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A Spy Amongst the Revolutionaries
By John L. Moore
James Molesworth’s brief career as a British spy began in March 1777 when he arrived in Philadelphia, pretending to be a merchant.
That month, members of the Continental Congress and many important leaders of the American Revolution were gathered in Philadelphia, then a city of about 40,000 people living in neighborhoods between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers.
Although Philadelphia was 120 miles inland, the Delaware was deep enough for ocean-going ships to come up to its wharves, provided a pilot steered them past the river’s many shoals and sandbars. The British in New York had directed Molesworth to recruit pilots willing to bring their warships up the Delaware so they could attack Philadelphia as well as two downriver forts that protected it. These were Fort Mifflin on the Pennsylvania side just below the city and Fort Mercer on the New Jersey side across from Fort Mifflin.
A native of Staffordshire, north of Birmingham in England, Molesworth knew his way around Philadelphia. He had lived and worked there prior to the war. He had been away for a while, but when he returned, Molesworth went to the streets along the docks lining the Delaware. He obtained lodgings at Widow Yarnall’s rooming house on Chestnut Street.
The spy then sought out experienced river pilots. Although many Philadelphians supported the war, many others were Loyalists–derided by Patriots as Tories–who opposed it. Molesworth soon made his way to the boarding house operated by one of these Tories, a woman named Sarah O’Brien. It was on Front Street, just above Lombard Street, near the docks. He also visited a woman named Abigail McKay, who had a boarding house on Union Street.
Over the course of several days, the women put him in touch with at least four pilots: John Eldridge, Andrew Higgins, Nathan Church, and John Snyder. Of the four, at least one–Church–knew how to navigate large ships past underwater obstacles the Americans had recently placed in the Delaware just below Philadelphia. Known as chevaux de frise, a French term, these were thick logs perhaps 30 feet long with one end fashioned into a sharp point. They served as sunken booby traps intended to damage or sink British naval vessels that came up the river.
← General George Washington, then at Morristown in New Jersey, sent a man suspected of being a Molesworth accomplice to Philadelphia for prosecution. The man had fled to New Jersey.
CHEVAUX DE FRISE
By John L. Moore
Philadelphians may have felt safe in 1775 when rebellious colonists and British troops began fighting near Boston, which was 300 miles away. But in late summer of 1776, the British shifted their army and naval operations to New York, which was much closer.
Growing fearful that enemy warships might sail up the Delaware River and attack them, the Pennsylvanians began placing log obstructions at strategic points in the river. Known by a French phrase as chevaux de frise, these devices were designed with sharp points on one end to damage the hulls of wooden ships.
One end of each log was anchored in a large wood box placed on the river bottom in water deep enough for large ships. Tons of rocks weighted each box to the river bed.
The log’s other end was carved into a sharp point, then capped with a closely fitted, pointed warhead made of iron. The log rose at an angle toward the river’s surface, but remained concealed below the water. Its position permitted an unsuspecting enemy ship to ram it–and to have a hole punched in its hull below the water line.
The British in New York certainly knew that these underwater defenses were being placed in the Delaware. Philadelphia Loyalists kept them abreast of such developments.
A cheval-de-frise is one log from a chevaux de frise. One such log was recovered from the Delaware in 2012 at Bristol. It measured “just under 29 feet in length with a diameter of 13 inches at its base,” according to the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission. In a 2013 post on its This Week in Pennsylvania Archaeology blog, the agency said that “examination revealed a large iron spike at one end.” The log was found at the Anchor Yacht Club, about 30 miles upriver from Fort Mifflin.
Janet Johnson, curator of archaeology at the State Museum in Harrisburg, was involved in the recovery and conservation of the cheval-de-frise at Bristol. She recently made an online presentation about the discovery, and the PHMC has posted a video of her program on Youtube.com. It is available at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=f59kzeh9hm4.
The cheval-de-frise is on display at Brandywine Battlefield Park, Chadds Ford.
