are in the Nathaniel Shaw Collection, CtNIHi, and the letter is in Morgan, Naval Documents, 7:1199 - 1200.