1783
At the end of a largely uneventful passage, she anchored off Saint-Pierre, Martinique, on 8 January 1783. There Barry found orders to sail to Havana to pick up a large quantity of gold and to deliver it to Congress at Philadelphia. After brief repairs, Alliance resumed her voyage on the 13th, touched at St. Eustatius and Cape Francois, and reached Havana on the last day of January.
However, another American warship, USS Duc de Lauzun, was already in port on the same mission. The specie had already been loaded on that ship, and Barry decided to escort her home. The inevitable delays kept both ships in port until 6 March. The next day, they encountered two Royal Navy frigates which gave chase. Barry chose not to fight these warships rather than risk losing the funds his consort carried, and the American vessels successfully eluded their pursuers. Three days later they encountered the same pair – HMS Alarm and HMS Sibyl – in company with sloop-of-war HMS Tobago.
Still striving to avoid risk to the desperately needed money he was carrying to Congress, Barry again headed southwest to escape from these unidentified strangers and ordered her consort to follow. Far off in that direction, the rigging of another ship appeared over the horizon, sailing away from the others.
Soon Alliance was noticeably pulling away from the pursuers but Duc de Lauzun – second in line – was losing ground to Alarm. In the distance, the newcomer was seen to change course and head toward Alliance. Alarm evidently gave up the chase and headed away. Sybil pressed on and soon began firing at Duc de Lauzun.
Confident in both Alliance's speed and her fighting ability, Barry maneuvered her between Sybil and Duc De Lauzun to demand the full attention of the former so that the latter might slip away to safety. Sybil then turned her fire toward Alliance and managed to send one shot from her bow chaser into the American frigate's cabin, mortally wounding a junior officer and scattering many splinters. Yet Barry held Alliance's fire until she was within a "pistol's shot" of her opponent. At that point, a broadside from the American warship opened some 40 minutes of close-in fighting which finally forced Sybil to flee in the wake of Alarm and Tobago. Ship's logs indicate that this battle was fought off the coast of Cape Canaveral. Captain Vashon, commander HMS Sybil, is recorded as saying “he had never seen a ship so ably fought as the Alliance.” Captain Vashon is further quoted as saying of Barry, “every quality of a great commander was brought out with extraordinary brilliancy”.
Meanwhile, the Treaty of Paris which ended the war and recognized the independence of the United States had been ratified on 3 February 1783, some five weeks before the battle.
The two American ships again headed home on the day following their brush with the British, 11 March, but separated off Cape Hatteras a week later. On the 19th, Alliance met a British ship of the line as she headed in toward the Delaware capes. She gave chase and forced Alliance back out to sea. This created a diversion which allowed Duc De Lauzun to slip into the Delaware unmolested and ascend the river to Philadelphia.
Alliance continued on northward and arrived at Newport, Rhode Island, at midafternoon on 20 March 1783. Since that port could easily be raided by British men-of-war, she soon proceeded up Narragansett Bay and anchored just below Providence. There, her crew was reduced to peacetime needs, and she was thoroughly overhauled.
Ordered to proceed to Chesapeake Bay to take on a cargo of tobacco for shipment to Europe, the frigate got underway on 20 June, but, headed for sea, she struck a rock and was stranded until high tide. Upon floating free, Alliance still seemed to be tight and resumed her voyage via the Virginia Capes and the lower Chesapeake Bay to the Rappahannock River. She then moved up that river where she began taking on tobacco. When completely loaded, she headed downstream on 21 August and sailed into the Atlantic three days later.
Soon after the ship entered the open sea, water rose rapidly in her hold. A hasty investigation revealed that a leak had developed where she had struck the rock weeks before. The crew's attempts to stem the influx failed, forcing Barry to head for the Delaware.
Further examination of the ship at Philadelphia ruled out any quick remedy and caused Congress to cancel the voyage. Her tobacco was transferred to other ships and her crew was further reduced to the bare minimum necessary to keep her in reasonably satisfactory condition. When the survey board reported that the necessary repairs would be quite expensive, no funds were available for the task.
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