About the Vessel - History of the Sultana

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Built in the yard of renowned Boston Shipwright Benjamin Hallowell in 1767, Sultana might have gone on to little historical note if it weren't for coincidence. Sir Thomas Asquith, the wealthy merchant she was built for, decided she wouldn't be worth the expense of keeping as the combination cargo vessel & yacht he'd imagined. But through connections in the Royal Navy, he arranged for her to be bought into a new fleet the Admiralty was assembling - small, nimble vessels to ply the North America coast as Revenue Cutters.

The Admiralty needed such maneuverable craft to police merchant traffic, searching their holds for lead, paper, glass and tea that they might be smuggling to avoid taxation under the Townsend Duties - the hated "Tea Taxes." These new tariffs, enacted almost succinctly with Sultana's launch, were designed to help pay off the massive debt England incurred through winning the Seven Years War. Since the British citizenry was burdened enough with taxes - paying nearly 98% of their income - Parliament decided the Colonists should shoulder some of the weight for the government that protected them.

Though Sultana survived a wintertime crossing from Boston to London unscathed, the Admiralty was initially disappointed with her. Promised as a 65 ton Schooner, roughly the size they sought, in reality, she was 52 tons - not large enough to accommodate a full schooner's crew of 30, and not stout enough in her timber to mount a single carriage gun on her decks. Still, the Shipwrights said of her "Appears well wrot and put together," and in the summer of 1768 she was fitted with topmasts, more sail, 8 pound swivel guns and a crew of 25 with newly commissioned Lieutenant John Inglis - a Philadelphia native of Scottish Ancestry and strong Loyalty to the crown - in command.

Lieutenant Inglis and David Bruce, Sultana's Master and second in command, both kept meticulous logs of the vessel's position and duties for every day of her four and a half years of Naval service. Their entries, conjoined with the draughts made in the Deptford Yard and muster books of all 101 men who sailed aboard Sultana, make her one of the most well documented vessels of the Colonial period. Additionally they shed light onto previously unknown historical incidents - such as Inglis and Bruce dining with then Colonel George Washington at his Mt. Vernon Estate in 1770 - and mark the steady rise of Colonial disdain for British Rule

In October 1772, after four years of hard patrolling, searching hundreds of vessels yet only making one seizure, Sultana was ordered back to England. That May she had been challenged by the crew of the Brig Caroline, while the previous year angry Colonists nearly put her to flames while she lay at anchor off Newport. Once the British Naval ensign ceased intimidating Colonial Ships, Sultana lost much of her authority and without it any merchantman with a carriage gun was more than her match for her overworked and under-armed crew.

Daring yet another North Atlantic crossing - this time getting knocked down onto her beam ends and surviving only by cutting away a small boat and essential provisions - Sultana arrived in England in December 1772 and was sold out of service the following January. The detailed records of the Navy cease at that point, and nothing of her fate is known in certainty.