We’ve visited Esek Hopkins in the past, when we told you about the transgressions he committed that led to today’s activity.

To be fair, when Hopkins chose to engage in the raid on Nassau, the reaction in Congress was mixed, especially at first. John Hancock was happy that the Continental Navy had seized badly-needed war supplies from the British, but members from the Southern colonies were upset by this failure to follow orders. The whole situation became politically quite complex. Part of the problem was that privateers were easier to hire than Continental Navy sailors, and here we had a guy behaving like a privateer. This could only make the problem harder to solve, because privateers wound up getting paid more.

The debate went on for several weeks, with John Adams, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Richard Henry Lee, Robert Treat Paine, and John Paul Jones (who was at Nassau) coming to the defense of Hopkins. Regardless, in the end he was formally censured. In the long run it wound up worse than if he’d simply lost his command, because he had to return to his ship disgraced and with the respect of his officers lost.

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