USS FANNING DD-385

NATHANIEL FANNING

Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, November 2017

Nathaniel Fanning — born in Stonington, Connecticut, on 31 May 1755 to Gilbert Fanning, a merchant, and Hulda Palmer — likely enjoyed a familiarity with the sea when hostilities commenced between the break-away American colonists and the British crown. After the British bombarded Stonington in August 1775, Nathaniel decided that the colonists would win the escalating conflict and took up the American cause.

After two cruises on board American letters of marque, Fanning embarked as prize-master on board the privateer brig Angelica.  Under the command of William Dennis, the ship departed Boston on 26 May 1778.  Five days later, on Nathaniel’s twenty-third birthday, lookouts spotted a vessel they supposed to be a Jamaica merchantman and closed.  After approaching the vessel, Angelica’s crew learned with a start that it was in fact a British warship.  The Americans attempted to beat a hasty retreat but the British frigate Andromeda captured Angelica and took her crew prisoner.  The crew endured a difficult Atlantic crossing confined in the hull of the frigate under orders of General William Howe, then returning from America.  After arriving in England, the British held the crew in Forton prison outside of Portsmouth, England. Fanning remained imprisoned there until 2 June 1779 when he was exchanged and transported to France.

Arriving in France he continued by land to L’Orient and arrived on 27 June 1779.   In that city he encountered American Commodore John Paul Jones who invited the experienced seaman to join the crew of the frigate Bonhomme Richard.  The vessel departed L’Orient on 14 August 1779, planning on a short cruise in the English Channel before returning to the United States.  The frigate preyed on British shipping in the English Channel and the North Sea for over a month, capturing, ransoming, or destroying several vessels.

On 22 September 1779, the American squadron was chasing a small convoy when Jones spotted a much larger British convoy –merchantmen guarded by a frigate and a sloop — off the coast of Yorkshire, England.  As Jones’s squadron closed, Midshipman Fanning led a party of fifteen marines and four sailors into Bonhomme Richard’s main top to prepare to engage the enemy with an array of small arms.  The commodore ordered the men in the tops to engage the tops of the approaching British frigate, later identified as Serapis. Fanning and his party were in place when Bonhomme Richard’s guns unleashed the first shots of the engagement.

The British vessel early made use of her superior firepower and maneuverability and gained an advantage on her adversary causing significant damage to the American ship and death among her crew. Bonhomme Richard sought to neutralize that advantage by closing on Serapis and boarding her.  As the vessels maneuvered close aboard, Midshipman Fanning led his men in a murderous fire on the enemy’s tops. The frigates soon became entangled and Jones ordered his crew to grapple the enemy ship and prepare to board.

As the crews of two warships were locked in gunnery duels below, Fanning’s top-men exchanged fire with their counterparts aloft.  After gunfire killed or wounded the majority of his men, Fanning clambered down and gathered a new party. The officer returned and the Americans silenced the final British sharpshooter in the rigging of Serapis approximately forty minutes into the battle.  The Americans in the tops then focused their fire on the enemy decks.  The American sailors and marines pressed their advantage, and took possession of Serapis’s vacant fighting tops by shinnying across the vessels’ interlocked yardarms.  From this position the Americans effectively commanded the entire deck of the enemy warship, firing and dropping grenades at will on any Jack Tar that emerged from below.

The actions of Nathaniel Fanning and his top-men proved crucial to the American victory. With fires raging in the rigging, the hold flooding, and British captives loose below deck, Bonhomme Richard looked nothing like a victorious man-of-war. The men in the tops, however, pinned down and harassed the British crew for hours. Late in the fighting, one of the top-men delivered a serious blow to Serapis by dropping a grenade through an open hatch that set off gunpowder below decks.  The resulting explosion decimated several gun crews.  With the other vessels in the American squadron bringing their guns to bear on Serapis, the British commander capitulated after four hours of battle, conceding the victory to the sinking Bonhomme Richard. After the American frigate sank, Fanning and the crew of Bonhomme Richard sailed to Texel, United Provinces, on board Serapis.

Commodore Jones applauded Fanning’s actions writing Congress, “His bravery…in the action with the Serapis… will, I hope, recommend him to the notice of Congress in the line of promotion.”  According to Commodore Jones “. . . [Fanning] was one cause among the prominent in obtaining the victory.” After a cruise off Spain with Jones in the frigate Alliance, Fanning separated from the Commodore at L’Orient.  The young sailor parlayed his growing reputation into a position as second in command in the French privateer lugger Count de Guichen, being entrusted with that ship’s operational decisions. The vessel departed Morlaix on 23 March 1781 and captured a British privateer the following day. He captured or ransomed several other ships and their crews before the British frigate Aurora caught up with her and forced Fanning’s vessel to surrender. The British exchanged him six weeks later.

Returning to Morlaix, he planned to return to Massachusetts with his prize money and sailed on board a French brigantine privateer on 12 July 1781.  Again his homecoming was ruined, this time by a gale that wrecked the vessel on an island off the coast of France.  Having escaped with his life but with all of his possessions and prize money lost, the hard-luck sailor “came to this determination, never to attempt again to cross the vast Atlantic Ocean until the god of war had ceased to waste human blood in the western world.”  He enlisted with the same French captain that he earlier served under in a privateer cutter Eclipse of eighteen guns.

