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The " " ^

Naval Operations

Of the War between Great Britain
and the United States

1812— 18 1 5

Bv
Theodore Roosevelt

Boston : Little, Brown, and Company
London : Sampson Low, Marston, and Company, Ltd.

1901

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Th.

Naval Operations

Of the War between Great Britain
and the United States

1812— 18 1 5

By
Theodore Roosevelt

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Boston : Little, Brown, and Company
London : Sampson Low, Marston, and Company, Ltd.

1901

Copyright, 1901,
By Little, Brown, and Company.

•ill rights reserved.

JGRESS,

Two Copies Received

NOV. 10 1901

Cor'WIOMT ENTRY

CLASS cc XXo. no,
COh

, i . ,

> . • • . '

UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

p

NAVAL OPERATIONS OF THE WAR

BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND

THE UNITED STATES*

1812 - 1815
OUTBEEAK OF THE WAR

/CAUSES of hostility — American unpreparedness — Jefferson's
^"^ peace policy — Irritation engendered by facilities for naturalisa-
tion— The Milan and Berlin decrees, and the Orders in Council —
Hardships brought about by the edicts — Cleveland's experiences —
Basil Hall's testimony — British seamen in the American marine

— American seamen pressed by the British — Berkeley's order —
Affair of the Leopard and the Chesapeake — Jefferson's " commercial
war" — Napoleon's duplicity — British blockade of the American
coasts — Affair of the President and the Litde Belt — Declaration of
war — Indifference of the American people — British over-confidence

— Efficiency of the United States navy — Ships of the United States

— Tonnage and armament — Superiority of the American frigate —
The American personnel — British seamen in the American navy —
Poorness of British gunnery.

IT is often difficult to realise that, in a clash
between two peoples, not only may each side
deem itself right, but each side may really be
right from its own standpoint. A healthy and vig-
orous nation must obey the law of self-preservation.
When it is engaged in a life-and-death grapple with
a powerful foe, it cannot too closely scan the damage
it is incidentally forced to do neutral nations. On
the other hand, it is just as little to be expected that

* Being Chapter xli. of The Royal Navy, a History, Vol. VI.

2 Naval Operations of the War Between

one of these neutral nations, when wronged, will
refrain from retaliation merely because the injuries
are inflicted by the aggressor as a regrettable, but
necessary, incident of a conflict with some one else.

This holds true of the bickering war between
Britain and America which closed the gigantic Na-
poleonic struggles. During nearly a quarter of a
century of tremendous warfare, Britain and France
stood as opposing champions in a struggle which
dwarfed all previous contests and convulsed the en-
tire civilised world. As has been seen, every other
nation of Europe was at one time or another drawn
into this struggle, and almost every other nation
sided now with one, and now with the other, of the
great central pair of combatants. Russia and Spain,
Austria and Prussia, Holland and Turkey, appeared,
now as the subservient allies, now as the bitter en-
emies, of Republican and Imperial France. The
Island Monarchy alone never wavered, and never
faltered. In the countless shifting coalitions framed
against France, there was always one unshifting fig-
ure, that of Britain. Kaiser and King, Tsar and
Cortes, might make war, or sue for peace ; but, save
for one brief truce, the people of Britain never for
a moment relaxed that deadly strain of hostility
which at last wore out even Napoleon's giant
strength.

It was a life and death struggle; and to win,
Britain had to spend her gold, her ships, and her
men like water. Where she was thus lavish of her

Great Britain and the United States 3

own wealth and her own blood, it was not to be
expected that she would pay over-scrupulous heed to
the exact rights of others, above all if these rights
were exercised seriously to her own disadvantage.
While the fight stamped to and fro, the combatants
were far too busy with one another to care whether
or not they trampled on outsiders. In the grim,
relentless, long-drawn warfare, neither side had any
intention of throwing away a chance by quixotic
over-regard for the rights of others ; and both sides
were at times seriously to blame for disregarding
these rights on occasions when to regard them would
not have been quixotic at all, but an evidence of
sound common-sense.

The scarlet-clad armies of Britain played a great
part in the closing years of the struggle, and devel-
oped as their leader the chief of all the generals who
fought under or against Napoleon. Nevertheless it
was the Navy of Britain, it was the British sea
power, which threw the deciding weight into the
contest. The British Navy destroyed the fleets of
France and the fleets of the Spanish, Dutch, and
Danish allies of France, and blockaded the French
ports, and the ports of all powers that were not
hostile to the French. In order to man the huge fleets
with which she kept command of the seas, England
was forced to try every expedient to gather sailors ;
and in order to make her blockade effective she had to
lay a heavy hand on the ships of those neutral powers
that found their profit in breaking the blockade.

4 Naval Operations of the War Between

The United States of America was the only neu-
tral power which at once both tended to drain the
British Navy of a certain number of its seamen, and
at the same time offered in her own seamen a chance
for that same Navy to make good the loss. More-
over, it was the one neutral nation which throve
apace during the years of European warfare by trad-
ing with the hostile powers. So long as they were
not too much harassed, the American merchants
and seamen were greatly benefited by the war in
Europe. The destruction of the French merchant-
men by the British warships, and the constant
harrying of the British merchantmen by the
French privateers, tended to drive trade into neutral
bottoms ; and America was the only neutral nation
prepared to profit greatly by this tendency. She
made the loss of England her gain. Her merchants
shipped cargoes to French ports ; and her merchant
captains, as their trade grew apace, and as they
became short-handed, welcomed eagerly all British
seamen, deserters or otherwise, who might take service
under the American flag in the hope of avoiding the
press-gang and the extreme severity of British naval
discipline.

The Americans were merely exercising their rights ;
but naturally their attitude exasperated not only
Britain, but also France. Each of the two main
combatants was inclined to view with suspicion the
neutral who made a cold-blooded profit out of the
sufferings of both. Each took harsh, and often

Great Britain and the United States 5

entirely unjustifiable, measures to protect himself.
Each in his action was guided very naturally by his
own interests as he saw them. It was Britain with
which America ultimately came to blows, because
Britain possessed far greater power of inflicting
injury; but, according to his capacity, Napoleon
showed a' much more callous disregard for Amer-
ican rights.

The British claimed the right to forbid vessels to
sail to or from ports which they announced as block-
aded, and to search neutral ships for contraband
goods. They also acted upon the doctrine that
" once a subject, always a subject," and that their
warships could at any time take British sailors,
wherever found, on the high seas. The intense vex-
ation and heavy loss caused by the right of search
need not be dwelt upon. The impressment of Amer-
ican seamen was an even more serious business.
Thousands of British sailor-men were to be found on
American vessels. Britain reclaimed these at every
opportunity ; but she did not rest content with this.
Each British war vessel regarded itself as the judge
as to whether the members of the crew of a searched
vessel were British or Americans. If the captain of
such a war vessel were short-handed, he was certain
to resolve all doubts in his own favour ; and, conse-
quently, thousands of impressed Americans served,
sorely against the grain, in British warships.

The whole situation was one that could not but
provoke intense irritation. There was much fraud

6 Naval Operations of the War Between

in the naturalisation of British seamen as Ameri-
cans ; and, on the other hand, there was much brutal
disregard of the rights of American sailors by British
warships. The American merchant cared nothing
for the contestants, save that he wanted to sell his
goods where he could get the best price ; while the
British officer was determined that the American
should not render help to France. From their
respective standpoints, each nation had much to say
in its own favour. Consistently with retaining her
self-respect, America could not submit quietly to the
injuries she received. On the other hand, Britain
could not afford, because of any consideration of
abstract right, to allow any neutral nation to fur-
nish Napoleon with another weapon. War was
almost inevitable.

At the time each people as a whole of course
firmly believed that its own cause was entirely
righteous, and that its opponents were without any
moral justification for their acts ; though the best-
informed Englishmen, those who managed the
councils of their country, evidently felt at bottom an
uneasy sense that their course was not entirely
justifiable, as was shown by the too tardy repeal of
the Orders in Council. The difference in feeling
caused by the difference of point of view was illus-
trated by the attitudes of the British and Americans
towards one another in 1812 and 1862 respectively.
In 1812 the bolder American merchants embarked
eagerly in the career of running cargoes into the

Great Britain and the United States 7

ports of blockaded France, precisely as half a century
later the British of the stamp of Hobart Pasha
swarmed forward to command the blockade-runners
which plied between the British ports and the ports
of the Southern Confederacy. At the earlier date
the Americans resisted and the British upheld the
right of search ; fifty years later it was the American,
Wilkes, who exercised the right, while the British
made ready for instant war unless the deed should
be disavowed.

It was entirely natural that Great Britain should
strive in every way possible to minimise the aid
which America, by the exercise of her rights as a
neutral, gave to France. It was equally natural
that the more reckless and overbearing spirits among
the British naval officers, while carrying out this
policy, should do deeds that were entirely indefen-
sible, and which could not but inflame the Americans
to madness. No American ship was safe from
confiscation, no American seaman was safe from
impressment, either on the high seas, or on the
American coast ; and insult and outrage followed
one another in monotonous succession.

The nation which submitted without war to such
insults erred on the side of tame submission, not of
undue truculence. But it must be remembered that
France was all the time, according to her capacity,
behaving quite as badly as Great Britain. Her sea
strength had been shattered by Britain, so she could
not do America anything like as much harm ; but

8 Naval Operations of the War Between

no British Minister vied with Napoleon in vicious
and treacherous disregard of the rights of both friend
and foe. Nevertheless, France offered the chance of
making money, and Britain did not. Britain could
do her own carrying trade, while the carrying trade
of France was largely in American bottoms. Many
Americans were delighted to balance against the
insults and injuries they received from the mighty
combatants, the profits which flowed into their
coffers only because the combat did not cease.

There was but one possible way by which to gain
and keep the respect of either France or Britain :
that was by the possession of power, and the readi-
ness to use it if necessary ; and power in this case
meant a formidable fighting navy. Had America
possessed a fleet of twenty ships of the line, her
sailors could have plied their trade unmolested ; and
the three years of war, with its loss in blood and
money, would have been avoided. From the merely
monetary standpoint such a navy would have been
the cheapest kind of insurance; and morally its
advantages would have been incalculable, for every
American worth the name would have lifted his
head higher because of its existence. But unfortu-
nately the nation lacked the wisdom to see this, and
it chose and re-chose for the Presidency Thomas
Jefferson, who avowed that his " passion was peace,"
and whose timidity surpassed even his philanthropy.
Both Britain and America have produced men of
the " peace at any price " pattern; and in America,

Great Britain and the United States 9

in one great crisis, at least, these men cost the nation
more, in blood and wealth, than the political leaders
most recklessly indifferent to war have ever cost it.
There never was a better example of the ultimate
evil caused by a timid effort to secure peace, through
the sacrifice of honour and the refusal to make
preparations for war, than that afforded by the
American people under the Presidencies of Jefferson
and Madison. The " infinite capacity of mankind
to withstand the introduction of knowledge " is also
shown by the fact that this lesson has not only been
largely wasted, but has even been misread and mis-
interpreted. National vanity, and the party spirit
which resolutely refuses to see crimes committed
against the nation by party heroes, are partly
responsible for this. The cultivation of a political
philosophy which persistently refuses to accept facts
as they are, and which in America is no dearer to
the unlettered demagogue than to the educated,
refined theorist whose knowledge of political affairs
is evolved in the seclusion of his own parlour, has
also operated to prevent Americans from learning
the bitter lessons which should be taught from the
war of 1812. The wealthy man who cares only for
mercantile prosperity, and the cultivated man who
forgets that nothing can atone for the loss of the
virile fighting virtues, both also forget that, though
war is an evil, an inglorious or unjustifiable peace is
a worse evil. As for England, she knows little or
nothing about the war, and so of course has been

i o Naval Operations of the War Between

equally blind to its lessons. In one way, however,
England does not so much need to be taught these
lessons, for there are few of her politicians or pub-
licists of any note who fail to see the necessity of
her possessing a navy more formidable than any
other navy on the face of the globe.

These men had numerous prototypes in the first
decade of the present century. The Federalists,
who were crystallised into a party under Washing-
ton, did have some appreciation of the fact that
peace is worth nothing unless it comes with sword
girt on thigh. Accordingly, in 1798 and 1799,
under the spur of the quasi-war with France and
the depredations of the Moorish pirates, the Federal-
ists set out to build a navy. They only made a
beginning. The people behind them were too igno-
rant and too short-sighted to permit the building of
the great ships of the line which could alone decide
a war; but they did build half a dozen frigates,
which were the best of their kind in existence. In
1801, however, the Jeffersonian democrats came
into power, and all work on the navy stopped forth-
with. Jefferson hated and dreaded war; and he
showed the true spirit of the non-military visionary
in striving to find some patent substitute for war,
or, if war could not be avoided, then some patent
substitute for the armies and fleets by which war
must be fought. Fatuously unable to learn the
lesson taught by the revolutionary contest, he hoped
to find in levies of untrained militia a substitute for

Great Britain and the United States 1 1

a regular army. As for the navy, he at one time
actually hoped to supply its place by a preposterous
system of what may be called horse-gunboats, that
is, gunboats which could be drawn ashore and
carried on wheeled vehicles to any point menaced
by a hostile fleet. Men who get discouraged by the
attitude of latter-day politicians may draw some
hope and comfort from the reflection that the nation
actually lived through the experiment of trying
Jefferson's ideas. Nevertheless, the trial of this
same experiment caused bitter loss and mortification.

At the present day no student of international law
would justify the attitude of Great Britain in the
quarrel ; but the international standard was differ-
ent among nations at the beginning of the nineteenth
century ; and, moreover, Great Britain was fighting
for her life, and nice customs curtesy to great crises
as well as to great kings.

The United States was still primarily a country of
dwellers on the sea-coast. The bulk of the popula-
tion lay along the Atlantic seaboard. There were
but three states west of the Alleghanies — Kentucky,
Tennessee, and Ohio ; and all three were still frontier
commonwealths. From Salem to Savannah the men
of every seaport city — and as yet there were no
cities of note which were not seaports — looked upon
foreign trade as the surest means to wealth and social
distinction. American shipwrights were already
famous : readers of that delightful book, < Tom
Cringle's Log,' will recall at once the way in which

1 2 Naval Operations of the War Between

Scott speaks of the swift American schooners ; and
their full-rigged ships also were among the best of
their kind on the ocean. Under the stimulus given
by the European war to their trade the merchants
embarked more and more eagerly in foreign ventures,
and ships were turned out of the yards in ever-
increasing numbers. From Maine to Maryland there
was a hardy population of sailor-folk, who manned,
not only the merchantmen, but also the fishing-fleet
and the whalers that went to the North Atlantic and
the South Seas. Under the abnormal growth of the
American merchant marine, however, the growth of
the sailor population was outstripped, and it became
impossible to man American ships purely with
American seamen. Seamen are roving creatures at
all times, and in every country they shift readily
from one flag to another. Seafarers from various
European states, notably from Portugal and the
Scandinavian countries, found their way in numbers
aboard the American ships ; but it was the sailors
of the British Islands who formed the chief resource
in making up any deficiency in the numbers of the
native Americans. The needs of Britain's gigantic
Navy were very great, and every method was re-
sorted to in order to keep level its quota of men.
Life on a British warship was hard, and the British
seamen lived in terror of the press-gang. Read-
ers of Marryat's novels will remember the large
part this institution played in the sea life of that
period.

Great Britain and the United States i 3

Wages on board the American ships were high,
and the service not particularly severe. In con-
sequence, British seamen entered the American
merchant marine literally by thousands. The easy
naturalisation laws of the country were even more
easily circumvented. There was very little difficulty
indeed in any British seaman getting naturalisation
papers as an American. The captains of British
war vessels were continually meeting in the Ameri-
can ports scores of British seamen who passed them
by with insolent defiance, confident in their posses-
sion of American naturalisation papers.

Seeing that this occurred at the very time when
American trading ships were crippling their British
rivals by their competition, and were furnishing
supplies to Britain's dreaded and hated rival, the
anger alike of British Government officials, of
British merchants, and of British naval officers, can
be readily understood. It was sufficiently irritating
to see an American ship carry to a French port
goods which the British wished to keep out of that
port, and which, in happier circumstances, might
have been in a British bottom ; but it was still more
exasperating to know that this very ship might
number among her crew a considerable proportion
of British seamen, at a time when the British fleets
needed every man they could crimp or press. More-
over, such a system of neutral trade and of easy
naturalisation put a premium upon perjury, and the
British grew to look with suspicion upon every

14 Naval Operations of the War Between

statement of an American merchant master, and
every paper produced by an American merchant
seaman.

The French had little in the way of a grievance
against the Americans. Very few French seamen
served under the American flag, certainly not enough
to be of any consequence to the French navy. The
French trade that was driven into American bottoms
would otherwise have been extinguished. On the
other hand, American merchantmen performed a
real service to France when they entered the French
ports. There was one point, however, on which
the American attitude was precisely as exasperating
to France as to Britain, and for the same reason. As
regards their dealings with the insurgent negroes of
Haiti and with the effort to blockade the Haitian
ports, the French stood toward the Americans just
as Britain stood toward them in regard to France.
In each case the American merchants showed, as
might have been expected, the same desire to send
their cargoes to the people who wished to pay for
them, without regard to the rights or wrongs of any
struggle in which these people might be engaged.
The Americans sent small fleets of merchantmen to
carry goods to the negroes in Haiti, who were en-
gaged in a life and death fight with the French, just
as they sent far larger fleets of merchantmen to
carry goods to the French, in their deadly grapple
with the British ; and the French felt as aggrieved
in the one case as the British did in the other.

Great Britain and the United States 15

But the case of Haiti was exceptional. Speaking
generally, no harm, and, on the contrary, much
good, resulted to France from the American neutral
trade. Nevertheless, Napoleon adopted toward the
Americans a course quite as brutal as the British
attitude, and more treacherous. In this he was
mainly actuated by a desire to force the Americans
into war with Great Britain ; but he was swayed by
various and complicated motives from time to time
— motives which it would be impossible to discuss
at proper length here. The intentions of the French
people toward the American Republic, as shown by
the actions of the French Emperor, were as bad as
could be.

The policy of the two nations towards America
was promulgated in a series of edicts — those of
Napoleon taking the form of Decrees dated at Milan,
Berlin, and elsewhere ; and those of the advisers of
King George appearing as Orders in Council. At
different times widely different interpretations were
put upon every decree and order, according to the
strenuousness of the American protest, and the
degree of exasperation of Britain or France. Napo-
leon in particular, whenever it suited him, inter-
preted his own decrees in a sense directly opposite
to their palpable purport ; or, if there was a momen-
tary gain in view, simply denied that he had ever
issued them. In Britain the followers of Fox were
supposed to be more friendly to America than the
followers of Pitt. In theory they were; but in

1 6 Naval Operations of the War Between

practice the attitudes of the two parties were not
materially different. The essential features of the
Orders in Council were, that they prohibited Ameri-
can ships from trading with France, unless they
first cleared from some British port ; and they de-
clared the coast of most of continental Europe to be
blockaded, and provided for the seizure of American
vessels bound thither. They also imposed similar
restrictions upon the very lucrative trade of America
with the West Indian Islands. Napoleon's decrees,
on the other hand, provided that any American
vessel which touched at a British port, or submitted
to search by a British cruiser, should be treated as
hostile, and be confiscated accordingly. Each nation
asserted its right to claim its own seamen, as a
matter of course.

These two series of edicts, if fully carried out,
meant the absolute annihilation of the American
merchant marine, so far as foreign commerce was
concerned, for almost every country in the world
was engaged on one side or the other in the
Napoleonic struggles. In point of intent, the action
of the French was a little the worse; and some of
Napoleon's seizures of American vessels in European
ports were marked by a bad faith which made them
peculiarly repulsive. The attitude of each nation
amply warranted America in declaring war on both.
This was the course which was actually proposed in
Congress, and which should have been followed.
But it was perhaps too much to expect that the

Great Britain and the United States 17

struggling transatlantic republic, which, in point of
regular navy and army, hardly ranked as a fifth-
class power, should at the same time throw down
the glove to the two greatest empires of the world.
Moreover, the Americans very naturally cared much
less what the French and British meant to do, than
what they actually did ; and when it came to doing,
the British were vastly better fitted than the French
to carry out their threats.

French privateers and cruisers occasionally mis-
handled an American vessel, and both ships and
cargoes were confiscated when in French ports,
sometimes even on a large scale ; but it was not for
the self-interest o* the French to molest overmuch
the only neutral*, who could bring them the goods
of which they stood in need ; and there was prac-
tically no trouble about the French impressing sea-
men from American ships, because there were very
few Frenchmen in these ships, and those few could
not hope to disguise their nationality. The American
seaman was inclined to look down upon the French,
but he had not much cause either to fear or hate
them.

With the British, all this was different. In the
first place, the Englishman cordially disliked the
American, because the American was feeding his
foes, and was robbing him both of his men and of
his trade. The fraudulent naturalisation of British
seamen was carried on openly in most American
ports ; and the American flag was used to protect,

1 8 Naval Operations of the War Between

not merely American skippers engaged in carrying
goods, which the British said should not be carried,
to France, but also not a few Frenchmen and
Spaniards, and a larger number of recreant Britons,
who wished to share the profits of the business.
The British ships of war were chronically under-
manned, and every commander had good reason to
believe that almost all American merchant vessels
contained some British seamen to whose service he
felt he was lawfully entitled. It was an article of
faith with him, as with his country, that he had a
right to take these seamen wherever he found them
on the ocean. As a rule he disliked, and half
despised, the Americans;1 he was puzzled and
angered by the chicanery of fraudulent naturalisa-
tion papers and the like wherewith they sought to
baffle him ; and in revenge he took refuge in
brutality. He was himself the judge as to whether
or not he was satisfied in regard to the nationality
of any given seaman ; and he always gave himself
the benefit of the doubt — even when there was no

1 Although a feeling of dislike for one another may have ani-
mated officers and men on both sides, such feeling was by no means
universal; and there are many examples of warm private friend-
ships having subsisted before the war between British and Ameri-
can naval officers, and having been continued after it, even in spite
of hostile meetings having occurred during the conflict. A notable
example of this kind of friendship is to be found in the long and
affectionate intimacy which subsisted between Captain Isaac Hull,
U. S. N., and Captain James Richard Dacres (2), R.N., an intimacy
heightened rather than decreased by the conduct of both on the occa-
sion of the capture of the Guerriere by the Constitution. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 19

doubt. Not only did he impress British seamen who
had been fraudulently naturalised as Americans, but
quite as often he impressed British seamen who had
been properly naturalised and were American citizens,
and, even more often, American citizens who were
such by birth, and not merely by adoption. The
two peoples could not always with entire certainty
be told apart; and when the British captain was
short-handed he did not endeavour to tell them
apart. Many thousands of British seamen served in
the American merchant marine; but there were
several thousand American seamen who had been
impressed into British ships of war. One of the
commonest incidents of the time was for an American
merchantman to be left helpless on the high seas,
unable to reach her port of destination, because the
majority of the crew had been taken off by some
British man-of-war.

In one of Cooper's sea novels, ' Miles Wallingford,'
the action of the story centres upon the experience
of an American merchant captain with a British
frigate and a French privateer; and, like many
another good novel, it is as essentially true to life as
any professed history. When not long from New
York the ship was overhauled by a British frigate
and sent into a British port as a prize, on the ground
that she was sailing for a German port under French
influence, and that there was some doubt as to the
cargo papers ; while most of the crew, Americans
and foreigners alike, were taken aboard the frigate.

20 Naval Operations of the War Between

By surprise, the remaining Americans recaptured
the ship from the British prize crew, only to have
their ship overhauled anew by a French privateer,
and again declared to be a prize, upon the ground
of having been previously captured by the British.
The Americans once more succeeded in regaining
possession of the vessel ; but, having only four
hands with which to work her, she was cast away ;
so that the voyage ended with the ruin of the owner
of the ship, and the impressment of her entire
crew.

This particular incident only occurred in a novel ;
but it was of a kind which occurred hundreds of
times in actual life. It was but rarely that an
American merchant captain of that day did any
writing ; yet one out of the very many Salem ship-
masters has left a record of his ocean trips at the
end of the last and the beginning of the present
centuries.1 He usually owned the ship he navigated,
and her cargo also ; and he sailed at different times
to the chief ports of Europe and Asia, and also to
many a coast where the ports were open roadsteads
and the inhabitants bloodthirsty savages. He was
able to hold his own against mutineers, savages, and
pirates ; but he was twice brought to ruin by
civilised France and Great Britain.

In 1807, when trading to the West Indies, after
having already been repeatedly searched by British

1 ' Voyages of an American Navigator.' By Richard J. Cleve-
land, pp. 124, 143.

Great Britain and the United States 21

cruisers, he was taken by Rear-Admiral the Hon.
A. F. I. Cochrane, and his ship was condemned by a
rascally little court at Tortola, whither he was sent
because a more respectable court would doubtless
have released him. The confiscation of his goods
stripped him to the bone, so that he had to begin
life over again ; and, in writing of the event in after
years, he remarked : " Compelled to navigate for the
support of my family, and deprived in consequence
of superintending the education of my children,
worn with anxiety and sick at heart with hope
deferred, it will be seen that I was for many years
an exile from all that rendered life dear and desir-
able ; and this as a consequence of the robbery of
my hard earned fortune by Admiral Cochrane."

Two years later he again got a ship, which he
took to Naples, whither he was enticed, with a
number of other American merchantmen, by one of
the treacherous proclamations of Napoleon. Having
got the ships into his power, Napoleon, acting
through Murat, had them all seized and confiscated,
without even the formality of a trial. In comparing
the two disasters the sufferer commented upon the
difference between them as being of not much more
consequence than the distinction between " the act
of the highwayman who demands your money at the
muzzle of a pistol, and that of the swindler who
robs you under the form of law." The marvel is,
not that such outrages were resented, but that they
were ever endured.

22 Naval Operations of the War Between

No better description of the attitude of the two
parties, British and American, toward one another
was ever given than is contained in the writings of
a most gallant British officer, Captain Basil Hall,
R.N. In 1831 he published two little volumes of
* Voyages and Travels,' which contained a chapter
called 'Blockading a Neutral Port.' In this he
described what he saw when a midshipman on
board the fifty-gun ship Leander, while she was
lying off New York harbour, to carry out the
instructions of the British Government as to super-
vising the American trade with France. I quote at
some length, condensing a little, from his descrip-
tion because it is the best ever given by a responsible
authority of what really occurred under the Orders
in Council ; and it is written with entire good
temper and truthfulness : —

" The blockading service at any time is a tedious one ;
but upon this occasion we contrived to enliven it in a
manner which, whether legitimate or not, was certainly
highly exciting, and sometimes rather profitable, to us.

"With the outward bound vessels we had little to do,
but with those which came from foreign parts, especially
from France, then our bitter enemy, we took the liberty —
the American said the improper liberty. The ships we
meddled with, so much to the displeasure of the Americans,
were those which, to outward appearance, belonged to
citizens of the United States, but on board which we had
reason, good or bad, to suspect there was cargo owned by
the enemy. Nothing appears to be so easy as to forge
a ship's papers or to swear false oaths ; and, accordingly, a

Great Britain and the United States 23

great deal of French property was imported into America
in vessels certainly belonging to the United States, but
covered, as it was called, by documents implying an
American or neutral right in it. In the very same way,
I suppose, much Spanish property was for a long course of
years imported into South America in English bottoms
when Spain was at war with her colonies. England in that
case acted the part of a neutral, and learned in like manner
for the lucre of gain to trifle with all the obligations of an
oath. The adroit neutral, by watching his time, can always
minister to the several necessities of the combatants, some-
times to one and sometimes to the other, according as the
payment is good or bad, and in such a manner as to be sure
of his own profit, reckless at whose cost. At the same time
he must naturally lay his account with provoking the dis-
pleasure of the powers at war, who in their turn will, of
course, do all they possibly can to prevent the neutral from
lending assistance to their opponents respectively.

" Conflicting nations accordingly have always claimed,
and, when they can, will never cease to enforce, this right
of searching neutral ships in order to discover whether
or not there be enemies' property on board.

" Every morning at daybreak during our stay off New
York we set about arresting the progress of all vessels
we saw, firing off guns to the right and left, to make every
ship that was running in heave to, or wait until we had
leisure to send a boat on board ' to see,' in our lingo, ' what
she was made of.' I have frequently known a dozen, and
sometimes a couple of dozen, ships lying a league or two oft
the port, losing their fair wind, their tide, and, worse than
all, their market for many hours, sometimes the whole day,
before our search was completed. I am not now inquiring
whether all this was right, or whether it was even necessary,
but simply describing the fact.

24 Naval Operations of the War Between

" When any circumstances in the ship's papers looked
suspicious, the boarding officer brought the master and his
documents to the Leander, where they were further
examined by the Captain ; and, if anything more important
was then elicited by the examination of the parties or their
papers to justify the idea that the cargo was French and
not American, as was pretended, the ship was forthwith
detained. She was then manned with an English crew
from the ships of war and ordered off to Halifax, to be there
tried in the Admiralty Court.

" One can easily conceive how this sort of proceeding, in
every possible case, must be vexatious to the neutral. If
the cargo be all the while, bond fide, the property of the
neutral whose nag it is sailing under, the vexation caused
by this interruption to the voyage is excessive. In the
event of restoration or acquittal, the owner's loss, it is said,
is seldom, if ever, adequately compensated for by the
awarded damages.

" We detained, at that period, a good many American
vessels on the ground of having French or Spanish property
on board. Three or four, I remember, were restored to
their owners by the decision of the Admiralty Court'; and
two of them were forcibly recaptured by the Americans on
their way to Halifax. On board one of these ships the
master and the few hands left in her to give evidence at the
trial rose in the night, overpowered the prize master and
his crew, nailed down the hatches, and having put the helm
up, with the wind on land, gained the coast before the scale
of authority could be turned.

*' There was another circumstance, connected with our
proceedings at that time, of still more serious annoyance to
the Americans, and one requiring in its discussion still
greater delicacy of handling. I need hardly mention that I
allude to the impressment of those seamen who were found

Great Britain and the United States 25

serving on board American merchant ships, but who were
known to be English subjects. It seems quite clear that,
while we can hold it, we will never give up the right of
search, or the right of impressment. We may, and ought
certainly to, exercise so disagreeable a power with such
temper and discretion as not to provoke the enmity of any
friendly nation. But at the time I speak of, and on board
our good old ship the Leander, whose name I was grieved,
but not surprised, to find was still held in detestation three
or four and twenty years afterwards at New York, I am
sorry to own we had not much of this discretion in our
proceedings ; or, rather, we had not enough consideration
for the feelings of the people we were dealing with. We
have since learned to respect them more — or, as they prefer
to express it, they have since taught us to respect them : be
it either way, it matters not much; and if it please the
Americans more to say they have instructed us in this
point of good manners, than to allow that we have come to
a knowledge of better habits, well and good.

" To place the full annoyance of these matters in a light
to be viewed fairly by English people : let us suppose that
the Americans and French were to go to war, and that
England for once remained neutral, and that an American
squadron stationed itself off Liverpool. If the American
ships were to detain off the port, within a league or so of
the lighthouse, every British ship coming from France
or from a French colony ; and if, besides looking over the
papers of these ships to see whether all was regular, they
were to open every private letter in the hope of detecting
some trace of French ownership in the cargo what should
we say ? If, out of twenty ships, one or two were to be
completely diverted from their course from time to time,
and sent off under a prize master to New York for adjudica-
tion, I wonder how the Liverpool folks would like it ?

