In a previous post I set the stage for the story of Talbot’s capture of the British ship Pigot. Right after the Battle of Rhode Island, Lafayette suggested a plan to remove a British schooner that had been blocking Narragansett Bay. He reached out to Silas Talbot because Talbot was a seaman who knew the Rhode Island waters. Talbot agreed to the plan, but he had profit in mind as well as serving the American cause.

As he was preparing for the attack, Talbot met with Nicholas Cooke, the Governor of Rhode Island. Cooke owned a ship called “Hawke” and with the help of local Providence merchants, the Hawke was fitted out and armed for the mission. General Sullivan gave Talbot permission to recruit Continental soldiers. Talbot was acting as a privateer. The Battlefield Trust definition of privateer is: “the term privateer refers to a privately-owned ship or sailor commissioned by a government to raid an enemy’s military and merchant shipping. Although controversial, there is a long history of privateering that dates back to the seventeenth century. The main difference between pirates and privateers is that privateers are commissioned by a specific government and can only attack ships that fly under an enemy flag, while pirates are not sanctioned by any government and can attack whomever they choose.”

Talbot had made a deal. Talbot and his men, fifty percent / Cooke and his associations, fifty-percent.

October 25, 1778, the Hawke made its way from Providence to a remote anchorage off of Bristol. The next day the Hawke sailed passed the Bristol Ferry area to Mount Hope in Bristol. Two days later she quietly made her way down the Sakonnet River. They moved toward the Pigot, but a sentry saw it and began firing from a battery on Aquidneck Island (perhaps by Fogland Ferry). Talbot took the Hawke to safety up the Taunton River and he took a small boat down to the Sakonnet River to spy on his quarry (he may have gone on horseback). He saw that the Pigot had netting to defend it from an invading party, so when he returned to the Hawke he ordered a kedge anchor lashed to the jib boom. Talbot was finding a way for the Americans to get through the defensive netting by ramming through it with their spare anchor as a point.

On the night of October 28, 1778, the Hawke sailed from the Taunton River to the Sakonnet River. The sentries at the Fogland Batteries did not see her. When the Hawke got within sight of the Pigot, Talbot positioned his craft so he could ram his jib boom and kedge anchor through the netting to shred it. The crew of the Hawke swarmed over the deck of the enemy skip. The Pigot crew stayed below deck, but the captain was the only one to resist. The prisoners were locked below while members of the Hawke crew sailed the Pigot to Stonington, Connecticut.

British Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie recorded the event in his diary – 29 October, 1778:

“The galley off Black Point in the Sakonnet with eight twelve pounders and two eighteen pounders plus swivels was surprised this morning about 02:00 by rebels, who boarded and took her with little or no resistance. They cut her cable and stood out to sea. We sent the King George privateer to chase them but they got clear off toward New London.”

This was a profitable venture for Talbot. The Rhode Island General Assembly voted him a silver sword and the Continental Congress promoted him to Lieutenant Colonel. His share of the sale of the Pigot was 500 pounds.

Silas Talbot would go on to further adventures with the Pigot. The website of Naval History and Heritage Command reports: “In the spring of 1779, the Navy Board at Boston purchased prize Pigot, and she operated under Talbot as the Argo guarding Narragansett Bay. During Argo’s cruises she alone kept these important waters open to vital American coastal shipping. Legend holds that she was subsequently burnt.”

Sketch of Pigot from Heritage of Courage.

Resources:

Fowler, William. Silas Talbot Captain of Old Ironshides. Mystic Seaport, Mystic Connecticut, 1995.

” Silas Talbot and the British warship Pigot, 29, October 1778″. Heritage of Courage. John Peck Rathbun Chapter Rhode Island Society, Sons of the American Revolution, 1992.

Diary of Frederick Mackenzie. Harvard University, Cambridge: 1930.

Article of Pigot in Naval History and Heritage: https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/p/pigot.html