Name of Vessel:

Johnson [Johnston, Johnstone]

Master of Vessel:

Commander Thomas Williams (Charles Stacbehen)

Rig of Vessel:

Schooner

Date of Capture:

29 November 1777

Place of Capture:

sixty-nine miles NNE of Martinique, French West Indies

Captor:

HM Frigate Ariadne

Home Port:

From What Port:

St. Lucia, French West Indies

To What Port:

Cargo:

Tonnage:

30

Battery:

8x3

Crew:

30

Owners:

Prize master:

Mate

Prize crew:

8 [total]

Ordered Into:

Barbados, British West Indies

Into What Port:

Barbados, British West Indies

Date Arrived:

[3] December 1777

Date Tried:

Date Sold:

Action:

No

Recaptured:

No

Comments: HM Frigate Ariadne (Captain Thomas Pringle) was 21 miles northeast of Martinique on 29 November 1777. At 1000 she saw a sail bearing south and chased. By afternoon she was sixty-nine miles NNE of Martinique where she fired several shots to stop the chase, which brought to at 1500. The prize was the 30-ton [Continental] Privateer Schooner Johnson (Commander Thomas Williams), armed with eight 3-pounders and ten swivels, with a crew of thirty men, out five days from St. Lucia. Ariadne took the prisoners out and put a mate, midshipmen, and six men aboard as a prize crew. Johnston had been fitted out at Martinique, and was on a cruise with both a French and American captain. The French captain was Charles Stacbehen, the American was Thomas Williams. She was sent to Barbados, where she was eventually sold as a tender to Ariadne, by 20 December 1777. Vice Admiral Young referred to her later as a “piratical armed vessel with American and French masters,” and reported her as 60 tons, with eight guns and thirty men.

By 3 December 1777 Ariadne was at Barbados with her prize, Johnstone. Pringle wanted to land the thirty prisoners, but Governor Edward Hay expostulated with him. The expense of keeping the prisoners was high, and because the act suspending habeas corpus was about to expire, Hay was unsure if he could even keep the ones he had confined. The prisoners should be sent to England in the convoys, dispersed among the ships. The prisoners from the Mosquito were still at Barbados. Hay understood the naval authorities were to care for the prisoners. Nevertheless, if the thirty were landed he would receive them, as they could not be allowed to roam about.

[NDAR, X, 632-633 and 633 notes, X, 661 and notes; XI, 634-636 and 636 note, 644-645; Jamieson, Alan G., “American Privateers in the Leeward Islands, 1776-1778,” in The American Neptune, [volume unknown], reprinting a list of Admiral Young’s in ADM 1/310]