26 Naval Operations of the War Between

Conceive, for instance, that the American squadron employed
to blockade the French ships in Liverpool were short-
handed, but, from being in daily expectation of bringing
their enemy to action, it had become an object of great
consequence with them to get their ships manned. And
suppose, likewise, that it was perfectly notorious to all
parties that on board every English ship, arriving or sailing
from the port in question, there were several American
citizens calling themselves Englishmen, and having in their
possession ' protections ' or certificates to that effect sworn
to in regular form, but all known to be false. If the
American man-of-war, off the English port, were then to
fire at and stop every ship, and, besides overhauling her
papers and cargo, were to take out any seamen, to work
their own guns withal, whom they had reason, or supposed,
or said they had reason, to consider American citizens,
or whose country they guessed from dialect or appearance,
I wish to know with what degree of patience this would be
submitted to on the Exchange at Liverpool, or anywhere
else in England.

" In putting a parallel case to ours off New York, and
supposing Liverpool to be blockaded by the Americans,
on the ground of having to watch some French ships, I
omitted to throw in one item which is necessary to complete
the parallel. In 1804, when we were blockading the French
frigates in New York, a casual shot from the Lcandcr hit an
unfortunate ship's mainboom ; and the broken spar, striking
the mate, John Peirce by name, killed him instantly. The
sloop sailed on to New York, where the mangled body,
raised on a platform, was paraded through the streets in
order to augment the vehement indignation, already at
a high pitch, against the English. Now, let us be candid to
our rivals, and ask whether the Americans would have been
worthy of our friendship, or even of our hostility, had they

Great Britain and the United States 27

tamely submitted to indignities which, if passed upon our-
selves, would have roused not only Liverpool, but the whole
country into a towering passion of nationality ? "

The British Minister, Erskine, laid the situation
fairly before his Government, writing to them that
American ill-will was naturally excited by the
" insulting behaviour " of British captains " in the
very harbours and wraters of the United States,"
while the wdiole coast was blockaded as if in time
of war, and every American ship vigorously searched
in sight of the shore.1

According to the best estimate, some twenty-five
hundred British seamen were drawm annually into
the American merchant marine ; and, on the other
hand, about a thousand seamen, supposed to be
British, but in large part American, were impressed
from American merchantmen by British warships
every year ; while hundreds of these merchantmen
were seized by British cruisers, not merely on the
high seas, but within gunshot of the American
coast. The Americans clamoured in anger, but
took no effectual steps in retaliation. The seafaring
people wrere willing to risk a wrar ; but the merchants
were not, for, after all, the neutral trade was very
remunerative, and, inasmuch as they pocketed the
profits, they were willing to pocket the accompany-
ing insults and injuries. Even the outrages on the
coast met with no more response than the tedious

1 Adams, iv. 143.

28 Naval Operations of the War Between

protests of diplomacy, and an occasional outburst of
indignation in some town which refused for the
moment to furnish provisions to a peculiarly
offensive British frigate. It could hardly be
deemed very spirited retaliation, this refusal to give
green vegetables to the men who slew or imprisoned
American citizens. But finally something occurred
which really did rouse the whole nation, for the
British suddenly extended their theory of the right
of search so as to include, not merely the merchant
vessels, but the warships of the United States.

The British ships on the American coast were
under the command of Vice-Admiral the Hon.
George Cranfield Berkeley, who was stationed at
Halifax. Desertions were rife from among these
ships, and, indeed, were not infrequent from the
American ships themselves. Naturally, whenever a
British ship was lying off an American port, the
American seamen aboard her were eager for a
chance to get ashore and desert ; and some of the
British seamen were delighted to follow suit. In
1807 the Admiral issued an order reciting the fact
that a certain number of deserters had escaped from
various British vessels, which he enumerated, and
directed the captains of the ships under him to
reclaim these deserters wherever found ; specifically
ordering them to search even an American man-of-
war which might be suspected of having them aboard.
At that time a British squadron, including both two-
deckers and frigates, lay off Norfolk. When they

Great Britain and the United States 29

received the news, the American frigate Chesapeake
was about to put to sea. She had aboard her one
of the deserters alluded to, and the 50-gun ship
Leopard, Captain Salusbury Pryce Humphreys, was
despatched to overhaul her and reclaim him.

The Chesapeake rated thirty-eight guns, and on
this voyage carried forty. She was inferior in
strength to the Leopard, about in the proportion
that a 38-gun frigate was inferior to a 44 ; that is,
the inferiority was not such as to warrant her strik-
ing without resistance. The Chesapeake was under
the command of Captain James Barron when she
put out ; and, of course, neither he nor any one else
aboard her dreamed that there was the slightest fear
of attack from the British ships which were lying
at anchor or cruising in the harbour. The Chesa-
peake's decks were lumbered up, and none of her
guns were ready for action, for they were without
gunlocks, and could only be fired by means of slow
matches, or of firing-irons previously heated in the
fire. "When the Leopard approached, Barron still
felt no suspicion of the errand on which she came,
and he was dumbfounded when he was informed of
the purpose to search his ship. It was, of course,
a proposition to which no naval officer who did not
wish to be hanged for cowardice or treason could
submit ; and Barron refused. After a few minutes'
hesitation, he began to prepare for defence; but,
long before the preparations were completed, the
Leopard opened fire. After submitting to three

30 Naval Operations of the War Between

broadsides, which killed or wounded twenty-one
men, the Chesapeake struck. She had been able to
fire in return but a single gun, which Lieutenant
William Henry Allen discharged by means of a hot
coal which he brought in his hands from the galley.
The British then boarded her, and took out four
deserters from British ships, three of these deserters
being Americans, and only one a British subject ;
and the Chesapeake returned to port in an agony of
shame and rage. Captain Barron was court-
martialled, but was acquitted of all charges save
neglect to utilise fully the short period given him
by the Leopard in which to make ready for the fight.
Decatur, however, always considered him more
blameworthy than was shown by the judgment;
and in after life the quarrel between the two men
gave rise to a duel in which Decatur was slain.

The event was a terrible tragedy ; but one touch
of comedy was supplied by Admiral Berkeley's letter
approving the deed. In this he warned Captain
Humphreys, of the Leopard, not to pay heed to
American criticism of a feat which was as lawless
as any deed of piracy ever committed on the high
seas, because he " must make allowances for the
heated state of the populace in a country where law,
and every tie both civil and religious, is treated so
lightly." '

Such an outrage convulsed the whole country for
the moment, and spurred to action even Jefferson,

1 Marshall, ' Naval Biography,' ii. 895.

Great Britain and the United States 31

the most timid and least warlike of presidents ; but
Jefferson, even when angry, was utterly unable to
uphold the honour or dignity of the nation in any
dispute with a foreign power. Though he led the
people wrong, it must be remembered that they were
more than willing to follow his lead; for the
Americans of that day lacked national feeling, and
were possessed of a party spirit rendered more than
usually ignoble because of the fact that the rival
factions fought under the badges of France and
England, and considered all American questions
solely from the standpoint of the foreign nation
whose interests they happened to champion. The
President, the Congress, and the people as a whole
all showed an unworthy dread of the appeal to
arms.

Instead of declaring war, Jefferson put in practice
one of his favourite schemes, that of commercial
war, as he called it. In other words, he declared an
embargo on all American shipping, refusing to
allow any of it to leave American ports, and hoping
thus so to injure the interests of England and
France as to force them to refrain from injuring
America: a futile hope, rightly destined to meet
with the failure which should attend the efforts of
men and of nations that lack that most elementary
and needful of all virtues, the orderly courage of the
soldier. The temper of Jefferson's mind, and the
extraordinary military foolishness of the American
people as a whole, may be gathered from the fact

32 Naval Operations of the War Between

that, in preparing for war, all he could suggest was
that the ships of war should be laid up so as not to
tempt the enemy to capture them; and that the
United States should rely upon the worthless militia
on shore, and the flotillas of equally worthless gun-
boats along the coast. ! The British Government,
through Canning, disavowed Berkeley's act and
recalled him, but accompanied the disavowal with
requests and demands in connection with the Orders
in Council which were in themselves almost as great
insults. Jefferson could not make his embargo work.
It did some damage to Great Britain and France,
but by no means enough to force either to yield,
while it wrought such ruin in America as very
nearly to bring about a civil war. It was a mean
and ignoble effort to avoid war ; and it spoke ill for
its promoters that they should prefer it to the
manlier course which would have appealed to all
really brave and generous natures. At the very
end of his administration Jefferson was forced to
submit to the repeal of his pet measure, and the
substitution of a non-intercourse act, which merely
forbad vessels to sail direct to France or England :
a measure which, if it accomplished no more good,
at least did very much less harm.

The British Government resolutely declined to
withdraw the Orders in Council, or to abandon the
impressment of seamen from American ships ; but,
inasmuch as the measures taken by the American

1 Adams, iv. 159.

Great Britain and the United States 33

government bore equally heavily against France and
Britain, they ceased to blockade the American ports,
or to exercise the right of search on the American
coasts; for they insisted that America must not
favour France at the expense of Britain, and hope
to escape retaliation. An interminable diplomatic
wrangle followed, the British and the French alike
accusing the Americans of favouring their oppo-
nents ; and the Americans endeavouring to persuade
each set of combatants that its conduct was worse
than that of the other, and should be abandoned.
Finally, in 1810, Napoleon made in the last and
worst of his decrees certain changes which the
Americans thought were equivalent to a repeal.
Napoleon and his administrators were steeped in
such seething duplicity, mendacity, and corruption,
that negotiations with the French at that period
afforded a peculiarly difficult problem. He allowed
one set of public officials to issue mandates showing
that the repeal of the decrees was real, and he per-
mitted action to be taken in accordance with these
mandates ; while another set of officers, or even the
same set on some other occasion, might ignore the
alleged repeal and enforce the original decrees.
Just prior to going through the form of a pretended
repeal, he had enforced a sweeping confiscation of
American ships by an act of gross treachery, and he
evaded making restitution for this : while, later, one
of his squadrons burned American merchant vessels
at sea. However, on the assumption that the repeal

34 Naval Operations of the War Between

of the obnoxious decrees had been declared, the
American government discontinued the operation of
the non-intercourse law as against France. There-
upon the British Government, insisting that the
decrees had really not been repealed, renewed the
blockade of the American coast, and there began
once more the familiar series of outrages ; American
ships being confiscated, and American sailors im-
pressed, off the mouth of American harbours, and
within gunshot of the American shore. Even the
greed of gain, and the timidity of the doctrinaire
politicians who believed in a conquest to be achieved
purely by peace, could not withstand this, and the
war spirit rose steadily among the American people ;
although without that accompaniment of forethought,
and of resolute, intelligent preparation, the lack of
which tends to make war spirit merely bluster.

At the time the conduct of the French was in
intention rather worse than that of the English, and
the damage which the French inflicted on the prop-
erty within their clutches was almost as great ; but
they had made a pretence of repealing the obnoxious
decrees, whereas Great Britain positively declined
to repeal the Orders in Council, or to abandon the
right of impressment. Moreover, what was far more
important, the French were remote and could not do
the damage they wished, whereas the British war-
ships were in sight of the American coast, and their
actions were the every-day theme of indignant com-
ment. In such circumstances it was inevitable that

Great Britain and the United States 35

the people, smarting under their wrongs, should feel
inclined to revenge them against the nearer and
more obvious aggressor ; though this did not excuse
the American government for the failure to take a
stand as decided against France as against Great
Britain.

In 1811 there occurred another collision between
armed ships of the two nations. The great frigate,
President, under the command of Captain John
Rodgers, encountered the British sloop of war Little
Belt, under the command of Commander Arthur Batt
Bingham, not very far from the scene of the Chesa-
peake's humiliation. The encounter took place at
night, under a misunderstanding which each alleged
to be the fault of the other. Shots were exchanged,
and a regular fight, lasting about a quarter of an hour,
took place, when the Little Belt, which was not of
a quarter the force of her antagonist,1 was of course
silenced, having thirty-two of her men either killed
or wounded. Not a man was touched on board the
President? Each accused the other of having fired
the first shot and brought on the action. But, taking
into account the great disparity in force between
the combatants, and the further fact that Rodgers
carried a letter of instructions from the Secretary

1 The Little Belt carried eighteen 32-pr. carronades and two
9-prs., with a complement of 121 men and boys; the President, a
" 44-gun " frigate, seems to have mounted thirty-two 24-prs. and
twenty-four 42-pr. carronades. — W. L. C.

2 Rodgers's letter, May 23rd, 1811; Secretary Hamilton to Rod-
gers, June 9th, 1810; Bingham's letter, May 23rd, 1811.

36 Naval Operations of the War Between

of the Navy, which, in effect, directed him to err on
the side of aggressiveness rather than to run any risk
of a repetition of the Chesapeake affair, it is difficult
not to come to the conclusion that the President
was the offender. The incident deeply exasperated
the British captains along the coast, while it put the
Americans in high feather. They accepted it as an
offset to the Chesapeake affair, and no longer dwelt
much upon the need of redress for the latter.

All of this really rendered war inevitable; but
as the American government grew more, the British
Government grew less, ready to appeal to the sword.
Finally, in June 1812, Madison sent in his declaration
of war, the two chief grievances alleged being the right
of search and the impressment of seamen. Almost
at the same time, and therefore too late to do any
good, the British Government repealed the Orders
in Council : a step which, if taken a year before,
would not only have prevented war, but very
possibly would have made America declare war on
France.

Deeply to the national discredit, the American
government and people had made no adequate
preparation for the conflict into which they plunged.
The statesmen who had been in control of the ad-
ministration for the last dozen years, Jefferson and
his followers, were utterly incompetent to guard the
national honour when menaced by a foreign Power.
They were painfully unable to plan or carry out
proper measures for national defence. The younger

Great Britain and the United States 37

democratic-republican leaders, men like Clay and
Calhoun, were unlike their elders in being willing to
fight, but they had not the slightest conception what
war meant, or how to meet the formidable foe to
whom they had thrown down the glove. Instead of
keeping quiet and making preparations, they made
no preparations, and indulged in vainglorious boast-
ings, Clay asserting that the militia of Kentucky
alone would conquer Canada ; and Calhoun, that
the conquest would be made almost without an
effort. The memory of these boasts must have cost
bitter mortification to the authors a couple of years
later. The people as a whole deserved just the
administrative weakness with which they were
cursed by their chosen rulers. Had Jefferson and
the other leaders of popular opinion been wiser and
firmer men, they could have led the people to make
better preparations ; but the people themselves did
not desire wiser or better leadership. The only
party which had ever acted with dignity in foreign
affairs, or taken proper measures for the national
defence and national honour, was the party of the
Federalists ; and the Federalists had sunk into a
seditious faction, especially in New England, where
discontent with the war reached a treasonable pitch
before it ended.

Though at the last the British Government had
seemed reluctant to go into the war, anticipating no
good from it, no question as to the result crossed
the mind of any British statesman, soldier, or sailor.

38 Naval Operations of the War Between

The Morning Post, the organ of the Government,
expressed the general feeling when it said in an in-
spired article that " a war of a very few months, with-
out creating to " (England) " the expense of a single
additional ship, would be sufficient to convince '
(America) " of her folly by a necessary chastisement
of her insolence and audacity." 1 Indeed, there was
one factor which both sides agreed at the outset
could be neglected, and that was the American navy.
The British could hardly be said to have considered
it at all ; and American statesmen so completely
shared the British belief in British invulnerability at
sea, that there was a general purpose to lay up the
American ships in port ; and this course was onLv
prevented by the striking victories with which the
navy opened its career.

The American navy itself did not in the least
share the feelings of its friends and foes. The offi-
cers knew that their ships were, on the whole, better
built and better armed than any foreign ships of
their classes ; and they had entire confidence in
their own training and courage, and in the training
and courage of the men under them. The navy had
been in existence only fourteen years. It was
probably fortunate that the service of none of the
officers extended back to the revolutionary struggle,
when the American warships were really, for the
most part, merely ill-disciplined privateers. The
first experience of the navy, in the struggle with

1 Morning Post, November 12th, 1807.

Great Britain and the United States 39

France, had been honourable. A French frigate and
corvette were captured in single fight, while the
West Indian seas were almost cleared of French
privateers, and no American vessel was lost Then
came the war with the Barbary States, which lasted
four years, and was a still better training school ; lor
though it was mostly a wearisome blockade, yet
there were bombardments, single ship encounters —
in which the vessels of the Moorish pirates were
captured — and desperate cutting-out expeditions,
in which the Yankee cutlass proved an over-match
for the Moorish scimitar. It was in that war that
the commanders who later won distinction against
the lords of the sea, gained their first experience of
hard and dangerous fighting, and of commanding
men in action. They improved the experience thus
gained by careful training in time of peace.

In 1812 the American navy regarded itself with
intelligent and resolute self-confidence. The people
at large not merely failed to possess this confidence,
but also showed criminal negligence in refusing to
build up a navy. The very Congress which declared
for war actually voted down a bill to increase he
navy by twelve battleships and twenty frigates.
The Federalists supported the proposition but the
great bulk of the dominant party, though clamorous
for war, yet declined to take the steps which alone
could have justified their clamour; and in so doing
they represented only too well the people behind
them Their conduct was humiliating to the na-

4o Naval Operations of the War Between

tional honour : it was a crime, and it left a stain on
the national character and reputation. Contempt is
the emotion of all others which a nation should be
least willing to arouse ; and contempt was aroused
by the attitude of those Americans who, in 1812
and before, refused to provide an adequate navy,
and declined to put the country into shape which
should render it fit for self-defence. There are
plenty of philanthropists and politicians in the
America of to-day who show the same timid, short-
sighted folly, and supine indifference to national hon-
our; nor is the breed wholly lacking in England.

In 1812 the navy of the United States, exclusive
of two or three condemned hulks and a score or so
of worthless gunboats, consisted of the following
vessels : —

Ratb.

(GUN9.)

44

44

44

38

38

38

32

28

18

18

16

16

14

14

12

12

Name.

United States
Constitution .
President
Constellation
Congress . .
Chesapeake .
Essex

Adams . .
Hornet
Wasp . .
Argus . .
Syren . . .
Nautilus . .
Vixen . . .
Enterprise .
Viper . . .

Class.

Frigate

Corvette
Ship-sloop

»
Brig-sloop

Brig

Date op
Building.

1797

1797

1800

1797

1799

1799

1799

1799

1805

1806

1803

1803

1803

1803

1799

1810

Tonnage.

1576

1576

1576

1265

1268

1244

860

560

480

450

298

250

185

185

165

148

Great Britain and the United States 41

Tonnage was at that time reckoned arbitrarily in
several different ways. One of the tricks of naval
writers of the period, on both sides, was to compute
the tonnage differently for friendly and foreign
ships, thus making out the most gratifying disparity
in size, for the benefit of the national vanity.1

The four smallest brigs were worthless craft orig-
inally altered from schooners. The other twelve
vessels were among the best of their respective
classes afloat. At that time there were two kinds
of guns in use in all navies : the long gun and the
carronade. The carronade was short and light, but
of large calibre. At long ranges it was useless ; at
short ranges, owing to the greater weight of the
shot, it was much more useful than a long gun of
less calibre. American sloops and brigs were armed
only with carronades, save for two longbow-chasers;
frigates were armed with long guns on the main-
deck, and with carronades and two long bow-chasers
on the quarter-deck and forecastle, or what the

1 The British method of computing tonnage being different from
the American, and even the methods of measurement being differ-
ent it is not possible to make an absolutely accurate comparison of
the' tonnage of the combatants. According to the British methods,
the American frigates would measure from 100 to 150 tons less than
the fi-ures given above. I have discussed the matter fully in the
appendix to mv 'Naval War of 1812.' James, the British histo-
rian, is one of the writers who, especially in dealing with the lake
flotillas, adopts different standards for the two sides ; and his latest
editor has attempted to justify him, by ignoring the fact that the
question is, not as to the accuracy of James's figures by any one
standard, but as to his using two different standards as if they were
the same.

42 Naval Operations of the War Between

Americans called the spar-deck. The only excep-
tion to this rule was the Essex, which was armed
with forty 32-pr. carronades and six Ion* 12's In
comparing the relative force of any pair of com-
batants, the most important item is the relative
weight of metal in broadside; but, in considering
this, allowance must always be made for the differ-
ence between carronades and long guns, the latter
being, relatively to their calibre, much more powerful
and efficient weapons. The annalist of each side
usually omits all considerations of this kind when
they tell against their own people.

The only other class of ocean vessels used by the
Americans during the war may as well be alluded
to here. It consisted of a class of fine ship-sloops,
ol 509 tons, each carrying twenty-two guns, which
put to sea m 1814.

Almost all the American ships carried more guns
than they rated. The 44-gun frigate usually carried
nfty-iour, consisting of thirty long 24's on the
mam-deck, and on the spar-deck two long bow-
chasers, and either twenty or twenty-two carronades
--oJ-pounders in the Constitution, and 42-pounders
m the President and the United States. The Con-
stellation, Congress, and Chesapeake carried forty-eight
guns, twenty-eight long 18's on the main-deck, and
on the spar-deck two long 18's, and eighteen 32-pr
carronades. The ship-sloops carried 32-pr. carron-
ades, and long 1 2's for bow-chasers. The brig-sloops
carried 24 or 18-pr. carronades, according to their size

i

Great Britain and the United States 43

The British vessels with which the American
ships most frequently came in contact were the 38-
gun frigates and the 18-gun brig-sloops. The 38-
gun frigates were almost exactly similar in size and
armament to the American ships of the same rate.
The brig-sloops were somewhat less in size than the
Hornet ; they were supposed to carry eighteen guns,
two bow-chasers and sixteen 32-pound carronades.

The system of rating, like the system of measur-
ing tonnage, was thus purely artificial. The worst
case of underrating in the American navy was that
of the Essex, which rated thirty-two and carried
forty-six guns, so that her real, was 44 per cent, in
excess of her nominal force. Among the British
ships with which the Americans came in contact,
the worst case of underrating was the Cyane, which
was rated at twenty-two and carried thirty-three
guns, making a difference of 50 per cent. The
Wasp carried eighteen guns, the Hornet twenty.
The English brig-sloops almost always carried one
light carronade beyond their rating, and sometimes,
in addition, a light stem-chaser, or two bow-chasers,
thrust into the bridle ports.

The conflicts which at the time and afterwards
attracted most attention were the first three frigate
fights, all of which took place between the Ameri-
can 44's and the British 38's. In each case the
American ship was markedly superior in force.
The countrymen of each combatant tried, on the
one side, to enhance the glory of the victory by

44 Naval Operations of the War Between

minimising this difference in force, and, on the
other, to explain away the defeat by exaggerating
it. The Americans asserted, not merely in their
histories, but even by resolutions in Congress, that
the ships were practically equal in force, which a
glance at the figures given above will show to be an
absurd untruth. The British, on the other hand,
sought consolation in declaring that the American
frigates were " disguised line-of -battle ships. ': This
has been solemnly repeated at intervals to the pres-
ent day. It is of course pure nonsense. The Amer-
ican 44 's were the finest frigates afloat ; but there
had already been 24-pounder frigates, not only in
the British, but also in the French and Danish
navies. One of the British frigates with which the
Americans came in contact was the 40-gun frigate
Endymion. The Endymion, like the Constitution,
carried long 24's on her main-deck, and 32-pound
carronades on her spar-deck. In 1815 she had fifty-
one guns, including a shifting 24-pound carronade,
making a broadside of 698 pounds. The Constitu-
tion that year carried fifty-two guns, and threw a
broadside of 704 pounds. The difference in weight
of metal was therefore just six pounds, or one per
cent., which is certainly not enough to mark the
difference between a 40-gun frigate and a " dis-
guised line-of-battle ship." As a matter of fact,
the difference between the force and the rating was
greater in the case of the Endymion than in that of
the Constitution.

Great Britain and the United States 45

The United States was not the first nation that
invented the heavy frigate, but was the first to use
it effectively. The French 24-pounder carried a ball
about five pounds heavier than that of the Ameri-
can 24, and the 36-pound carronade which the
French put on their spar-decks carried a heavier
ball than the American or British 42-pounder ; for
the French pound was about 15 per cent, heavier
than the English. Nevertheless the French, as well
as the Dutch and Danish, heavy 24-pounder frigates
had failed to distinguish themselves, and had been
captured by the British just as easily as the 18-
pounder frigates. In consequence, the belief was gen-
eral that the 18-pounder frigates were really better
as fighting machines than those with 24-pounders.
The American successes upset this theory, because
the Americans built heavy frigates which were even
better than those built by the French and Dutch,
and put into them officers and seamen who were
able to handle and fight them as no frigates at that
time were handled or fought by any other nation.

The size and seaworthy qualities, and the excel-
lent armament of the American vessels did the
utmost credit, both to those who had planned them,
and to those who had built them. There was one
point in which there was a falling off as compared
with the British. The American foundries were
not very good, and in consequence the guns were
more liable to accidents; and almost all the shot
were of light weight, the shortage varying from two

46 Naval Operations of the War Between

or three to as much as ten per cent. As a result,
the real weight of the American broadside was al-
ways somewhat less than nominal.

The personnel of the American navy consisted of
500 officers, but twelve of whom were captains, and
5230 seamen and boys, of whom 2346 were destined
for the cruising war vessels, the remainder being
for service at the forts and navy yards, in the gun-
boats, and on the lakes. The officers were almost
exclusively native Americans. In the crews, native
Americans also overwhelmingly predominated ; there
were, however, a certain number of foreigners aboard
almost every vessel, the proportion of English being
probably larger than that of any other nationality,
in spite of the fact that Great Britain was the coun-
try with which the Americans were at war. This
proportion of foreigners, and especially of English-
men, varied in the different ships. The captains,
under instructions from the Secretary of the Navy,
got rid of as many English as possible at the out-
break of the war, fearing lest they might be reluctant
to fight against their countrymen. A good many
remained, possibly as many as ten or even fifteen
per cent, of the total in some of the ships, but
certainly a smaller percentage on the average.

The British Navy was so large as to put all com-
parison between it and that of the United States out
of the question. But the British Navy could not be
diverted from the use to which it had so long been
put. It was a knife at the throat of Napoleon, and

Great Britain and the United States 47

it could not be taken away. However, this applied
only to the great fleets, and there was no need of great
fleets for use against America. A few two-deckers,
and a score or two of frigates would, it was believed,
suffice to keep in check the entire American navy,
and to blockade all the important American ports.

The British Navy stood at the height of its splen-
dour and triumph, and higher than any other navy
either before or since. During twenty years of
almost uninterrupted warfare it had cowed or
destroyed the navies of all other European powers.
In fleet action after fleet action it had crushed to
atoms the sea might of France, of Spain, of Holland,
and of Denmark ; in hundreds of single ship fights,
in which the forces engaged on each side were fairly
equal, the monotonous record of Britain's triumphs
had been broken by less than half-a-dozen defeats.
The British officers felt absolute confidence in their
prowess, and they despised their new foes. As a
whole they had begun to pay less attention to
gunnery since Nelson's death ; and this lack of care
and their overwhelming pride and self-confidence
— good qualities, but bad if carried to excess —
made them less fit than formerly to contend on
equal terms for the mastery of the ocean with
enemies more skilful than any they had yet encoun-
tered. Their European antagonists had been com-
pletely cowed, and always entered into a fight half
beaten in advance ; but in the Americans they had
to meet men of a different mettle.

THE EARLY AMERICAN VICTORIES

HPHE President and the Belvidera — The Essex and the Alert —
The Constitution and the Guerriere — The Wasp and the Frolic
— The United States and the Macedonian — The Constitution and the
Java — The Hornet and the Peacock — American privateers — Ef-
fects of commerce-destroying — British discouragement — Admiralty
precautions — Jurien de La Graviere on the war.

IN June, 1812, there were half-a-dozen British
frigates, and one old two-decker, the Africa,
64,1 immediately off the American coast. Had
the American ships been ready they could doubtless
have overcome these, even when collected into a
squadron, as they were as soon as the news of the
outbreak of the war became known. Such a victory
over a squadron would have been an incalculable
benefit to the Americans ; but the administration
had no thought of such action. It wished to lay
up the American frigates in port, and was only pre-
vented from doing so by the urgent remonstrances
of two of the naval captains. The Secretary of the
Navy wrote letters to Captain Isaac Hull urging
him to act, even against a single foe, with timid
caution ; but Hull, fortunately, was willing to bear

1 The Africa, built in 1781, was, in 1812, flagship of Vice-Admiral
Herbert Sawyer (2), who, since 1810, had been Commander-in-
Chief on the Halifax station W. L. C.

Naval Operations 49

the responsibility which his superior shirked.1 How-
ever, even a bold administration could have done
little at the moment. The ships were not ready,
and all that could be done was to send Captain John
Rodgers on a cruise with his own frigate, the Pres-
ident, 44, the United States, 44, Captain Stephen
Decatur, the Congress, 38, Captain John Smith, the
Hornet, 18, Captain James Lawrence, and the Argus,
16, Captain Arthur Sinclair. Rodgers put to sea
on June 21st, hoping to strike the West Indies'
homeward-bound fleet.2 Two days out of the port
he encountered the British frigate Belvidcra, 36,
Captain Richard Byron (2).3 Byron had been in-
formed of the likelihood of war by a New York
pilot boat ; and as soon as he made out the strange
ships he stood away before the wind. The Ameri-
cans made all sail in chase, the President, a very
fast ship off the wind, leading, and the Congress
coming next.

At noon the President was within less than three
miles of the Belvidera, steering N.E. by E. As the
President kept gaining, Byron cleared for action,
and shifted to the stern ports two long 18's on the
main-deck and two 32-pound carronades on the
quarter-deck. At 4.30 4 Commodore Rodgers him-
self fired the President's starboard forecastle bow-

1 Ingersoll's • Second War between the United States and Great
Britain,' i. 377, 381.

2 Captain John Rodgers to the Secretary of the Navy, Sept. 1st,
1812.

8 Brenton, v. 46. 4 Cooper, ii. 151.

4

50 Naval Operations of the War Between

chaser ; the corresponding main-deck gun was next
discharged ; and then Rodgers fired his gun again.
All three shots struck the stern of the Belvidera,
killing and wounding nine men ; but when the
President's main-deck gun was discharged for the
second time it burst, blowing up the forecastle deck
and killing and wounding sixteen men, among them
the Commodore himself, whose leg was broken.
Nothing causes more panic than such an explosion,
for every gun is at once distrusted ; and in the
midst of the confusion Byron opened his stern-
chaser, and killed or wounded six men more. Had
the President pushed steadily on, using only her
bow-chasers until she closed, she would probably
have run abreast of the Belvidera, which could not
then have successfully withstood her; but, instead
of doing this, she bore up and fired her port broad-
side, doing little damage ; and this manoeuvre she
repeated again and again ; while the Belvidera kept
up a brisk and galling fire with her stern-chasers,
and her active seamen repaired the damage done by
the President's guns as fast as it occurred.1 Byron
cut away his anchors, the barge, yawl, gig, and jolly-
boat, and started fourteen tons of water, gradually
shifting his course, and beginning to draw ahead,
and the President, which had lost much ground by
yawing to deliver her broadsides, could not regain
it.2 The upshot of it was that Captain Byron

1 James, vi. 119.

2 Sir Howard Douglas, 'Naval Gunnery,' 419 (3rd edition).

Great Britain and the United States 51

escaped and got safely into Halifax on June 27th,
having shown himself to be a skilful seaman and
resolute commander.1 Subsequently, when engaged
in the blockade of the Chesapeake, he proved him-
self to be as humane and generous to non-combat-
ants as he was formidable to armed foes.

