US naval officer Lambert Wickes took the war to England's back door in 1777:
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Reprisal left St Nazaire to cruise in the [English] Channel in January 1777 - a miserable time of year in those waters, and consequently an excellent time for raiding. Wickes quickly took five prizes (three brigs, a snow, and a ship), which for him made it "a tolerable successful cruise." The snow, Swallow, was a mail packet from Falmouth bound for Lisbon, and fought for an hour before striking her flag. Men on both sides were wounded, but none killed. In Reprisal, the first lieutenant's left arm was shot off above the elbow, "and the Lieut. of Marines had a musket ball lodged in his wrist." [...] Benedict Arnold may have found the marines to be "the refuse of every regiment"; to others, they were an essential adjunct to operations, and Wickes's crew included a detachment of two of their officers and thirty men.
After selling his prizes in France to pay his crew and maintain his ship, Wickes was joined in April by the Continental brig Lexington (a name that would grace many American warships) and the cutter Dolphin. (She, incidentally, was an English boat, secretly sold to the American service from her home port of Dover.). In May the three vessels set off to try their luck, standing out across the Channel for the Irish Sea. In essence such raiding was identical to privateering; the only difference was that it was done by naval ships under official orders. But to a young naval officer, that probably made it close to ideal. It was daring, exciting, novel, and, when successful, profitable too. Few captains would ask for more in wartime.
Before they left the Bay of Biscay, the squadron encountered a British ship of the line, too powerful for them to challenge. Escaping, they were blown west of Ireland by a gale and took no prizes until three weeks after leaving port. By then they were back in the north side of the Channel; and in a single week they captured eighteen vessels. Satisfied with that, they headed for base and again met a British ship. Reprisal had eighteen guns; her opponent had seventy-four. In the chase that followed, Wickes scattered his squadron, and to lighten Reprisal threw all her guns over, until finally, believing it would increase her flexibility and speed, he sawed through some of her beams. It was a common idea at the time; but it was probably that which brought about his death. Though he escaped from the British once more, he was never able to tell his adventures to his grandchildren. Returning home in September, Reprisal foundered in a gale and was lost with her captain.
Wickes had been a brave man, and his death was a blow to the Continental Navy. Had he lived, he might well have outshone his more celebrated colleague John Paul Jones; and of the two, it could well be argued that Wickes was the more courageous, for when he conducted his pioneering raids, he (unlike Jones) had no guaranteed safe port in France. Wickes paved the way for Jones.
Today Jones is far more widely remembered, and in the context of the U.S. Navy's whole history, that is right [...] But at the time, Wickes's contribution to the immediate cause of American independence was far greater. This is not simply because he captured more prizes; they paid for his voyage, but little more. Instead, the true value of his voyage lay in its political consequences [...]
By helping to heat up Anglo-French antagonism, simmering since France's defeat in the Seven Years' War, Wickes brought vital French support for America that much closer. This was exactly what the American commissioners in Paris wanted, and the French were indeed growing visibly keener. During the summer of 1777, in the French port of Brest, an American privateer (General Mifflin, flying the "Grand Union flag") was saluted with nine guns by Admiral du Chauffault - the traditional signal of the navy of one sovereign state to another.
- Stephen Howarth, To Shining Sea: A History of the United States Navy 1775-1991, London, 1991, p.30-31.
