SCHOONER
Sultana:
BuILDING AN
I8T'H
by Drew McMullen n 8 M arch 1768, His M ajesty's Royal N avy purchased what wo uld prove to be the smallest schooner ever to see active service in Britain's history. At just 52-64/92 tons burthen, the schooner Sultana was the unlikeliest of warships. Built by American shipwrights at Benjamin Hallowell's South Boston shipyard, Sultana had been conceived as a coastal m erchant schooner. D estined fo r a life of hard work in relative
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obscuri ty, Sultana's fate changed fo rever when the British Parliam ent enacted the notorious Townsend Acts or "Tea Taxes" just as Sultana was being framed up in the H allowell Yard in the summer of 1767. The burden of enfo rcing the new Townsend Acts fell to a reluctant Royal Navy. The larges t, most p rofessional navy in the world at the time, the Royal Navy did not particularly relish its new role as customs collector. Nonetheless, the Navy was the only arm of the British Empire that possessed the experience and resources to enforce the wide array of taxes Parliament had levied on its American colonies. Initially the biggest challenge faci ng the Navy was a to tal lack of sui table patrol vessels. H aving just vanquished the French in the Seven Years War, the Royal Navy had no shortage of large and powerful warships, bur it lacked small and nimble vessels that wo uld be required to patrol fo r colonial m erchant ships and smugglers in the shallow and constricted waters off the North Am erican coas t. Ironically the solution was found in the upstart yards of their N orth American cousins. In 1768 the Royal Navy faced a challenge that had been ch ronic th ro ughout its existence-a shortage of fundin g. This
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particular shortfall was precipitated by the her sister-schooner, the HMS Gaspee, was enormous debts amassed in rhe course of captured and burned by rebellious colothe Seven Years War. In an effort to fulfill nists near Providence, Rhode Island, the its new customs m ission while expending Admiral ty concluded that conditions in a minimum am o unt of resources the Navy the colonies had becom e too dangerous chose to ro und out its Beet by purchasing for vessels like Sultana to continue servexisting American vessels rather than by ing there. In autum n 1772 Sultana was building new. This approach had several ordered to sail fo r England where her crew advantages- chief among them being that was paid-off, the vessel was decommisit was cost effective. Labor and materials sioned and sold for 85 pounds at public were far less expensive in the Americas auction . and a vessel of Sultana's size could be obtained "as-is" in Conceiving a Reproduction the colonies for a fraction of The prospect of replicating a vessel such the cost required to build it as Sultana in m odern times is fraught with from scratch in Britain. significant challenges. Foremost am o ng Another factor in the these is th at there is no overriding ecoAmericans' favo r was that nomic m otivation to construct a large the vessels they built were traditional wooden sailing vessel in today's designed for service along the world. While there are isolated examples N orth American coas t. In the of wooden sailing craft that operate sucmid- l 760s American ship- cessfully on a fo r-profit basis (Maine's wrights were Left and Below: Sultana's hull begins to take shape. well o n their way to perfecting what would become the quintessential American design- the schooner. N imble, well-adapted for sailing upwind and easily managed by a sm all crew, the schooner's characteristics fir the Royal Navy's needs to a tee. Sultana was the sm allest of a handful of American schooners the Royal Navy acquired in the 1760s. The N avy re-rigged, re-fit and re-armed her to make her suitable for her new naval duties. Sultana was dispatched to No rth America and spent the period from 17 68 to 1772 patrolling for smugglers along the coast from Halifax to Cape Fear, North Carolina. During this time she stopped and searched m ore than a thousand m erchant vessels. The activities of Sultana and her fellow Royal N avy revenue cutters so infuri ated the Americans that these small and relatively defenseless schooners soo n becam e a favo rite target for the colonists' anger. Sultana only narrowly escaped destructio n at the hands of irate colonists in Newport, Rhode Island in 177 1 and again off New Castle, Delaware, in 1772. Finally, when
W indj ammer Beet com es to mind) the overwhelming majori ty oflarge traditio nal sailing vessels built and operated today are done so by non-p rofi t organizatio ns. The larger and more complex the vessel, the more likely it is that this is the case. By its very nature a non-profit undertakin g requires that there is a m otivation other than generating a m onetary pro fi t. In the case of historic reproduction sailing vessels, the clear identification of a ra tional and sustainable motivati on is the singlemosr important facror in the ultimate success or fai lure of the endeavor. Mo re ofren than no r, a vessel that lacks an obvious and defensible reason for existence will face long term fin ancial , personnel, and, mos t wo rrisom e, safety problem s.
SEA H ISTORY 107, SPRING/SUMMER 2 004