Neptune's Militia: The Frigate South Carolina During the American Revolution.

Neptune's Militia: The Frigate South Carolina During the American Revolution. By James A. Lewis. (Kent, Ohio, and London: Kent State University Press, c. 1999. Pp. x, 235. $39.00, ISBN 0-87338-632-9.)

For years, readers of naval histories and biographies set during the era of the American War of Independence have encountered brief references to the Dutch-built frigate L'Indien. This formidable vessel was originally expected to sail under the Stars and Stripes, with John Paul Jones, the Scottish-born American commodore, in command. But Jones and his patron Benjamin Franklin, the American minister to France, were forced by straitened American finances to relinquish their claim to the ship. It wound up leased to the state navy of South Carolina and cruised under Commodore Alexander Gillon who, after a somewhat successful voyage in the West Indies, eventually brought the now-renamed South Carolina into Philadelphia for a refit. Gillon was not on board in December 1782 when his command was captured by three British frigates off the Delaware capes while trying to force its way back out to sea. Not until the 1850s was there a resolution between the state of South Carolina and various claimants over financial responsibility for the loss of the ship.

Neptune's Militia, by James A. Lewis of Western Carolina University, is by far the most exhaustively researched and thorough account yet published of Gillon and the South Carolina. Indeed, it is hard to imagine that this particular story will ever need to be told again. In particular, Lewis has carefully investigated Gillon's cruise in the Caribbean, a voyage which did yield several prizes. The South Carolina also assisted Spanish forces with the capture of New Providence in the Bahamas. Students of the Revolution are much more likely to question Lewis's interpretive conclusions than his research. He treats Gillon far more sympathetically than do other writers, who tend to denigrate the commodore's judgment in business, politics, and naval operations. The monetary vexations caused to the state by its nautical namesake over the next seventy years, as well as the controversial involvement of Gillon in the turbulent politics of postwar South Carolina, have undoubtedly contributed to his negative reputation ashore. At sea, it is difficult even now to look beyond the colorful saga of John Paul Jones, a stormy personality who did, nevertheless, fight and win two naval actions against British warships. While it may have had no greater impact on the course of the war than Gillon's activities, Jones's capture of the British warship Serapis remains the most remarkable American naval feat of arms of the eighteenth century. It is hard not to wonder what John Paul Jones might have accomplished in command of L'Indien.

RICHARD G. STONE
Western Kentucky University