THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 25, 1994 TAG: 9409230587
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
Every American history buff knows the timely arrival of a French naval squadron in the Chesapeake Bay in August 1781 contributed largely to the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown in October of the same year.
What is not generally known is that Capt. John Sinclair, a 26-year-old unjustly forgotten Virginian, piloted the French fleet commanded by Admiral De Grasse through the Virginia capes.
Born in Hampton in 1755, Sinclair was the son of Henry Sinclair, a Scottish-born sea captain, and Martha Brock of Isle of Wight County. Henry Sinclair reputedly had been kidnapped as a boy by a Virginia mariner named Meredith from the household of the Earl of Caithness in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Whether this is true has never been definitely proven. The fact remains that Henry Sinclair became a successful Virginia merchant whose vessels carried on a brisk trade with the West Indies.
John Sinclair followed in his father's footsteps. At age 18, he was already the captain of his own ship, the St. Andrew, and had also moved his family from Hampton to Isle of Wight.
Sinclair celebrated his coming of age by marrying Ann Wilson, the daughter of a wealthy Smithfield merchant planter. From then until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War he successfully engaged in a profitable trade with Bermuda as well as St. Eustatius and St. Kitts in the West Indies. Meanwhile, he had thoroughly acquainted himself with Tidewater's waterways, a knowledge that finally brought him to the attention of the French who were then assisting the 13 colonies to gain their independence.
When hostilities broke out in 1776, Sinclair became a captain in the Virginia Navy. For several years thereafter, he smuggled arms and ammunition from the West Indies to the colonial forces. By 1781, when Cornwallis invaded Virginia, Sinclair had become such a trusted patriot that Lafayette, then commander of the Virginia forces, dispatched him to request that all available French warships in American waters sail immediately for the Chesapeake Bay to prevent the British at Yorktown from escaping.
It was then that Sinclair came to the attention of De Grasse, who hired him to pilot his fleet of 28 sails of the line and a due proportion of frigates containing 3,000 troops through the Virginia capes. Once anchored there, the squadron became a formidable naval bastion extending from Lynnhaven Bay to Cape Charles. This automatically prevented naval forces from coming to Cornwallis' assistance.
Sinclair was so proud of having piloted the Ville de Paris, the French admiral's leading vessel, he later had it recorded on his still-existing tombstone. Once the colonies had gained their independence, Sinclair again became a West Indian ship captain. When his first wife died in 1791, leaving a household of small children, he quickly remarried the widow Mary Mackie Ianson, by whom he subsequently had another large family. Through the descendants of both marriages, Sinclair has many descendants now living in the Tidewater area.
A born egalitarian, Sinclair supported the French Revolution when it broke out in 1789. Napoleon became his idol, but this admiration eventually got him into serious trouble with the newly established United States government.
Sinclair outfitted several privateers during the early 1790s to prey on British West Indian shipping. The venture, designed to help France strike back at England with whom it was at war, was temporarily successful. When the federal government and the state of Virginia feared the daring raids made by his captains might contribute to bringing on hostilities from Great Britain, however, Sinclair was halted on the carpet and the raids ceased. Interestingly, Brig. Gen. John Marshall of the Virginia militia, who later became Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, headed the raid on Sinclair's Smithfield shipyard.
Disgruntled, Sinclair moved to a farm called Land's End in Gloucester County, where a portrait of Napoleon was given the place of honor in his parlor. But when Napoleon divorced the Empress Josephine, Sinclair slashed the portrait with the sword he had been awarded for bravery during the Revolution and flung the portrait into the fire.
Sinclair died at Land's End in 1820. A memorial plaque there designates his plantation home as ``the last anchorage of the American Patriot Privateer, and alleged pirate, Captain John Sinclair, 1755-1820.'' by CNB