↑ 1777 map showing chevaux de frize placed in the
Delaware River along Fort Mifflin, visible on the southern end of Mud Island, labeled Mudden Island by a Hessian mapmaker. The Schuylkill River joins the
Delaware in Philadelphia.
↑ 1750 view of Philadelphia, looking across the Delaware River from New Jersey.
One of the pilots, Andrew Higgins, said that, when invited, he went to Abigail McKay’s house, and she “took him into a room and said she wanted to ask him particular questions. She asked him if he would go to New York to pilot one of the vessels (up the Delaware). He asked her how he should go without being catched [sic]. She replied, ‘If you will go, it will be the making of you, as you will be upon King’s pay all your lifetime.’ That besides, he should receive 500 guineas as a present on his arrival at New York.”
Mrs. McKay explained that the British had sent an agent “from New York for the purpose of engaging pilots.”
A second pilot, John Snyder, said that Mrs. McKay asked him flat out if he “would go to New York to pilot the Eagle Man-of-War round to Philadelphia. He said he would, if he could get off clear. She said it would be the best thing he ever did for himself.”
A man-of-war was a sailing ship armed with cannons. At this point, the woman “informed him that all our cannon (at Fort Mifflin) would be spiked up (disabled) by some of our own people who attended the fort,” the pilot said.
Mrs. McKay also incriminated Sarah O’Brien. According to a March 28 transcript of McKay’s interview at the Pennsylvania Board of War, “She heard Mrs. O’Brien say, or understood from her discourse, that a (British) captain of a man-of-war had been here in disguise. He was dressed in a blanket coat and slept at her house with Bill Skillinger, (a pilot) with whom he talked a great deal, but found Bill to be a great Whig.”
Whigs supported the Revolution.
Asked about this, Mrs. O’Brien agreed that the man in the blanket coat had stayed overnight in her establishment, but she asserted he was a New Jerseyan named Hazelett who lived near Easton, Pa. She said he had driven a wagon to Philadelphia in order to buy a hogshead of rum.
↑ 1776 map of Philadelphia showing streets along and near the Delaware
River where James Molesworth attempted to recruit river pilots to guide
British warships up the river to attack the city. ↓ The HMS Asia was a British warship with 64 guns. It was launched in 1764 and took part in the American
Revolution. This watercolor was painted in 1797 at the naval yard in Halifax. There’s no evidence suggesting it ever sailed in the Delaware River during the war.
Yes, “the man in the blanket coat lodged with William Skillinger, a pilot, who lives at Cape May,” Mrs. O’Brien said. “This man breakfasted, dined, supped, and lodged the next day and night at her house. There were a good many pilots in the house the next night with whom the blanket coat man associated.”
No, she said, “the pilots had no rum to sell.”
Molesworth subsequently described a conversation he had with Sarah O’Brien when he arrived in Philadelphia a short time earlier. He had “told Mrs. O’Brien of the scheme” to recruit pilots willing to bring British ships upriver. “She said she would mention it to some of the pilots, as they all lodged at her house,” the spy said.
When the authorities asked her about this later, Mrs. O’Brien disputed Molesworth’s allegation. “Molesworth never told her the reason why he wanted Eldridge,” she insisted. “Never heard Mrs. McKay say what Molesworth wanted with pilots.”
Surviving documents reveal that Molesworth had a number of face-to-face meetings with river pilots that he met through Mrs. O’Brien and Mrs. McKay. Several told Molesworth they would go to New York with him, but they didn’t mean it. Instead, they decided to expose the plot and turn Molesworth in. Two of these pilots–Andrew Higgins and John Eldridge–got together with a third pilot, John Snyder. Snyder said, “They went into Mr. Turner’s Tavern together on Market Street Wharf, where he related what had passed between him and Molesworth.”
Each pilot wrote down details of his meetings with the spy.
According to Andrew Higgins, on the night they were to depart for New York, they encountered a Pennsylvania soldier, Captain Casdrop, “and told him their case, what they were after, and would be glad of his assistance.”
