Patrick Maxfield

Patrick Maxfield of Bedford Village was another of the Old Dartmouth shipbuilders who got involved in the privateering business when the Revolutionary War started.

Maxfield was born in September 1742 in Dartmouth, the son of Timothy Maxfield Jr. (born 1708) and Patience Drinkwater. He died at sea in 1793 off Hispanola, modern-day Cuba.

He was referred to as “mariner” in three deeds for Dartmouth land sales, listed as the builder of the privateer brig Maria, carrying seven or eight guns and a crew of 20 men and licensed as a Massachusetts privateer on Jan. 11, 1781. Businessman Leonard Jarvis, the deputy Continental Agent for the Dartmouth area, was his partner in the venture, along with Bedford Village merchant Joseph Russell, a partner with Jarvis in the Boston-based shipping firm of Jarvis & Russell.

Maxfield was the second commander of the Maria, with Timothy Peirce first taking the helm of the privateer vessel when it was commissioned in November 1778. Maxfield took over after a January 1781 re-commissioning, but he was not in command when the ship was eventually captured by the Royal Navy.

In 1783, Jarvis signed a petition to the Massachusetts Committee on Safety seeking to have Maxfield commissioned as commander of the privateer brig Betsy, approved on Feb. 28, 1783, according to state archives.

Maxfield was clearly a patriotic businessman, perhaps motivated by the British attack on Dartmouth in the fall of 1778. His shipyard in Bedford Village was certainly among those burned by the attacking Redcoats who rampaged through the village.

As early as 1776, Maxfield had petitioned the state to send his schooner Wealthy to South Carolina for a cargo of rice, a much-needed commodity in the blockaded Bay Colony. Joseph Rotch of Bedford had made a similar request earlier that year, proposing to send a cargo of rum and sugar to South Carolina on his sloop Polly, and come back with a load of rice.

It’s hard to tell whether the risks at that time were taken for patriotic or business reasons. “Provisions here scarce,” Barnabas Russell wrote in his petition to release the schooner Rouger for a similar trip south to secure needed food commodities in 1776.

Prices for all foodstuffs and commercial goods began to climb as soon as the war started, and perhaps some ship owners felt the potential profits to be realized would be worth the risk of losing the vessel to the Royal Navy blockade fleet.

When it came to privateering, the potential rewards became much greater for any man who had a good ship and could find the backers to post the cash bonds needed to obtain a letter of marque from the state. The Maxfields, the Russells and the Rotches were just those kind of men, having both the ships and the money to profit from the business of war.

BARREL MAKERS & MINUTEMEN

It seems more likely that the Maxfields were active members of the Sons of Liberty group from the beginning of the conflict. Patrick Maxfield came from a family of coopers — makers of the barrels used to transport everything from nautical commodities, such as salt cod and whale oil, to molasses and rum, two other staples of the local economy.

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20141231/special/141239967