Benjamin Franklin | Franklin commissions the captain of an eponymous naval vessel

Benjamin Franklin

Letterpress broadside document signed (“BFranklin Presidt.,” with paraph) as President of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, printed on a half-sheet of laid paper (195 x 304 mm, sight), Philadelphia, 1 August 1775, accomplished in a clerical hand, being Nicholas Biddle's commission as Captain of a provincial armed boat called the Franklin, countersigned by the Secretary of the Committee (“Wm. Govett Sect:y”), fine embossed paper seal of the Committee (motto “This Is My Right & I Will Defend It” encircling a liberty cap); rebacked with tissue, lightly browned, tiny holes at some intersecting folds touching two letters. Matted, framed, and glazed with Plexiglas.

Headed “In Committee of Safety,” the present document commissions Biddle and details his responsibilities: “To Nicholas Biddle Esquire. We reposing especial trust and confidence in your Patriotism, Valour, Conduct and Fidelity, Do by these Presents constitute and appoint you to be Captain of the Provincial Armed Boat, called the Franklin fitted out for the protection of the Province of Pennsylvania, and the Commerce of the River Delaware, against all hostile Enterprizes, and for the defence of American Liberty: You are therefore to take the said Boat into your charge, and carefully and diligently to discharge the duty of Captain by doing and performing all manner of things thereunto belonging. And we do strictly charge and require all Officers, Soldiers and Mariners under your command, to be obedient to your orders, as Captain[.] And you are to observe, and follow such orders and directions from time to time, as you all receive from the Assembly or Provincial Convention, during their sessions, or from this or a future Committee of Safety for this Province, or from your superior Officer, according to the Rules and Dicipline of War, pursuant to the trust reposed in you; this Commission to continue in force until revoked by the Assembly or Provincial Convention, or by this or any succeeding Committee of Safety. By order of the Committee.”

Nicholas Biddle (1750–1778), a native of Philadelphia, entered the merchant marine when he was just thirteen, and in 1770 he was appointed a midshipman in the Royal British Navy. After the Boston Tea Party, he resigned from the British service. Despite his youth, Biddle’s experience was recognized by the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, and he was commissioned a captain and given command of a Pennsylvania row-galley, the Franklin.

The Franklin patrolled the Delaware River, and possibly the Schuylkill as well, but less than three months after receiving the present commission, the Continental Congress officially established a Continental Navy. Biddle, longing for more action and more guns, left the service of his home state and accepted command, successively, of the USS Andrew Doria and the USS Randolph, becoming one of the first five captains appointed to the Continental Navy. (The present commission has sometimes been misinterpreted as giving Biddle command of the Continental schooner Franklin, which was fitted out from a Marblehead fishing vessel as part of "Washington's Navy," but Biddle never served on her.) Biddle captured many British prizes, but he was killed at his post when the Randolph was sunk by HMS Yarmouth off Barbados, 7 March 1778. Between 1901 and 1967, four US Navy ships were named for Biddle.

This is an exceptionally rare form of document; Benjamin Franklin was president of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety only from 3 July 1775 until August 1776, when he was succeeded by Thomas Wharton Jr. Franklin had just returned to Philadelphia in May 1775 from London, where he had been resident for a decade. Over the course of the next year, in addition to being named President of the commonwealth’s Committee of Safety, he was appointed as first Postmaster General of the United States and elected to the Second Continental Congress, which in 1776 appointed him to the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence. At the end of October 1776, Franklin sailed to Paris as the American Commissioner to France, an office that would be officially recognized as Minister Plenipotentiary after France had acknowledged the independence of the United States.

Rare Book Hub records only three Committee of Safety appointments signed by Franklin, none since 1979 and all for commissions in the First Battalion of Pennsylvania Associators. No other Pennsylvania Committee of Safety naval appointments can be traced in the auction records.

REFERENCES

Tim McGrath, "I Fear Nothing," in Naval History, Vol. 29, No. 4 (August 2015)

PROVENANCE

Nicolas Biddle (recipient), by family descent to — Christine Biddle Wainwright (Doyle, 4 May 2022, lot 1122)