Casdrop took them to an inn along the docks called The Boatswain & Call “and read over the memorandums they had made. Casdrop advised them to get the City Guard to go with them. This was after 10 at night.”
The pilots did as Casdrop suggested, then accompanied the members of the guard “to Molesworth’s lodgings and assisted in seizing him, and, when taken, he cried out, ‘Then I am betrayed,’” Higgins said.
Molesworth was turned over to the Philadelphia-based Board of War, which began an immediate investigation. The pilots and the women who ran the boarding houses were questioned. Transcripts of their statements were written out by clerks writing with quill pens.
↑ John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail about the execution of
James Molesworth for espionage.
SHOP NEW. SHOP VINTAGE. SHOP LOCAL.
Molesworth himself confessed. He said that one of his key contacts in New York was a Philadelphia Loyalist, a lawyer/ politician named Joseph Galloway. Galloway had left Pennsylvania in late 1776, joined the British in New Jersey, and by early 1777 was in New York, where, according to Founders Online, a National Archives website, “he was plotting to raise a Loyalist militia in Pennsylvania.”
Galloway introduced Molesworth to a British army officer, who commissioned him as a lieutenant. Molesworth said he was told to go immediately to Philadelphia, recruit the pilots and “return as fast as he could to New York.”
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↑ A political cartoon from the Revolutionary War era shows a man on bended knee who was been covered in hot pine tar, then coated with chicken feathers. Patriots occasionally did this to punish British tax collectors or to outspoken Tories..
For Molesworth, justice proved swift. Arrested on March 27, he was interrogated and tried by the War Board, and executed on March 31.
If Molesworth did his spying in secret, his hanging occurred in public. As John Adams, a Massachusetts congressman, wrote to his wife Abigail, the spy “was this day at noon, executed on the gallows in the presence of an immense crowd of spectators.”
The Board of War reported the Molesworth affair to Gen. George Washington, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, describing it as “the happy discovery of a dangerous conspiracy in this city.”
Molesworth “was convicted of engaging pilots to go to Lord (William) Howe to assist in bringing the English fleet up our river … He was executed this day agreeable to the sentence of a court martial.” Howe was the British commander in New York.
The board’s letter also reported that the spy had three accomplices. They included “one Collins, lately a clerk” in the Philadelphia customs office. Thomas W. Collins had attempted to flee but hadn’t gotten very far. American soldiers had caught him and taken him to Washington’s camp at Morristown, N.J.
Suspected of being a Molesworth confederate, Collins was detained there. After learning from the Board of War that Collins was wanted, Washington returned him to Philadelphia. “Lieutenant Robb with the small detachment of the Pennsylvania Regiment goes off tomorrow,” the general advised the board. “I shall send down Collins under his guard.” On April 2, Richard Peters, the secretary of the War Board, informed Pennsylvania’s Supreme Executive Council that Sarah 0’Brien and Abigail McKay had been committed to the state prison as Molesworth’s accomplices. The board had decided the women should be tried by civil rather than military authority. If convicted, they should “receive such punishment as crimes of so black a dye entitle them to.”
The British eventually came into southeastern Pennsylvania not by the Delaware, but from the Chesapeake Bay and forced their way into Philadelphia from the west.
During the fall of 1777, their navy and land forces then attacked the two American forts protected by the chevaux de frize along the Delaware. When the British navy attacked Fort Mifflin, which was located on Mud Island, on Oct. 23, “two ships of force attempted the chevaux de frize but were so injured the men soon abandoned them, having first set them on fire, and they soon blew up,” according to John Clark, an American. “The explosion was great.”
Clark added that enemy soldiers “also attempted to land on Mud Island in boats but were defeated with great loss.”
Weeks later, the British overpowered Fort Mifflin. In midNovember, General Washington reported that the Americans had evacuated. The final British bombardment had been so severe that the fort’s “works were entirely beat down (and) every piece of cannon dismounted.”
Also, one of the British ships got so close “that she threw grenades into the fort, and killed” many of the defenders, Washington said.