Eclipse began her cruise in early December 1781, capturing and ransoming several merchant vessels and continued operating successfully against British shipping until early March.  The vessel underwent refitting at Dunkerque [Dunkirk], France until May.  The owners of Eclipse offered Fanning the command, which he accepted, but he was not content to sit idle while his ship underwent a refit. In March 1782, he boldly crossed the channel and visited London on a clandestine errand to redeem, personally, the ransom notes collected on his previous cruise.  After completing his task and gathering intelligence overheard in British coffee houses, he travelled to Dunkerque only to return immediately to London. The American’s second errand to the enemy capital was to deliver letters from the French Court to members of parliament sympathetic to the American cause. After completing his task and touring England, even viewing the King in person, Captain Fanning returned to Dunkerque in time to command Eclipse against His Majesty’s shipping.

Fanning took command of Eclipse on 12 May 1782 at the young age of 27.  He fit her for a cruise around the British Isles and had her painted to appear as a Royal Navy cutter and outfitted his men like British sailors. He styled himself as “Captain John Dyon,” of His Majesty’s Cutter Surprize, to avoid detection, sailing in June 1782 but was soon trapped in the Orkney Islands when two superior British vessels unknowingly blocked his access to open water.  After an audacious attempt to ransom a nearby village failed, Eclipse bribed a pilot and escaped without alarming the two British warships.  He captured several British merchantmen and outran pursuing warships. His crew prevailed in a bloody boarding action against the armed merchantman Lovely Lass and were rewarded with a hold full of valuable West Indian goods.  He returned to L’Orient with his spoils and Eclipse underwent repairs.

In August 1782 the cutter returned to sea quickly capturing two prizes. He was chased by the British fourth rate Jupiter. The ship-of-the-line overhauled Eclipse before Captain Fanning brazenly escaped as a British boarding party was approaching the vessel. He personally took the helm during the escape while ordering his men to lie flat on deck to avoid enemy fire.  After several hours on the run the fleeing cutter spotted an entire British fleet in her path. Captain Fanning ordered his vessel, still disguised as a British cutter, through the heart of the force. He brusquely answered hails from massive ships-of-the-line as Captain Dyon and rushed through the gathered warships. Before the British could realize their mistake and maneuver their plodding vessels to fire, Fanning was clear of their threat.  Jupiter continued pursuit, however, and wounded several of Eclipse’s crew, including Fanning, in the nocturnal chase.  A favorable change in wind, however, allowed the French privateer to shed her stubborn adversary and slip off into the night.

Two days after that narrow escape, the privateer spotted approaching sails and broke the French ensign preparing for battle.  Her opponent, the British Lord Howe, transporting a regiment of British infantry from Ireland, engaged Eclipse with her twelve-gun broadside.  Fanning’s vessel soon outmaneuvered and raked her foe.  Although wounded in the leg by a musket ball, Fanning remained at his station on the deck issuing orders.  Laying Eclipse alongside Lord Howe, Fanning’s men leapt on board the English vessel and engaged in a bloody fight against a superior force of British sailors and soldiers.  After significant losses to both sides, the French privateer proved victorious, but was forced to abandon her prize when a British frigate closed.  Eclipse made off with the crew and ensign of Lord Howe and out-sailed the frigate before arriving at Dunkerque.

Word of Fanning’s exploits impressed officials in France who commissioned him a lieutenant in the French Navy in October 1782.  On the 23rd of that month, Lieutenant Fanning was acting captain of the small cutter Ranger when she stood out for the coast of southeastern England.  Again the officer displayed his audacity by disguising his privateer as an English coasting vessel and sailing alongside an armed British convoy for three days, waiting for an opportunity to strike. The moment presented itself when the convoy dispersed in the dark to avoid hazardous weather. In the confusion, Ranger picked off three surprised privateers and took them as prizes under the noses of their escorts. Fanning’s success greatly handicapped Ranger, however, by depriving the crew of experienced seamen after they were assigned to man the prizes.  The depleted and inexperienced skeleton crew thus had no hopes of escaping when a British cutter closed on the French vessel at sunrise. The enemy cutter overhauled Ranger at 2:00 p.m. and Fanning found himself a prisoner of the British for the third time. The British exchanged him quickly and he returned to Dunkerque only seventeen days after departing, finding his prizes waiting for him.

Only five days after returning to France, Fanning departed on another cruise in command of a small lugger. After only two days, a British frigate spotted the French privateer and overhauled her after a ten-hour chase, and Fanning entered captivity for the fourth time, on that occasion being roughly treated on board the frigate for six weeks before she in turn was captured by a French fleet off the coast of France.  Fanning endeavored to prepare a brig for another cruise before the American commissioners reached a rumored peace with Great Britain.  As the vessel finished her final preparations, notification of a preliminary peace reached Dunkerque on 30 December 1782.  After months touring France and securing his wartime earnings, Fanning embarked on board a French vessel on 30 September.  He disembarked at New York in mid-November and finally returned to the U.S. after an adventurous time abroad.

After over 21 years, Fanning returned to naval service of the U.S. and was commissioned lieutenant on 4 December 1804.  He initially supervised the construction of Gunboat No. 9 at Charleston S.C., then, on 6 May 1805, obtained command of Gunboat No. 1 as she operated between Savannah, Georgia, and Georgetown, S.C. Fanning attempted to prepare his ship for deployment to the Mediterranean to wage war against the Barbary Pirates but the vessel proved not strong enough for a trans-Atlantic voyage, instead operating out of Charleston, S.C., where Fanning fell sick and died of yellow fever on 30 September 1805.