14 minute read
1770: Suspected Smugglers Assault Threaten Royal Customs Agent in Delaware Bay
By John L. Moore
During the run-up to the American Revolutionary War, many a merchant seaman on the lower Delaware River was tempted to smuggle goods past Royal customs officers in order to get his cargo ashore without paying import duties.
One such customs officer was John Hatton Sr.
Based in Salem, a port community on the Delaware’s New Jersey shore. Hatton left a detailed account of how he tried to thwart smugglers in Delaware Bay in 1770. For his effort, he was badly beaten by the men he suspected of smuggling. They also took a boat Hatton had seized after deciding it carried contraband.
The controversy over import duties raged in England’s North American colonies after King George 3rd and the British Parliament in the 1760s imposed taxes and duties on imported commodities such as glass, paint, and tea. They hadn’t anticipated strong opposition, but their measures created a political uproar in the colonies. Many shippers and importers bypassed customs agents. The Delaware Bay incident shows just how violent the situation could become.
Hatton’s post at Salem was about 65 land miles upriver from Cape May. He “came to Cape May in November 1770 to stop what he termed were illegal actions on the part of local and other skippers in landing goods at Cape May to avoid paying duty,” according to Lewis T. Stevens in his 1897 book, “The History of Cape May.” Hatton stood on the shore at Cape May on Nov. 5, 1770, looking through his spyglass and watching a Philadelphia-bound sailing ship, The Prince of Wales, riding at anchor in Delaware Bay. Soon, the ship “was met by several pilot boats.”
The wharves at Philadelphia lay 120 miles upriver, and sea captains routinely hired river pilots to guide their deep-water vessels past the many sandbars and shoals that awaited unwary ships in the bay and river. But Hatton said the crews on the smaller boats weren’t there to take The Prince of Wales upriver. Instead, as he watched, they “immediately set to unload her.”
Hatton suspected that the men transferring goods to the smaller boats intended to ship them into either Pennsylvania or New Jersey without paying import duties on them.
All this was disturbing to Hatton, whom New Jersey Governor William Franklin described as “Collector of His Majesty’s Customs at the Port of Salem, Etc., in the Province of New Jersey.”
> An 1855 painting by John Scott depicts the brig Mary.
Hatton sprang into action. “I got about eight men, and manned two wherries (rowboats), and rowed down to her about 10 miles,” he said later in a detailed report to John Swift, collector of the Port of Philadelphia.
The men accompanying Hatton included his son, John Jr., and an enslaved man named Ned. Ned belonged to the customs agent.
The sailors and others on The Prince of Wales and the smaller boats felt threatened to see Hatton’s men approach. “We rowed on each side of the ship with our two boats,” he said. “As soon as they perceived us, they threw overboard a great quantity of bales (of fabric) and casks of claret or red wine …”
As they tossed the kegs over the side, the sailors damaged them so that seawater would ruin the wine, Hatton said.
“When we came near, they called out to me, and bid me stand off, or they would sink me, and they manned their sides with swivels, guns, peteraroes, blunderbusses, and muskets, and declared they would murder us,” Hatton said. Swivels, peteraroes, and blunderbusses were 18th-century firearms. A standoff occurred. “I parleyed with them about an hour, but could get no Information from them,” Hatton said. He estimated that the crews of The Prince of Wales and the pilot boats numbered “about 50 persons.”
The collector eventually changed his strategy. “Finding I could not board them, I then set out for another pilot boat I saw about four miles off, which I supposed belonged to them.”
Hatton said that his two rowboats overtook the distant vessel. “As soon as we reached the pilot boat, I jumped on board, then my son and Negro got in.” As Hatton scuffled with the pilot, “my son opened her hatches, and said she was full of goods … I then legally seized her and set the two pilots … in my boat to be put on shore by my … men who would not stay any longer.”
Hatton afterwards told Governor Franklin that he was convinced this boat was “laden with goods … clandestinely discharged … out of the … Prince of Wales.”
Men from The Prince of Wales had been following Hatton in a slower, flat-bottom boat that he described as a barge. Hatton
SAILORS TAR, FEATHER TAX COLLECTOR’S SON
As the American colonies headed towards revolution during the 1770s, the practice of tarring and feathering became an acceptable – if violent – form of political expression. Rebellious protesters engaged in it to intimidate and punish officials of the Royal government and other loyalists.