Rodgers's squadron continued its cruise, but re-
turned home two months later without accomplish-
ing anything save the capture of a few merchantmen.
When Byron brought the news of the war to Hali-
fax, a squadron of ships 2 was immediately despatched
to cruise against the United States, under the com-
mand of Captain Philip Bowes Vere Broke, of the
Shannon. Meanwhile the Essex, 32, had to put to
sea under Captain David Porter, after he had in
vain implored the Navy Department to allow him
to change her maindeck carronades for long guns.
She cut out a transport with a couple of hundred
soldiers from a convoy of troopships bound to
Quebec, under the protection of the British frigate
Minerva, 32, Captain Richard Hawkins; and she
captured the British ship-sloop Alert, 16,3 Com-

1 In this affair, Lieutenants John Sykes (2), William Henry
Bruce (2), who was wounded, and the Hon. George Pryse Campbell,
and the Master, Mr. James Kerr, of the Relvidera, specially distin-
guished themselves. (Byron's Disp.) — W. L. C.

2 Africa, 64, Shannon, 38, Belvidera, 36, and JEolus, 32, subse-
quently reinforced by the Guerriere, 38. The scpiadron left Halifax
on July 5th. —W. L. C.

8 The Alert was one of twelve colliers which had been purchased
into the Navy in 1804, and fitted with 18-pr. carronades. In 1812
two only of these craft, the Alert and the Avenger, remained on the

52 Naval Operations of the War Between

mander Thomas Lamb Polden Laugharne, after an
exchange of broadsides, made prize of eight mer-
chantmen, and then returned to New York.1

On July 12th another ship, destined to become
one of the most famous in the American navy, put
out of the Chesapeake. This was the 44-gun frigate
Constitution, affectionately known as " Old Ironsides."
She was commanded by Captain Isaac Hull, than
whom there was no better single ship commander
in the service. Her crew was almost entirely new,
drafts of men coming on board up to the last
moment; but they were of excellent stuff, being
almost all native Americans, cool, handy, intelligent,
and eager to learn their duties. Under the care of
the experienced officers and under-officers they were
got into shape as men-of-war's men without the
slightest trouble. Just before starting, Hull wrote
to the Secretary of the Navy : " The crew are as
yet unacquainted with a ship of war, as many have
but lately joined, and have never been on an armed
ship before. ... We are doing all we can to make
them acquainted with their duties, and in a few
days we shall have nothing to fear from any single-
decked ship." 2

list. In the brief action the Alert had three men wounded. Laug-
harne, his Master, and his Purser were most honourably acquitted for
the loss of the ship ; but the first lieutenant, Andrew Duncan, was
dismissed the service for misbehaviour. — W. L. C.

1 Navy Department MSS., < Captains' Letters,' 1812, vol. ii., No.

128, etc.

2 Navy Department MSS., 'Captains' Letters,' 1812, ii. No. 85.

Great Britain and the United States

53

There was need of hurry. On the afternoon of
July 16th, when some leagues off Barnegat, Hull
sighted Captain Broke's squadron, which had just
previously captured the American brig Nautilus, 14.
This squadron then consisted of the Shannon, 38,
Captain Broke, the Belvidera, 36, Captain Richard
Byron, the Guerriere, 38, Captain James Richard
Dacres (2), the Africa, 64, Captain John Bastard,
and the JEolus, 32, Captain Lord James Nugent
Boyle Bernards Townshend. The Guerriere became
separated from the rest of the squadron, and the
Constitution beat to action and stood toward her, the
wind being very light. The Guerriere also stood
toward the Constitution, but, early on the 17th, when
only half a mile away, she discovered the rest of the
British squadron on her lee beam. She signalled to
these vessels, and they did not answer — a circum-
stance which afterwards caused a sharp controversy
among the Captains ; whereupon, concluding that
they were Commodore Rodgers's squadron, she
tacked and stood away from the Constitution some
time before discovering her mistake. It was now
nearly daylight.

As morning broke all the British ships were in
chase of the Constitution, heading eastward. At 5.30
it fell entirely calm, and Hull rigged four long
24's aft to serve as stern-chasers. At 6 a.m. the
Shannon, the nearest frigate, tried a few shots, which
fell short. Then most of the boats of the squadron
were got out to tow her, and she began to gain on

54 Naval Operations of the War Between

the American. Hall tried kedging. All the spare
rope was bent on to the cables and paid out into
the cutters, and a kedge was run out half a mile
ahead and let go ; whereupon the crew clapped on
and walked away with the ship, overrunning and
tripping the kedge as she came up with the end
of the line.1 Meanwhile fresh lines and another
kedge were carried ahead, and the frigate glided
away from her pursuers. From time to time there
were little puffs of air, and every possible advan-
tage was taken of each. At one time the Guerritre
opened fire, but her shot fell short. Later in the
day the Btividcra, observing the benefit which the
Constitution had derived from warping, did the same,
and, having men from the other frigates to help
her, she got near enough to exchange bow and
stern-chasers ; 2 but fear of the American guns ren-
dered it impossible for either the Belvidera or the
Shannon to tow very near.

The Constitutions crew showed most excellent
spirit, the officers and men relieving one another
regularly, and snatching their sleep on the decks.
All through the afternoon and until late in the
evening the towing and kedging went on, the
British ships being barely out of gunshot. Then a
light breeze sprang up, and, the sails of the Consti-
tution being handled with consummate skill, she
gradually drew away, and throughout the following

1 Cooper is the best authority for this chase.

2 Marshall's ' Naval Biography,' ii. 626.

Great Britain and the United States 55

day continued to gain. In the evening there came
on a heavy rain squall, of which Hull took such
skilful advantage that he greatly increased his lead.
At 8.15 on the morning of the 20th, the British
ships gave up the pursuit. During the three
days' chase Hull had shown skill and seamanship
as great as would be demanded by a successful
battle, and his men had proved their hardihood,
discipline, and readiness for work. If they could
do as well with the guns as with the sails, Hull's
confidence in his ability to meet any single-decker
was more than justifiable ; and Hull was eager
to try the experiment. He did not have long to
wait.

The Constitution put into Boston, and on August
6th made sail to the eastward. Hull acted without
orders from the Department, for the administration
was as yet uncertain as to whether it could afford
to risk its frigates in action. But Hull himself
wished for nothing so much as a chance to take the
risk, and he knew that, not being one of the senior
officers, he would speedily be superseded in the
command of the Constitution. Accordingly, he
sailed, right in the track of the British cruisers, to
the coast of Nova Scotia, where the British fleet had
its headquarters. In the afternoon of the 19th, in
latitude 40° 30' N. and 55° W., he made out a
frigate bearing E. S. E. and to leeward.1 She proved
to be his old acquaintance, the Giierriere, under

1 Letter of Captain Isaac Hull, August 28th and 30th, 1812.

56 Naval Operations of the War between

Captain James Richard Dacres (2).1 It was a cloudy
day, and the wind blew fresh from the N. W. The
Guerriere backed her maintopsail, and waited for
the Constitution, which shortened her sail to fighting
rig, and ran down with the wind nearly aft. The
Guerriere was on the starboard tack, and at
5 o'clock she opened with her weather guns, the
shot falling short. She then wore round and fired
her port broadside, the shot this time passing over
the Constitution} As she again wore to fire her
starboard battery, the Constitution yawed a little and
fired two or three of her port bow-guns. Three or
four times the Guerriere repeated this manoeuvre,
wearing and firing alternate broadsides with little or
no effect; while the Constitution yawed to avoid
being raked, and occasionally fired one of her bow-
guns. The distance was very great, however, and
little or no damage was caused. At 6 o'clock the
Guerriere bore up and ran off with the wind almost
astern on her port quarter under her topsails and
jib. The Constitution set her main-topgallantsail and
foresail, and at 6.5 p.m. closed within half pistol-
shot distance on her adversary's port beam.3 Then
for the first time the action began in earnest, each
ship firing as the guns bore. By 6.20 4 the two were
fairly abreast, and the Constitution shot away the
Guerriere's mizenmast, which fell over the starboard

1 Letter of Captain Dacres, September 7th, 1812.

2 Navy Department MSS., 'Logbook of Constitution? vol. ii.
8 ' Autobiography of Commodore Morris,' p. 164.

4 6.5 p. M. by the Guerriere's time. — W. L. C

Great Britain and the United States 57

quarter, knocking a big hole in the counter, and
brought the ship round against her helm. The
British ship was being cut to pieces, while the
American had hardly suffered at all. The Con-
stitution, finding that she was ranging ahead, put her
helm aport and luffed short round her enemy's
bows, raking her with the starboard guns ; then she
wore, and again raked with her port battery. The
Englishman's bowsprit got foul of the American's
mizen-rigging, and the vessels then lay with the
Guerrieres starboard bow against the Constitution' 's
port quarter.1 The Englishmen's bow-guns played
havoc with Captain Hull's cabin, setting fire to it ;
and on both sides the boarders were called away.
The British ran forward, but Captain Dacres relin-
quished the idea of attacking when he saw the
crowds of men on the American's decks ; 2 while
the Constitutions people, though they gathered aft
to board, were prevented by the heavy sea which
was running. Both sides suffered heavily from the
closeness of the musketry fire ; indeed, it was at
this time that almost the entire loss of the Consti-
tution occurred. In the Constitution, as Lieutenant
William S. Bush of the marines sprang upon the
taffrail to leap on the Guerrieres deck, a British
marine shot him dead; Charles Morris, the first
lieutenant, and John C. Alwyn, the master, had also
both leaped on the taffrail, and both were at the

1 Cooper in ' Putnam's Magazine,' i. 475.

2 Dacres's address to the court-martial at Halifax.

58 Naval Operations of the War Between

same moment wounded by the musketry fire. In
the Guerriere almost all the men on the forecastle
were picked off. Captain Dacres himself was shot
and wounded by one of the American mizentop men
while he was standing on the starboard forecastle
hammocks cheering on his crew; the first and
second lieutenants, Bartholomew Kent and Henry
Ready, and the master, Robert Scott, were also shot
down. The ships gradually worked round until
they got clear. Immediately afterwards the
Guerriere s foremast and mainmast went by the
board, leaving her a defenceless hulk, rolling her
main-deck guns into the water. At 6.30 the Con-
stitution ran off for a little distance, and lay to until
she had repaired the damages to her rigging.
Captain Hull then stood under his adversary's lee,
and the latter struck at 7 p.m., just two hours after
she had fired the first shot ; the actual fighting,
however, occupied but little over twenty-five
minutes.

The Constitution was a very much heavier ship
than the Guerriere. She carried thirty-two long
24's and twenty-two 32-pr. carronades, while the
Guerriere carried thirty long 18's, two long 12's, and
eighteen 32-pr. carronades ; the Constitutions crew
numbered 456 all told, while the Guerriere s num-
bered but 282, and 10 of these were Americans, who
refused to fight against their countrymen, and whom
Captain Dacres, very greatly to his credit, permitted
to go below. Fourteen of the Constitutions men

Great Britain and the United States 59

and 79 of the Gucrricres were killed or wounded.1
The damage done to the Constitution was trilling,
while the Guerriere was so knocked to pieces that
she had to be abandoned and burned by the victors,
who then set sail for Boston, which they reached on
August 30th. " Captain Hull and his officers,"
wrote Captain Dacres, " have treated us like brave
and generous enemies ; the greatest care has been
taken that we should not lose the smallest trifle."

Rarely has any single-ship action caused such joy
to the victors, such woe to the vanquished. The
disparity of force between the combatants was very
nearly in the proportion of three to two. Against
such odds, when there was an approximate equality
in courage and skill, neither Dacres 2 nor any other
captain in the British Navy could hope to succeed.
But hitherto the British had refused to admit that
there was or could be any equality of courage and
skill between them and their foes. Moreover, the
disparity in loss was altogether disproportionate to
the disparity in force. No one could question the
gallantry with which the British ship was fought ;
but in gunnery she showed at a great disadvantage

1 The Guerriere lost 15 killed, including Lieutenant Henry
Ready, and 63 (6 mortally) wounded, including Captain Dacres,
Lieutenant Bartholomew Kent, Master Robert Scott, Master's Mates
Samuel Grant and William John Snow, and Midshipman James
Enslie. — W. L. C.

2 Captain Dacres was tried at Halifax on Oct. 2nd, and, with
his officers and crew, unanimously and honourably acquitted. —
W. L. C.

60 Naval Operations of the War Between

compared to the American, and she was not handled
with as much judgment. Like all the other British
captains on the American coast, Dacres had been
intensely eager to meet one of the large American
frigates, and no doubt of his success had crossed his
mind. British captains, in single-ship contests, had
not been accustomed to weigh too nicely the odds
against them ; and in the twenty years during which
they had overcome the navies of every maritime
power in Europe they had repeatedly conquered in
single fight where the difference in force against
them had been far heavier than in this instance.
This was the case when, in 1799, the British 38-gun
18-pr. frigate Sibyl captured the French 44-gun 24-pr.
frigate Forte; when, in 1805, the Phoenix, 36, cap-
tured the Didon, 40 ; when, in 1808, the San Fiorcnzo,
36, captured the Piedmontaise, 40 ; and in many
other instances. The exultation of the Americans
was as natural as was the depression of the British ;
though both feelings were exaggerated.

Captain Hull owed his victory as much to superi-
ority of force as to superiority of skill ; but in the
next sea fidit that occurred the decisive difference

O

was in skill. On October 18th the American 18-gun
ship-sloop Wasp, Captain Jacob Jones, mounting
sixteen 32-pr. carronades and two long 12' s, with
137 men all told, sailed from the Delaware. She
went south-eastward to get into the track of the
West India vessels ; and on the 16th ran into a
heavy gale in which she lost her jib-boom, and two

Great Britain and the United States 61

men who were on it. On the 17th the weather had
moderated somewhat, and late in the evening she
descried several sails in latitude 37° N. and longi-
tude 65° W.1 These were a convoy of merchantmen
guarded by the British 18-gun brig-sloop Frolic, car-
rying sixteen 32-pr. carronades, two long 6's and two
12-pr. carronades, with a crew of 110 men. She
was under the command of Commander Thomas
Whinyates, and had also suffered in the gale of
the 16th, in which her mainyard had been carried
away.2 The morning of the 18th was almost cloud-
less, and the Wasp bore down on the convoy under
short fighting canvas ; while the Frolic hauled to
the wind under her boom-mainsail and close-reefed
foretopsail, the merchantmen making all sail to lee-
ward. At 11.30 a.m. the action began, the two
ships running parallel on the starboard tack within
sixty yards of one another, the Wasp firing her port
and the Frolic her starboard guns. By degrees the
ships fell off until they were almost before the wind.
There was a heavy sea running, which caused the
vessels to pitch and roll ; and the two crews cheered
loudly as the ships wallowed through the water.
Clouds of spray dashed over both crews, and at
times the muzzles of the guns were rolled under ; 3
but in spite of the rough weather the batteries were
well served. The Frolic fired far more rapidly than

1 Letter of Captain Jones, Nov. 24th, 1812. The American let-
ters can generally be found in ' Niles's Register.'

2 Captain Whinyates' letter, Oct. 18th, 1812.

3 ' Niles's Register,' iii. 324.

62 Naval Operations of the War Between

the Wasp, delivering three broadsides to her oppon-
ent's two, and shooting while on the crests of the
seas. The shot, in consequence, tended to go high.
In the Wasp the captains of the guns aimed with
skill and precision, as the engaged side of their ship
was getting down. They therefore fired into their
opponent's hull ; so that, though they fired fewer
shots, a much larger proportion hit. Four minutes
after the action began, the Wasps maintopmast
was shot away and fell with its yard across the
port foretopsail braces, rendering the head-yards
unmanageable. Ten minutes later the gaff and
mizen-topgallantmast came down; and twenty
minutes after the action had begun, every brace
and most of the rigging was shot away, so that it
was almost impossible to brace any of the yards.
But while the Wasp suffered thus aloft, the Frolic
was suffering far more heavily below. Her gaff
and her head braces were shot away, and her lower
masts wounded; but her hull was cut to pieces.
The slaughter was very great among her crew;
nevertheless, the survivors fought on with splendid
courage. Gradually the Wasp forged ahead, while
the two vessels drew closer together, so that at last
the Americans struck the Frolics side with their
rammers in loading. The Frolic then fell aboard
her antagonist, her jibboom coming in between the
main and mizen-rigging of the Wasp, and passing
over the heads of Captain Jones and Lieutenant
James Biddle as they stood near the capstan. The

Great Britain and the United States 63

bris was raked from stem to stern ; and in another
moment the Americans began to swarm along the
Frolics bowsprit, though the roughness of the sea
rendered the boarding very difficult. A New Jersey
sailor, Jack Lang, was the first man on the bowsprit.
Lieutenant Biddle then leaped on the hammock
cloth to board; but one of the midshipmen who
was following him seized his coat-tails and tumbled
him back on deck. At the next swell he succeeded
in getting on the bowsprit behind Jack Lang and
another seaman, and he passed them both on the
forecastle; but there was no one to oppose him.
Not twenty of the British were left unhurt, and
most of those were below. The man at the wheel
was still at his post, doggedly attending to his duty,
and two or three more were on deck, including
Captain Whinyates and Lieutenant Frederick Bough-
ton Wintle, both so severely wounded that they
could not stand without support. It was impossible
to resist longer, and Lieutenant Biddle lowered the
flag at 12.15, after three-quarters of an hour's
fighting.

A minute or two afterwards the Frolic s masts
went by the board. Every one of her officers was
wounded, two of them mortally.1 The Wasp lost
but ten men, chiefly aloft. Nevertheless, the des-

1 The Frolic went into action with 110 men and boys all told on
board. Of these, 15 were killed and 47 wounded, besides some who
were slightly hurt. Among the wounded were Commander Whin-
yates, Lieutenants Charles M'Kay (mortally), and Frederick Bough-
ton Wintle, and Master John Stephens (mortally). — W. L. C.

64 Naval Operations of the War Between

perate defence of the Frolic in the end accomplished
the undoing of her foe, for in a few hours a British
74, the Poictiers, Captain John Poo Beresford, hove
in sight, and captured both victor and vanquished,
the Wasp being too much cut up aloft to make her
escape.

The two ships were of practically equal force : in
broadside the British used ten guns to the Ameri-
can's nine, and threw a few pounds more weight of
metal, while they had twenty-five fewer men. The
disparity in loss was enormous. The Frolic was des-
perately defended ; no men in any navy ever showed
more courage than Captain Whinyates and his crew.
The battle was decided by gunnery, the coolness and
skill of the Americans, and the great superiority in
the judgment and accuracy with which they fired,
giving them the victory. Their skill was rendered
all the more evident by the extreme roughness of
the sea, which might have been expected to prevent,
and, in the case of the Frolic, actually did prevent,
very great accuracy of aim. In forty-five minutes the
American ship cut her antagonist to pieces, conquer-
ing a foe who refused to admit defeat until literally
unable to return a blow.

On October 8th Commander Rodgers left Boston,
on his second cruise, with the President, United
States, Congress, and Argus. Three days out they
separated. The President and Congress cruised to-
gether, nearly crossing the Atlantic, but did nothing
more than capture a dozen merchantmen, though

Great Britain and the United States 6c

they twice chased British frigates — once the
Nymphe, 38,1 once the Galatea, 36/* They returned
to Boston on December 31st. The Argus got in
about the same time, having herself been chased for
three days by a British frigate.3 She had to start
her water and cut away her boats and anchors to
escape ; but she kept her guns, and during the chase
actually succeeded in taking and manning a prize,
though the delay allowed the pursuer to get near
enough to open fire as the vessels separated.

The fourth ship of Rodgers's squadron met writh
greater luck. This was the frigate United States,
44, Captain Stephen Decatur. She was a sister ship
to the Constitution, but mounted 42-pr. carronades
instead of 32's, and had a crew of 478 officers and
men all told. On October 25th, in latitude 29° N.
and longitude 29° 30' W., she descried a sail on her
weather-beam, twelve miles distant.4 This was the
British 38-gun frigate Macedonian, Captain John
Surmam Carden. Unlike the Guerriere, which had
been captured from the French, she was a new oak-
built ship, rather larger than any of the American
18-pr. frigates. She carried a crew of 301 men all
told. Her armament wTas like the Guerriere s, ex-
cept that she had two long 18's fewrer on the main-

1 Captain Farmery Predam Epworth. The Nymphe was sighted
and chased on October 10th. — W. L. C.

2 Captain Woodley Losack. The Galatea was sighted on October
31st. — W. L. C.

8 Letter of Captain Arthur Sinclair, Jan. 4th, 1813.
4 Letter of Captain Decatur, Oct. 30th, 1812.

5

66 Naval Operations of the War Between

deck, and two long 9's extra on the spar-deck.
Like the Guerriere, she had an 18-pr. carronade
extra, so that she presented twenty-five guns in
broadside, throwing 547 pounds of shot ; while the
United States had twenty-seven guns in broadside,
throwing nominally 846 pounds of shot, although
owing to the short weight of metal the actual broad-
side was probably under 800.

The Macedonian was reputed to be a crack ship.
Captain Carden had exercised every care to gather
a crew of picked, first-rate men. He had also taken
every opportunity to get rid of all the shiftless and
slovenly seamen. Both he himself and his first
lieutenant, David Hope, were merciless disciplina-
rians, and kept the crew in order by the unsparing
use of the lash, in which they seemed positively to
delight. They were feared even more than they
were hated, and the discipline of the ship was
seemingly perfect ; but they made the men under
them detest the service.1

Lieutenant Hope said afterwards that the state of
discipline on board was excellent ; and that in no
British ship was more attention paid to gunnery.2

i ' Thirty Years from Home, or a Voice from the Main-deck, be-
ing the Experience of Samuel Leech,' fifteenth edition, 1847, pp. 89,
99, etc. Leech was an Englishman who was a sailor in the Mace-
donian ; he afterwards entered the United States service, with others
of the Macedonian's crew. He belonged to the British Nonconform-
ist type, which has so many points in common with the average
American citizen. His rambling reminiscences are by no means
without value.

2 Marshall's ' Xavy Biography,' ii. 1018.

Great Britain and the United States 67

The results of the action showed, however, that the
discipline was that of a martinet, and that in intelli-
gence and judgment the gunners of the Macedonian
could not compare with those in the United States,
where the sailors were admirably drilled, and yet
were treated so humanely that the captured crew
speedily wished to enlist among them.

Captain Carden knew nothing of the defeat of the
Guerricre, and was most anxious to engage the
United States. Once, while at Norfolk before the
war, he and Decatur had met and joked one another
as to which ship would win if they met in battle.
The Macedonians people were entirely confident of
victory, although among the crew there was a gen-
erally expressed wish that the antagonist were a
French, instead of an American, frigate, because
they knew that they could whip the French, and they
had learned from the Americans on board that the
Yankee frigates carried heavy metal.

Of these American seamen there was a considera-
ble number among the crew of the Macedonian. A
British seaman, who served long on the Macedonian,
in writing out his reminiscences in after-life, gave a
vivid picture of how they happened to be on board.
In one place he described the work of the press-gang
at a certain port, adding " among (the impressed
men) were a few Americans ; they were taken with-
out respect to their protections, which were often
taken from them and destroyed ; some were released
through the influence of the American Consul ;

68 Naval Operations of the War Between

others, less fortunate, were carried to sea, to their
no small chagrin." When the ship was at Norfolk,
as already mentioned, the sailors were denied all
liberty to get on shore lest they should desert.
" Many of our crew were Americans ; some of
these were pressed men ; others were much dis-
satisfied with the severity, not to say cruelty, of our
discipline; so that a multitude of the crew were
ready to give leg-bail, as they termed it, could they
have planted their feet on American soil." 1 Before
going into action some of these Americans requested
permission not to fight against their countrymen ;
but Captain Carden, unlike Captain Dacres, refused
to grant this permission, and ordered them to the
guns under penalty of death. One or two of them
were killed in the action. The crew of the United
States was mainly composed of native Americans,
but among the foreigners on board there were a
number of Englishmen, as well as many Americans,
who had served in the British fleet.2 All did their
duty equally well.

1 Leech, pp. 80, 102.

2 " That Britons were opposed to Britons in the Macedonian
action is no less true than lamentable. Most of her gallant de-
fenders recognised old shipmates in the British Navy among those
who had fought under the American flag. We have already stated
that a quartermaster discovered his first cousin in the person of a
traitor. Two other seamen met with brothers from whom they had
been long separated ; and Mr. James, in his ' Naval History,' informs
us that an officer's servant, a young lad from London, named Wil-
liam Hearne, found his own brother among the United States' crew.
... It is also worthy of remark that many of the guns on board the

Great Britain and the United States 69

As soon as it was evident what the United States
was, the Macedonian beat to quarters, the bulkheads
were knocked away, the guns were cast loose, and
in a few minutes all was ready. In the excitement
of the battle the men forgot their wrongs, real and
fancied, and went into action in good spirits ; and
throughout the fight they continued to cheer heart-
ily. The junior midshipmen were stationed below
on the berth-deck with orders to shoot any man who
ran from his quarters ; and the captain exhorted the
men to show fidelity and courage, quoting Nelson's
famous words, " England expects every man to do
his duty." 1

The Macedonian then bore down toward the
United States, which stood toward her with the
wind a little forward of the portbeam. Captain
Carden, from over-anxiety to keep the weather-
gage,2 hauled by the wind, and passed far to wind-
ward of the American. Decatur eased off and fired

United States were named after British ships, and some of our most
celebrated naval commanders. Captain Carden, observing ' Vic-
tory' painted on the ship's side over one port, and 'Nelson' over
another, asked Commodore Decatur the reason of so strange an
anomaly. He answered : • The men belonging to those guns served •
many years with Lord Nelson, and in the Victory. The crew of the
gun named ' Nelson ' were once bargemen to that great chief. ..."
— Marshall : ' Nav. Biog.' ii. 1019. But it does not necessarily fol-
low that men who had served with Nelson were British subjects ;
and it is admitted on both sides that before 1812 very many Ameri-
cans had served with honour in the British Navy. — W. L. C.

1 Leech, 127, etc.

2 Sentence of court-martial held on board the San Domingo, 74,
at Bermuda, May 27th, 1813.

jo Naval Operations of the War Between

a broadside, which fell short ; he then held his luff,
and, the next time he fired, his long main-deck gnns,
the only ones used, told heavily. The Englishman
responded with his long 18's, but soon found that at
long bowls the American had the advantage, not
only in weight of metal, but also in rapidity of
fire, for the broadsides of the United States were
delivered almost twice as fast as those of the
Macedonian} Captain Carden soon altered his mind
and tried to close ; but he had lost his chance by
keeping his wind in the first place, and, when he
bore up and down with the wind on his port-
quarter, he exposed himself to heavy punishment.
The United States at 10.15 a.m. led her maintopsail
aback and used her whole port broadside. The
British ship replied with her starboard guns, hauling
up to do so, while the American alternately eased
off and came to, keeping up a terrific fire. The
guns of the Macedonian caused some damage to the
American's rigging, but hardly touched her hull,
while Carden' s ship suffered heavily both below and
aloft, and her decks began to look like slaughter-
pens. The British sailors fought like tigers — some
stripped to the shirt, others to the naked skin.
Those who were killed outright were immediately
thrown overboard. One man, who was literally cut
almost in two by a shot, was caught as he fell by
two or three of his shipmates, and, before the last
flicker of life had left him, was tossed into the sea.

1 James, vi. 169.

Great Britain and the United States 71

Lieutenant Hope showed that, though a cruel task-
master, he at least possessed undaunted courage.
He was wounded, but as soon as the wound was
dressed returned to the deck, shouting to the men
to fight on; and he alone advised against striking
the flag, preferring to see the ship sink beneath
him.1 The Macedonian gradually dropped to leeward,
while the American forereached until the firing
ceased. Finding herself ahead and to windward, the
United States tacked and ranged up under the
Macedonians lee, at 11.15, when the latter struck
her colours, an hour after the action began.

The United States had suffered very little. Some
of her spars were wounded, and the rigging was a
good deal cut up ; but her hull had not been touched
more than two or three times. As the ships were
never close enough to be within fair range of
grape and musketry, only a dozen of her men
were killed and wounded. The Macedonian, on the
other hand, had received over a hundred shots in
her hull ; her mizenmast and her fore and main-
topmasts were shot away, and on the engaged side
all her carronades but two, and two of her main-deck
guns, were dismounted, while one hundred and four 2
of the crew were either killed or wounded.3

1 Leech, 131.

2 The killed numbered 38, including Boatswain James Holmes,
Master's Mate Thomas James Nankivel, and Mr. Dennis Colwell,
schoolmaster. Among the 68 wounded were Lieutenants David

3 Captain Carden's Letter, Oct. 23th, 1812.

72 Naval Operations of the War Between

When the Americans came on board to take
possession, the British crew, maddened by the sight
of their dead comrades, heated with the fury of the
battle, and excited by rum they had obtained from
the spirit-room, evinced a tendency to fight their
captors. But the latter showed so much good
humour, and set to work with such briskness to
take care of the wounded and put the ship to rights,
that the two crews soon became the best of friends,
and ate, drank, sang, laughed, and yarned together
with hearty goodwill. A rather unexpected result
was that the majority of the captive crew soon
showed a disposition to enlist in the American navy,
especially when they found out how much more
kindly the seamen were treated in the American
ships. The Americans, however, not only refused
to enlist them, but also kept close guard over them
to prevent their escape, as it was wished to send
them to England in a cartel to exchange for
American prisoners.1 However, in one way or
another, most of them managed to get away, a few
only venturing to enlist in the American navy, as
death would naturally be their portion if they were
recaptured and recognised by the British.

Hope and John Bulford, Master's Mate Henry Roebuck, Midship-
man George Greenway, and Mr. Francis Baker, first-class volunteer.
Captain Carden and his officers and men, upon trial for the loss of
the ship, were most honourably acquitted, the court specially com-
mending Carden's gallantry, and the good conduct and discipline of
all concerned. — W. L. C.

1 Leech. He is the authority for most of the incidents of the
action, as seen from the Macedonian.

Great Britain and the United States 73

Decatur discontinued his cruise to take back his
prize to the United States. He reached New London
in safety, and the Macedonian became part of the
American navy.

In this fight the Macedonian s only superiority
over the United States was speed. In force she was
very much inferior, about in the proportion of three
to two, so that only marked superiority in seaman-
ship and gunnery could have given her the victory.
As a matter of fact, however, the superiority was
the other way. Decatur handled his ship faultlessly,
and "William Henry Allen, first lieutenant of the
United States, had trained the men to the highest
point of efficiency in the use of the guns. The gun
practice of the Macedonian s crew was apparently
poor, but this was probably as much the fault of the
captain as of the gunners, for he first kept off too
far, so as to give all possible advantage to the
24-poimders of the Americans, and then made his
attack in such a manner as to allow his skilful
adversaries to use their guns to the best advantage.
The Macedonian was bravely fought, and was not
surrendered until there was no hope of success left.
Still, the defence was not so desperate as that of the
Essex, nor indeed did the ship lose so heavily as
the Java or CJiesapeaJce. Captain Carden had bravely
encountered heavy odds, for during the preceding
twenty years the traditions of the British Navy had
taught him that it was possible to win against such
odds. This had been proved scores of times in

74 Naval Operations of the War Between

single fight at the expense of the French, the
Spaniards, the Dutch, the Danes, and the Turks.
But only a real superiority in skill could have
warranted the effort. An eminent British officer,
Sir Howard Douglas, sums up the action very
justly, though he ascribes wholly to inferior gun-
nery what should be in part ascribed to lack of
judgment on the side of the commanding officer.
He says : —

" As a display of courage the character of the service was
nobly upheld ; but we would be deceiving ourselves were
we to admit that the comparative expertness of the crews
in gunnery was equally satisfactory. Now, taking the dif-
ference of effect as given by Captain Carden, we must draw
this conclusion — that the comparative loss in killed and
wounded (104 to 12), together with the dreadful account he
gives of the condition of his own ship, while he admits that
the enemy's vessel was in comparatively good order, must
have arisen from inferiority in gunnery, as well as in
force."

