Reprisal	Commander John Wheelwright
Armed Brig	3 October 1776-1777
Massachusetts Privateer Brigantine

Commissioned/First Date:	3 October 1776
Out of Service/Cause:

Owners:

Job Prince, Samuel White et al of Marblehead and Boston, Massachusetts

Tonnage:

70

Battery:

Date Reported: 3 October 1776 Number/Caliber  Weight        Broadside 8/3-pounder       24 pounds   12 pounds Total: 8 cannon/24 pounds Broadside: 4 cannon/12 pounds Swivels: ten

Crew:

3 October 1776: 71 [total]

Description:

Officers:

(1) First Lieutenant Samuel Smallcorn, 30 September 1776-; (2) Second Lieutenant Nathaniel Thayer, 30 September 1776-; (3) Master John Gregore [Gregory], 30 September 1776-

Cruises:

Prizes:

(1) Snow Kitty [Ketty, Hetty] (Charles Ross), [November] 1776

Actions:

Comments:

The owners of Massachusetts Privateer Brigantine Reprisal petitioned for a commission for the brigantine on 30 September 1776. They listed themselves as Job Prince, Samuel White, Jacob Fowle, Andrew Cabot, John Coffin Jones and Benjamin Hitchborne. She was then in Boston, measured 70 tons, with a crew of seventy men, and armed with eight 3-pounders and ten swivel guns. Her officers were Commander John Wheelwright, First Lieutenant Samuel Smallcorn, Second Lieutenant Nathaniel Thayer, Master John Gregore [Gregory], and Surgeon John Ritchmond. The commission was granted on 3 October 1776.¹ Her $5000 Continental bond was signed by Wheelwright (of Portsmouth, New Hampshire) and by Samuel White (of Marblehead) and Henry Jackson (of Boston).² Wheelwright had been Second Lieutenant aboard Continental Navy Ship Raleigh, but had left for command of the privateer by 14 September.³ Samuel Smallcorn had previously been the gunner on the Continental Navy Ship Raleigh.⁴

The only known prize for Reprisal in this period was the snow Ketty, Kitty, or Hetty (Charles Ross). She had originally been captured by Continental Navy Ship Alfred (Captain John Paul Jones) and Continental Navy Sloop Providence (Captain Hoystead Hacker).  She was captured on 15 November 1776, off Cape North, Cape Breton Island.⁵ The 120-ton⁶ merchant snow Kitty⁷ (or Hetty, Charles Ross),⁸ was bound from Gaspee to Barbados with a cargo of fish and oil. Acting Lieutenant Joseph Allen of Providence was assigned as Kitty’s prize master, and ordered to go into Rhode Island, if possible.⁹ She parted company in the from her captors in the afternoon of 15 November, bound for Newport. Allen got down to the Nantucket Shoals area where he was recaptured by HM Frigate Unicorn (Captain John Ford).¹⁰ Before Unicorn’s prize crew could get her into port, she was captured again, by Reprisal.¹¹ The privateer sent Kitty into Boston, where she arrived 27 December.¹² Kitty was libeled by Wheelwright on 9 January 1777, tried 28 January,¹³ and sold at Avis’s Wharf on 7 February.¹⁴

Reprisal may have been captured in 1777, or at least one of her prizes recaptured. Her Second Lieutenant, Nathaniel Thayer, was among the prisoners brought from Halifax on the cartel Swift on 9 November 1777.¹⁵

¹ Allen, Massachusetts Privateers of the Revolution, 249

¹ NDAR, “Petition for Commission for John Wheelwright to Command the Massachusetts Privateer Brigantine Reprisal,” VI, 1052-1053

² Allen, Massachusetts Privateers of the Revolution, 253

³ NDAR, “John Langdon to Josiah Bartlett,” VI, 816-817;  “John Langdon to John Hancock,” VI, 1159-1160

⁴ Remick, Oliver P., A Record of the Services of the Commissioned Officers and Enlisted Men of Kittery and Eliot, Maine: who served their country on land and sea in the American Revolution, from 1775 to 1783, Boston: A. Mudge & Son, [1901]), 46-47

⁵ NDAR, "Independent Chronicle, Thursday, December 19, 1776," VII, 517-518

⁶ NDAR, "Libels Filed in the Massachusetts Maritime Court," VII, 906-907

⁷ NDAR, "Captain John Paul Jones to Acting Lieutenant Joseph Allen," VII, 160-161

⁸ NDAR, "Captain John Paul Jones's Notes on the Alfred's Cruise," VII, 417

⁹ NDAR, "Captain John Paul Jones to Acting Lieutenant Joseph Allen," VII, 160-161

¹⁰ NDAR, "Public Advertiser, Wednesday, February 26, 1777," VIII, 613; "Independent Chronicle, Thursday, January 2, 1777," VII, 844-845

¹¹ NDAR, "Libels Filed in the Massachusetts Maritime Court," VII, 906-907; "Independent Chronicle, Thursday, January 2, 1777," VII, 844-845

¹² NDAR, "Independent Chronicle, Thursday, January 2, 1777," VII, 844-845

¹³ NDAR, "Libels Filed in the Massachusetts Maritime Court," VII, 906-907

¹⁴ NDAR, "Independent Chronicle, Thursday, February 6, 1777," VII, 1118

¹⁵ Howe, Beverly Privateers in the Revolution, 415

Posted 13 February 2009

web counter