Produced by burning logs cut from pitch pine trees in earthen kilns, the tar itself had a mundane purpose. Construction workers and shipbuilders used it as a sealant. Wheelwrights used it as a lubricant for wagon axles. The feathers came from the carcasses of chickens and other barnyard birds.
John Hatton Jr., the son of a Delaware River tax collector, found himself the subject of a tarring and feathering in November 1770 during a confrontation in Philadelphia with a group of sailors. Hatton’s father had previously accused these men of attempting to smuggle cargo from an English ship, The Prince of Wales, into New Jersey or Pennsylvania.
Hatton had arrived in Philadelphia from Cape May, N.J., on Nov. 12 to deliver a letter his father had written to John Swift, the Royal tax collector of the Port of Philadelphia. It detailed the Nov. 5, 1770, incident involving The Prince of Wales in Delaware Bay.
While in Philadelphia, Hatton learned that a pilot boat involved in the incident was in the city’s harbor, possibly at Carpenter's Wharf. He went to the waterfront to find the boat.
“My son went with him to show him the wharf where she lay,” Swift said. “As they were going thither, they met the pilot who owned the boat, and young Hatton entered into a conversation with him. He (the pilot) pretended to be very sorry for what had passed, and told him (Hatton) he might take the boat and do as he pleased with her.”
They conversed for nearly half an hour. Suddenly, “seven or eight sailors armed with clubs” showed up. The pilot told Hatton “to take care of himself for they were coming after him. … Young Hatton and my son took to their heels, and the sailors after them,” Swift said.
“My son was fortunate enough to get into a house where he was “Young Hatton likewise got into another house, but the sailors followed and dragged him out, and drove him about from place to place,” Swift said.
At one point, the men “poured a pot of tar upon his head, and then feathered him. The mob gathered as they drove him with sticks from street to street. They had a rope round his body, and when he would not walk or run, they dragged him.”
In the end, they took Hatton “to the river and ducked him,” Swift said.
Eventually, the sailors put Hatton in a boat and rowed across the Delaware to New Jersey, where they left him in the ferry house at Cooper’s Ferry.
The next morning, Swift took a doctor to Cooper’s Ferry to examine Hatton. “We found him in bed,” Swift said. Wounds that Hatton had suffered on Delaware Bay previously had not yet healed, and these “were much inflamed. His wrist much swelled, and he had a fever.”
“Everything possible shall be done for his recovery,” Swift said. “I did not dare to have him brought to this city, fearing the same tragedy might be acted over again.”
Swift noted that nobody – “neither magistrate or citizen” – had tried to stop the assault.
In an official report sent to the King's Commissioners at Boston, Swift said, “If these riots are permitted with impunity, it will be impossible for any Custom House officer to do his duty in this port. There are not less than a thousand seamen here at this time, and they are always ready to do any mischief that their captains or owners set them upon."
> 1753 Map showing Coopers Ferry across from Philadelphia
> 1777 map shows Cape May, New Jersey, and the lower section of Delaware Bay.
reported that he attempted to sail off in the boat he had seized. “But there being no wind, their barge soon came up with the man who called himself captain, and eight more men armed with a musket, patteraro gun, swords and axes, and threatened us with death if we would not surrender.”
Hatton, his son and Ned mounted a vigorous defense. “They … endeavored to board us, but with our guns and swords, we beat them off for about an hour and a half.”
The fight ended abruptly. “My Negro being knocked down, they boarded us when we put down our arms, and I said, 'Gentlemen, we submit.'”
The sailors proved to be anything but gentlemen. As soon as Hatton surrendered, “they took up our guns and … beat and wounded us in a most inhuman manner, rifling our pockets, taking from me one rifle pistol, four dollars and my shoe buckles and some other trifles.”
In the end, the sailors put Hatton and his son ashore; commandeered the boat he had seized, and confiscated “my Negro and three guns, two hangers and several other things … which they would keep.” Hangers were swords that had curved blades.