Elsewhere the same writer comments upon the
dangers to which encounters with skilful opponents
exposed captains who had been led by repeated
triumphs over men of inferior discipline and ability
to feel that defeat was out of question, and to
" contemn all manoeuvring as a sign of timidity."
It was the old lesson of the ill effects of over-confi-
dence, complicated by the effects of following under
wrong conditions the course which a great man had
followed under right ones. Timid manoeuvring

Great Britain and the United States 75

was an error, especially in the presence of an unskil-
ful or inferior foe ; and it was to such manoeuvring
that Nelson alluded when — or if — he said, " Never
mind manoeuvring — go at them." Nelson knew
very well when to manoeuvre and when not to, and
his own genius and the skill of his captains and
seamen enabled him to defy heavy odds. But it
was a very different thing for would-be imitators of
Nelson's tactics who lacked his genius, and who had
to encounter superiority in skill as well as superi-
ority in physical force.

On October 26th,1 the Constitution, Captain
William Bainbridge, and the Hornet, Captain James
Lawrence, sailed ; and, after cruising to and fro,
arrived off San Salvador on December 13th. There
they found a British ship of twenty guns, the Bonne
Citoyenne, Captain Pitt Burnaby Greene, almost
exactly of the Hornet's force, and Lawrence chal-
lenged her captain to single fight, the Constitution
giving the usual pledges not to interfere. The chal-
lenge was refused, for a variety of reasons ; among
others, because the Bonne Citoyenne was carrying
home half a million pounds in specie. Leaving the
Hornet to blockade her, Bainbridge ran off to the
southward.

At 9 a.m. on December 29th, while the Constitution
was running along the coast of Brazil about thirty
miles off shore, in latitude 13° 6' S. and longitude

1 James says that the Constitution and Hornet left Boston on
October 30th. — W. L. C.

yd Naval Operations of the War Between

32° W.,1 she made out the British frigate Java,
Captain Henry Lambert, inshore and to westward.2
The Java at once bore down in chase, while the
Constitution stood toward her on the starboard tack.3
The Java was of the same strength as the Guerriere,
except that she had a crew of about four hundred
men,4 and carried two long guns less, and two car-
ronades more.5 The Constitution had sent ashore
two of her carronades, and had four hundred and
seventy-five men in her crew.

The Java was much the swifter ship, for the
weak point in all the American 44's was their lack
of speed. In point of physical force the combatants
stood more nearly on an equality than in either of

1 James (vi. 126) gives the time of sighting as 2 p. M. (an obvious
error), and the position as lat. 13° 6' S., long. 30° W. — W. L. C.

2 Letter of Captain Bainbridge, Jan. 3rd, 1813.

8 Letter of Lieutenant Henry Ducie Chads, Dec. 31st, 1812.

4 James explains that on August 17th, 1812, the Java, 38 (ex-
Renommee), had been commissioned at Portsmouth to carry to Bom-
bay the newly-appointed governor, Lieut. -General Hislop and a
supply of stores ; and says that her ship's company included about
60 raw Irish landsmen, and 50 disaffected seamen from the Coquette,
18, besides a considerable number of Marine Society boys — in all
397 persons of every description, mainly inexperienced. She had
sailed from Spithead on November 12th, in charge of two Indiamen,
and, on December 12th, had captured the American merchantman
William, into which she had put a prize crew of 20, all told. The
Indiamen had afterwards parted company, and the Java had put
into San Salvador for water. — W. L. C.

6 See Roosevelt's ' Naval War of 1812,' p. 126, for full discussion
of the figures given above. The official accounts contradict one
another flatly. The reason for the great number of men aboard the
Java was because she was carrying part of the crews for three other
British ships.

Great Britain and the United States 77

the other frigate duels, the odds being about five to
four, or rather less — odds which were a heavy
handicap to the Java, but which were not such as
to render the contest by any means hopeless if the
weaker party were even slightly superior in skill
and fighting efficiency.

The Constitution stood away from the land towards
the S.E., while the Java made sail on a parallel
course to windward, and gained rapidly. At half-
past one the Constitution shortened her canvas to
fighting rig, and ran easily off on the port tack.
The Java also shortened sail, and came down off
the wind toward her adversary's weather quarter.
The colours of the two ships floated from every mast
in proud defiance, the decks were cleared to fighting
trim, and the men stood ready at quarters. At
2 p.m. they opened fire at long range, the British
with the lee and the Americans with the weather
guns. The firing was very spirited, and at the
beginning the ships suffered about equally, for the
first broadside of the Java was well aimed, killing
and wounding several of the Constitutions crew.
The Englishman kept edging down until he got
well within range of grape and musketry. Being
swifter, he soon forereached, intending to wear
across his antagonist's bow and rake him ; but Bain-
bridge anticipated the movement, and himself wore
in the smoke. The two antagonists again ran off
side by side, with the wind on their starboard beams,
the Englishman still a-weather, and steering freer

7S Naval Operations of the War Between

than the Constitution, which had luffed to close.1
The action went on at pistol-shot distance ; but in
a few minutes the Java again forged ahead out of
the weight of her adversary's fire and then kept off
as before ; and. as before, the Constitution avoided
this by wearing, both ships once more coming round
with their heads to the east, the American still to
leeward. The Java kept the advantage of the wind,
and still forereached a little ; and she sought to rake
the Constitution as the latter from time to time
luffed in the endeavour to close ; but after the first
broadside or two her gunnery had fallen off. Most
of the loss which she inflicted was inflicted early in
the action.

Bainbridge, finding that his foe outsailed him,
and that he was therefore constantly in danger of
beino- raked, set the Constitution s foresail and main-
sail, and came up close on the Jaws lee beam. The
weight of his fire then told heavily, and among other
losses the Jams jib-boom and the end of her bow-
sprit were carried away. The Constitution in her
turn forced ahead, and again wore in the smoke.
The Java hove in stays, but the loss of her headsail
made her fall off very slowly; and the American
frigate, passing across her stern two cable-lengths
away, raked her heavily. As the Java fell off she
replied with her port guns, and the two vessel? bore
up and ran off with the wind nearly aft, the Java
still to windward. She was suffering heavily, and

1 Xavy Departmental MSS.. Log of Constitution.

Great Britain and the United States 79

the Constitution very little. The ships were well
within musketry range, and the British lost many
men by the fire from the American topmen, and
still more from the round and grape ; but the crew
showed no signs of flinching, and fought on like
tigers. Captain Lambert saw that he was beaten at
the guns, and that he was being. cut to pieces both
below and aloft ; and he resolved to try boarding.
The helm was put a-weather, and the Java came
down for the Constitutions main-chains. The boarders
and marines gathered in the gangways and on the
forecastle, the boatswain having been ordered to
cheer them with his pipe that they might make a
clean spring.1 But boarding was a hazardous ex-
periment to try against an enemy not already well
beaten at the guns. As the Java came down, the
Americans raked her with terrible effect, taking out
her foremast and maintopmast. The stump of the
Java's bowsprit caught in the Constitutions mizen-
rigging, and she was raked again, while the Ameri-
ican marines and topmen, by their steady fire,
prevented any effort to board.

Finally the ships got clear ; and once again they
ran off abreast. Again the Constitution forereached,
and, wearing, luffed up under the Java's quarter,
raked her with the starboard guns, and wore again,
recommencing the action with her port battery.
Once more the vessels were abreast, and the action

1 Minutes of court-martial held on board H.M.S. Gladiator,
Portsmouth, April 23rd, 1813.

80 Naval Operations of the War Between

went on as furiously as ever, the Java refusing to
acknowledge defeat. The wreck of her tophamper
lay over her starboard side, taking fire every few
minutes ; and at that time her able and gallant
commander was mortally wounded by a ball fired by
one of the American maintop men.1 Lieutenant
Henry Ducie Chads then took the command, though
painfully wounded. The British sailors continued
to fight with undaunted resolution, cheering lustily ;
but nothing could stand against the cool precision
of the Yankee fire. The decks of the Java looked
like a slaughter-house ; one by one her masts fell ;
her guns were silenced ; and she lay a sheer hulk on
the water, when, at 4.5 p.m., the Constitution, think-
ing that her adversary had struck, ceased firing and
passed out of action to windward. There she spent
an hour in repairing damages and securing her
masts; then, in practically as good condition as
ever, she stood towards her foe, who struck his
flas;.

The American ship had suffered but little either
in hull or aloft, and, after an hour of repairs, was
again in good fighting trim. Thirty-four of her
crew were killed or wounded,2 for the Java had
been more skilfully handled and more stubbornly
fought than either the Guerriere or the Macedonian.
The British ship was a riddled and dismasted hulk.
" The Java sustained unequalled injuries beyond the

1 Report of the Surgeon of the Java.

2 Report of the Surgeon of the Constitution.

Great Britain and the United States 81

Constitution" ran the statement of one of her offi-
cers.1 One hundred and twenty-four of those on
board her were killed or wounded.2 Captain Bain-
bridge reported that the Java was " exceedingly
well handled and bravely fought," and paid a de-
served tribute to the worth and bravery of Captain
Lambert ; 3 while Lieutenant Chads in his report
stated that " our gallant enemy has treated us most
generously," and Lieutenant-General Hislop pre-
sented Bainbridsre with a handsome sword. Owing;
to the distance from home, the Java was destroyed,
and the Constitution presently returned to the United
States.

The fight was remarkable because of the rather
complicated nature of the manoeuvres, and the skill

1 ' Xaval Chronicle,' xxix. 432.

2 The Java went into action with a crew of 377 all told, including
supernumeraries, 20 others having been sent on board the William.
Of these, 22 were killed, and 102 wounded. Among the killed were
Master's Mates Charles Jones, Thomas Hammond, and William
Gascoigne, Midshipmen William Salmond and Edward Keele, and
Clerk (supernumerary) Thomas Joseph Matthias. Among the
wounded were Captain Henry Lambert (who died on January 4th,
1813), Lieutenant Henry Ducie Chads, Master Batty Robinson,
Second Lieutenant David Davies, R.M., Boatswain James Humble,
and four Midshipmen, besides, among the supernumeraries, Com-
mander John Marshall, Lieutenant James Saunders, Master's Mate
William Brown, and General Hislop's aide-de-camp. Midshipman
Keele, who was only thirteen years of age, was not killed outright,
but died in a few hours. Mr. Humble lost a hand, and had a wound
near the elbow, but, after having a tourniquet put on, returned to
his duty. — W. L. C.

3 Captain Henry Lambert had received his post commission on
April 10th, 1805. — W. L. C.

6

82 Naval Operations of the War Between

with which they were performed. As regards the
tactical ability with which the ships were handled,
there was nothing to choose ; and certainly no men
could have fought more gallantly than the Java's
crew ; but there was a very great difference in the
comparative efficiency of the two crews as fighting
machines, especially in gunnery. The difference in
the damage done was utterly out of proportion to
the difference in force. Probably the material of the
Constitution's crew was slightly better than that of
the Java, for the seafaring folk from among whom
it was recruited were peculiarly handy and resource-
ful, and they enlisted freely in the American ships,
regarding the quarrel as peculiarly their own ; while
the British frigates were manned by pressed men
from many different sources, who were full of fight,
but who had little cause to love their task-masters.
The main reason for the difference in fighting effi-
ciency, however, was that one crew had been care-
fully trained, and the other had not. The Java's
crew had been on board her six weeks, and, when
the Constitution fought her first battle, the crew had
been on board her only five weeks ; but the Consti-
tution's crew from the very beginning were incessantly
practised in firing, both with blank cartridges and
also at a target ; whereas the Java, during the entire
six weeks, had fired but six broadsides, all of blank
cartridges, and her crew had been exercised only
occasionally even in pointing the guns. Thus the
Americans were trained to shoot with a precision

Great Britain and the United States 83

entirely foreign to their opponents. Moreover, they
were better trained to play different parts, so that,
for instance, the sudden loss of a gun captain did
not demoralise the rest of the crew, who were able
immediately to supply his place from among them-
selves. The petty officers, also, among the Ameri-
cans were better paid than in the British ships, and
were of a better class ; and the American officers
showed greater zeal and intelligence in getting their
men into order, and in drilling them in the essen-
tials, never losing sight of the fact that efficiency in
fighting was the first consideration, to which all
considerations of show came second.

The Hornet continued to blockade the Bonne
Citoyenne until January 24th, 1813, the latter still
refusing to fight and jeopardise the treasure she had
on board. Then the Montagu, 74,1 arrived, and the
Hornet, under cover of the darkness, stood out to sea.
She made a few prizes, one of much value. On
February 24th, 1813, near the mouth of the De-
merara River, Captain Lawrence, being near shore,
discovered a man-of-war brig lying at anchor ; and
while beating round Caroband bank in order to get
at her, he discovered another man-of-war brig edging
clown on his weather quarter.2 Both were British.
The one at anchor was the Espiegle, of sixteen 32-pr.
carronades, and two 6-prs., Commander John

1 Captain Manley Hall Dixon, bearing the flag of Rear-Admiral
Manley Dixon commanding on the Brazilian station. — W. L. C.

2 Letter of Captain Lawrence, March 20th, 1813.

84 Naval Operations of the War Between

Taylor (1) ; the other was the Peacock, Commander
William Peake, which for some unknown reason
had exchanged her 32-pr. carronades for 24's.1 She
had left the Espiegles anchorage that morning at
ten o'clock. The Hornet at once turned to attack
the newcomer, being anxious to get rid of her before
her companion inside the bar could come to her
assistance.

At 4.20 p.m. the Peacock hoisted her colours, and
the Hornet beat to quarters and cleared for action.
Lawrence kept close hauled to get the weather-gage.
When he was sure that he could weather the enemy,
he tacked at 5.10 and stood toward her, hoisting his
colours. The ship and the brig were now both on
the wind — the Hornet on the starboard, and the
Peacock on the port, tack. At 5.25 they exchanged
broadsides as they passed one another, but a few
yards distant, in opposite directions, the Americans
firing their lee, and the British their weather guns,
as they bore. The contrast in the gunnery of the
two crews was almost absurd. As the British were
using the weather battery, the guns, unless some-
what depressed, were sure to throw the shot high,
and for this the crews made no allowance. Not a
shot penetrated the Hornet's hull, the entire broad-
side passing through the rigging. One of her men
in the mizen-top was killed by a round shot, and two
in the main-top were wounded ; 2 a few ropes were

1 James, vi. 194 (ed. 1837).

2 Xavy Departmental MSS., Logbook of Hornet, Wasp, and
Argus, 1809-1813.

Great Britain and the United States 85

cut, the foremast was wounded, and some holes were
made in the sails ; but her fighting efficiency was
not impaired in the slightest degree. On the other
hand, the Hornet's guns, being fired from the lee
side of the ship, naturally shot low, and her men
aimed as if at drill, almost every shot striking the
Peacock's hull, while, inasmuch as the Peacock was
heeled over, many of them struck below the water-
line, making holes through which the water gushed
in torrents as soon as the brig was again on an even
keel.

When the two vessels were clear, Captain Peake
put his helm hard up and wore, firing his starboard
guns ; but Lawrence had watched him closely, and
himself bore up, and at 5.35 ran the Englishman
close aboard on the starboard quarter. Another
broadside, added to the musketry fire, did the busi-
ness. Captain Peake fell; and at 5.39,1 just four-
teen minutes after the first shot, the Peacock
surrendered. Immediately afterwards her mainmast
went by the board, and she began to settle, hoisting
her ensign union down as a signal of distress. Both
vessels cast anchor ; and Lieutenant Shubrick, being
sent on board the prize, reported her sinking. Lieu-
tenant Connor was then sent in another boat to try
to save the brig ; but though the captors threw the
guns overboard, plugged the shot holes, and worked
the pumps, the water gained so rapidly that the

1 British accounts, and James, make the action to have lasted
from 5.25 to 5.50 p. m. — W. L. C.

86 Naval Operations of the War Between

attempt was abandoned, and the Hornet's officers
used what remained of the fading tropical twilight
in removing the wounded and prisoners. Just as
dark fell the brig suddenly sank, in water which
was so shallow that her foretop remained above the
surface. There was, of course, much confusion.
Three of the Hornet's men and nine prisoners went
down with the Peacock. Four other prisoners
lowered the stern-boat and escaped unobserved to
the land, while four more saved themselves by run-
ning up the rigging into the foretop. Lieutenant
Connor and the rest of the Hornet's men who were
on board, and the remainder of the Peacock's crew,
who had not been shifted, escaped by jumping into
the launch which was lying on the booms, and
paddling her towards the ship with pieces of boards.
Seven of the Hornet's men and six of the Peacock's
were on the sick list, leaving fit for action one hun-
dred and thirty-five of the former,1 and one hundred
and twenty-two of the latter.2 The Hornet carried
twenty, and the Peacock nineteen 3 guns, each pre-
senting ten in broadside ; but, as already mentioned,
the Peacock's carronades were 24's, and the Hornet's
32's. There was a very real disparity in force, but
in this particular instance the disparity in force in

1 Letter of Lieutenant Connor, April 26th, 1813.

2 Letter of Lieutenant Frederick Augustus Wright, April 19th,
1813.

8 According to James, the Peacock mounted only sixteen 24-pr.
carronades, and two long 6-prs., and had nine, not ten, guns in
broadside. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 87

no way affected the result. The Peacock's guns
simply did not hit, so that their calibre was a matter
of no possible consequence. The Hornet was hardly
scratched, and lost but three men, all aloft ; while
the Peacock was sunk in fourteen minutes, nearly
one-third of her crew being killed or wounded.1 She
was bravely fought, but her gunnery was phenom-
enally bad. It appears that she had long been
known as "the yacht" on account of the tasteful
arrangement of her deck. The breechings of the
carronades were lined with white canvas, and noth-
ing could exceed in brilliancy the polish upon the
traversing bars and elevating screws.2 Of course, a
slovenly ship does not often make a good fight, for
slovenliness is an indication of laziness, carelessness,
and inefficiency ; but man — and above all the fight-
ing man — shall not live by neatness alone, nor yet
merely by precision in the performance of duties not
connected with the actual shock of arms. Com-
mander Peake had committed the not uncommon
mistake of confounding the incidents and the
essentials of discipline.

Throughout the fight the Espiegle was but four
miles distant,3 and was plainly visible from the

1 Of her crew of 122 men and boys, the Peacock had five killed,
including Commander Peake, a Commander of January 21st, 1806,
and 33 wounded, three mortally. — W. L. C.

2 James, vi. 194 (ed. 1837).

8 Upon this point there is, however, a conflict of evidence. Lieu-
tenant Frederick Augustus Wright, of the Peacock, testified that the
Espiegle " was not visible from the look-outs stationed at -the Pea-

88 Naval Operations of the War Between

Hornet ; but for some reason, which never was fully
explained, her Commander did not observe anything,
and knew nothing of the action until the next day.
Lawrence, of course, took it for granted that he
must know, and would shortly come out ; and, by
nine o'clock in the evening, new sails had been bent
on, and the decks cleared, so that the Hornet was
again ready for action. She was then, however,
overcrowded with people and short of water, and,
as the Espiegle showed no signs of coming out,1 the
Hornet stood for home, which she reached in March.
On their arrival at New York the officers of the
Peacock published a card expressing their apprecia-
tion of the way in which they and their men had
been treated. The note ran in part, " We ceased to
consider ourselves prisoners, and everything that
friendship could dictate was adopted by you and
the officers of the Hornet to remedy the inconven-
ience we would otherwise have experienced from the

cock's mastheads for some time previous to the commencement of
the action." James, too, says (vi. 194, ed. 1837): " The wreck of
the Peacock was visible for a long time after the action, and bore
from Point Spirit, which is about six miles to the eastward of the
entrance to Demerara river, N. E. by E.; making the distance
between the Espiegle and Peacock, during the action, nearly 24
miles." — W. L. C.

1 Commander John Taylor (1), of the Espiegle, was tried at
Portsmouth, in 1814, on various charges, and was, in consequence,
dismissed the service ; but though the charges included a count of
having failed in his duty when he was in pursuit of the Hornet, it
was held that that particular charge was not proved. Commander
Taylor was reinstated, as "the junior Commander," in 1817. (Mar-
shall, iv., pt. iii. 537, and the Navy Lists.) — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 89

unavoidable loss of the whole of our property and
clothes owing to the sudden sinking of the Peacock." l

So far the American navy had achieved success
beyond what any one could have either hoped for or
dreaded, and the British government had paid dearly
for its contemptuous disregard of the power of the
United States at sea. It was utterly unprepared
for the skill and energy shown by the Americans.
More ships of the line and frigates were gradually as-
sembled on the American coast ; but, during the first
eight months or thereabouts, no effective blockade
was established, and the American cruisers slipped in
and out as they wished. The British picked up a
couple more American brigs, the Viper and the
Vixen,2 and captured many American merchantmen,
but this was all.

The offensive powers of the Americans were dis-
played not merely in the use of their regular war-
vessels, but in the careers of the privateers. The
mere declaration of war with Great Britain meant
the destruction for the moment of the major part of
the foreign trade of America ; and the more daring
spirits who had formerly gone into this trade at
once turned to the business of privateering. The

1 This and the other letters are given in full in ' Niles's Register '
for this and the following months.

2 The Viper, 16, Lieut. J. D. Henby, was captured on January
17th, 1813, by the Narcissus, 32, Capt. John Richard Lumley. The
Vixen, 12, Lieut. Geo. U. Read, had been taken on the previous
November 22nd, by the Southampton, 32, Capt. Sir James Lucas
Yeo. — W. L. C.

90 Naval Operations of the War Between

American privateers swarmed out into the Atlantic,
and especially round the West India Islands, the
trade with which was at that period very profitable
to England. At times, in the past, the French
privateers had inflicted very great damage upon
British trade, but the British men-of-war had so
completely gained the upper hand of their adver-
saries that very few French ships, public or private,
were left at sea. The activity and success of the
American privateers, therefore, took the British
government and the British mercantile interest com-
pletely by surprise. Hundreds of merchantmen
were captured in the Atlantic, and in the West
Indies the privateers cut vessels out of harbors
protected by batteries, and landed to plunder the
plantations. The island of Jamaica was for some
time practically blockaded by them. At first the
British warships could do little with them ; and the
merchants cried out bitterly because of the failure
to protect them.

As rapidly as possible the British naval author-
ities gathered the swiftest frigates and sloops to
employ against these cruisers ; and there resulted a
process of natural selection so severe that the type
of privateer soon became altered. At the outset
almost any craft was used ; but before the first year
of the war had closed all the small and slow vessels
were captured or shut up in port, and a peculiar
species of craft was developed. She was of large
size, with a numerous crew, so as to man the prizes,

Great Britain and the United States 91

and was armed with one heavy gun, or " long torn,"
and several lighter pieces for use at close quarters.
She was sometimes a schooner, and sometimes a
brig or a ship, but always built on fine lines, and
with extreme lightness, so as to possess astonishing
speed. There were no more beautiful craft in ex-
istence than these graceful, venomous, swift-sailing
privateers; and as commerce destroyers they had
not then their equals in the entire world.1

The first nine months of the war ended with the
balance entirely in favour of the Americans. Even
at the outbreak of hostilities the British had, scat-
tered along the American coast and among the West
India Islands, three or four times as many ships as
there were in the American navy, and to those there
had been added many others, including heavy two-
deckers ; but they had not settled down to any
definite plan for seriously interfering with the cruises
of the regular warships, or for sweeping the priva-
teers from the seas. The American trade had suffered
severely ; but so had the British. Infinitely more
important, however, than such material suffering,
short of actual crippling, were the shame and smart
felt by the British public at the American naval
victories. Commerce destroying was annoying and
vexatious, and it might prove sufficiently serious to

1 Adams, vols. vii. and viii.,has treated better than any other
historian the careers and importance of the privateers. If he could
have seen Mahan's book before writing his own, he would doubtless
have laid more stress on the unsatisfactory results of trying to
substitute commerce destroyers for fighting ships.

92 Naval Operations of the War Between

incline an already disheartened combatant to peace ;
but no amount of destruction of commerce could
cripple a thoroughly resolute antagonist, nor, giving
heart to the nation which inflicted the loss, make it
thrill with that warlike pride and determination to
conquer which do so much toward winning victory.
The two prime objects to be attained in successful
warfare are to cripple the antagonist and to give
heart and confidence to one's own side. The first
object could not be attained by the little American
navy, for it was powerless to inflict appreciable
damage to the colossal sea might of England ; but
the second object it could and did achieve. On land
the American attempts to invade Canada resulted
in humiliating disasters, and the effects of the vic-
torious sea fights were very great in offsetting the
mortification and depression which those disasters
caused.

In England the sea fights caused as much excite-
ment as in America, though of a wholly different
kind. Neither the British government nor the
British people, and least of all the British Navy,
had dreamed it possible that on sea they would
suffer any serious annoyance from America. The
prowess of the American frigates and sloops, the
hawk-like predatory speed of the American priva-
teers, and the energy displayed by men-of-warsmen
and privateersmen alike, were so many disagreeable
surprises. The material loss to the merchants was
heavy, whereas the material loss to the navy was

Great Britain and the United States 93

trifling, so far as affecting Great Britain's naval
strength was concerned. Nevertheless, it was this
last loss which infinitely outweighed the other, as
was inevitable and proper with a proud, self-confident,
and warlike nation. In seven months Great Britain
had suffered from the infant navy of the United
States, in five single-ship contests, severer moral
loss than she had suffered in all the single-ship con-
tests of the preceding twenty years' warfare with
the nations of Europe.

Such a result was almost paralysing, and naturally
produced inordinate boastfulness and self-exaltation
on the one side, and bitter shame and anger on the
other. The victors, the greater to exalt their glory,
sought to minimise the difference of force in their
favour, and insisted that the contending ships were
practically on an equality; which was not only
absurdly untrue, but a discredit to their own intelli-
gence, for, of course, it was highly to the credit of
America to have built ships more efficient than any
then afloat. The vanquished, to extenuate their
defeats, attributed them entirely to the difference in
force, and enormously exaggerated this, crying out
that the American 44's were " disguised 74's," and
that building them was a characteristic piece of
" Yankee cunning " to lure brave British captains into
unequal combat. The attention paid in Parliament
and in the London press to these victories was a
sufficient tribute to their importance. The Times,
smarting under the need to lay stress upon a differ-

94 Naval Operations of the War Between

ence in force which British seamen had been
accustomed to disregard, wrote,

" Good God ! that a few short months should have so
altered the tone of British sentiment ! Is it true, or is it
not, that our Navy was accustomed to hold the American
in utter contempt ? Is it true, or is it not, that the
Guerriere sailed up and down the American coast with her
name painted in large characters on her sails, in boyish
defiance of Commodore Rodgers ? "

Eighty-five British ships were on the American
station at the beginning of hostilities.

" "We have since sent out more line-of-battle ships and
heavier frigates. Surely we must now mean to smother the
American Navy. A very short time before the capture
of the Guerriere, an American frigate was an object of
ridicule to our honest tars. Now the prejudice is actually
setting the other way, and great pains seem to be taken by
the friends of ministers to prepare the public for the sur-
render of a British 74 to an opponent lately so much
contemned."

The Pilot, the chief maritime authority, gave full
expression to the feelings with which the British
public generally regarded these events : —

" The public will learn, with sentiments which we shall
not presume to anticipate, that a third British frigate has
struck to an American. This is an occurrence which calls
for serious reflection — this, and the fact stated in one paper
of yesterday, that Lloyd's List contains notice of upwards of
five hundred British vessels captured in seven months by
the Americans, five hundred merchantmen, and three
frigates ! Can these statements be true, and can the

Great Britain and the United States 95

English people hear them unmoved? Any one who had
predicted such a result of an American war this time last
year would have been treated as a madman or a traitor.
He would have been told, if his opponents had condescended
to argue with him, that long ere seven months had elapsed
the American rlag would be swept from the seas, the
contemptible navy of the United States annihilated, and
their maritime arsenals rendered a heap of ruins. Yet
down to this moment not a single American frigate has
struck her flag. They insult and laugh at our want of
enterprise and vigour. They leave their ports when they
please, and return to them when it suits their convenience ;
they traverse the Atlantic ; they beset the West India
Islands ; they advance to the very chops of the Channel ;
they parade along the coasts of South America ; nothing
chases, nothing intercepts, nothing engages them but to
yield them triumph."

Canning, in open Parliament, expressed the bitter
anger felt by the whole governing class. He stated
that the loss of the frigates had affected the country
as it could be affected only by the most violent
convulsions of nature, and he returned to the subject
again and again, saying " It never entered into my
mind that the mighty naval power of England
would be allowed to sit idle while our commerce
was swept from the surface of the Atlantic." And
again, " It cannot be too deeply felt that the sacred
spell of the invincibility of the British Navy was
broken by these unfortunate captures."

Most significant of all was the fact that the
Admiralty issued an order forbidding the 18-pounder

9 6 Naval Operations of the War Between

frigates thereafter to do battle with the American
24-pounder frigates. This was not a confession of
inferiority, as has been said by some American
writers ; but it was distinctly a renunciation of any
claim of superiority. The American 44 was no more
superior to the British 38-gun frigate than the
French 74 was to the English 74, for the main-deck
battery of the French two-decker carried a gun
which threw a shot weighing forty-three English
pounds, whereas the main-deck guns of the British
ships of the line were only 32's. The difference,
therefore, was greater in favour of the French ships
of the line, as compared with their British opponents,
than the difference between the victor and the van-
quished in the famous single-ship duels of 1812.
The victories of Nelson and Jervis had been gained
against odds much greater than those encountered
by the frigates which succumbed to the Constitution
and the United States. Time and again, moreover,
the British had won against odds as great, or greater,
in single combat. The French 18-pounder gun
threw a shot weighing twenty-one pounds English ;
whereas, owing to the short weight of the American
shot, the American 24-pounder usually threw but a
little over twenty-two; so that, as compared with
the old opponents whom the British frigate captains
had so often vanquished, their new American foes
threw but one and one-half pound more metal from
each gun of the main battery.

The difference in the size and stoutness of the

Great Britain and the United States 97

ships, in the numbers of the crews, and in the calibre
of the guns accounted for much in the result, but it
by no means accounted for all ; and in the two
sloop actions it was of little or no moment. The
other element, which entered quite as decisively into
the contest, was the superior efficiency of the
Americans, especially in gunnery. The British had
grown over-confident and careless. They had
learned to lean overmuch upon what Canning called
" the sacred spell of the invincibility of the British
Navy," and they needed to learn the lesson that
this sacred spell can always be readily broken by any
opponent who, with equal courage, shows superiority
in skill, and especially in cool forethought and
preparation. Superiority in courage and skill com-
bined can wrest victory from great odds, and no
amount of skill will atone for the lack of daring,
of unflinching resolution, and of dogged capacity to
stand punishment ; but where courage is equal, skill
will always win ; and where courage and skill are
both equal, then the side which has the best ships
and guns will overwhelm the other, no matter what
may be the flags under which the combatants fight.
The best commentary on the five victories thus
far described is that given by the French Admiral,
Jurien de La Graviere : and it is significant of the
profound impression they created that, in a work
devoted to the gigantic naval battles of the fleets
that fought under and against Nelson, a French
admiral, to whom the contest between the British

98 Naval Operations of the War Between

and the Americans had no other interest than the
lesson it taught, should have devoted so much space
to these duels, singling them out above all the other
single-ship contests of the twenty-five years' war.

" When the American Congress declared war on England
in 1812," he says,1 "it seemed as if this unequal conflict
would crush her navy in the act of being born ; instead, it
but fertilised the germ. It is only since that epoch that
the United States has taken rank among maritime powers.
Some combats of frigates, corvettes, and brigs, insignificant
without doubt as regards the material results, sufficed to
break the charm which protected the standard of St. George,
and taught Europe what she could have already learned
from some of our combats, if the louder noise of our defeats
had not drowned the glory, that the only invincibles on the
sea are good seamen and good artillerists.

