Summary

By the end of October, 1775, resistance to the oppressive actions of British naval and military forces had become widespread from Machias, on the northern coast of Massachusetts' Province of Maine, to Savannah, in Georgia. Royal authority in all thirteen colonies had collapsed, with Provincial Congresses or Committees of Safety taking over the reins of government. Three Colonial Governors - William Franklin in New Jersey, Robert Eden in Maryland and Sir James Wright in Georgia, still occupied their ornate offices, shorn of all power, their correspondence intercepted, their every movement shadowed. Five more — John Wentworth in New Hampshire, William Tryon in New York, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, in Virginia, Josiah Martin in North Carolina, and Lord William Campbell, in South Carolina, driven from their seats of government, had fled to the protection of the ships of war, where Tryon and Dunmore maintained an uneasy semblance of authority extending no further than the reach of the guns in His Majesty's ships.

Regiments were being raised in every Province to reinforce Washington's army hemming the British in the narrow confines of Boston or the northern forces under Schuyler closing in on beleaguered St. John's in Canada. Other regiments, under direction of Provincial Congress or Committee, were being employed for local defense and offense — to crush Dunmore in Virginia, and Martin in North Carolina; to keep Tryon on shipboard in New York harbor, and Campbell in like plight at Charleston; and to suppress the back-country insurrections of Tories and Indians in the wildernesses of the western Carolinas.

Ports evacuated by the enemy were being fortified. Powder, saltpetre and muskets were unloading from small ships, which had slipped hrough the ineffective enemy blockade with their precious cargoes into remote inlets along the far-flung shore line of the Continent. Committees of Observation were rigorously en­forcing the regulations of the Continental Association.

Initial efforts at sea were beginning to show results. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and South Carolina boasted of naval vessels in commission or being outfitted. Washington's fleet of armed schooners were all cruising against the enemy's supply ships, and the birth of a Continental Navy had come in October with authorization for the conversion of four merchantmen to ships of war at Philadelphia. This was followed by legislation on November 10 creating the Marine Corps.

Esek Hopkins was named to command the first Continental fleet and the other officers were commissioned including John Paul Jones, first lieutenant of the flagship Alfred.