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The Ukrainians have been running roughshod over the Russian navy in the Black Sea. It all started with the cruiser Moskva in the opening months of the Russian invasion. This flagship of the Black Sea Fleet went down in April 2022, hit by two Ukrainian Neptune missiles. Since then, the Ukrainians have been using everything from jet skis to inflatable boats to force the Russian navy out of its headquarters in Sevastopol. The Russians have had to run farther east to Novorossiysk, where the Ukrainians have pursued them. Unrelenting missile and drone attacks have also threatened military logistics in Crimea, a giant warehouse hub supplying the Russian front lines in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s “mosquito navy” has essentially undone Russian naval superiority, using tactics and weapons of irregular warfare. These techniques are not new: they often appear when a “less powerful adversary seeks to disrupt or negate the military capabilities and advantages of a more powerful military force.”
One such adversary was our own nascent country, which stymied the mighty Royal Navy during the Revolutionary War.
The revolutionaries had no navy to begin with. The first rebel successes at sea came thanks to privateers—fishermen, coastal shippers, and whalers who fitted out ships to harry British seagoing commerce. They received so-called “letters of marque” from colonial authorities, thus transforming their activities from piracy to acts of war. In capturing prizes, they challenged British naval ships that were much bigger and better equipped, forcing them into merchant escort duties when they might better have been blockading colonial ports.
I first encountered the heroics of the privateers when I was ten, reading a book called Sea Captain from Salem by Leonard Wibberly. It told the tale of Peace of God Manly, whose unlikely name conveyed a sober and serious nature that belied his skill at outwitting the British. His naval exploits, vividly told, were wonderful and impressed on me—at ten—how patriotism could combine with self-interest. The God-fearing captain made sure that his prizes reached port for the cash returns.
Peace of God did not exist, it turns out, but a real Manley does appear in our revolutionary history. With the more prosaic name of John Manley, he seems to have been as daring as his fictional counterpart.
When Manley received his commission from no less a commander than George Washington, he immediately set out in search of prizes. On November 26, 1775, Captain Manley learned that the brig Nancy was alone off the coast of Massachusetts without a naval convoy. When his small schooner Lee overtook the Nancy, her captain invited the new arrivals aboard, evidently believing they were there to help him deal with weather damage. Manley’s crew drew their weapons once aboard and the ship was seized without a fight.
The prize proved incredibly valuable to the hard-pressed revolutionaries, who desperately needed military supplies. The Nancy carried 2,000 muskets, 7,000 cannonballs, and 39 tons of shot, along with other vital provisions. So important was the cargo that Washington called its capture an “instance of divine favor.”
In quick succession, Manley and his crew seized four more prizes in December, totaling 900 valuable tons. These exploits attracted a great deal of admiration, even adulation. Lieutenant H. E. Dow recounted in a 1926 Proceedings of the US Naval Institute article that one writer gushed, “As many towns contend for the honor of (Manley’s) birth as they did for that of Homer’s.” General Washington, who wrote to Manley on a number of occasions, remarked that “I wish you could inspire the captains of the other armed schooners under your command with some of your activity and industry.” In the same letter, he appointed Manley commodore of the schooner fleet, with authority to instruct the other captains.
In September 1782, Manley took command of the frigate Hogue, which had been captured from the British. His exploits as captain of the Hogue are a remarkable testimony to his cheek and seafaring skill. On one occasion, the Hogue was chased down by a British naval squadron of four ships much bigger and better armed. Manley tried to outrun them in a three-day chase but ran aground. All four proceeded to pound the Hogue with cannon fire for two solid days. The Hogue steadily returned fire and on the third day, Manley succeeded in refloating the ship and sailing away—firing a thirteen-gun salute as he escaped.
Although these deeds were heroic, Manley did suffer controversy, losing two ships early in the war and thereby earning the slur from his crew of being a “Jonah.” When in that period he was commanding the Jason, a serious squall hit while he was engaging two British ships. The British were driven out to sea, but the masts and sails of the Jason were lost and the crew outright mutinied. They wanted to go into port for repairs so that they could desert. Manley reacted sharply, seizing a cutlass and “running down the deck, singled out the ringleaders of the mutineers and punished them to such a good purpose that within thirty-six hours, the masts were restepped” and other repairs completed. A man of his times, the captain knew precisely what to do when his authority was challenged.
Manley and other skilled privateers formed America’s own “mosquito navy,” which harried and distracted the British navy throughout the Revolution. They succeeded in creating huge difficulties for British seagoing commerce, enraging the British merchant class but eventually emboldening those who wanted to end the war. A similar effect may be unfolding today with Ukraine’s continuing attacks against the Russian navy and critical Russian infrastructure. Perhaps an end to the war in Ukraine will be hastened when the Russian business class tires of uncertainty, hamstrung investment, and skyrocketing insurance rates.
Irregular naval warfare did not originate in the American Revolution, but General Washington and his commanders made excellent use of it in their bid for independence. It laid the keel for the powerful US naval tradition, formed out of daring, creativity, risk-taking—and not a little self-interest, just like the United States itself. John Manley and his fellow privateers are the heroes of this tale, and to them we owe our thanks.
Rose Gottemoeller is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. She is also a lecturer at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).