" The English covered the ocean with their cruisers when
this unknown navy, composed of six frigates and a few
small craft hitherto hardly numbered, dared to establish its
cruisers at the mouth of the Channel, in the very centre of
the British power. But already the Constitution had cap-
tured the Guerriere and Java, the United States had made
a prize of the Macedonian, the Wasp of the Frolic, and the
Hornet of the Peacock. The honour of the new flag was
established. England, humiliated, tried to attribute her
multiplied reverses to the unusual size of the vessels which
Congress had had constructed in 1799, and which did the
fighting in 1812. She wished to refuse them the name
of frigates, and called them, not without some appearance
of reason, disguised line-of-battle ships. Since then all
maritime powers have copied these gigantic models, as the

1 'Guerres Maritiraes,' ii. 284 (edition of 1881).

Great Britain and the United States 99

result of the war of 1812 obliged England herself to change
her naval material ; but if they had employed, instead of
frigates, cut-down 74's, it would still be difficult to explain
the prodigious success of the Americans. . . .

" In an engagement which terminated in less than half an
hour, the English frigate Guerriere, completely dismasted,
had fifteen men killed, sixty-three wounded, and more than
thirty shot below the water-line. She sank twelve hours
after the combat. The Constitution, on the contrary, had
but seven men killed and seven wounded, and did not lose
a mast. As soon as she had replaced a few cut ropes and
changed a few sails, she was in condition, even by the
testimony of the British historian, to take another Guerriere.
The United States took an hour and a half to recapture the
Macedonian, and the same difference made itself felt in
the damage suffered by the two ships. The Macedonian
had her masts shattered, two of her main-deck and all her
spar-deck guns disabled, more than a hundred shots had
penetrated the hull, and over a third of the crew had
suffered by the hostile fire. The American frigate, on the
contrary, had to regret but five men killed and seven
wounded ; her guns had been fired each sixty-six times to
the Macedonian's thirty- six. The combat of the Constitution
and the Java lasted two hours ; and was the most bloody of
these three engagements. The Java only struck when she
had been razed like a sheer hulk ; she had twenty-two men
killed and one hundred and two wounded.

"This war should be studied with unceasing diligence;
the pride of the two peoples to whom naval affairs are so
generally familiar has cleared all the details and laid bare
all the episodes ; and through the sneers which the victors
should have spared, merely out of care for their own glory,

Lore.

ioo Naval Operations of the War Between

at every step can be seen the great truth, that there is only
success for those who know how to prepare it.

" It belongs to us to judge impartially these marine events,
too much exalted perhaps by a national vanity one is
tempted to excuse. The Americans showed in the war of
1812 a great deal of skill and resolution ; but if, as they have
asserted, the chances had always been perfectly equal
between them and their adversaries, if they had only owed
their triumphs to the intrepidity of Hull, Decatur, and
Bainbridge, there would be for us but little interest in
recalling the struggle. We need not seek lessons in courage
outside of our own history. On the contrary, what is to
be well considered is that the ships of the United States
constantly fought with the chances in their favour, and it is
on this that the American Government should found its
true title to glory. . . . The Americans in 1812 had secured
to themselves the advantage of a better organisation (than
the English)."

After speaking of the heavier metal and greater
number of men of the American ships, he
continues : —

" And yet only an enormous superiority in the precision
and rapidity of their fire can explain the difference in the
losses sustained by the combatants.

" The American fire showed itself to be as accurate as it
was rapid. On occasions when the roughness of the sea
would seem to render all aim excessively uncertain, the
effects of their artillery were not less murderous than under
more advantageous conditions.

" Nor was the skill of their gunners the only cause to
which the Americans owed their success. Their ships were

Great Britain and the United States 101

faster ; the crews, composed of chosen men, manoeuvred
with uniformity and precision ; their captains had that
practical knowledge which is only to be acquired by long
experience of the sea ; and it is not to be wondered at that
the Constitution, when chased during three days by a
squadron of five English frigates, succeeded in escaping, by
surpassing them in manoeuvring and by availing herself of
every ingenious resource and skilful expedient that mari-
time science could suggest. ... To a marine exalted by
success, but rendered negligent by the very habit of victory,
the Congress only opposed the best of vessels and most
formidable of armaments."

THE TURN OF THE TIDE

HP HE American coast blockaded — Effect of the blockade — Raids
**• on the coast — Retaliation by the privateers — Failure of ex-
pectations on both sides — Fleets the true commerce-destroyers —
The SJiannon and the Chesapeake — The power of good organisation
— The Pelican and the Argus — The Enterprise and the Boxer —
Failure of the attack on Norfolk — Outrages at Hampton — Inade-
quacy of the American gunboats — The Junon in Delaware Bay —
Attack on the Asp — Capture of the Surveyor — Affair in the Stone
River — Capture of the Lottery — Polkinghorne and the privateers —
Cochrane succeeds Warren — Cruise of the Essex — The Phoebe and
Cherub, and the Essex and Essex Junior.

THROUGHOUT the year 1812, and the be-
ginning of the year 1813, Britain had made
no effective use whatever of her tremendous
power at sea, so far as the United States was con-
cerned. She had suffered from overweening self-
confidence in her own prowess, and from overween-
ing contempt for her foe. During the first year of
war the utter futility of the American land attacks
on Canada could fairly be matched by the utter
inefficiency of the efforts of the British both to
destroy the little American navy, and to employ
their own huge Navy so as to make it a determin-
ing factor in the struggle. But by the spring of
1813 this was changed. The British were a prac-
tical people, and they faced facts — thereby showing
capacity to turn these facts to their own advan-

Naval Operations 103

tage. The dream of British naval invincibility,
the dream that the British warships could win
against any reasonable odds, was a pleasant dream,
and the awakening was extremely disagreeable.
Nevertheless, a dream it was, and the British
recognised it as such, and acted accordingly, with
the natural result that thereafter the Americans
suffered more than the British at sea. The 18-
pounder frigates were forbidden to engage single-
handed the 24-pounder frigates of the Americans,1
and where possible they were directed to cruise in
couples, or in small squadrons, so as to be able with
certainty to overpower any single antagonist, great
or small. No sufficient steps were taken to bring
the average standard of fighting efficiency, especially
in gunnery, up to the American levels and in con-
sequence there were some defeats yet in store ; but
the best captains in the British Navy were already as
good as any to be found in America, or anywhere else,
and it was now the turn of the Americans to suffer
from over-confidence, while the British, wherever
possible, made dexterous use of their superior forces.
After this period no British frigate was captured,
while three American frigates surrendered, one to
an opponent of superior fighting efficiency, and the
other two to superior force, skilfully used. The
American sloops did better, but even their career was
chequered by defeat.

1 The order recites that they are " forbidden to engage " and are
to " retreat " from such a foe. — ' The Croker Papers,' i. 44.

104 Naval Operations of the War Between

The important factor on the British side was the
use of the Navy to blockade the American coast.
When war was declared, the Napoleonic struggle
was at its height, and the chances seemed on the
whole to favour Napoleon. But, by the spring of
1813, the Grand Army had gone to its death in the
snowclad wastes of Russia, and Wellington had
completely bested the French marshals in Spain, so
that it was merely a question of time as to when he
would invade France. In Germany the French were
steadily losing ground ; and all the nations of
Europe were combining, for the overthrow of that
splendid, evil, and terrible genius before whom they
had so long cowered. Britain could, therefore,
afford to turn her attention to America in earnest.
As yet she could not spare adequate land forces, but
she could and did spare a sufficiency of battleships,
frigates, and sloops to make a real blockade of the
American coast. After May 1813 the blockade was
complete from New York southward. In the
autumn it was extended further east ; but it was
not until the following year that it was applied with
the same iron severity to the New England coast,
for the British government hoped always that the
seditious spirit in New England would manifest
itself in open revolt.

After the blockade had been once established,
commerce ceased; and the only vessels that could
slip out were the fast-sailing privateers and regular
cruisers, whose captains combined daring, caution,

Great Britain and the United States 105

and skill in such equal proportions as to enable
them to thread their way through the innumerable
dangers that barred the path. The privateers
frequently failed, and even the regular cruisers were
by no means always successful; while the risks
were too great for merchantmen habitually to en-
counter them. Georgia touched Florida, and so
could do a little trade through the Spanish
dominions ; and the northern New England coast
lay open for some time to come ; but elsewhere the
ships rotted at the ports, though the shipwrights
found employment in building the swift privateers,
and the sailor-folk in manning them.

The white-sailed British frigates hovered in front
of every seaport of note, standing on and off with
ceaseless, unwearying vigilance by day and night,
in fair weather and foul, through the summer and
through the winter. In the great estuaries fleets
rode at anchor, or sailed hither and thither menacing
destruction. No town, large or small, could deem
itself safe ; and every great river was a possible
highroad for the entrance of the enemy. There was
not a strip of the American coast over which the
Americans could call themselves masters, seaward
of the point where the water grew deep enough to
float a light craft of war.

The one lesson which should be most clearly
taught by this war is the folly of a nation's relying
for safety upon anything but its own readiness to
repel attack ; and, in the case of a power with an

106 Naval Operations of the War Between

extended seaboard, this readiness implies the pos-
session of a great fighting navy. The utter failure
of Jefferson's embargo and his other measures of
what he termed "peaceable coercion," teach their
part of the lesson so plainly that it would seem im-
possible to misread it ; but the glory won by their
little navy has tended to blind Americans to the fact
that this navy was too small to do anything except
win glory. It lacked the power to harm anything
but Britain's pride, and it was too weak to parry a
single blow delivered by the British along the coast,
when once they realised that their task was serious,
and set about it in earnest. Twenty ships-of-the-
line, as good of their kind as were the frigates and
sloops, would have rendered the blockade impossible,
even if they had not prevented the war ; and, judged
merely from the monetary standpoint, they would
have repaid to the nation their cost a thousand
times over by the commerce they would have saved,
and the business losses they would have averted.
As it was, the Americans were utterly powerless to
offer any effective resistance to the British blockade ;
for it is too late to try to build a fleet, or take any
other effective steps, when once the war has begun.
The nerveless administration at Washington did not
even take steps to defend the capital city.

It is the fashion to speak of the people as misrep-
resented by the politicians ; but in this case certainly
the people deserved just the government they had.
Indeed, it is curious and instructive as well as mel-

Great Britain and the United States i 07

ancholy to see how powerless the Americans as a
whole were to make good the shortcomings of which
they had been guilty prior to the declaration of war.
It is especially instructive for those Americans, and
indeed those Englishmen, who are fond of saying
that either country needs no protection merely because
it cannot be directly invaded by land, and who try to
teach us that the immense reserve strength which
each nation undoubtedly possesses can be immedi-
ately drawn on to make good any deficiencies in
preparation at the outbreak of a war. This is much
like telling a prize-fighter that he need not train
because he has such an excellent constitution that
he may draw on it to make good defects in his
preparation for the ring. The truth seems to be
that, in naval matters especially, nothing can supply
the lack of adequate preparation and training before
the outbreak of war. The lead which is lost at the
beginning cannot be regained save by superhuman
effort, and after enormous waste of strength. It is
too late to mature plans for defence when the enemy
is close at hand, for he continually breaks up and
renders abortive the various little movements which,
if given time, would become formidable. There is
more chance of remedying defective preparation on
land than on sea, merely because the fighting ma-
chinery for use on the sea is so delicate and compli-
cated that ample opportunity must be given, not
merely to produce it, but to learn to use it aright.
This was true in the clays of the American and

io8 Naval Operations of the War Between

French revolutions ; it is infinitely truer now, when
the fleets of Rodney and Nelson have been left as
far behind modern navies as they stood ahead of the
galleys of Alcibiades and Hanno.

The failure of the Americans to devise any ade-
quate measure for breaking the British blockade is
partially due to this fundamental difficulty in making
preparations when the time for preparation has
passed. There was also a curious supineness among
the people as a whole, which was, if anything, even
more noticeable among those States which were
clamorous for war than among those which, to their
deep discredit, clamoured for peace. Virginia and
the Southern States did not falter in their deter-
mination to continue the war, and the New England
States betrayed an utter lack of patriotism in their
councils, and greatly hampered the national govern-
ment in its feeble efforts to uphold the national
honour. Nevertheless, astounding to relate, the
New England States actually did more than the
South Atlantic States in the war itself, and this, not
because they did so much, but because the South
Atlantic States did so little. Massachusetts and
Virginia were the typical States of their two sections,
and Massachusetts gave more men and more money
to carry on the war than did Virginia, apart from
furnishing a very large proportion of the sailors
who manned the war ships and privateers, while
Virginia furnished hardly any. Not even the con-
tinual presence of the British at their very doors

Great Britain and the United States 109

could rouse the Virginians to respectable resistance ;
and the Marylanders were not much better. It was
in the Chesapeake that the main part of the block-
ading fleet lay ; it was along the shores of that great
bay that the ravages of the British were most
severely felt ; yet the Virginians and Marylanders,
during the two years when the enemy lay on their
coasts, insulting them at will, never organised any
attack whatsoever upon them, and took inadequate
and imperfect measures even for defence. The truth
seems to be that the nation was yet in the gristle,
and that its awkward strength was useless, as it
could not be concentrated or applied to any one
object. There was no public training, and indeed
no public feeling, which could put at the disposal of
the national government large bodies of disciplined
men sufficient for effective use to a given end ; and
the men in control of the national government had
been bred in a political school which on its adminis-
trative side was so silly that they could not have
used this power even had it been given them. New
York and Philadelphia were never directly menaced
during the war; but once or twice they thought
they were, and the way in which they proposed to
meet the danger was by setting the citizens to labour
on earthworks in the neighbourhood, each profession,
trade, or association going out in a body on some
one day — the lawyers on one day, the butchers on
another, the United Irishmen on another, and so on,
and so on. This conception of the way to perform

iio Naval Operations of the War Between

military duty does not require comment; it would
be grossly unfair to compare it with the attitude
even of unwarlike mediaeval burghers, for, after all,
the mediaeval burghers had some idea of arms, and
the shopkeepers, day-labourers, and professional
men of New York and Philadelphia had not.

Where such was the conception of how to carry
on the war, there is small cause for wonder that the
war was allowed to carry on itself pretty much as it
pleased. Had the people displayed the energy, the
resolution, and the efficiency which their descendants
on both sides showed half a century later in the
Civil War, no amount of courage or of military
sagacity on the part of the British could have pro-
longed the contest for any length of time. But
there was no such showing. No concerted or reso-
lute effort was made by the people as a whole.
Individual shipbuilders and contractors showed
great energy and capacity. Individual ship-captains
at sea, individual generals on land, did remarkably
well, showing military aptitude of a high order : and
every such commander, by sea or by land, was able
to make the seamen or the troops under him formid-
able and well-disciplined fighters in an astonishingly
short space of time ; for the Americans, whether
afloat or on shore, were cool, hardy, resolute, and
fertile in resources and expedients. But no com-
mander ever had more than a small squadron or a
diminutive army with which to work, for the great
mass of the Americans did nothing to bring the war

Great Britain and the United States i i i

to a close. The task about which the people as a
whole refused seriously to concern themselves, and
which the government lacked decision and charac-
ter to perform, was left to the shipwrights, to the
seafaring folk, to the admirably trained officers of
the little regular navy, and, on shore, to such com-
manders and troops as the campaigns themselves
gradually developed : and all acted more or less
independently of one another, or with only such
concert as their own intelligence demanded.

The pressure brought to bear on America by the
British blockade was exceedingly effective, but it
was silent, and so historians have tended to forget
it. They have chronicled with pride or regret
according to their nationality, the capture of an
occasional British by an American sloop, but they
have paid little heed to, the ceaseless strain on the
American resources caused by the blockade. Its
mere existence inflicted a direct material loss to the
American people a hundredfold greater than the
entire American navy was able to inflict on Great
Britain from the beginning to the end of its gallant
career in this war. The very fact that the workings
of the blockade were ceaseless and almost universal
makes it difficult to realise their importance. It
told heavily against the coasting trade, though less
heavily than against foreign commerce ; and it
revived an almost archaic industry, that of the wag-
goners, who travelled slowly, parallel with the coast-
line, to carry with an infinitely greater labour and

1 1 2 Naval Operations of the War Between

expense the goods that had formerly gone in the
sloops and schooners. The return to this primitive
method of interchange implied much of the suffering
of primitive times, for it meant that one part of the
country might lack the necessaries of which another
part possessed an over-abundance. As soon as the
blockade was established it created the widest
inequalities in the prices of commodities in different
parts of the country.1 Flour cost nearly three times
as much in Boston as in Richmond, and rice four
times as much in Philadelphia as in Charleston,
while imported articles like sugar rose fivefold in
price. Exports practically ceased by the close of
1813. In that year they amounted to but two hun-
dred thousand dollars in New York as against over
twelve million in the year preceding the outbreak of
the war, while, during the same period, Virginia's
original exports of five million dollars fell off to
twenty thousand. The import duties diminished
with even greater rapidity, until finally they could
only be raised in New England. The ruin was
widespread. As yet the people of the United States
were not manufacturers, but small farmers, traders,
and seafarers. The trader of the towns saw all his
trade destroyed, and could give no employment to
the sailors who had formerly worked for him ; while
the farmer grew crops which could not be moved to
any remunerative market, so that no ready money
came in to him; and yet for whatever he needed,

1 Adams, vii. 263.

Great Britain and the United States 1 1 3

save what he himself produced, he had to pay five
times as much as formerly.

The coast dwellers in Virginia and Maryland were
forced to experience, not merely the weight of the
blockade, but also actual physical contact with the
enemy. Another British squadron lay in the Dela-
ware, and forays were made here and there along
the coast. New York was blockaded, but very little
was done save to put a stop to commerce. There
was another squadron at Nantucket, with Sir Thomas
Masterman Hardy, Nelson's flag-captain, as commo-
dore. Hardy's ships closed southern New England
to the world, but they did very little in the way of
attacking or harassing the coast itself, for Hardy,
one of the most gallant captains who ever lived, a
man who had won his spurs in the greatest sea fights
of all time, and who prided himself on his ability to
meet armed foes in battle, felt impatient at mere
marauding, and countenanced it with reluctance.

The directly opposite policy was pursued in Ches-
apeake Bay. There Admiral Sir John Borlase
Warren was in command, but the chief work was
done by Rear- Admiral Sir George Cockburn. Cock-
burn organised a few of the lightest ships of
Warren's fleet, and some captured schooners, into
a flotilla with which he could penetrate at will the
creeks and rivers. He was a capable, brave, ener-
getic man, hating his foes and enjoying his work ;
and he carried out with scrupulous fidelity the order
to harass the American coast. Not merely did he

8

114 Naval Operations of the War Between

attack any militia that might from time to time
assemble, but he also destroyed towns and hamlets,
and worked widespread havoc throughout the coun-
try that lay within striking distance of tide-water.
Houses were burned, farms plundered, stores pillaged,
and small towns destroyed, while the larger places,
and even Baltimore, were thrown into a panic which
caused the inhabitants to neglect their business, but
did not cause them to take such efficient measures
for self-defence as the exercise of reasonable fore-
thought would have demanded. Usually Cockburn
and his followers refrained from maltreating the
people personally, and most of the destruction they
caused was at places where the militia made some
resistance ; but, when plundering once began, it was
quite impossible for the officers to restrain some of
the very men who most needed restraint.

The people were of course greatly exasperated at
the marauding, and the American newspapers far
and near, and most American writers then and after-
wards, were loud in their denunciation of the Bear-
Admiral and his methods. Exactly how far these
were or were not defensible, it is difficult to say.
It is, of course, a mere matter of convention to dis-
criminate between the destruction of private property
on sea and land. Armed vessels, British and Ameri-
can, destroyed or captured any private property of
the enemy which they could find afloat ; and if there
were sufficient cause, or if there were an object of
sufficient importance to be attained, the combatants

Great Britain and the United States 115

were certainly warranted in destroying such property
ashore. Cockburn's course was in many respects
the same as that of Sheridan's at one crisis in the
Civil War; and there was certainly little in it to
warrant the warmth of the execrations heaped upon
him by his foes — which were indeed somewhat in
the nature of a tribute to his efficiency. At the
same time it may be admitted that his work was
not of the kind in which the best type of fighting
man would find any pleasure, or which he would
carry on longer than was absolutely necessary ; and
for some of the revolting details there was small
excuse. There is room for question as to whether
the comparatively trifling loss inflicted on the
Americans did much beyond irritating them. It
certainly failed to cow them, though equally cer-
tainly it failed to rouse them to effective resistance.
In short, it may be doubted whether the course
followed by Cockburn reflected any particular credit
upon, or caused much, if any, benefit to, the British
side. There can be no doubt, however, of the dis-
credit attaching to the Americans for their conduct.
A people which lets its shores be insulted with im-
punity incurs, if not greater blame, at least greater
contempt, than the people which does the plunder-
ing. If here and there Cockburn burned a hamlet
or two which he ought to have spared, his offence
was really small when compared with the disgrace
brought on the American name b}r the supineness
shown by the people of the threatened neighbour-

1 1 6 Naval Operations of the War Between

hoods. They did nothing effectively of any kind for
their own defence. Indeed, for the most part they did
nothing at all, except gather bodies of militia when-
ever there was an alarm, and so keep the inhabitants
constantly worried and harassed by always calling
them to arms, and yet merely providing almost
worthless defenders. And the nation as a whole
was as much to blame as the States directly
menaced.

The retaliation of the Americans took the form
of privateering. By the time the blockade began to
be effective, the American privateers had developed
into a well-recognised type. Small vessels had been
abandoned. Brigs and ships were common, and so
were schooners of large size. Everything was sacri-
ficed to speed ; and the chief feature of the arma-
ment was the single long-range gun, fitted to
bring-to a fleeing merchantman at a considerable
distance. The privateers thus had neither the arma-
ment nor the build, not to speak of the discipline,
which would have enabled them to withstand regular
men-of-war of the same size in close action, although
the crews were large, the better to man the prizes.
In other words, the privateer was a commerce de-
stroyer pure and simple, built to run and not to
fight ; although, even as a commerce destroyer, she
was less effective than a government vessel would
be, because she was built to make money in a par-
ticularly risky species of gambling; and so, instead
of destroying prizes, she sought to send them in,

Great Britain and the United States 1 17

with the result that nearly half were recaptured
when once the British began to make their blockade
effective. A good many privateers went out from
the ports of the Southern States, and Baltimore
was a famous centre for them ; but the great
majority sailed from the New England and Middle
States.

The ravages of these privateers were very serious.1
The British trade suffered heavily from them, much
more than from the closing of the American ports
— the argument upon which Jefferson had placed
so much reliance in his vain effort to bring Britain
to terms. In fact, the closing of the American ports
by the war made comparatively little difference to
England, because it was almost immediately accom-
panied by the opening of the trade with continental
Europe. The crushing disasters that befell Napo-
leon's great army in Russia meant the immediate
relaxation of his system in the Baltic ; and after he
was driven out of Germany, toward the close of
1813, all the German ports were again thrown open
to the British merchants, so that their trade grew
by leaps and bounds, and the loss of the American
market was far more than made good by the gain
of markets elsewhere. After the overthrow of
France, in the spring of 1814, England was left

1 Adams, in his ' History,' gives the best account both of the
blockade and the privateers. The details of some of the voyages of
the latter are preserved in Coggeshall's ' History of American
Privateers.'

1 1 8 Naval Operations of the War Between

without an enemy, excepting the United States, and
her commerce went where it pleased, unharmed
except by the American privateers.

When she was thus left free to use her vast
strength solely against America, it seemed inevitable
that the latter should be overthrown. But, in the
war of 1812, what seemed probable rarely came to
pass ; and the failures on both sides caused the
utmost astonishment at the time, and are difficult to
fully explain now. At the outbreak of the war the
general opinion in America was that Canada would
speedily be conquered ; and the general opinion in
Europe was that the United States' navy would be
brushed from the sea, and that the American pri-
vateers would be got under just as those of France
had been got under. Neither expectation was ful-
filled. During the first two years the Americans
made no headway in the effort to conquer feebly-
held Canada. When, in 1814, Britain turned her
undivided attention to an enemy which with one
hand she had held at bay for two years, the inevit-
able outcome seemed to be her triumph ; yet she in
her turn failed in her aggressive movements against
the United States just as America had failed in her
aggressive movements against Canada, and her giant
Navy proved unequal to the task of scourging from
the seas the American men-of-war and privateers.
Contrary to her experience in all former wars with
European powers, she found that the American
privateers were able to operate far from their base,

Great Britain and the United States i 1 9

and to do great damage without any great fighting
navy to back them up ; and as the war progressed
they grew ever bolder in their ravages round the
coasts of the British Isles themselves.

There are two lessons, which at first sight seem
contradictory, to be learned from the history of the
privateers in this war. In the first place, their his-
tory does teach that very much can be accomplished
by commerce destroying, if more directly efficient
methods cannot be used. The American privateers
rendered invaluable service to their country by their
daring, and the severity of their ravages. In those
days sailing vessels were not hampered as vessels
would be hampered under like conditions in the
days of steam ; they did not need coaling stations,
and there was much less danger of their getting out
of repair. The American privateer was a faster
ship than any previously seen on the waters, and
she was more daringly and skilfully handled than
any ships of her kind had ever been handled by
Europeans. She could usually overtake any mer-
chantman, and usually escape any man-of-war. Of
course, in the end she was almost certain to encounter
some man-of-war from whom she could not escape ;
but this might not be until after several profitable
voyages ; and though, on the average, privateering
was a business in which the losses equalled the gains,
yet the chances of success were as great as the risks,
and it was a kind of gambling which appealed
peculiarly to adventurous spirits. The commerce

i 20 Naval Operations of the War Between

destroying put a severe strain on the British mer-
cantile and seafaring communities.

Nevertheless, admitting and emphasising all this
does not mean the admission that privateering was
the way in which America could best have used her
strength. The privateers did great and real damage
to England, and though at first they caused more
irritation than alarm, they inflicted such punishment
upon the merchants and the seamen as materially
to increase the disposition of the British for peace.
But what they accomplished cannot be compared
with what wTas accomplished by the British Navy.
The American privateers harassed the commerce of
England, but the British blockading fleet destroyed
the commerce of America. The ravages of the one
inclined the British people to peace ; but the steady
pressure of the other caused such a bitter revolt
against the war in parts of America as nearly to
produce a civil conflict. The very success of the
privateers was a damage to the American navy, for
all the seamen wished to enlist on board them in-
stead of on board the regular ships of war. Regular
ships were better commerce destroyers, and, above
all, battleships would have accomplished far more,
had the energies of the nation been turned towards
their production instead of to the production of
private armed ships. In the coast towns the number
of seamen who served on board the privateers could
have manned scores of fast government vessels built
on the same lines ; and, as these vessels would not

Great Britain and the United States 121

have tried to save their prizes, they would have
inflicted more damage on the enemy. Undoubtedly
this would have been an advantage, so far as it
went ; and perhaps, after the outbreak of the war,
it was too late to try to build a great fighting fleet.
But in reality what was needed was an infinitely
more radical change. The substitution of the gov-
ernment commerce destroyer for the privateer would
have done some good, but it could not have accom-
plished anything decisive. What was needed was
the substitution for all these commerce destroyers
of a great fighting fleet. Such a fleet by its mere
existence would doubtless have prevented the war.
It would certainly, if handled as well as the frigates,
sloops, and privateers were handled, have prevented
a blockade, even if war had been declared; and
American commerce, instead of being destroyed out-
right, would merely have suffered heavily, just as
the British commerce suffered. The men employed
in the privateers would have manned enough ships
of the line to have brought all this about. A fight-
ing fleet would have prevented the losses and
humiliations which the commerce • destroyers were
utterly powerless to avert. Moreover, it would have
done more real and lasting damage than the com-
merce destroyers could possibly do. Commerce
destroying was a makeshift. It was a very useful
makeshift, and much good came from the way in
which it was utilised ; but it must not be forgotten
that it was only a makeshift, and that the commerce

122 Naval Operations of the War Between

destroyers were in no sense satisfactory substitutes
for great fighting ships of the line, fitted to wrest
victory from the enemy by destroying his powers,
both of offence and defence, and able to keep the
war away from the home coasts.

The reverses which the British Navy had encoun-
tered in all the earlier sea fights were mortifying to
a degree. It was now the turn of the Americans
to suffer similar mortifications. Perhaps the chief
cause of the British disasters had been an ignorant
self-confidence combined with an equally ignorant
contempt of the enemy, which rendered the British
indifferent to odds, and indifferent also to that
thorough training which could alone make their
ships into efficient fighting machines. The same
undue self-confidence and undue disregard for the
prowess of the enemy were now to cause the Ameri-
cans the loss of one of their frigates and the death
of one of their most gallant captains.

In May, 1812, Captain James Lawrence, the
commander of the Hornet, was promoted to the com-
mand of the Chesapeake, 38, which was being fitted
out at Boston. Her crew had just been discharged,
and, as she was regarded as an unlucky ship, and
as there had been much dissatisfaction over their
failure to get prize-money, many of the crew refused
to re-enlist, preferring to ship in some of the numer-
ous privateers. A few of the Constitutions old crew
came on board, and those, and the men who had
been in the CJicsapeaJce during her former voyage,

Great Britain and the United States 123

were excellent material. The rest were raw hands,
including an unusually large number of foreigners.
About forty of these were British. There were also
a number of Portuguese, one of whom, a boatswain's
mate, almost brought about a mutiny among the
crew, which was only pacified by giving the men
prize cheques. The last draft of the new hands was
not only entirely untrained, but also came on board
so late that when the ship was captured their ham-
mocks and bags were still lying in the boats stowed
over the booms. A man like Lawrence would
speedily have got such a crew into shape. A cruise
of a very few weeks would doubtless have enabled
him to put the ship in as good trim as the Hornet
was when under his command. But she was in no
condition to meet an exceptionally good frigate
before she was eight hours out of port. Even his
officers, with one exception, were new to the ship,
and the third and fourth lieutenants were not resru-
larly commissioned as such, but were only midship-
men, acting for the first time in higher positions.
Lawrence himself was of course new to both the
officers and the crew.

In such circumstances it was clearly his duty to
try to avoid an encounter with the enemy until his
ship should be in good condition to fight. Unfor-
tunately for him, however, his experiences in the war
had given him the same unreasonable feeling of
superiority over his foes as the latter had themselves
felt a year earlier. He had spent three weeks in

I 24 Naval Operations of the War Between

blockading a sloop-of-war, the Bonne Citoyenne,
which was of equal force with his own, and which
yet resolutely declined to fight. He had captured
another sloop-of-war which was, it is true, inferior
in force, but which was also infinitely inferior in
point of fighting efficiency ; and this capture had
been made in spite of the presence of another sloop-
of-war, which, nevertheless, did not venture out to
attack him. He had, as he deemed, good ground
to believe that his foes were so much inferior in
prowess as to make success almost certain. Indeed,
had the frigate which he was about to attack been
no more formidable, as regards the skill of her cap-
tain and the training of her crew, than the ships
which the Americans had hitherto encountered,
Lawrence's conduct might very possibly have been
justified by the result.

But the British frigate Shannon, 38, which was
then cruising off Boston harbour, was under Captain
Philip Bowes Vere Broke, who had commanded her
for seven years, and who was one of the ablest cap-
tains in the British service. A British naval histo-
rian has explained why it was that the Shannon
proved herself so much more formidable than her
sister frigates.

