USS Providence (1775) - Service As Katy

Service As Katy

From early 1775, British men-of-war, especially His Majesty’s Frigate Rose, searched Rhode Island shipping and annoyed the colony’s merchants who had become wealthy through smuggling. On 13 June Deputy Governor Nicholas Cooke wrote James Wallace, the frigate’s Captain, demanding restoration of several ships which Rose had captured. Two days later the Rhode Island General Assembly ordered the committee of safety to fit out two ships to defend the colony’s shipping, and appointed a committee of three to obtain the vessels. That day the committee chartered the sloop Katy from John Brown of Providence and the sloop Washington at the same time. The General Assembly appointed Abraham Whipple, who had won fame in the burning of British armed schooner HMS Gaspée in 1772, commander of Katy, the larger ship, and made him commodore of the tiny fleet. Before sunset that day Whipple captured a tender to HMS Rose. Katy cruised in Narragansett Bay through the summer protecting coastal shipping.

The supply of gun powder, an essential commodity scarce in the Continental Army throughout the Revolutionary War, was desperately low during the first year of the struggle for Independence. Late in the summer of 1775 the shortage in Washington’s Army besieging Boston became so severe that he was unable to use his artillery and his riflemen would have been unable to repel an attack had the British taken the offensive.

In an effort to obtain precious powder for the Continental Army, Cooke ordered Whipple to cruise for a fortnight off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, to intercept a powder-laden packet expected from London. He was then to proceed to Bermuda to capture the powder stored in the British magazine there. Katy departed Narragansett Bay 12 September but caught no sight of the packet. Later upon reaching Bermuda, Whipple learned that the powder from the magazine was already en route to Philadelphia.