Background
He was born on July 6, 1759, in Baltimore, the seventh of the fourteen children of Frances (Holland) Barney and William Barney.
He was born on July 6, 1759, in Baltimore, the seventh of the fourteen children of Frances (Holland) Barney and William Barney.
Joshua, with an inborn passion for the sea, was allowed to leave school at the age of ten, but was for three years restrained from following his natural bent, his father compelling him to enter commercial life, the drudgery of which he bore with increasing signs of impatience. Yielding at last to his plainly adventurous nature and his steadfast desire to follow the sea, his father, early in the year 1771, entrusted him to a Baltimore pilot, aboard whose craft he enjoyed a short but useful experience. The next year he was regularly apprenticed to Capt. Thomas Drysdale, his brother-in-law, who commanded a small brig in the Liverpool trade.
Here the boy's extraordinary aptitude for his chosen profession became at once apparent. In January 1775, while on a voyage to Nice with a cargo of wheat, the captain died, and, there being no mate, Barney, at the age of fifteen, took command of the vessel, which, in a leaky condition on account of continued storms, he took safely into Gibraltar. Here he successfully negotiated the loan of a large sum for repairs and proceeded to Nice, where he sold his cargo to advantage in spite of the intrigues and extortions of the Sardinian officials. To circumvent these he made the arduous journey across the mountains to appeal personally to the British minister at Milan, who, astonished and delighted at the lad's boldness, interfered effectively in his behalf.
On his way back to his native land, Barney took advantage of the opportunity to earn money for his employer by chartering his ship as a transport to the Spanish army, and was a witness of its defeat at Algiers, afterward conveying some of the defeated troops back to Alicante. Then, recrossing the Atlantic in the month of October, he appeared before his astonished employer, who with difficulty believed his romantic story. In the same month, October 1775, Barney entered the service of the Colonies as sailing-master (master's mate) of the sloop Hornet, belonging to Commodore Hopkins's squadron, and so distinguished himself at the capture of New Providence in the West Indies, as well as in an engagement of Hazzlewood's flotilla with two strong British ships, acting on this occasion as a volunteer, that, in June 1776, he was commissioned lieutenant in the regular navy by Robert Morris, president of the Marine Committee of Congress, "in consequence of his good conduct with the flotilla. "
Serving gallantly in the sloop Wasp and afterward in the sloop Sachem, he was captured by a British ship while taking a prize into port, but was soon exchanged. In December 1777 he was appointed lieutenant of the frigate Virginia, and early in the next year he captured and took into Baltimore a large enemy sloop and a barge, his humane and courteous treatment of his prisoners earning him a letter of thanks, together with a present of English cheese and porter, from the British naval commander in those waters.
On April 1 the Virginia, in attempting to get to sea, was captured by the British, and Barney, together with a large number of other prisoners, was sent to New York in the St. Albans, after a bold and almost successful effort on his part to organize the prisoners and overpower the ship's crew. He was again exchanged in August 1778. As the activities of the American navy at sea were reduced at this time to almost nothing, owing to the complete control of the coasts by the British shipping, Barney accepted the command of several armed merchant vessels, more than once beating off the attacks of enemy privateers of greater tonnage and heavier armament than his own.
Soon after he was ordered as first-lieutenant to the Saratoga, 16 guns, which, after capturing a number of enemy vessels, herself fell a victim to the British battle-ship Intrepid. Taken to England and confined for nearly a year in the Mill Prison near Plymouth, he escaped only to be retaken, but at the second attempt succeeded, through a series of romantic adventures and disguises, in reaching France and, late in December 1781, arrived at Boston, where John Hancock and Samuel Adams "paid him the honor of their special notice and flattering civilities. "
The Messrs. Cabot of Beverly, well-known ship-builders, offered him the command of a new privateer of 20 guns, with the privilege of choosing his own cruising ground, but he was loath to make a definite engagement before seeing his family again, and in March 1782 he arrived at Philadelphia, where he found his wife and the little son born during his imprisonment. At this time the State of Pennsylvania, irritated at the annoying depredations of the many British "refugee barges and privateers" along her coast, began to fit out, at her own expense, a number of lightly armed vessels to operate in her own waters. Of one of these, the Hyder-Ally, a hastily converted merchantman mounting 16 six-pounders and carrying a crew of only 110 men, Barney was placed in command, with orders to convoy a fleet of merchant ships to the Capes, but on no account to proceed to sea.
On April 8, the fleet being anchored off Cape May awaiting a favorable wind, Barney observed the approach, with evidently hostile intent, of three British war-ships, and signaled for the convoy to stand up the Bay, while the Hyder-Ally covered the retreat. The fleet obeyed and eventually escaped with the exception of two vessels which ran aground. One of the enemy ships, the privateer Fair American, ran down the Hyder-Ally, but, as Barney held his position, she sheered off, at the same time firing a broadside, to which Barney did not reply, wishing to reserve himself for the ship astern which was coming up fast, and which afterward proved to be the General Monk, 20 guns, commanded by Capt. Rodgers, an officer of reputation. To fight this ship broadside to broadside would have been inviting disaster. Instead, the resourceful Barney, waiting for the enemy to get quite near, threw in his own broadside, righted his helm and kept away. The enemy stood boldly on when Barney, using, it is said, the ruse of shouting false orders to his helmsman who had been informed of the stratagem, placed his vessel in such a position that the jib-boom of the British ship became entangled in the fore-rigging of the Hyder-Ally, with the result that the guns of the General Monk could not bear and were useless, while those of the Hyder-Ally raked the Monk fore-and-aft. In twenty-six minutes the British ship, more than twice as powerful in men and metal as her adversary, struck her colors, and Barney, skilfully avoiding the other enemy vessels, took his prize triumphantly into Philadelphia. The American loss was only four killed and eleven wounded, while the loss aboard the General Monk was at least three times as heavy.