*er

" There was another point in which the generality of the
British crews, as compared with any one American crew,
were miserably deficient : that is, skill in the art of gunnery.
"While the American seamen were constantly firing at
marks, the British seamen, except in particular cases,

Great Britain and the United States 125

scarcely did so once in a year ; and some ships could be
named on board which not a shot had been tired in this
way for upward of three years. Nor was the fault wholly
the captain's. The instructions under which he was bound
to act forbade him to use, during the first six months after
the ship had received her armament, more shots per month
than amounted to a third in number of the upper-deck
guns ; and after these six months only half the quantity.
Many captains never put a shot in the guns till an enemy
appeared ; they employed the leisure time of the men in
handling the sails and in decorating the ship."

Captain Broke was not one of this kind.

" From the day on which he had joined her, the 14th of
September, 1806, the Shannon began to feel the effect of
her captain's proficiency as a gunner, and zeal for the ser-
vice. The laying of the ship's ordnance so that it may be
correctly fired in a horizontal direction is justly deemed a
most important operation, as upon it depends in a great
measure the true aim and destructive effect of every future
shot she may fire. On board the Shannon, at her first out-
fit, this was attended to by Captain Broke in person. . . .
By drafts from other ships, and the usual means to
which a British man-of-war is obliged to resort, the Shan-
non got together a crew ; and in the course of a year or two,
by the paternal care and excellent regulations of Captain
Broke, an undersized, not very well disposed, and, in point
of age, rather motley ship's company became as pleasant to
command as they would have been dangerous to meet." *

The SJiannons guns were all carefully sighted ;
and, moreover, " every clay, for about an hour and

1 James, vi. 196 (Ed. 1837).

i 26 Naval Operations of the War Between

a half in the forenoon, when not prevented by chase
or the state of the weather, the men were exercised
at training the guns, and for the same time in the
afternoon in the use of the broadsword, pike, mus-
ket, etc. Twice a week the crew fired at targets,
both with great guns and with musketry ; and
Captain Broke, as an additional stimulus beyond
the emulation excited, gave a pound of tobacco to
every man that put a shot through the bull's eye."
He would frequently have a cask thrown overboard,
and suddenly order some one gun to be manned to
sink the cask.

Captain Broke had sent a challenge to Captain
Lawrence, expressing a willingness to meet the latter
in a duel in any latitude and longitude he might
appoint ; for Broke did not expect to be given the
great advantage of meeting his antagonist just as
the latter was leaving port, and before her crew
were in fighting trim ; and he possessed a justifiable
confidence in the ability of the ship which he com-
manded to hold her own in any circumstances. It
may be mentioned that this letter of challenge was
worthy of the gallant writer, being a model of cour-
tesy, manliness, and candour. Unfortunately for
Lawrence, he never received it ; and he stood out
to engage the Shannon at midday of June 1st, 1813. 1
Afterwards it was alleged that he engaged against
his judgment; but this was undoubtedly not the

1 Navy Department MSS., ' Captains' Letters,' vol. xxix. No. 1;
Lawrence's letter, June 1st, 1813.

Great Britain and the United States i 27

case. The British frigate was in sight in the offing,
and he sailed out to attack her in the confident hope
of victory.

The two ships were very evenly matched, but
what superiority there was, was on the American
side. The Chesapeake carried fifty guns — twenty-
eight long 18's on the gun-deck, and, on the spar-
deck two long 12's, one long 18, one 12-pr. carronade,
and eighteen 32-pr. carronades. There were on
board her 379 men all told. The Shannon carried
fifty-two guns — twenty-eight long 18's on the gun-
deck, and, on the spar-deck, four long 9's, one long
6, three 12-pr. carronades, and sixteen 32-pr. car-
ronades, with a crew of 330 men. In guns the two
ships were practically equal, but in crew the Ameri-
cans were superior by fifty men, which, in an
engagement at close quarters, ought to have given
them the upper hand, if the two crews had been
likewise equal in fighting capacity.1

At noon the Chesapeake weighed anchor, stood
out of Boston harbour, and an hour later rounded
the lighthouse. The Shannon stood off under easy
sail. She reefed her topsails, and alternately hauled
up and again bore away. With her foresail brailed
up, and her maintopsail braced flat and shivering,
she surged slowly through the quiet seas, while the
Chesapeake came down with towering canvas and
the white water breaking under her bow. When

1 Letters of Lieutenant George Budd and Captain Broke, and
Brighton's ' Memoir of Admiral Broke.'

128 Naval Operations of the War Between

Boston lighthouse bore west, distant six leagues, the
Shannon again hauled up, with her head to the south-
east, and lay-to under fighting canvas, stripped to her
topsails, topgallant-sails, jib, and spanker. The breeze
freshened, and as the Chesapeake neared her foe, she
took in her studding-sails, topgallant-sails, and royals,
got her royal yards on deck, and came down very fast
under topsails and jib. At 5.30 p. m., to keep under
command and be able to wear if necessary, the
Shannon put her helm alternately a-lee and a- weather,
first keeping a close luff, and then again letting the
sails shiver. The Chesapeake had hauled up her
foresail ; and, with three ensigns flying, she steered
straight for the Shannon's starboard quarter. For a
moment Broke feared lest his adversary might pass
under the Shannons stern, rake her, and engage her
on the quarter; but the American captain sought
only a yardarm and yardarm action, to be decided
by sheer ability to give and take punishment. He
luffed up fifty yards from the Shannons starboard
quarter, and squared his mainyard. On board the
Shannon, the captain of the 14th gun, William Mind-
ham, had been ordered not to fire until it bore into
the second main-deck port forward. At 5.50 it was
fired, and then the other guns in quick succession
from abaft forward, the Chesapeake replying with
her whole broadside. At 5.53, Lawrence, finding
that he was forging ahead, hauled up a little. The
Chesapeake s guns did murderous damage, but the
ship herself suffered even more. The men in the

Great Britain and the United States i 29

Shannon's tops could hardly see the deck of the
American frigate through the cloud of shivered and
splintered wreck that was flying across it. Man
after man was killed at the wheel ; the fourth lieu-
tenant, the master, and the boatswain fell , and, six
minutes after the first gun had been fired, the jib-
sheet and foretopsail tie were shot away, and the
spanker brails loosened so that the sails blew out,
and the ship came up into the wind somewhat.
Her quarter was then exposed to her antagonist's
broadside, which beat in her stern ports and swept
the men from the after-guns. One of the arms-chests
on the quarter-deck was blown up by a hand-grenade
thrown from the Shannon, the smoke shrouding
everything from sight for a moment.1 Broke saw
that the Chesapeake had stern-way on and was paying
slowly off ; so he put his helm a-starboard and
shivered his mizen-topsail, to keep off the wind and
delay the boarding. But at that moment the Shan-
nons jib-stay was shot away (for some of the
Chesapeake's guns still bore), and, her headsails
becoming becalmed, she went off very slowly. In
consequence, at six o'clock, the two frigates fell on
board one another, the Chesapeake s quarter pressing
upon the Shannons side just forward of the starboard
main-chains ; and they were kept in this position by
the fluke of the Shannons anchor catching in the
Chesapeake! s quarter port.

1 Navy Department MSS., ' Captains' Letters,' vol. xxix. No.
10; Bainbridge's letter, June 2nd, 1S33.

9

130 Naval Operations of the War Between

The Shannons crew had suffered severely, and her
decks were running thick with blood ; but the trained
and seasoned seamen stood to their work with grim
indifference. Broke ran forward as the frigates
ground against one another. He saw that the
Americans were flinching from their quarter-deck
guns, and at once ordered the ships to be lashed
together, the great guns to cease firing, and the
boarders to be called. The boatswain, Mr. Stevens,
who had fought in Rodney's action, was foremost in
fastening the frigates together, though, as he finished
his work, an American seaman hacked his right
arm off with a blow from a cutlass.

All was confusion and dismay on board the
Chesapeake. Lieutenant Augustus Charles Ludlow
had been mortally wounded and carried below.
Lawrence himself, while standing on the quarter-
deck, fatally conspicuous by his full-dress uniform
and commanding stature, was shot as the vessels
closed by Lieutenant John Law of the Royal Marines.
He fell dying, and was carried below, exclaiming,
" Don't give up the ship " — a phrase that has since
become proverbial among his countrymen. The
acting third lieutenant, a midshipman, who was a
devoted admirer of Lawrence, helped to carry him
below, instead of remaining at his post as he should
have done.1 When he returned it was too late.
Indeed, one or two of the younger officers were

1 See minutes of court-martial on the loss of the Chesapeake,
given in Ingersoll, i. 396.

Great Britain and the United States i 3 1

stunned and demoralised by the succession of
disasters.

While the confusion was at its height, Captain
Broke stepped from the Shannons gangway rail on
to the muzzle of the Chesapeake s aftermost car-
ronade, and thence over the bulwark on to her
quarter-deck, followed by about twenty men. As
the British came on board, the men on the Chesa-
peake s spar-deck, who had suffered more heavily
than any others, whose officers had all been killed or
wounded, and who had not the discipline to take
unmoved such heavy punishment, deserted their
quarters. The Portuguese boatswain's mate removed
the gratings of the berth-deck and ran below, fol-
lowed by many of the crew. On the quarter-deck,
almost the only man who made any resistance was
the chaplain, Mr. Samuel Livermore, who advanced,
firing his pistol at Broke ; and Broke in return cut
him down with a single stroke. On the upper-deck
the only men who behaved well were the marines ;
but of their original number of forty-four men, four-
teen, including Lieutenant James Broom and
Corporal Dixon, were dead, and twenty, including
Sergeants Twin and Harris, wounded ; so that there
were left but one corporal and nine men, several of
whom had been knocked down and bruised, though
they were later reported unwounded. There was
thus hardly any resistance, Captain Broke stopping
his men for a moment until they were joined by the
rest of the boarders under Lieutenants George

132 Naval Operations of the War Between

Thomas L. Watt and Charles Leslie Falkiner. The
Chesapeake's mizen-top men began firing at the
boarders, mortally wounding Midshipman John
Samwell, and killing Lieutenant Watt ; but one of
the Shannon's long 9's was pointed at the top and
cleared it out, being assisted by the British main-top
men under Midshipman Cosnahan. At the same
time the men in the Chesapeake's main-top were
driven out of it by the fire of the Shannons fore-top
men under Midshipman William Smith (5).

The Americans on the main-deck now for the
first time learned that the British had boarded, as
the upper-deck men came crowding down; and
Lieutenant George Budd sprang up, calling on his
people to follow him. A dozen veterans tumbled
up after him, and, as they reached the spar-deck,
Budd led them against the British who were coming
along the gangways. For a moment, under the
surprise of the attack, the assailants paused, the
British purser, Mr. George Aldham, and Captain's
Clerk, Mr. John Dunn, being killed; but they
rallied at once, and the handful of Americans were
cut down or dispersed, Lieutenant Budd being
wounded and knocked down the main hatchway.
"The enemy," wrote Captain Broke, "fought des-
perately, but in disorder." Lieutenant Ludlow,
already mortally wounded, heard the shouts and the
stamping overhead, and he struggled up on deck,
sword in hand. Two or three men followed him ;
but the rush of the boarders swept them away like

Great Britain and the United States 133

chaff, and the dying Ludlow was hewn down as he
fought. On the forecastle a few seamen and marines
turned at bay. Captain Broke was still leading his
men with the same brilliant personal courage which
he had all along shown. Attacking the first
American, who was armed with a pike, he parried a
blow from it and cut down the man ; attacking
another, he was himself cut down, and only saved
by the seaman Mindham, already mentioned, who
slew his assailant. One of the American marines
brained an Englishman with his clubbed musket;
and so stubborn was the resistance of the little group,
that, for a moment, the assailants recoiled; but
immediately afterwards they closed in and slew their
foes to a man. The British fired a volley or two
down the hatchway, in response to a couple of shots
fired up, whereupon all resistance came to an end ;
and at 6.5, just fifteen minutes after the first gun had
been fired, and not five minutes after Captain Broke
had boarded, the colours of the Chesapeake were
struck. Of her crew sixty-one were killed or
mortally wounded, including her captain, her first
and fourth lieutenants, the lieutenant of marines,
the master, boatswain, and three midshipmen ; and
eighty-five were severely or slightly wounded, in-
cluding both her other lieutenants, five midshipmen,
and the chaplain : a total of one hundred and forty-
eight. Of the Shannons men, thirty-three were
killed outright or died of their wounds, including
her first Lieutenant, George Thomas L. Watt;

i 34 Naval Operations of the War Between

Purser George Aldham ; Captain's Clerk John
Dunn; and Midshipman John Samwell; and fifty
were wounded, including the Captain himself and
the Boatswain, Mr. William Stevens: total, eighty-
three. The Chesapeake was taken into Halifax,
where Captain Lawrence and Lieutenant Ludlow
were both buried with military honours. Captain
Broke was made a baronet, very deservedly, and
Lieutenants Wallis1 and Falkiner2 were both made
commanders.

The battle had been as bloody as it was brief.
When the Chesapeake surrendered, her crew had
suffered a much heavier relative loss than the crews
of the Gfuerriere, the Macedonia?!, or even the Java.
The Shannon had not only suffered a heavier loss
than befell the victorious ship in any other single
ship duel of the war, but had also suffered a loss as
severe as that which had been held to justify the
surrender of more than one vessel — the Argus and
the fipervier, for instance, and even the Guerriere.
The action was fought at such close quarters and
under such conditions that there was no room for
manoeuvring, and, so far as the first broadside was

1 Provo William Parry Wallis: born, 1791; Lieutenant, 1808;
Commander, 1813; Captain, 1819; Rear-Admiral, 1851; Vice-
Admiral, 1857; Admiral, 1863; Admiral of the Fleet, 1877; died
senior of that rank, and G.C.B., February 13th, 1892, being in his
hundred and first year. (Life by Bright.) — W. L. C.

2 Charles Leslie Falkiner: born, 1791; Lieutenant, 1810; Com-
mander, 1813 ; retired with the rank of Captain, 1848 ; succeeded
his brother as a Baronet; died, 1858. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 135

concerned, no room for display of any very great
difference in gunnery, provided each side was
moderately efficient. Beyond question, Broke's men
were far more skilful in the handling of the guns ;
but this was only one of the factors which went to
make up the victory. It was a terrific, punishing
fight, entered into on conditions that ensured the
taking as well as the giving of very hard blows.
Such a fight is not merely a test of pluck : it is a
test, above all others, of training and discipline, and
of cool-headed readiness to repair injuries and take
advantage of shifting opportunities. The heavy
loss on board the Shannon did not confuse or terrify
the thoroughly trained men, disciplined to place
implicit reliance in their leaders. A somewhat
greater loss on board the Chesapeake disheartened
the raw hands among the crew, and created such
confusion that there was no immediate readiness to
remedy any temporary disaster; while even the
officers, being new to one another and to the ship,
and some of them being very young, were not able
to do their best. American writers have been fond
of saying that the defeat of the Chesapeake was due
to accident, especially to the loss of the jib-sheet
and foretop-sail tie, which brought her up into the
wind, and exposed her to a raking fire. This state-
ment is simply not true. Such accidents are bound
to occur in battle ; and a skilled captain and crew
will remedy them when they occur in their own
ship, and will take advantage of them when they

i 36 Naval Operations of the War Between

occur to the enemy. The victory was not in the
slightest degree to be attributed to accident,1 though
it may have been slightly hastened by it. Trained
skill and good discipline won, as they had so oft<en
won before. There was no lack of courage on the
defeated side ; the heavy death-roll shows that.
Nearly every American officer was killed or wounded,
and so were three-fourths of the marines, and half
the veterans of the crew.

Nor did the boarding win the victory. When the
ships came together the Chesapeake was already
beaten at the guns. She had been struck, all told,
by three hundred and sixty-two shot of every
description, and the Shannon, by about one hundred
and fifty-eight. Had the ships not come together,
the fight would have been longer, and the loss
greater and more nearly equal ; but the result would
have been the same. The Chesapeake s crew had
been together and on board her only as many hours
as the Shannon s had been years, and the result was
what might have been foreseen, when the captain
of the Shannon had spent his time to such good
advantage in training his crew. It is worth noticing
that the only thoroughly disciplined set of men on
board the Chesapeake, the marines, behaved with
superb courage and fought to the last, very few of
them escaping entirely unscathed. Complaint was
made at the time against the Portuguese and other

1 Cooper is of little use for this action; and the "accident"
theory is a favourite with most American writers.

Great Britain and the United States 137

foreigners among the crew, and notably against the
Portuguese boatswain's mate. It appears that at
the time of the boarding they did not do very well,
the boatswain's mate in particular showing cow-
ardice ; but it is idle to ascribe the defeat in any
way to their action. The Chesapeake was beaten
before the boarding took place ; and her men had
suffered too severe a loss, and were too demoralised,
to oppose successful resistance to gallant Captain
Broke and his veterans.

Admiral de La Graviere comments on this fight
as follows, and his criticism is entirely just : —

" It is impossible to avoid seeing in the capture of the
Chesapeake a new proof of the enormous power of a good
organisation, when it has received the consecration of a few
years' actual service on the sea. On this occasion, in effect,
two captains equally renowned, the honour of two navies,
were opposed to each other, in two ships of the same
tonnage and number of guns. Never had the chances
seemed better balanced ; but Sir Philip Broke had com-
manded the Shannon for nearly seven years, while Captain
Lawrence had only commanded the Chesapeake for a few
days. The first of these frigates had cruised for eighteen
months on the coast of America ; the second was leaving
port. One had a crew long accustomed to habits of strict
obedience ; the other was manned by men who had just
been engaged in mutiny. The Americans were wrong to
accuse fortune on this occasion. Fortune was not fickle —
she was merely logical. The Shannon captured the Chesa-
peake on the first of June, 1813 ; but on the 14th of
September, 1806, the day when he took command of his

138 Naval Operations of the War Between

frigate, Captain Broke had begun to prepare the glorious
termination of this bloody affair."1

No single ship action of the war attracted greater
attention than this, and none reflected greater credit
on the victor. After five ships in succession had
been captured in single fight by the enemy, without
one victory to relieve the defeats, Captain Broke,
in sight of the enemy's coast, off the harbour of one
of his chief seaports, had captured single-handed a
frigate nominally of equal, and in reality of slightly
superior, force. He himself was very badly wounded,
and was never again able to go into active service.2
His victory was celebrated with almost extravagant
joy throughout Britain. The exultation of the
British was as great as had been their previous
depression. No other British captain has ever won
such honour by a single ship action. No other fight
between frigates has ever been so enthusiastically
commemorated by the victor's countrymen. Captain
Broke was made a baronet. Nelson, for the battle
of the Nile, was only raised to the lowest rank of
the peerage ; and fifty years later, as we learn from
" Tom Brown at Rugby," the glory of the Shannon
and her commander was a favourite theme for song;
among British schoolboys.

In America the news of the result caused wide-

1 ' Guerres Maritimes,' ii. 272.

2 Philip Bowes Vere Broke: born, 1776; Lieutenant, 1795; Com-
mander, 1799; Captain, 1801; Baronet, November 2nd, 1813;
K.C.B., January 2nd, 1815; Rear- Admiral, 1830; died, 1841.—
W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 139

spread grief and dismay. A year had made the
Americans feel the same unjustifiable self-confidence
that the British had felt at the outbreak of the war,
and the Shannons victory shattered the one as the
frigate and sloop actions of 1812 had shattered
the other. In each case the exultation of the victors
was an unconscious expression of the high esteem in
which they had held the prowess of the vanquished.
The excitement caused by the capture of the
Guerriare was proof of the commanding position of
the British Navy ; the joy over the capture of the
Chesapeake showed the point to which the prowess
of the Americans had raised the general estimate of
American ships-of-war.

The lesson of the Chesapeake was not to stand
alone. The American brig sloop Argus, 16, com-
manded by Lieutenant William Henry Allen, had
crossed the ocean in June, carrying the American
minister to France. On July 14th, 1813, she put out
again from Lorient, and cruised in the chops of the
English Channel, and then along the coast of
Cornwall and into St. George's Channel. She cap-
tured and burnt ship after ship, creating the greatest
consternation among the merchants. The labour
was very severe, the men getting hardly any rest.
On the night of August 13th a brig laden with wine
from Oporto was taken, and many of the crew got
drunk. At five o'clock on the following morning, a
large brig-of-war, which proved to be the British
brig sloop Pelican, under Commander John Fordyce

140 Naval Operations of the War Between

Maples,1 was descried standing down under a
cloud of canvas. St. David's Head bore east five
leagues.

The Argus was a very swift brig, with loftier
masts and longer spars than the Pelican, though the
latter was considerably heavier ; and she was armed
only with 24-pr. carronades as against the 32' s of
the Pelican. The odds against her were about the
same as they had been against the Peacock or the
Java ; but Allen, who had been Decatur's first lieu-
tenant when the Macedonian was captured, was as
confident of victory as Lawrence had been, and he
had no intention of taking advantage of his superi-
ority of speed to avoid combat. The Argus short-
ened sail and waited until the Pelican was nearly
aft, and but a pistol-shot off. Then, at 6 a.m., she
wore and fired her port guns, the Pelican responding
with her starboard battery.2 Immediately after the
beginning of the action a round shot carried off
Allen's leg, inflicting a mortal wound ; but he stayed
on deck until he fainted from loss of blood. Soon
afterwards the first lieutenant, William Henry
Watson, was wounded by a grape-shot and carried
below ; and the second lieutenant, Mr. U. H. Allen,
was left to fight the brig. The firing was very

1 The Pelican had anchored at Cork on August 12th, after a
cruise, and had at once been ordered to sea again in quest of the
Argus. She had, therefore, taken necessary stores on board, and
sailed within fourteen hours. — W. L. C.

2 Minutes of court of inquiry into loss of Argus, March, 1815.

Great Britain and the United States 141

heavy, especially from the Pelican ; but most of it
went high, on both sides. At 6.14 Commander
Maples bore up to pass astern of his antagonist ; but
Lieutenant Allen luffed into the wind and threw the
maintop-sail aback, so as to come square across his
antagonist's bows. From this position he raked the
Pelican with his broadside ; but the guns were badly
aimed, and did little damage. The ships again ran
off side by side, the fire continuing as furiously as
ever ; but the Argus began to suffer so much in her
rigging that she became unmanageable, and fell off
before the wind. The Pelican then passed under
her stern, raked her heavily, ranged up on her star-
board quarter, and raked her again and again ; for
it was no longer possible to handle her. The Argus
suffered heavily aloft : her crew escaped without
severe slaughter, but began to show symptoms of
demoralisation, not behaving as well as the gal-
lantry and seamanship of her officers would seem-
ingly have warranted. In a few moments the Pelican
passed her foes' broadside, and took a position on
her starboard bow. At 6.45, three-quarters of an
hour after the action had begun, the brigs fell
together, and the Argus struck just as the British
were about to board.1

The Pelican carried twenty-one guns, including
sixteen 32-pound carronades, four long 6's, and one
12-pound carronade. The Argus carried twenty
guns — eighteen 24-pound carronades and two long

1 Letter of Maples, Aug. 14th, 1813.

142 Naval Operations of the War Between

12's.1 The crew of the Pelican consisted of 113
men, the crew of the Argus of 104. Seven men
were killed and wounded in the Pelican, among the
killed being Master's Mate William Young, and
twenty-four in the Argus. Both ships were tolerably
well cut up. The difference in force was less than
as five to four ; whereas the difference in loss was
greater than three to one. In other words, the
Pelican displayed superiority in efficiency as well as
superiority in weight. The Argus made a distinctly
poor fight. She did not inflict much damage, and
though the officers behaved well, most of them being
killed or wounded, the crew had lost less than a
fourth of their number when they surrendered.
The Pelican herself did not show to much advan-
tage, her gunnery being poor. In short, the action
was directly the reverse of that between the Chesa-
peake and the Shannon. Broke won because he did
even better than his gallant and skilful antagonist ;
but the Pelican won, although she did poorly, because

1 James gives the armament of the two brigs thus : —

Pelican.

A rgus.

18 24-pr. carrs.
2 long British 12-prs.2

16 32-pr. carrs.
2 long 6-prs.

1 12-pr. boat carr.*

2 brass 6-prs. f
Broadside weight of metal,

262 lbs.

* Not reckoned as part of the broadside. The 6-prs. were in the stern
ports, where they inconvenienced the man at the helm.

t The 12-prs. were in her bridle ports, and not in her broadside.

— W. L. C.

Broadside weight of metal,
228 lbs.

Great Britain and the United States 143

her antagonist did very badly indeed. The short-
comings of the Argus have never been adequately
explained, for her commander was a man of proved
courage and ability. It was afterwards stated that
her powder was poor, and that her crew were over-
tired, and some of them intoxicated.1 It seems
evident that Lieutenant Allen had become over-
confident, and had let his men fall off in their gun-
nery, and yet had engaged a heavier antagonist
when his people were worn out with fatigue.2

The next engagement was in favour of the Ameri-
cans. The only one of the small American gun-
brigs left was the Enterprise, Lieutenant William
Burrows. Two bow-chasers had been crowded into
her bridle-ports, and she was over-manned, mount-
ing fourteen 18-pr. carronades and two long 9's,
with a crew of 120 men. She was a very lucky
little vessel, both before and after the engagement
now to be told, and, though a dull sailer, of weak
force, she managed to escape capture, and in her
turn captured a number of British privateers. One
of these privateers, mounting fourteen long 9's with
a crew of seventy-nine men, showed fight, and only
struck after receiving a broadside which killed and
wounded four of her crew. Later, being chased by

1 Cooper ; and minutes of court of inquiry.

2 Lieutenant W. H. Allen, of the Argus, after having his thigh
amputated, died at Plymouth on August 18th, and was buried there
on the 21st. Commander Maples was posted on August 23rd, as a
reward for his success. He died, after retirement with the rauk of
Rear-Admiral, in 1847. — W. L. C.

144 Naval Operations of the War Between

a frigate, the Enterprise had to throw overboard all
her guns but two in order to escape.

In the summer of 1813 she was kept cruising off
the eastern coast to harass the Nova Scotian and
New Brunswick privateers. On September 5th,
while standing along shore near Penguin Point, a
few miles to the eastward of Portland, Maine, she
descried at anchor inside, the British gun-brig Boxer,
Commander Samuel Blyth, of about her own size,
but with two carronades less, l and only sixty-six
men in crew. The Boxer at once hoisted ensigns,
fore and aft, and bore up for the Enterprise, which
was then standing in on the starboard tack ; but,
when the two brigs were still four miles apart, it
fell calm.2 At midday a breeze sprang up from the
south-west, giving the Enterprise the weather-gage ;
and she manoeuvred for some time before closing, in
order to try the comparative rates of sailing of the
vessels. At 3 p.m. Lieutenant Burrows hoisted three
ensigns, shortened sail, and edged away towards the
Boxer. Commander Blyth had nailed his colours to
the mast, telling his men that they should never be
struck while he had life in his body ; 3 and his little brig
was steered gallantly into action. Both crews were
in good spirits, and they cheered loudly as the brigs
neared one another. At a quarter-past three, when

1 The Boxer, moreover, had two long 6's, instead of long 9-prs. —
W. L. C.

2 Letter of Lieutenant Edward R. M'Call, U. S. N., Sept. 5th, 1813.
8 ' Naval Chronicle,' xxxii. 4G2.

Great Britain and the United States 145

the two brigs were on the starboard tack not a half
pistol-shot apart, they opened fire, the Americans
using the port, and the British the starboard guns.
Both broadsides were very destructive, and the two
commanders fell at the very beginning of the action.
Commander Blyth was killed by an 18-pound shot,
which passed through his body while he was stand-
ing on the quarter-deck. The second in command,
Lieutenant David M'Creery, continued to fight the
brig. At almost the same time Lieutenant Burrows
fell. He had laid hold of a gun-tackle fall to help
the crew of a carronade to run out the gun. In
doing so he raised one leg against the bulwark, and
a canister-shot struck his thigh, glancing into his
body and inflicting a fearful wound. * In spite of
the pain, he refused to be carried below, and lay on
the deck calling out to the men, and cheering them
to the fight. Lieutenant Edward R. M'Call took
command in his place. After a quarter of an hour's
yardarm and yardarm work, the Enterprise ranged
ahead, rounded to on the starboard tack, and raked
the Boxer. She shot away the Boxer s maintopmast
and topsail-yard ; but the British crew kept up the
fight bravely, with the exception of four men, who
deserted their quarters and were afterwards court-
martialled for cowardice. However, there was now
no chance of success. The Enterprise set her foresail,
so as to keep on the starboard bow of the Boxer, and
raked her until she surrendered, half an hour after

1 Cooper, ii. 259.
10

146 Naval Operations of the War Between

the fight began, she being then entirely unmanage-
able and defenceless. Lieutenant Barrows would
not go below until he had received the sword of his
adversary, when he exclaimed, " I am satisfied ; I
die contented."

Both brigs had suffered severely, especially the
Boxer, which had been hulled repeatedly. The
Enterprises injuries were chiefly aloft. The differ-
ence in loss of men was less than the difference in
damage to the brigs. Twelve of the Americans and
twenty-one of the British were killed or wounded.
The British court-martial attributed the defeat of
the Boxer " to a superiority in the enemy's force,
principally in the number of men, as well as to a
greater degree of skill in the direction of her fire,
and to the destructive effects of the first broad-
sides." l The main factor was the superiority in
force, the difference in loss being very nearly pro-
portional to it. Both sides fought with equal
bravery ; and the difference in skill, though apprecia-
ble, was not marked. At a naval dinner given at
New York shortly afterwards, one of the toasts
offered was, " The crew of the Boxer ; enemies by law,
but by gallantry brothers." The two commanders were
both buried at Portland with all the honours of war.2

1 Minutes of court-martial on board II. M. S. Surprise, Jan. 8th.
1814.

? Commander Samuel Blyth, born in 1783, had held his rank
since September 5th, 1811. If my memory of the spot serves me
aright, a single tree overshadows the graves of both commanders. —
W. L. C

Great Britain and the United States 147

The fight had taken place so close to the shore
that it could be both seen and heard. Among those
who listened to the guns was Longfellow, who long
afterwards commemorated the battle in verse.
Commander Blyth was a man of high personal
courage, noted for his gentleness and courtesy. He
had been one of Captain Lawrence's pall-bearers,
and, shortly before his death, had been publicly
thanked by the militia commander of one of the
Maine districts for the kindness and humanity
which he had shown to the inhabitants.

The blockade of the American coast as a whole
was far more important than any of the single ship
actions ; but the incidents to relieve the monotony
were so few that there is little to chronicle beyond
the fact of the blockade itself, and the further fact
that it told upon every article which any American
bought or sold, and that it put every man to such
trouble and inconvenience, if not to such positive
want, as to cause formidable discontent. It was
the mere presence of the ships that accomplished
this — their ceaseless standing to and fro off the
coast and at the mouths of the harbours. American
merchant vessels had been almost driven from the
ocean, although many ran in and out of the New
England ports, until, within the closing months of
the war, the blockade was applied to New England
also in all its rigour. On the high seas the British
took many American ships ; but they were mostly
privateers, or the prizes of privateers, for there were

148 Naval Operations of the War Between

not many merchantmen to capture. No vigilance
by the blockading squadrons could prevent many
cruisers, public and private, built especially to run
and to fight, from slipping out of port ; and, of the
prizes, enough got in to pay well in a certain pro-
portion of cases ; but mere cargo ships had to undergo
such risks that they could only be compensated for
by trebling and quadrupling the prices of the cargoes.
The weary sameness of the blockade was broken by
occasional descents to harry the coast, or by cutting-
out expeditions against gunboats and privateers.
Of course, these were mere incidents, valuable chiefly
as relieving the monotony of the life, though, in
the case of the descents, they had a certain effect in
harassing and worrying the Americans. Even the
damage done by these expeditions, however, proba-
bly caused as much anger as willingness to come to
terms. It was the constant pressure of the blockade
itself that counted, together with the opportunities
which it offered for descents in force, rather than
the mere harrying expeditions.

