Attacking British Warships
On the afternoon of 3 August, Spitfire joined Lady Washington and Washington in an attack on HMS Phoenix and HMS Rose and engaged the British warships for over two hours before retiring. One man on Spitfire was killed and two were badly wounded. Her hull and rigging sustained much damage.
The two galleys returned to Providence, Rhode Island, late in the month. In mid-September, libels were filed in court on
| “ | three large cables and two large anchors, which late belonged to the British Ship-of-War, called the Scarborough; which…were captured… by…the Row-Galley called the Spitfire. | ” |
Little is known about the curious action which resulted in this litigation in Admiralty court-not even when it occurred.
Read more about this topic: USS Spitfire (1776)
Famous quotes containing the words attacking and/or british:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)