Later in the year he was commissioned to bear official dispatches to Dr. Franklin in Paris, where he was made much of by the American Commissioners and by the French officers who had served in America, including Lafayette. In 1783 came the peace with Great Britain. The navy was practically disbanded and the ships laid up or sold, though Barney continued in service until May 1784, longer than any other officer of the Revolutionary navy. There followed for him ten years of various peaceful activities, including commercial ventures by land and by sea, farming and exploration, in the course of which he visited parts of the South and the frontiers of Kentucky, where he found the rough, adventurous life much to his taste, and where he afterward purchased an estate.
In 1787 and 1788 he took an active and influential part as an ardent Federalist, in the debates on the adoption of the Constitution, and had the honor of being for a week Washington's guest at Mt. Vernon. In November 1789 he was appointed Vendue Master by the General Assembly of Maryland, an office of profit which, however, he soon abandoned in order to embark in a commercial undertaking in the West Indies, which, though promising success at first, was eventually ruined by the disorders resultant from the French Revolution and the British "Orders in Council" of June 1793, under which Barney's ship, the Sampson, was condemned and confiscated by the Admiralty Court in Jamaica. In 1794 Barney was named one of the captains to command the six new frigates constructed by Congress in consequence of the depredations of the Barbary corsairs, his name being placed third on the list but after that of Silas Talbot, who was ranked only by John Barry.
Returning to the merchant service, Barney took command of the Cincinnatus, out of Baltimore, and on July 30 arrived at Havre, having on board as a passenger the new American minister to France, James Monroe. The object of the journey was to recover the value of certain dratts on French officials given Barney in lieu of payment at St. Domingo, and to represent an American firm engaged in shipping flour to France. Accompanying Monroe to Paris, he was paid the compliment of being selected by the Minister to present an American flag to the National Convention, on which occasion he received the ceremonial "fraternal embrace. " Soon after this he was offered the command of a 74-gun line-of-battle ship recently taken from the British, but declined, wishing first to carry out his commercial engagements. Bringing these to a close, he held himself at the disposal of the French Minister of Marine, and in the meantime fitted out a small privateer which preyed successfully on British commerce. In 1796 he was appointed captain and chef de division (commodore) in the French navy, in which he served with distinction until, after several attempts to resign, he was, in 1802, discharged and placed on the pension list of the Republic. The most brilliant feature of his French service was the manner in which while being watched by a much superior British force at St. Domingo, he succeeded in getting to sea with two frigates. Returning to Baltimore, he soon found his financial situation improved by the payment of certain long-outstanding debts, and, while continuing to engage in business, he permitted himself to be twice nominated for Congress by one of the Democratic factions, being defeated on each occasion.
. In 1805 he refused the superintendency of the new navy-yard at Washington offered him by President Jefferson. In 1809 he tendered his services to the new president, Madison, being highly indignant at the so-called "Chesapeake incident" (vide James Barron), but he does not seem to have reëntered the regular navy even at the breaking out of the war with Great Britain in 1812. Instead he embarked in privateering enterprises on a large scale, numerous and valuable prizes being taken by the armed vessels under his control, and often under his personal command, during the next two years. Called to Washington by the secretary of the navy in July 1814, for consultation in regard to the protection of that capital, then seriously threatened by a combined sea and land attack, Barney was placed in command of a flotilla of barges carrying heavy guns, together with a few galleys and several schooners, manned by sailors and marines, and for several weeks held the British forces at bay, their repeated attacks being smartly repulsed.
On August 16 he reported to the Navy Department that the British were ascending the Patuxent in force, and he was directed to disembark his men and retire to Washington, which, however, he left early on the morning of August 24, proceeding by a forced march to Bladensburg to meet the advance of the British detachment. There his little body of some 500 men were placed at the center of Gen. Winder's position, Barney himself directing the artillery (2 eighteens and 3 twelve-pounder ship's guns mounted on carriages), while Capt. Miller of the marines commanded the rest of Barney's company, seventy marines and 370 seamen armed as infantry. As at Bunker Hill, the two first attacks of the British were bloodily repulsed, chiefly by Barney's guns, but the enemy assaults on the American militia to right and left found such feeble resistance that the little band of sailors and marines was soon flanked and at length forced to abandon the field, leaving both Barney and Miller wounded and in the hands of the enemy, who lost no time in pressing his advance and seizing the national capital. This heroic resistance of the force under Barney alone saved the combat at Bladensburg from being an unqualified disgrace to American arms. He was presented by the city of Washington with a sword of honor, and was afterward appointed Naval Officer at Baltimore, a position which he held for a short time only. He died at Pittsburgh on December 1, 1818, while returning from a visit to his Kentucky estate.
In March 1780, in his twenty-first year, he married Anne, the daughter of Alderman Gunning Bedford of Philadelphia.