It was early in April, 1813, when Rear- Admiral
George Cockburn first began to harry the shores of
the Chesapeake in earnest. His little flotilla was
manned by but four or five hundred men ; yet he
stationed himself at the mouth of the Susquehanna
and supplied the whole British fleet with provisions
from American towns and farms ; and no effort
worth speaking of was made to molest him. All
Maryland was fiercely excited and angered; but

Great Britain and the United States 149

Maryland had to learn the lesson that, after war
has begun, it is impossible to do much by improvised
means of defence against a trained enemy who can
choose his own point of attack. The militia here
and there gathered for resistance; but Cockburn's
veterans, sailors and soldiers, dispersed them with
the utmost ease. He destroyed a large cannon
foundry, he burned all the towns where there was
any resistance, and, early in May, he brought back
his flotilla to Sir John Borlase Warren, having had
but one man wounded during the month which he
had spent working his will among the Marylanders.
The American newspapers denounced him bitterly
as a buccaneer ; but they should have denounced
even more severely themselves and their political
leaders. It was a bitter disgrace to the American
people that they should be powerless to resent or
repel such insults to their shores; and it was a
severe commentary on their folly in having refused
in the past, and even at the time refusing, to organ-
ise the thoroughly trained forces by sea and land
which alone could prevent or avenge such a catas-
trophe.

This expedition showed that the villages and
country districts were completely at the mercy of
the British. There were three towns of importance,
Baltimore, Washington, and Norfolk, which were
also within striking distance of the fleet; and, in
June, Warren made up his mind to attack one of
these. He chose Norfolk, because there was the

150 Naval Operations of the War Between

Portsmouth Navy Yard, and there lay the Con-
stellation frigate. The expedition, however, mis-
carried, although the Admiral had at his disposal
three thousand troops and thirteen war vessels.
The land forces became entangled among some deep
creeks, and re-embarked without making any serious
effort to carry out their part of the programme.
The attack by the Navy was made in a division of
fifteen boats with seven hundred men, under the
command of Captain Samuel John Pechell of the
San Domingo, 74. Captain John Martin Hanchett,
of the Diadem frigate, led the way in his launch.
The point chosen for attack was Craney Island,
where a battery of six 18-prs. had been erected and
put in charge of a hundred sailors and fifty marines
from the Constellation, under Lieutenants Neale,
Shubrick, Saunders, and Breckinbridge of that ship.1
The water was shallow, and the attack was not
pushed with the resolution ordinarily displayed by
the British Navy in an enterprise of the kind. The
Constellation's men reserved their fire until the British
were close in, when they opened with destructive
effect. While still more than seventy yards from the
guns, the Diadems launch grounded. Three of the
boats were sunk by shot, but remained above water,
as it was so shallow ; and, in the heat of the fight,
some of the Constellation s crew, headed by Midship-
man Tatnall, waded out and took possession.2 Some

1 Letter of Captain John Cassin, June 23rd, 1813.

a ' Life of Commodore Josiah Tatnall/ by Charles C. Jones, p. 17.

Great Britain and the United States 151

of the crews surrendered and went ashore with their
captors ; the others escaped to the remaining boats,
which immediately afterwards made off in disorder,
having lost ninety-one men.1 The assailants after-
wards strove to justify themselves by asserting that
the bottom was covered with slime and mud too
deep to admit of their getting on shore; but this
was certainly not the case, as it did not prevent
Tatnall and his companions from wading out to
them, and from returning in safety with the
prisoners. The Americans suffered no loss.

This took place on June 22nd, 1813. Smarting
under the repulse, Warren, on the 25th, sent Cock-
burn, accompanied by a land force under Major-
General Sir Sydney Beckwith, to attack Hampton
village. The militia on that occasion gave Beckwith
a rather stout fight, killing and wounding some
fifty men before they were dispersed. The town was
then taken and destroyed with circumstances of
horrible outrage. Lieutenant-Colonel C. J. Napier,
of the 102nd Regiment, commanded Beckwith's
advance, and prevented his men from joining in the
deeds of the " miscreants," as he called them. He
wrote, with intense indignation, that the troops
perpetrated with impunity " every horror — rape,
murder, pillage — and not a man was punished;'
and he blamed Sir Sydney for not hanging several
of the villains.2 Nothing was done, however ; and

1 James, vi. 233 [ed. 1837].

3 ' Life of General Sir Charles James Napier,.' i. 221, 225.

152 Naval Operations of the War Between

the affair caused bitter anger in America, leading to
reprisals and counter-reprisals on the Canadian
frontier. Although none of the offenders were
punished, both Sir John Warren and General Beck-
with took steps to prevent any repetition of the
outrages, dismissing from the service a regiment of
French deserters in British pay, who were alleged to
be the chief offenders.1 During the remainder of
the year Warren cruised off Chesapeake Bay and at
the mouth of the lower Potomac, keeping Virginia
and Maryland in a state of incessant alarm ; which
makes it all the more wonderful that those States
were not roused to take measures for efficient
defence. Cockburn sailed south to harry the coast
of the Carolinas and Georgia. Colonel Napier went
with him to North Carolina to take part in the
descents, and left on record his distaste for what he
called " a necessary part of our job, viz., plundering
and ruining the peasantry . . . (for) no outrages
have been authorised on persons, though much on
property, unavoidably."

1 James (vi. 234, ed. 1S37), while admitting that outrages were
committed, makes a feeble attempt to minimise them by quoting
from the Georgetown Federal Republican, of July 7th, 1813, the fol-
lowing : " The statement of the women of Hampton being violated
by the British turns out to be false. A correspondence upon that
subject, and the pillage said to have been committed there, has taken
place between General Taylor and Admiral Warren. Some plunder
appears to have been committed, but it was confined to the French
troops employed." If the outrages were perpetrated by troops in
British pay, Britain was, unhappily, responsible for what occurred ;
and Napier's testimony puts the question of outrage beyond chal-
lenge. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 153

Meanwhile the American gunboats had on one or
two occasions made efforts to harass the British
blockading squadrons, with ludicrously futile results.
The gunboats were sloop or schooner-rigged, and
armed with one or two long heavy guns, and
occasionally with light carronades to repel boarders.
The larger gunboats were useful in convoying parties
of small coasting vessels from one port to another ;
and they interfered with the British boats and
tenders, and also kept privateers off the coast. The
smaller gunboats, which were chiefly employed in
attacks on the frigates, had been built in accordance
with Jefferson's theory of coast protection, and they
proved utterly worthless. They trusted mainly to
their sweeps for motive power, and each was usually
armed with a long 12 or 18-pounder. They could
be used only in an almost absolute calm, for in any
wind it was not only impossible to fire, but also
difficult to keep the boats right side up. Both
officers and men hated the gunboat service, and
were so convinced of the uselessness of the vessels
that they made but half-hearted attempts to do
anything with them. The gunboats were much
smaller and in every way inferior to the big Danish
gunboats, which, during the same period, did at
times efficient work on the coast of Denmark. That
the fault lay in the boats themselves, and not in the
crews who manned them, was proved by the great
gallantry with which the latter afterwards behaved
at Bladensburg.

154 Naval Operations of the War Between

On June 20th fifteen gunboats attacked the Junon,
38, Captain James Sanders, while she lay becalmed
in Hampton road. The gunboats anchored while
still at a very long range, and promptly drifted
round, so that they could not shoot. They then got
under way, and gradually drew nearer the. Junon.
A long-range cannonade followed, in which the
Junon was very slightly injured, and the gunboats
suffered not at all ; but as soon as a slight breeze
sprung up, the Barrosa, 36, Captain William Henry
Shirreff, approached, and promptly drove off the
flotilla ; for as soon as they felt the effects of the
breeze the gunboats became useless, and could
only retire. The only loss they suffered was one
man killed and two wounded, from the Barrosa's
fire.

On that occasion the Junon did little better than
the gunboats; but she had her revenge a month
later. On July 29th she was in Delaware Bay with
the ship-sloop Martin, 18, Commander Humphrey
Fleming Senhouse, when the latter grounded on the
outside of Crow's Shoal. The frigate anchored
within supporting distance ; and shortly afterwards
the two ships were attacked by a flotilla of ten
American gunboats. Besides the usual disadvan-
tages of gunboats, these particular ones suffered
under an additional handicap, for their powder was
so bad that all of the officers had joined in a solemn
protest to the Navy Department, and had stated

Great Britain and the United States 155

that it was unfit for service.1 The flotilla kept at a
distance which permitted an hour's cannonading
with no damage to anybody, their own shot failing
to reach even the brig, while those of the frigate
occasionally passed over them. During the firing,
gunboat No. 121, Sailing-Master Shead, drifted a
mile and a half away from her consorts. This gave
the British an opportunity, of which they took
prompt advantage. They made a dash for No. 121
in seven boats, containing one hundred and forty
men, under the command of Lieutenant Philip
Westphal. Mr. Shead anchored, and made an
obstinate defence ; but at the second discharge of
his long-gun the carriage was almost torn to pieces,
and he was reduced to the use of small-arms.2 The
British boats advanced steadily, firing their boat
carronades and musketry, and carried the gunboat
by boarding, though not without a loss of three
killed or mortally wounded, and four wounded,
while seven of the twenty-five members of the gun-
boat's crew suffered likewise.

At about the same time the boats of the British
brig-sloops Contest and Mohaivk, under the command
of Lieutenant Rodger Carley Curry, made an attack
on the little gunboat Asp, 8, commanded by Mid-
shipman Sigourney, when she was moored in

1 Navy Department MSS., « Masters Commandants' Letters,'
1813, No. 3 ; enclosed in letter of Master-Commandant Samuel
Angus.

2 Letter of Mr. Shead, Aug. 5th, 1813.

156 Naval Operations of the War Between

Yeocomico Creek, out of the Chesapeake, on July
11th. After a murderous conflict, in which eleven
Americans, including Mr. Sigourney, and eight
British, including Lieutenant Curry, were killed or
wounded, the British carried the Asp and set her on
fire. However, the surviving Americans, nine in
number, escaped to the shore, rallied under Midship-
man McClintock, and, as soon as the British retired,
boarded the Asp, put out the flames, and got her
into fighting order.1 They were not again mo-
lested.

Shortly before this, on June 12th, the boats of
the British frigate Narcissus, 32, Captain John
Richard Lumley, containing fifty men under the
command of Lieutenant John Cririe, captured the
little cutter Surveyor, 6, under Mr. William S.
Travis, with a crew of fifteen men, as she lay in
York River, out of the Chesapeake.2 The struggle
was brief but bloody, five Americans and nine Brit-
ish beins: killed or wounded. Lieutenant Cririe led
his men with distinguished gallantry, and proved
himself a generous victor, for he returned Mr.
Travis's sword with a letter running : " Your gal-
lant and desperate attempt to defend your vessel
against more than double your number on the night
of the 12th instant, excited such admiration on the
part of your opponents as I have seldom witnessed

1 Letter of Midshipman McClintock, July 15th, 1813; also
James, vi. 236 (ed. 1837).

2 Letter of W. S. Travis, June 16th, 1813.

Great Britain and the United States 157

and I am at a loss which to admire most — the
previous arrangements on board the Surveyor, or the
determined manner in which her deck was disputed

inch by inch."

In January, 1814, the little United States coast-
ing schooner Alligator, of four guns and forty men,
Sailing-Master R. Bassett, was attacked by the boats
of a British frigate and brig, after nightfall, while
lying at anchor in the mouth of the Stone River,
South Carolina. Two of her men were killed and
two wounded ; but the boats were beaten off with
severe loss, one of them being captured.1

Besides these engagements with the United States'
armed vessels, boat-parties from the British two-
deckers and frigates destroyed many privateers and
merchantmen all along the coast from New England
to Georgia, as well as on the high seas. Some of
the privateers showed fight ; and of them some
behaved with courage that would have done credit
to any ship in the regular navy, while others
betrayed panic or inefficiency which would have
disgraced the worst ship in the worst regular navy
afloat. In short, they were the militia of the sea,
and they could not be depended upon for steady
fighting, though at times their feats were brilliant to
a degree ; for, unlike the militia of the land, they
were trained to the profession of arms, and they
followed by choice a pursuit of peril and hazard.

1 Letters of Bassett, Jan. 31st, 1814, and Commander J. H. Dent,
Feb. 21st, 1814.

158 Naval Operations of the War Between

A good example of the wide variety in behaviour
of the privateers under similar circumstances was
afforded by two incidents which occurred in Chesa-
peake Bay early in 1813. On February 8th, nine
boats, with two hundred men under the command
of Lieutenant Kelly Nazer, from the four British
frigates, Belvidera, Maidstone, Junon, and Statira,
were sent against the schooner Lottery, John South-
comb, master, a letter of marque of six 12-pr. car-
ronades, and twenty-five men, bound from Baltimore
to Bordeaux. A calm came on, enabling the boats
to overtake the schooner ; and they spread out, then
closing in with a rush. The schooner1 was speedily
carried, but only after an obstinate struggle, in
which Southcomb and nineteen of his crew, together
with six of the assailants, were killed or wounded.
Southcomb, mortally wounded, was taken on board
the Belvidera, where Captain Richard Byron (2)
treated him with the kind and considerate courtesy
which always marked that brave officer's dealings
with his foes ; and, when Southcomb died, his body
was sent ashore with every mark of respect due to
a brave officer. Captain Stewart, of the Constella-
tion, wrote Captain Byron a letter thanking him for
his generous conduct.2

On March 16th, 1813, a smaller British division

1 The Lottery was added to the Royal Navy as the Canso, 16. —
W. L. C.

2 The whole correspondence is given in full in ' Niles's Register,'
February and March numbers.

Great Britain and the United States 159

of five boats and one hundred and five men, com-
manded by Lieutenant James Polkinghorne, attacked
the privateer schooner Dolphin, and the letters of
marque Racer, Arab, and Lynx, mounting all told
thirty guns, with an aggregate of one hundred and
sixty men. Polkinghorne' s force was greatly infe-
rior: nevertheless it dashed in with the utmost
gallantry, and the privateersmen speedily became
panic-stricken. The Arab and Lynx surrendered at
once. The Racer was carried, after a sharp strug-
gle in which Polkinghorne was wounded ; and her
guns were turned on the Dolphin. Most of the
latter's crew jumped overboard. A few rallied
round their captain, but they were at once scat-
tered as the British seamen came on board.1 It
was an unusually brilliant and daring cutting-out
expedition.2

The American gunboats occasionally captured
British privateers, and on more than one occasion
cut them out, when they were becalmed or at
anchor, with boat-parties ; but they did nothing
of any especial note in that way. They also at

1 See Niles for this ; also James's ' Naval Occurrences.'

2 In this affair, besides Lieutenant Polkinghorne, Lieutenant
William Alexander Brand, Lieutenant William Richard Flint, R.M.,
Midshipman John Sleigh, and 7 men were wounded. In spite of
its gallant nature, no medal was ever granted for it. The Ameri-
cans lost 16 killed and wounded. The Racer became the Shelburne,
14, and the Lynx, the Afusquedobet, 14, in the Royal Navy. Polk-
inghorne was not made a Commander until June 27th, 1814. He
was posted on August 25th, 1828, and died on January 9th, 1839. —
W. L. C.

160 Naval Operations of the War Between

times cut off tenders to the British war vessels, or
interfered with the British cutting-out expeditions.

In the spring of 1814 the command of the British
fleet on the coast of North America was given to
Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Forester Inglis Coch-
rane.1 The main British force continued to lie in
the Chesapeake.

During 1813 and 1814 the blockade of the Amer-
ican coast was so severe that only occasionally could
American frigates get to sea ; and those that did get
to sea failed to accomplish anything. Once or twice
one of the American 44's chased a British 18-pounder
frigate and failed to come up with her ; and once or
twice they were themselves chased by a couple of
18-pounder frigates and escaped. They captured a
few merchantmen and picked up one or two small
British cruisers, while two or three small American
cruisers, brigs, or schooners were lost in the same
way ; but nothing of importance happened to any
American frigates, with one exception.

That exception was the Essex, 32, Captain David
Porter, which spent most of the year 1813 in the
Pacific. The Essex had left the United States on
October 28th, 1812. As she expected to make a
very long cruise, she carried an unusual quantity of
provisions, and sixty more men than ordinarily, so
as to man any ships which she might capture. She

1 Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, whom Cochrane superseded,
was only sixty-one years of age, but was very infirm. Cochrane
was but fifty-six. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 1 6 1

cruised in the South Atlantic for two or three
months, capturing some valuable prizes. Porter
then decided on the very bold course of doubling
Cape Horn, and striking at the British whalers in
the Pacific.

This was practically going into the enemy's
waters, for there were no stations where the Essex
could refit in safety, while South America and South-
Eastern Asia were full of ports friendly to the
British. No American frigate had ever before gone
into the Pacific ; and during all the long Euro-
pean warfare, no one of Great Britain's enemies
had ventured to attack her in the remote South
Seas.

At the end of the winter the Essex doubled the
Horn, and sailed into the harbour of Valparaiso.
On March 20th she captured a Peruvian corsair,
the Nereyda, which had been harassing American
whalers. Porter threw her guns and small-arms
overboard, and sent her into port. The Spanish
colonies were at that time in open revolt against
Spain, both sides bidding for the favour of Britain ;
and there was lawlessness throughout the South
Seas. The American whalers had been in great
danger of capture, but Porter's appearance saved
them. He cruised hither and thither to the different
islands and archipelagoes most frequented by whaling
vessels ; and, as by-play, he took part in the wars of
the savages. He saved all the American whalers,
and did not cost the government a dollar, supplying

11

1 62 Naval Operations of the War Between

everything from his prizes — sails, guns, anchors,
provisions, medicine, and even money to pay the
officers and the men. He completely broke up the
British whaling trade in the Pacific, capturing or
destroying four thousand tons of shipping, and
making prisoners of four hundred men. One or two
of the prizes he turned into tenders ; and these and
the boat-parties had one or two smart skirmishes in
capturing such of the whalers as were armed letters
of marque.1

Early in January, 1814, he returned to the South
American coast, and again made the harbour of
Valparaiso. One of the captured whalers, rechris-
tened the Essex Junior, 2 was in company as a tender.
On February 8th the British frigate Phoebe, 36,
Captain James Hillyar, accompanied by the ship-
sloop Cherub, 18, Commander Thomas Tudor Tucker,
made their appearance in the harbour. They had
been sent to the Pacific especially to capture Porter,
to break up the American whaling trade, and to
destroy the American fur-stations at the mouth of
the Columbia. When they came into the harbour
Porter was afraid that they might try to carry the
Essex out of hand without regard to the neutrality
laws. The Essex was put in fighting trim. The
Phoebe came so near her — whether by accident, as
Hillyar asserted, or by design, as Porter insisted,
cannot be said — that a collision seemed imminent;

1 In Porter's own book this cruise is described at length.

2 Previously the Atlantic. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 163

but neither captain was willing to begin the fray,
and the peace of the port was not broken.

The British ships began a blockade of the port
which lasted over a month. Porter was anxious to
meet the Phoebe alone, and Hillyar was equally de-
termined to use the advantage which his two ships
gave him. He was quite right in refusing single
combat except on his own terms. The Phoebe was
armed like the Essex with forty-six guns ; but on
her main-deck she carried long 18's, so that at a
distance she could cut the Essex to pieces without
suffering any material loss or damage. Her crew
consisted of over three hundred men, while that of
the Essex numbered but two hundred and fifty- five.
But, on the occasions when he sought a single com-
bat, Porter took the crew of the Essex Junior on
board, which gave him sixty men additional. In
such circumstances the widely different armaments
of the two frigates made it difficult to foretell the
result of a combat between them. In ordinary cir-
cumstances, and taking into account the ordinary
chances and vicissitudes of naval warfare, the
Phoebe's armament was beyond all comparison the
better ; but the Essex was the swifter ship, and at
close quarters her carronades threw, of course, a
greater weight in broadside than the long-guns to
which they were opposed, while, when she had the
crew of the Essex Junior on board, the complements
of the two ships were about equal, while the crew of
the Essex had been especially trained with a view to

s

164 Naval Operations of the War Between

boarding. If his speed had enabled him to close,
Porter would have had more than an even chance of
winning ; whereas he had no chance at all in action
at a distance. Hillyar was not in the South Pacific
as a naval knight-errant. His business there was to
capture the Essex. It would have been folly to risk
the result on a doubtful single ship duel, instead of
utilising his superiority in force, and trying to get his
antagonist at a disadvantage. The Cherub was a
small frigate-built sloop, mounting twenty-six guns,
with a crew of about 160 men. All her guns were
carronades, excepting two long bow-chasers.

Toward the end of March, Porter decided to run
out of harbour on the first opportunity, so as to
draw away his two antagonists in chase, and let the
Essex Junior escape ; for Porter had satisfied himself
that his ship was faster than either of the British
ships. After he had come to this conclusion, the
two vessels were kept always ready, the Essex hav-
ing only her proper complement of 255 men on
board.

On March 28th it came on to blow from the
south, and the Essex parted her cables. She then
got under way and made sail, Porter having deter-
mined to put his plan in operation. The British
vessels were close in with the weathermost point of
the bay, and Porter hauled up to pass to windward
of them. Just as he was rounding the outermost
point, and when safety was almost within his grasp,
a heavy squall struck the Essex, and her main top-

Great Britain and the United States 165

mast went by the board. Porter then committed a
grave error. David Glasgow Farragut,1 then a mid-
shipman, and afterwards the greatest admiral of the
American navy, was on board the Essex ; and in
after life he always expressed the opinion that she
should have run before the wind, which had shifted,
and have tried to escape into the open sea; for
Farragut believed that, even with her topmast out,
she would have been faster before the wind than the
Phoebe, and certainly much faster than the Cherub.
This at least would have given her a chance to
escape : otherwise she had no chance at all.2

However, the Essex tried to get back to the
harbour, and failing, because of her crippled con-
dition, she anchored, at 3.40 p.m., in a small bay
three miles from Valparaiso, and half a mile from a
detached Chilian battery. She was within pistol-
shot of the shore, and was as much entitled to the
benefit of neutral rights as when in Valparaiso
harbour; but neutral rights have shifting values,
and Hillyar had no idea of letting his foe escape
when disabled and within his grasp.

The Phoebe and Cherub bore down upon the Essex,
covered with ensigns, union jacks, and motto flags ;

1 David Glasgow Farragut, born in Tennessee, of part Spanish
ancestry, July 5th, 1801 ; gained undying fame as a naval com-
mander in the American Civil War, 1861-65, notably at New
Orleans and in Mobile Bay ; was the first officer to be given the rank
of Admiral in the United States Navy; visited Europe, 1867-68;
died in New York, August 14th, 1870. Life by L. Farragut, by
Headley, and by Mahan. — W. L. C.

2 ' Life of Farragut,' by his son, Loyall Farragut, pp. 37-46.

1 66 Naval Operations of the War Between

and the Essex made ready to receive them, her flags
flying from every mast.1 The fight was begun
before the springs could be got on her cables.
Hillyar made his attack with extreme caution, taking
his frigate under the stern of the Essex, while the
Cherub took her position on the American's star-
board bow. The action began soon after four in the
afternoon. The Essex s bow-chasers speedily drove
off the Cherub, which ran down and stationed her-
self near the Phoebe. The latter opened with her
broadside of long 18's from a position in which not
one of Porter's guns could reach her. Three times
springs were got on the cables of the Essex, in order
to bring her round until her broadside bore ; but in
each instance they were shot away. Three long
12's were then got out of the stern-ports ; and with
these a brisk fire was kept up, aimed especially at
the rigging of the British ships. A good many of
the Essex's crew were killed during the first five
minutes, before she could bring any guns to bear ;
but afterwards she did not suffer much. Meanwhile
her own long 12's were so well handled that, after
a quarter of an hour's firing, the Phoebe and Cherub
were actually driven off. They wore, and again
began with their long-guns, but found themselves at
too great range to accomplish anything ; and about
half an hour after the first shot had been fired, the
British ships hauled out of the fight for the time

1 Letters of Captain Hillyar, March 30th, 1814, and Captain
Porter, July 3rd, 1811.

Great Britain and the United States 167

being. " Our first fire . . . produced no visible
effect ; our second . . . was not apparently more
successful ; and, having lost the use of our main-
sail, jib, and mainstay, appearances were a little
inauspicious," wrote Captain Hillyar in his official
report.

The damages were soon repaired, and the two
ships stood back for the Essex. The Phoebe anchored
off her port quarter, at about 5.35 p.m., while the
Cherub kept under way, using her long bow-chasers.
They were out of reach of Porter's carronades, his
long-guns would not bear, and the enemy was
gradually knocking the Essex to pieces without
suffering any damage in return. This could not be
borne, and at 5.50 Porter severed his cable and tried
to close with his antagonists. His rigging and sails
were cut almost to pieces. Still, the Essex drove
down on her assailants, and for the first time got
near enough to use her carronades. After exchang-
ing a couple of broadsides, the Cherub hauled out of
the fight, and the Phoebe also edged off. The latter
now possessed the superiority of sailing, for her foe
was almost helpless, and so Hillyar was able to
choose his own distance. Again he opened with his
long 18's, out of range of the Essex's carronades.
All that Porter could do was to reply with his long
12's. There was no hope of success left, but the
Essex was not yet ready to surrender.

From that point on it was a slaughter rather
than a battle. The carnage in the American frigate

1 68 Naval Operations of the War Between

made her decks look like shambles. Throughout
the entire war no ship on either side was so desper-
ately defended as the Essex, taking into account the
frightful odds against which she fought ; indeed, the
Frolic, the Reindeer, and the Lawrence were the only
ships which in this respect deserved any comparison
with her. Captain Hillyar in his official report
says, " The defence of the Essex, taking into con-
sideration our superiority of force, and the very
discouraging circumstances of her having lost her
maintopmast, and being twice on fire, did honour
to her brave defenders, and fully evinced the courage
of Captain Porter and those under his command."
A middle-aged man, cool and wary, he very properly
declined to expose his men to needless danger ; but
his first Lieutenant, William Ingram, a hot-headed,
impulsive young fellow, begged him to close and run
Porter aboard, for it was "deliberate murder" to
lie off at long range and use a defenceless foe as a
target. Poor gallant Ingram was himself slain in
the fight, a splinter striking him in the head as he
stood by the rail.

Midshipman Farragut was naturally enough very
much impressed by his baptism of fire, and he has
preserved for us most of what we know of what
occurred on board the Essex during the time of
slaughter that preceded her surrender.

One gun was manned three times, fifteen men be-
ing slain at it. Its captain alone escaped without
a wound. As Farragut stood by another gun, he

Great Britain and the United States 169

saw four of its crew killed by a single ball. There
were but one or two instances of flinching. The
wounded, many of whom were killed by flying
splinters while under the hands of the doctors,
cheered on their comrades, and themselves worked
the guns until the mortal weakness came upon
them. At one of the guns was a young Scotsman
named Bissly, who had one leg shot off close to the
groin. Using his handkerchief as a tourniquet, he
said, turning to his American shipmates, " I left my
own country and adopted the United States to fight
for her. I hope I have this day proved myself
worthy of the country of my adoption. I am no
longer of any use to you or to her, so good-bye ! "
With these words he leaned on the sill of the port
and threw himself overboard. Among the very few
men who flinched was one named William Roach.
Porter sent one of his midshipmen to shoot him, but
he was not to be found. He was discovered by a
.man named William Call, whose leg had been shot
off and was hanging by the skin, and who dragged
the shattered stump all round the bag-house, pistol
in hand, trying to get a shot at the fellow. A sin-
gular feature of Roach's cowardice was that on
previous occasions he had shown much courage. He
could fight well when there was a hope of victory,
but he flinched in the awful hour of disaster. Lieu-
tenant J. G. Cowell had his leg shot off above the
knee, and his life might have been saved had it been
amputated at once ; but the surgeons had already

170 Naval Operations of the War Between

rows of wounded men waiting for them, and when
it was proposed to him that he should be attended
to out of order, he replied, " No doctor, none of that
— fair play 's a jewel ! One man's life is as dear as
another's. I would not cheat any poor fellow out
of his turn."

Finding it hopeless to try to close, Porter stood
for the land, intending to run the Essex ashore and
burn her. But when she had drifted close to the
bluffs, the wind suddenly shifted, took her flat aback,
and paid her head off shore, exposing herself to a
raking fire. At that moment Lieutenant John
Downes, commanding the Essex Junior, pulled out
in a boat, in spite of the cannonade, to see if he
could do anything. Three of the men with him,
including an old boatswain's mate named Kingsbury,
had come out expressly "to share the fate of the old
ship " ; so they remained on board, and in their
places Lieutenant Downes took some of the wounded
ashore under a heavy fire. The shift of the wind
gave Porter a faint hope of closing ; and once more
the crippled and riddled Essex was headed for
her foes. But Hillyar put his helm up to avoid
close quarters. The battle was his already, and he
was too good an officer to leave anything to chance.
Seeing that he could not close, Porter had a hawser
bent on the sheet-anchor, which he let go. This
brought the ship's head round, keeping her station-
ary ; and, from such of her guns as were not dis-
mounted and had men enough left to man them, a

Great Britain and the United States 171

broadside was fired at the Phoebe. The wind was
now very light, and the Phoebe, whose masts were
seriously wounded, and which had suffered much
aloft, beside receiving a number of shot between
wind and water, thus being a good deal crippled,
began to drift slowly to leeward. Porter hoped that
she would drift out of gunshot; but even this
chance was lost by the parting of the hawser, which
left the Essex at the mercy of the British vessels.
Their fire was deliberate and destructive, and could
only be occasionally replied to by a shot from one of
the American's long 12's. The ship caught fire, and
the men came tumbling up from below with their
clothes burning. To save the lives of some of them
they were ordered to jump overboard; and others,
thinking it a general order, followed suit, leaping
into the sea and trying to swim to the land. Some
failed, and were drowned. Others succeeded : among
them being one man who had sixteen or eighteen
pieces of iron in his leg, scales from the muzzle of a
gun. The old boatswain's mate, Kingsbury, was
one of those who escaped by swimming to shore,
though he was so burned that he was out of his
mind for several days.

The frigate had been cut to pieces above the
water-line, although, from the smoothness of the
sea, she was not harmed enough below it to reduce
her to a sinking condition. The carpenter reported
that he alone of his crew was fit for duty : the
others were dead or disabled. One of the lieuten-

172 Naval Operations of the War Between

ants had been knocked overboard by a splinter and
drowned. He had as a servant a little negro boy,
who, coming on deck and hearing of the disaster,
deliberately leaped into the sea and shared his
master's fate. Another of the lieutenants was
also knocked overboard, but was not much hurt,
and swam back to the ship. The only commis-
sioned officer left on duty was Lieutenant Decatur
McKnight. Of the two hundred and fifty-five men
on board, fifty-eight had been killed, sixty-six
wounded, and thirty-one drowned, while twenty-
four had succeeded in reaching shore. Only seventy-
six men were left unwounded, and many of them
had been bruised or otherwise injured. Porter him-
self had been knocked down by the windage of a
passing shot. Farragut had been acting as powder-
boy, messenger, and everything else. While he was
on the ward-room ladder, going below for gun-
primers, the captain of the gun directly opposite
the hatchway was struck full in the face by an 18-
pounder shot, and tumbled back on him. They fell
down the hatch together, Farragut being stunned
for some minutes. Later, while standing by a man
at the wheel, an old quarter-master named Francis
Bland, a shot, coming over the foreyard-arm, took
off the quarter-master's right leg, carrying away at
the same time one of Farragut' s coat-tails.

Nothing remained to be done ; and at twenty
minutes past six the Essex surrendered. The Phoebe
had lost four killed, and seven wounded ; the Cherub,

Great Britain and the United States 173

one killed, and three, including Commander Tucker,
wounded ; or fifteen all told.