Night had fallen by the time the barge and the pilot ship returned to The Prince of Wales. Ned was taken aboard. “Towards morning they put him on shore. He informs me they had a great quantity of valuable goods on board. The two pilot boats … were to sail the next tide up the Delaware,” Hatton said.
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> This hand-colored print offers a late 18th-century view of the Philadelphia waterfront. > An 1838 painting by Joseph Walter shows a small English trading brig.
Angered by the turn of events, Hatton promptly fired off letters describing the incident to Governor Franklin, and to Swift, the customs agent at Philadelphia.
Hatton also identified the owners of the pilot boats. The river pilot who pointed a gun at him and “who swore he would murder me was one Jedediah Mills,” he said. He identified the pilot of the second boat as Seletheall Forster.
According to a proclamation that Governor Franklin made soon after receiving Hatton’s report, the leader of the attack was a man named Smith, “a short, thick, well-set man, supposed to be between 30 and 40 years of age.” Smith, the governor said, “has a fresh cut on the right side of his head and face, made with a cutlass.”
Hatton advised Swift to be on the lookout for The Prince of Wales, “a large ship” out of a port on the Irish Sea – either Liverpool, England, or Londonderry, Ireland – commanded by Captain Patrick Crawford. “Her name was formerly The King George,” Hatton reported.
Hatton said that he himself had been so badly wounded that “I am not able to write or travel.” so his son – “who is the least wounded” of the three – was going to Philadelphia, and would hand-deliver Hatton’s letter to Swift. “I despair of my Negro's life, and am dangerously wounded myself,” Hatton said.
By the time John Jr. reached Philadelphia with his father’s letter a week later, The Prince of Wales had already arrived with a cargo of salt and coal. She had sailed out of England, and her captain had listed Liverpool as her home port.
Swift reviewed Hatton’s report but couldn’t see any cause to take action. A serious violation would have occurred if Hatton had seen the seamen take the goods ashore and ship them overland. But had the sailors committed a crime merely by transferring cargo from The Prince of Wales to smaller boats? “I do not apprehend that her breaking bulk at sea and putting goods on board the pilot boat makes her liable to any penalty,” Swift reasoned.
Even so, “the goods taken out and the boat into which they were put were forfeited” had Hatton managed to keep them in his possession. “But as they were rescued from him, the case is altered, and the persons who beat, wounded and abused him are liable … to a forfeiture of one hundred pounds and to be imprisoned till discharged by the Court of Exchequer.”
This wasn’t likely because the court operated in England, and “we have none here.”
Swift added: “An officer may be beat and abused in the execution of his office and can have no redress but at common law. I am in doubt whether Mr. Hatton can have any redress here for an offence that was committed in another province, or rather upon the high seas.”
In all likelihood, the goods that Hatton saw being transferred from The Prince of Wales to the smaller boats managed to come ashore without anyone paying import duties on them.
The controversy over paying taxes to Britain ended when the colonies revolted and won their independence.
Though out of a job as a customs officer by then, John Hatton Sr. became an active Tory when the Revolutionary War swept through the Delaware Valley. He also became a staunch ally of Governor Franklin, the loyalist son of Benjamin Franklin, who helped write the Declaration of Independence. But that’s another story.
John L. Moore
John L. Moore, a retired newspaperman, continues to pursue his lifelong interests in Pennsylvania’s colonial history and archaeology. The Northumberland writer has published 15 non-fiction books about Pennsylvania during the 17th and 18th centuries. His most recent books, “The Outposts” and “Border War” are the sixth and seventh volumes in his ongoing Revolutionary Pennsylvania Series. They are available online at the Sunbury Press Bookstore and Amazon.com. Over the years John has participated in archaeological excavations of Native American sites along the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers. These include the City Island site excavated by the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission during the 1990s across from Harrisburg, and a New Jersey State Museum dig along the Delaware River north of Worthington State Forest in New Jersey in 1963. A professional storyteller, John specializes in telling historically-accurate stories about real people and events in Pennsylvania history. One of his favorite stories is that of Frances Slocum, a 5-year-old girl who lived in northeastern Pennsylvania until Delaware Indians kidnapped her during the American Revolutionary War. She spent the rest of her life as the Native American known as Little Bear Woman.
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