John L. Moore continues to pursue his lifelong interests in Pennsylvania’s colonial history and archaeology. The Northumberland writer has published 11 non-fiction books about Pennsylvania’s 16th and 17th century. John’s latest book, 1780: Year of Revenge, is currently available in book stores or from the online bookstore Sunbury Press Inc. This book is the 3rd volume in his Revolutionary Pennsylvania Series and tells the story of Indian raids all across the Pennsylvania Frontier — including the Poconos and Minisinks — in the year following General Sullivan’s 1779 invasion of the Iroquios homeland. Over the years John has participated in archaeological excavations of Native American sites along the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers. A professional storyteller, he recently took part in the Heritage Festival at Frances Slocum State Park near Wilkes-Barre. He told the true story of Frances Slocum, a 5-year-old girl who lived as a Native American after being kidnapped by Indians during the American Revolution. The park was named for her.
HOW IT BECAME UNPATRIOTIC FOR AMERICANS TO DRINK TEA
By John L. Moore
Once a popular beverage in colonial Pennsylvania, tea rapidly lost favor after America’s colonists learned in mid1773 that the British government intended to tax it.
In Philadelphia, news of the plan prompted a political uproar. City residents gathered for an open public meeting on Oct. 18, declaring, “It is the duty of every American to oppose this attempt.” The levy was denounced as “a tax on the Americans ... without their consent.”
Pennsylvanians were infuriated when word arrived that England’s East India Company was shipping 600 chests of tea to Philadelphia aboard The Polly, a sailing ship. A man named Ayres would be captain.
Philadelphians organized an entity called The Committee for Tar¬ring and Feathering. On Nov. 27 the committee published a handbill urging the port’s river pilots—men who guided oceangoing vessels up the Delaware to Philadelphia—to watch for The Polly.
A “handsome reward” might well go to the waterman first to spot the tea ship, “but all agree that tar and feathers will be his portion who pilots her into this harbor,” said the handbill, which was signed by such fictional notables as Thomas Tarbuckett, Peter Pitch, and Benjamin Brush.
The committee also threatened to tar and feather The Polly’s captain.
Tarring and feathering was a form of torture. Victims were stripped, then coated with hot tar made from the sap of pine trees. The sticky tar was then covered with feathers from chickens or ducks. It was late in 1773 when word reached Philadelphia that The Polly had sailed into the Delaware. It was coming up without a pilot.
On Dec. 25, “an express came up from Chester to inform the town that the tea ship commanded by Captain Ayres, with her de¬tested cargo, was arrived there, having followed another ship up the river,” the Pennsylvania Gazette reported.
Events happened rapidly after that. On Dec. 26, a citizens committee created to deal with the tea ship appointed three representatives to go to Chester, about 15 miles downriver, and to bring Ayres to Philadelphia. But when the three men reached Chester, The Polly was already sailing upriver.
As it passed Gloucester Point, about four miles south of the city, other Philadelphians were waiting. “As she passed along, she was hailed, and the captain (was) requested not to proceed farther, but to come on shore. This the captain complied with,” the Pennsylvania Gazette reported.
Ayres went to Philadelphia. The tea committee convened a public meeting to decide what should be done with The Polly’s cargo. So many people turned out that the committee held the meeting out of doors in the public square across from the State House, now known as Independence Hall.
The captain, quickly sensing the temper of the citizens, readily agreed that The Polly wouldn’t attempt to land. Instead, he permitted a river pilot take his ship to Reedy Island, about 55 miles downriver. Ayres himself stayed in Philadelphia long enough to obtain supplies his crew needed for the return trip to London.
As the Pennsylvania Journal reported on Dec. 29: “Yesterday at three quarters of an hour after 2 o’clock, Captain Ayres . . . left Arch Street wharf on board a pilot boat, (having been 46 hours in town,) to follow the ship to Reedy Island, and from thence transport the East India Company’s (tea) to ... London. He was attended to the wharf by a concourse of people, who wished him a good voyage.”
