The name of Joshua Barney is unlikely to be familiar with readers.  He was, however, one of the principal American naval heroes of both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.  We have not sufficient space here to recount his long and distinguished career as a combatant; but we will relate his daring escape from British captivity during the revolution, as it illustrates his dominant traits of resourcefulness and courage.

Barney was born in Baltimore in 1759.  His parents attempted to steer him towards a sedentary occupation, but the boy had reserves of energy that could not be easily contained.  He first went to sea at the age of 12; by the age of 16, he was second in command of a merchant ship captained by his brother-in-law.  It is a constant source of amazement for us moderns, when poring over the lives of great men of ages past, to see how much responsibility was successfully entrusted to young men.  Perhaps there is a lesson embedded in this fact. 

When the revolution broke out, Barney immediately sought a participatory role.  His aggressiveness and courage during a fight between the American ship Wasp and the British brig Betsey earned him a commission as a lieutenant.  Bad luck intervened in December 1780, however, when he was captured by H.M.S. Intrepid, commanded by one Captain Malloy.  Barney and seventy other American officers were shipped to England aboard a miserable vessel named the Yarmouth.  His memoirs, written in the third person and published in Boston in 1832, provide a grim picture of the transatlantic journey:

They were confined in the hold of the ship, under five decks—and consequently at least thirty feet under water—in a dungeon, the area of which was twelve feet by twenty, and its height three feet without light, and almost without air—where they were necessarily compelled to remain always in a bent or recumbent posture.  Their food was not only of the worst quality, but supplied in such insufficient quantity, that whenever one of their comrades died—which unhappily but too frequently occurred—in order that the survivors might enjoy the benefit of a surplus ration, they carefully concealed his death, until the body became too offensively putredinous to be longer supported.  They were fifty-three days, in the depth of winter, on the passage from 1781 New York to Plymouth, thus confined and treated—the water was measured out to them with even more parsimony than the food, and so thick with animalcules was it, that they could only drink it through their closed teeth.  In addition to their accumulated miseries, a pestilence broke out among them…[E]leven of their number perished by the fever, generated by the confined air and gathered filth of their dungeon, every one of whom suffered inconceivable agonies in the progress of the disease, and died in a state of rabid delirium…

It took fifty-three appalling days to reach England.  By the time the Yarmouth arrived at her destination, Barney had resolved to escape, no matter the dangers or the cost.  He was incarcerated at Old Mill Prison—later known as Millbay—which also housed French and Spanish prisoners of war; but as “rebels,” they were granted smaller food rations and less privileges than their European counterparts.  Barney’s first escape ended in failure when he and a few comrades crawled through a filthy sewer only to be blocked by an immoveable iron grate.  His next scheme bore the hallmarks of ingenuity, however.  To lull his captors into complacency, he faked an ankle injury and made a point of roaming the prison grounds on makeshift crutches. 

Barney somehow found, and corrupted, a British guard who had spent time in America and was sympathetic to his cause.  This man arranged to have a British officer’s uniform stashed for Barney’s use as a disguise.  On an appointed day, Barney donned the uniform and covered it with his ragged coat.  He had other men distract the attention of the guards and answer for him at roll-call.  A tall prisoner helped him reach the top of the prison wall; soon he was on the other side of the gate.  He took off his prisoner’s coat and walked towards the prison’s front gate, knowing he must look and behave exactly like a British officer if he were to deceive the sentry.  Somehow he managed this, and headed for the town of Plymouth. 

It is clear from his memoirs that there were individuals in Plymouth sympathetic to the American cause, and that Barney had learned their names and addresses.  At the house of a friendly clergyman he found two other Americans who were civilians; the three of them agreed on an escape plan that involved piloting a small boat to the coast of France.  The scheme immediately encountered difficulties.  Barney’s comrades became incapacitated with seasickness, and he had to pilot the boat alone.  Soon his rickety boat was intercepted by a Guernsey privateer who wanted to know why a “British officer” with two sick comrades was rowing a pathetic craft to France.  The officers aboard the privateer were suspicious, but Barney sought to bluff his way through their questions.  He boldly announced that he was on a secret mission on behalf of the crown, and could not divulge the details of his purpose. 

This did not work.  The captain of the privateer detained Barney and arranged to return him to Plymouth to verify his identity.  Taken aboard the privateer, he somehow managed to slip away unobserved in a small boat attached to the ship’s side.  He landed at Cawsand and made his way to Edgcumbe Park; there he charmed an old man to guide him to Plymouth, and was soon back at the house of the clergyman who had previously assisted him.  There he learned that there was a reward of five guineas for the capture of “Joshua Barney, the Rebel Deserter from Mill Prison.”  After three days in hiding he left for Exeter in disguise.  From there he managed to reach Bristol, then London; from there he sailed to Ostend in Belgium, and then to Amsterdam.  By way of adventures too circuitous to elaborate, Barney eventually reached Boston. 

He led a colorful and varied life.  When the war ended in 1783, opportunities for naval officers became severely limited, so he served in the French navy from 1796 to 1802.  This was a controversial decision, as the United States was nearly at war with France in 1798; but we should note that another naval hero of the revolution, John Paul Jones, also sought out foreign military service after Congress made it clear that it had no intention of maintaining a standing army or navy. Barney tried to adapt to civilian life in America after this, but found it uncongenial to his restless spirit.  When war with Great Britain broke out again in 1812, Barney immediately volunteered his services.  He served with great distinction, and his exploits during this war alone could fill a volume.  He died in 1818 of complications from a musket ball wound received during the Battle of Bladensburg in 1814, when he and his men fought the British in hand-to-hand combat in defense of our nation’s capital.    

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Read more about the exploits of daring leaders in the new translation of Cornelius Nepos’s Lives of the Great Commanders.