Congress-Savage Engagement

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Congress-Savage Engagement

CONGRESS-SAVAGE ENGAGEMENT. 6 September 1781. In 1781 the privateer Congress, an especially large thirty-two-gun frigate, was completed in Philadelphia for a group of merchants. On 6 September of that year the Royal Navy's fourteen-gun sloop Savage was cruising off Charleston. Captain Charles Stirling, encountering the Congress, made a fatal error of identification and engaged, only to discover that he was badly outgunned by the American ship. A four-hour running battle ensued before Captain George Geddes battered the sloop into submission. The Congress then headed home for repairs. The Savage was recaptured later in the year by the twenty-eight-gun British frigate Solebay.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Millar, John F. American Ships of the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods. New York: Norton, 1978.

                              revised by Robert K. Wright Jr.

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