Captain Porter in his letter spoke very bitterly
of Hilly ar's violation of the neutrality, and sneered
at his excessive caution before and during the fight.
Most American writers, including even Farragut,
have repeated the denunciations and the sneers.
Captain Hillyar did, of course, break the neutrality
laws in circumstances which made their violation
peculiarly irritating ; for he paid respect to them so
long as Porter was in good fighting trim, and broke
them the minute the enemy was crippled and could
be attacked with safety. But as yet respect for
international law does not stand on a level with
respect for the law of one's own land ; and the chief
thing to be considered is whether the irritation
caused by the violation of neutrality will compensate
for the advantage gained. In this case the capture
of the Essex certainly compensated for any injury
done to the feeling's of Chili ; and the circumstances
in which the violation of neutrality took place,
though not creditable, were no more discreditable
than those which attended the capture of the Con-
federate steamer Florida by a Northern cruiser in
the American Civil War.

Before the action Hillyar seems to have been
rather over-cautious, showing, perhaps, too much
hesitation about engaging the Essex without the
assistance of the Cherub. The Essex was the faster
ship ; and this over-caution would have resulted in

174 Naval Operations of the War Between

her escape had it not been for the accident which
caused the loss of her topmast. But, in the action
itself, Hillyar's conduct was eminently proper. It
would have been foolish, by coming to close quarters,
to forego the advantage which bis entire masts and
better artillery gave him. He treated his prisoners
with the utmost humanity and kindness. Says Sir
Howard Douglas, "The action displayed all that
can reflect honour on the science and admirable con-
duct of Captain Hillyar and his crew, which, with-
out the assistance of the Cherub, would have insured
the same termination. Captain Porter's sneers at
the respectful distance the Phoebe kept are in fact
acknowledgments of the ability with which Captain
Hillyar availed himself of the superiority of his

arms."

Following the defeat of the Essex came the
destruction of the American fur-posts on the
Columbia, and of what was left of the American
whaling trade in the South Seas. The Essex had
made a romantically daring cruise, and had ended
her career by an exhibition of fighting which, for
dauntless courage, could not be surpassed. She had
inflicted much damage on her foes, and had given
great temporary relief to American interests ; but
the fact remained that her cruise ended in disaster,
and in the sweeping of the American flag from the
Pacific. It is a very old truth, though one which
many legislators seem slow to learn, that no courage
and skill on the part of sea-officers can atone for

Great Britain and the United States 175

insufficiency in the number, and inefficiency in
the quality, of ships. To do permanent damage to
British interests in the Pacific, or anywhere else, the
Americans would have needed, even aside from a
fleet of battle-ships, a goodly number of frigates as
formidable as those with which they won their early
victories.

THE WARFARE ON THE LAKES

' I ''HE forces opposed — Lake Ontario — Defence of Sackett's
"*■ Harbour — Capture of the Julia and Growler — Chauncey and
Yeo — The affair at Big Sandy Creek — A contest of shipbuilding
— Lake Erie — Cutting out of the Caledonia — Barclay and Perry —
Battle of Lake Erie — American repulse at Macinaw — Capture of
the Tigress and Scorpion — Cutting-out affair at Port Erie — Lake
Champlain — Capture of the Growler — Macdonough and Hownie —
Battle of Plattsburg Harbour.

BESIDES the ocean ones, both the United
States and Great Britain possessed inland
sea-boards; for the boundary line between
the United States and Canada traversed the extreme
northern end of Lake Champlain, and went along
the middle of Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron, and
Superior. These inland waters were the scenes of
important naval engagements — important, that is,
in their effects, though they were waged between
diminutive flotillas. East of Lake Champlain prac-
tically to the ocean, and westward of it nearly to
Lake Erie, stretched a wooded wilderness, impassa-
ble for armies. In consequence, the effort to invade
either territory had to be made in the neighborhood
of one of the lakes; and the control of the latter
was important to the success of any offensive opera-
tions whatsoever, and was indispensable to their suc-
cess if they were to be conducted on a large scale.

Naval Operations 177

The naval warfare on the lakes, therefore, differed
in several points from the naval warfare 011 the
ocean. On the lakes, the success of a sea fiVht
might, and did, determine the success or the failure
of military operations the outcome of which would
have great weight upon the result of the war;
whereas, on the ocean, no success which the Amer-
ican warships could win could possibly have any
other than a moral effect. In the next place, on
the lakes special flotillas had to be constructed, so
that there the enormous British preponderances in
sea-might did not prevail. Finally, the crews them-
selves were made up of more or less heterogeneous
elements; and there was little difference between
them in point of skill.

The country around Lake Champlain was reason-
ably well settled on both the Canadian and American
sides, though very remote from the centres of
population. Both sides of Lake Erie were still
chiefly wooded wilderness. On Lake Ontario the
Canadian side had been longer settled, and was
more thickly populated than the American. More-
over, it was easier of access, for the great river St.
Lawrence connected it with the sea. The American
outposts, however, could keep up their connection
with the coast districts only through the Mohawk
Valley, which in its upper part merged into a forest
that stretched to the lakes unbroken, save by
occasional clearings and squalid log hamlets, while
the roads were very bad. On Lake Champlain both

12

178 Naval Operations of the War Between

sides were entirely unprepared. On Lake Ontario
and Lake Erie the British were very much ahead.
They had on Lake Ontario a squadron of six ships,
brigs and schooners, mounting from eight to twenty-
two guns each ; while the United States had only
one brig, the Oneida, of sixteen guns. On Lake
Erie the British had another squadron of six ships
— brigs and schooners of from two to seventeen
guns each.

It is quite impossible, and also quite needless, to
fully detail the make, rig, armament, and comple-
ment of all the vessels employed, for some of the
regularly built warships, and many of the sloops and
schooners purchased and used as such, changed
from time to time, not only in their rig, their
armament, and their complement, but even in their
names. Drafts of men from the regular navies of
both nations were soon sent up to the lakes ; but
there were not enough regular men-of-wars' men to
man the ships on either side, and the deficiency was
supplied by the use of Canadian and American lake
sailors, of militia, and of regular troops. One result
of this mixed character of the force was that the
superiority in training, and especially in gunnery,
shown by the American on the ocean was not shown
by the American on the lakes. There was little in
the lake actions to show any difference in skill, as
regards either the management of the sails or the
handling of the guns ; and in daring, resolution, and
courage there was also a practical equality. It was

Great Britain and the United States 179

largely a test of the comparative merit and energy
of the shipwrights. As the operations on the three
lakes were entirely independent of one another,
they can be considered separately.

Lake Ontario was the body of water on which
the largest squadrons were gathered by both sides,
and the land in its neighbourhood was the centre of
operations in the Canadian campaigns ; and, accord-
ingly, this lake should have been the scene of the
most important and decisive actions. Such was not
the case, however, largely owing to the extremely
cautious nature of the two men who respectively
commanded the British and the American squadrons
when they were finally put into fighting trim.

In 1812, when the war broke out, the Canadian
squadron of six ships, mounting about eighty guns,
was under the command of a provincial officer
named Earle, who was not in the British regular
service. The American brig Oneida, 16, Lieutenant
Melancthon Thomas Woolsey, was stationed at
Sackett's Harbour, the American headquarters on
the lake, which was protected by a little battery
mounting one long 32-pounder. On July loth
Earle's squadron made a feeble attack on the har-
bour. Woolsey landed some of the Oneida s carron-
ades, and beat off the attack without much difficulty,
the long 32 being the gun most used. On the retreat
of the Canadian flotilla, Woolsey prepared to take
the offensive. By capture and purchase he procured

180 Naval Operations of the War Between

six schooners, in which he mounted twenty-four
long guns.

In September, 1812, Captain Isaac Chauncey
arrived to supplant him in the supreme command.
A party of ship-carpenters, officers, and seamen, with
guns, stores, etc., followed him to the harbour ;
and preparations were at once made to build some
efficient ships. Meanwhile Chauncey took the lake
with the little squadron already prepared by Lieu-
tenant Woolsey. The Canadian flotilla was of
double his force, but, as already said, it really formed
only a species of water militia, and was not capable
of making head against regular seamen of the
United States navy, just as at the same time the
American militia proved unable to make head
against the British regulars on land. Chauncey not
only chased the Canadian squadron off the lake, but
also attacked it when it took refuge under the
batteries of Kingston, which was the naval head-
quarters on the Canadian side. No serious results
followed on this attack, any more than on the
previous attack on Sackett's Harbour ; but it was
noteworthy that it should have been made at all,
when the attacking force was so greatly inferior.

During the winter both sides made preparations
for the warfare in the spring. The lake service was
very unpopular with the Americans, so that it
proved difficult to get men to volunteer for it at all.
The only way they were persuaded to come was by
inducing them to serve under officers whom they

Great Britain and the United States 1 8 1

liked, and who went with them. In the British
service this particular difficulty was not encountered,
as men could be sent wherever the Admiralty
ordered ; but the demands of the great ocean fleets
were so stringent that it was hard to spare men for
the service on these remote inland waters. How-
ever, by May, 1813, five hundred British seamen
had been set up under Captain Sir James Lucas Yeo.
Two ships were being built at Sackett's Harbour by
the Americans, and two others, of twenty-four guns
each, by the British at York and Kingston, at
opposite ends of the lake. Thanks to the energy of
Mr. Henry Eckford, the head builder, the work on
the American side was pushed with greater rapidity,
and larger and somewhat better ships were built.
In addition to the new ships, Sir James kept the
five best of the original Canadian squadron, and
Chauncey kept the Oneida, and purchased a dozen
schooners. When the two squadrons were completely
ready, Chauncey had a great superiority in long-
guns and Sir James in carronades. In smooth
weather, therefore, when Chauncey could choose his
distance, he possessed much advantage ; but whereas
all the British ships were regularly built for men-of-
war, and sailed well in rough weather, Chauncey's
schooners were without bulwarks, and were rendered
so top-heavy by their guns that, in a sea-way, the
latter could not be used at all.

In the spring of 1813 the Americans, thanks to
the energy with which their shipwrights had worked,

1 82 Naval Operations of the War Between

were able to take the lake first. On April 27th
Chauncey's squadron joined in the attack on York,
whither he convoyed some 1700 troops under the
immediate command of General Pike. The attack
was successful : the 24-gun ship, which had been
almost completed, was burned, many military and
naval stores were destroyed, and the 10-gun brig
Gloucester was captured and taken back to Sackett's
Harbour.1

On the 27th of May, Chauncey's squadron again
took part, with Colonel Scott of the land forces
(which were conveyed in troop-ships and in the craft
which had been captured at York), in a successful
attack on Fort George.2 The result of this attack
was that the British troops evacuated the entire
Niagara frontier, thereby enabling Captain Oliver
Hazard Perry to get into Lake Erie with five small
vessels which became the nucleus of the American
force on that water. Up to that time they had not
been able to get past the British batteries into the
lake.

These attacks on York and Fort George had been
well executed; but no great fighting capacity was
needed, the assailants being in very much greater
force than the assailed. Hitherto the British flotilla
had not been strong enough to interfere with the

1 Letter of Chauncey, April 28th, 1813 ; Lossing's « Field-Book
of the War of 1812,' p. 581.

2 Chauncey's letter, May 29th, 1813 ; James's 'Military Occur-
rences,' i. 151.

Great Britain and the United States 183

Americans, though the largest American ship was
still in the dock at Sackett's Harbour; but, at about
the time when Chauncey's squadron was at Fort
George, the British ship which had been built at
Kingston was launched, and this made the British
squadron superior in strength for the moment. Sir
James Lucas Yeo, together with Sir George Prevost,
the Commander-in-Chief of the land forces in Canada,
decided to strike a blow at Sackett's Harbour, and
destroy the big American ship there, so ensuring
their superiority in force on the lake for the re-
mainder of the season. On May 27th they embarked,
and on the following day captured some boats which
were transporting troops to Sackett's Harbour. On
the 29th Sir George and Sir James made their
attack on the harbour, which was defended by
General Jacob Brown. The defences of the port
consisted merely of the one-gun battery and a block-
house. The attack resulted in a rather bloody
repulse, though at one time it seemed on the point
of succeeding.1 The attacking force was relatively
very much weaker than were the Americans at Fort
George and York, but it was certainly strong enough
to have succeeded if properly handled ; and the
failure caused much recrimination between the fol-
lowers of Sir James and Sir George.2

1 The British, however, succeeded in burning the Gloucester, 10,
which had been captured at York. — W. L. C.

2 Letter of Adjutant-General Baynes, May 30th, 1813 ; James's
' Military Occurrences,' i. 173.

i 84 Naval Operations of the War Between

During June, Yeo kept the lake undisputed, and
actively co-operated with the British army in the
operations which resulted in the humiliating repulse
of the American General Wilkinson's expedition into
Canada. In July Chauncey once more took the lake,
his new ship being ready. Throughout August and
September the two squadrons were facing one
another on the lake, each commander manoeuvring
with a caution that amounted to timidity. In smooth
water and with all the ships in action, Chauncey
undoubtedly possessed the superiority in force ; but
on the 8th of August he received a severe lesson as
to the unseaworthiness of his schooners, for the two
largest went to the bottom in a heavy gust of wind,
their guns breaking loose when they heeled over.
Moreover, as the ships were of widely different
types, it was only possible to get them all into
action by causing one half of the squadron to tow
the other half.

On August 10th there occurred the one encounter
in which either side can be said to have shown any-
thing approaching to brilliancy ; and all the credit
must be given to the British. Yeo, after two days
of cautious manoeuvring, finally made a night attack
on Chauncey 's squadron. Chauncey, partly owing
to his own blunder and partly to the blunder of two
of his schooners, the Julia and Growler, allowed the
latter to be cut off, and they were both of them
captured by Yeo, who deserved great praise.1

1 Letters of Yeo, Aug. 10th, 1813, and Chauncey, Aug. 13th, 1813.

Great Britain and the United States 185

For the next six weeks the skirmishes on the
lakes continued, each commander in his official
letters stoutly maintaining that he was chasing the
other. As a matter of fact, Yeo was determined
only to fight in heavy, and Chauncey only in light
weather. On September 11th a long-range skirmish
occurred at the mouth of the Genesee River. The
heavy guns of the American schooners gave their
side the advantage in this affair, but nothing
decisive resulted.1

On September 28th the squadrons again came into
contact near York Bay. On that occasion the
Americans were to windward ; and Chauncey at last
made up his mind to try a real fight. But Yeo
succumbed with very little resistance. The American
vessels suffered hardly at all. Chauncey led his
squadron in the Pike, much the heaviest vessel in
either squadron. Yeo's ship, the Wolfe, speedily
had her main and mizen topmasts shot away;
whereupon Yeo crowded all sail forward, and hastily
got out of the combat, leaving his retreat to be
covered by the Royal George, Captain William Howe
Mulcaster. Mulcaster luffed across the Wolfe s stern,
and stood the brunt of the action until his commo-
dore was in safety, when he himself followed suit,
having lost his fore topmast. For an hour the
American ships followed, and then relinquished the
pursuit when the British were running into the
entirely undefended port of Burlington Bay, whence

1 Letters of Yeo, Sept. 12th, 1813, and Chauncey, Sept. 13th, 1813.

1 86 Naval Operations of the War Between

escape would have been impossible.1 The only loss
inflicted by the British guns had been to the Amer-
ican schooner TomjiJcins, under Lieutenant Bolton
Fitch, who shared with Captain Mulcaster what
there was of glory in the day. The fight, or skir-
mish, such as it was, was decisive in so far as
concerned any further attempts by Yeo to keep the
lake that season, for thereafter his squadron remained
in Kingston, part of the time blockaded by Chaun-
cey. But Chauncey deserved no credit for the action.
He possessed an undoubted superiority in force, and
his opponents made very little resistance, so that
the victory was cheap ; and his conduct in abandon-
ing the pursuit and thereby losing the fruits of the
victory was inexplicable. He did not order his
swifter vessels to cast off the slower ones which they
were towing, so he could not overtake the fleeing
enemy; and he did not follow them into the open
roadstead where they sought refuge. He afterwards
alleged that he feared to make the attack in Bur-
lington Bay lest the wind should blow up to a gale
and drive both squadrons ashore ; and that he hoped
to be able to make another attack at a more suitable
time. Such excuses simply serve to mark the
difference between the commander who allows
caution to degenerate into irresolution, and the bold

1 Letter of Chauncey, Sept. 2Sth, 1813; Brenton, ii. 503. Un-
fortunately, the British Admiralty had at that time adopted the
rule of not publishing official accounts of defeats, so there is no
printed letter of Yeo's.

Great Britain and the United States 187

leader of men. Chauncey had missed the great
opportunity of his life.

In 1814 the contest degenerated into one of ship-
building merely. The shipwrights under Yeo and
Chauncey began to build huge frigates and to lay
down battleships, while the schooners were no longer
included in the cruising squadrons. * Chauncey had
recaptured the Julia and the Growler in a successful
attack upon some British transports. The Growler,
however, was again captured on May 3rd, 1814,
when Yeo, who took the lake first, began a success-
ful attack on Oswego,2 the British troops being
under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Fischer. 3
Yeo then blockaded Sackett's Harbour. On May
30th he sent an expedition of six boats with seven
guns and one hundred and eighty men, under Com-
manders Stephen Popham and Francis Brockell
Spilsbury, to attack an American convoy under
Captain Woolsey which was bringing up guns and
cables for the new American frigates. Woolsey ran

1 On April 15th, there were launched, by the British, at Kingston,
the Prince Regent, 58, and the Princess Charlotte, 42. On May 1st
the Americans, at Sackett's Harbour, launched the Superior, 62, and
on June 11th, the Mohawk, 48. — W. L. C.

2 In the capture of Oswego, the British lost 18 killed and 64
wounded, among the former being Captain William Holtoway, R.M.,
and among the latter Captain William Howe Mulcaster, Commander
Stephen Popham, and Lieutenant Charles William Griffith Griffin.
The American loss was 6 killed, 38 wounded, and 25 missing.
Three schooners and seven guns were carried away by the victors,
and a schooner and six guns were destroyed. — W. L. C.

8 Yeo's letter, May 17th, 1814.

1 88 Naval Operations of the War Between

into Big Sandy Creek, eight miles from the harbour,
where he was joined by some militia and a company
of light artillery, under Major Appling. The British
force was absurdly inadequate for the duty to which
it was assigned ; Americans had every advantage of
position, and outnumbered the attacking party.
Woolsey and Appling arranged an ambush, and,
with the loss of only one man slightly wounded,
killed 1 or captured the entire body of assailants. 2

On July 6th Yeo raised the blockade, and, for six
weeks, nothing was done except that Lieutenant
Francis Gregory, U.S. N., twice led daring and suc-
cessful cutting-out expeditions, in one of which he
captured a British gunboat, and in the other de-
stroyed a 14-gun schooner which was nearly ready
for launching. In August, Commodore Chauncey's
vessels having been built, Captain Yeo in his turn
promptly retreated to port, where he was blockaded.
The difference in force against Yeo was about 15
per cent., and he declined to fight with these odds
against him. A little later, in October, bis two-
decker, the Prince Regent, 58, being completed, Yeo

1 The attacking party consisted of 180 seamen and Royal Marines.
It lost 18 killed and 50 badly wounded, among the latter being Lieu-
tenants Thomas S. Cox and Patrick M'Veagh, R.M. Popham's
official letter ended : " The exertions of the American officers of the
rifle corps commanded by Major Appling, in saving the lives of
many of the officers and men whom their own men and the Indians
were devoting to death, were conspicuous, and claim our warmest
gratitude."— W. L. C.

2 Letters of Woolsey and Appling, June 1st and May 30th,
1814.

Great Britain and the United States 189

in his turn took the lake ; and the equally cautious
Chauncey promptly retired to Sackett's Harbour.

Chauncey varied the game by quarreling with
General Brown, alleging that the latter was making
a " sinister attempt " to subordinate the navy to the
army.1 He insisted — wherein he was quite right
— that his proper objective was the enemy's fleet,
and that he could best serve the army by destroying
the British vessels. This was true enough ; but the
timid and dilatory tactics employed by both Chaun-
cey and Yeo were such as to render it certain that
neither would ever inflict a serious blow on the other,
for neither would fight unless the odds were largely
in his favour ; and when such was the case, he could
not persuade his opponent to meet him ; so that
the best either could do was to assist the army in
the way against which Chauncey protested. Both
Chauncey and Yeo were good organisers : each in
turn assisted the land forces on his side more or less
by getting control of the lake ; but, towards the end,
the contest became almost farcical, for it was one of
shipbuilding merely, and the minute either party
completed a new ship the other promptly retired
into harbour until able in turn to complete a larger
one.

On Lake Erie the course of events was very dif-
ferent, for the commanders on that sheet of water
displayed none of the extreme and timid caution

1 Niles, vii. 12, vi.

190 Naval Operations of the War Between

which characterised the two commodores on Lake
Ontario.

At the outbreak of the war the British squadron
on Lake Ontario consisted of the Queen Charlotte,
16, Lady Prevost, 12, Hunter, 10, Caledonia, 2, Little
Belt, 2, and Chippeway, 2. These were all manned
by Canadians, and, like the vessels on Lake Ontario,
were not part of the British regular Navy, but
formed a species of water militia. The American
navy was not represented on Lake Erie at all ; but
Hull's army at Detroit had fitted out a small brig,
the Adams, armed with six 6-pounders, which fell
into the hands of the British when Hull and his
army were captured by the gallant British General
Brock. The Detroit, ex Adams, was then put in
charge of Lieutenant Rolette, R.N., assisted by a
boatswain, and was provided with a crew of fifty-six
men. She was in company with the Caledonia, a
small brig mounting two guns, with a crew of twelve
Canadians under Mr. Irving. In all the fighting on
the upper lakes the bulk of the British crews was
composed of Canadians and of British soldiers ;
whereas on Lake Ontario the ships were manned by
British sailors from the fleet.

The Detroit and the Caledonia, carrying a very
valuable cargo of furs and about forty American
prisoners, moved down the lake, and on October 7th,
1812, anchored under the guns of the British Fort
Erie.

Commander Jesse D. Elliott, U.S.N., had already

Great Britain and the United States 191

been sent to Lake Erie to construct a naval force.
On the very day on which the two brigs came to
anchor under the British fort the first detachment of
the American seamen, fifty-one in number, arrived
at Black Rock, on the American side, where Elliott
was stationed. They had no arms ; but sabres,
pistols, and muskets were supplied by the com-
mander of the land forces, who also detailed seventy
soldiers under Captain Towsen to act with Elliott,
the total force being 124.1 On the 9th, Elliott,
acting with great promptness and decision, left in
two large boats, one under his own command, the
other under Towsen, intending to cut out the British
vessels. After two hours' rowing the boats reached
the brigs. Elliott took his own boat alongside the
Detroit and boarded her before the surprised crew
knew their danger, though there was a scuffie in
which one American was killed and one wounded.
The noise roused the Canadians in the Caledonia,
and they made more resistance to the other boat.
However, it was too late, and the Caledonia was
carried with a rush, all twelve of the Canadians
being cut down or made prisoners. Five of the
Americans were killed or wounded. The Caledonia
was brought back in safety to the American side,
but the Detroit had to be destroyed.

This ended the naval operations of 1812 on Lake
Erie, except that the American Commander Angus,
with eighty sailors, took part in one of the abortive

1 Letter of Elliott, Oct. 5th, 1812 ; Lossing, p. 385.

192 Naval Operations of the War Between

attacks made by the American General Smith on
some of the British batteries. Late in the winter
Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry arrived and took
command.

Commander Robert Heriot Barclay (actg.), R.N.,
was appointed commander of the British forces on
Lake Erie, in May, 1813. He began to build a
20-gun ship at Amherstburgh. Some seventy sailors
from the British Navy were sent to him, and there
were about twice that number of Canadian sailors
already in the flotilla. The remainder, at least
half, of his men were soldiers sent from the British
army on shore.

Perry began the construction of two 20-gun brigs
at Presqu'isle, now Erie. Over one-half of the men
who manned his squadron were seamen from the
regular Navy on the Atlantic coast ; about a third
were soldiers and marines ; and about a tenth were
volunteers from among the frontiersmen around the
lake.

The crews and vessels on both sides were of the
order of makeshifts, although the splendid courage
and efficiency with which the men fought was a
sufficient proof that there was no difficulty in
bringing such material up to the highest standard ;
for the British and American seamen from the ocean,
the American and Canadian frontiersmen and lake
sailors, and the soldiers from both armies, who
formed the crews, offered fine fighting stuff.

The lake vessels were very much shallower than

Great Britain and the United States 193

those used for the deep seas. Their tonnage was
estimated arbitrarily, on the supposition that, like
the ordinary ocean vessels, they were deep in a
given proportion to their length and breadth. If
allowance were made for the shallowness of the lake
vessels, their tonnage would be of course very much
less. Thus, making such allowance, the British 20-
gun ship built by Barclay, which he christened the
Detroit, was of only 305 tons, while, if estimated in
the usual manner, it was of 490. The two brigs
Lawrence, and Niagara, which Perry was building,
were similarly of either 300 or 480 tons. However,
the tonnage was really a matter of small moment
in war vessels, except to indicate the size above the
water-line, for they carried no cargoes ; so that the
tonnage of the lake vessels may as well be reckoned
as though it were a case of ordinary ocean vessels.
Reckoning thus, Barclay's second ship, the Lady
Charlotte, was of 400 tons; his third, the Lady
Prevost, of 230 ; and his fourth, the Hunter, of
180 tons. On the American side the Caledonia, like
the LIunter, was of 180 tons, and the largest
schooner, the Ariel, of 112. The other schooners
and sloops on both sides were of from 70 to 95 tons
apiece.

The two American brigs and the British ship
were completed in August. Until their completion
the British squadron was superior in force, and
Barclay kept up a close blockade of the harbour of
Erie, where there was a bar having on it less than

13

194 Naval Operations of the War Between

seven feet of water. This bar prevented the British
from going in, but it also prevented the two Amer-
ican brigs from getting out so long as the enemy
was off the harbour. Finally Barclay, early in
August, was obliged to be away for a couple of
days ; and Perry by great exertions managed to get
the two brigs across the bar without their guns,
which were put in later. ! Soon afterwards the
Detroit joined Barclay's squadron, and the captains
made ready for battle.

Barclay's squadron was so inferior in force that
he would not have been justified in risking action if
it could have been avoided. But there was no
alternative. The control of Lake Erie virtually
decided the control of the disputed territory around
the Detroit River. Moreover, Barclay was so short
of provisions that he had to bring matters to a head.
On September 10th, 1813, the two squadrons came
together.

Perry had nine vessels, the brigs Laivrence, Niag-
ara, and Caledonia, the schooners Ariel, Scorpion,
Somers, Porcupine, and Tigress, and the sloop Trippe.
Their total tonnage was 1671, and their total crews
amounted to 532 men ; but sickness had been so
prevalent that only about 416 were fit for duty. In
his vessels fifty-four guns were mounted, fourteen of
which were on pivots. In the action his broadside
weight of metal was 896 pounds ; 288 of which were
thrown from long-guns. The Laivrence and Niagara

1 Cooper, ii. 389.

1

Great Britain and the United States 195

were large men-of-war brigs, armed in the usual
manner with eighteen 32-pr. carronades, and two
long 12's apiece. The smaller vessels, in addition
to two or three light carronades, carried long 32' s,
24's, and 12's. Barclay's squadron consisted of six
vessels, the ships Detroit and Queen Charlotte, the
brig Hunter, the schooners Lady Prevost and Chip-
peway, and the sloop Little Belt. The aggregate
tonnage was 1460 ; the aggregate of the crews
summed up to about 440 men. 1 The total number
of guns was sixty-three, five being on pivots. The
total broadside weight was 459 pounds, of which
195 were from long guns ; for many of Barclay's
guns were of very small calibre, including long 2's,
4's, and 6's, and 12-pr. carronades.

The difference in number of men between the
two squadrons was not very material. Both had
scratch crews, made up of regular seamen, of lake
seamen, of British regulars, and a few Indians in
Barclay's squadron, and American militia and a
few negroes in Perry's. In tonnage Perry was
superior by just about what would be indicated by
the possession of three extra schooners. The de-
cisive difference was in the armament. In weight
of broadside the superiority of the Americans in
long-gun metal was nearly as three to two, and in
carronade metal it was greater than two to one.

1 James (vi. 250, ed. 1837) puts the numerical strength of Bar-
clay's command at only 345 men, including 80 Canadians, and 240
soldiers of the Newfoundland and 41st regiments. — W. L. C.

196 Naval Operations of the War Between

The ship Detroit mounted chiefly long guns, and was
on the whole probably rather superior to either of
Perry's big brigs. The Queen Charlotte was greatly
inferior to either. The smaller vessels lacked the
long guns which made the small American vessels
formidable. In smooth water and at a distance
the long guns of Perry's smaller vessels gave his
squadron a very marked advantage ; in a brisk
breeze his two big brigs should have been almost a
match for the entire British squadron.

When, at daylight on September 10th, Perry dis-
covered Barclay's squadron he was at anchor at
Put-In Bay. As soon as the ships were made out,
Perry got under way and bore down toward them,
having the weather gage. Barclay lay to in close
column, the Qhippeivay ahead, followed by the
Detroit, the Hunter, the Queen Charlotte, the Lady
Prevost, and the Little Belt.1 Perry went down
with the wind off his port beam, and made the
attack in column ahead obliquely. The Erie and
Scorpion led the line a little ahead, and on the
weather bow, of Perry's ship the Lawrence. Next
came the Caledonia, and after her the Lawrence s
twin sister, the Niagara, under Captain Jesse D.
Elliott, whom Perry had superseded, and wTho

1 The British vessels were commanded as follows : Chippeway,
Master's Mate J. Campbell ; Detroit, Commander Robert Heriot
Barclay ; Hunter, Lieutenant George Bignell ; Queen Charlotte, Com-
mander Robert Finnis (acting) ; Lady Prevost, Lieutenant Edward
Wise Buchan. The commander of the Little Belt is unnamed in
Barclay's letter of September 12th to Yeo. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 197

showed by his actions that he felt no particular
zeal in helping Perry to gain glory. The Niagara
was followed by the Somen, the Porcupine, the
Tigress, and the Trippe in that order.2

The winds were light and baffling, and, as the
American ships came down, they formed a strag-
gling and irregular line which approached at an
angle of about fifteen degrees to the line of Bar-
clay's squadron, which was in much better and
more compact order. At a quarter to twelve the
Detroit opened the action with her long 24's. Her
first shot fell short : her second crashed through
the Lawrence ; whereupon the Scorpion replied with
her long 32. Ten minutes after the Detroit had
first fired, the Lawrence, which had shifted her port
bow-chaser into the place of one of the carronades
on her starboard side, opened with both her long
12's. At noon she tried her carronades, but the
shot fell short. Shortly afterwards the action be-
came general on both sides, though the rearmost
American vessels were still so far away that they
were themselves not exposed to any danger at all,
and only the longest guns occasionally reached.
The Lawrence was steadily nearing Barclay's line,
Perry making every effort to close ; but it was half
an hour after the Detroit had opened before the

2 Letters of Captain Barclay and Lieutenant Inglis, Sept. 12th
and 10th, 1813; of Captain Perry, Sept. 11th, 12th, and 13th.
Lossing gives some valuable matter ; so does Ward in his ' Naval
Tactics,' and James in his ' Naval Occurrences.'

198 Naval Operations of the War Between

Lawrence got to the close quarters necessary for the
effective use of her carronades. Throughout this
half -hour Barclay's leading ships had concentrated
their fire on Perry's vessel, and so the Lawrence had
suffered a good deal ; though the schooners Scorpion
and Ariel had been pounding away with their long
guns to help her.

For some time, therefore, the action at the head *
of the line was in favour of the British. The sides
of the Detroit were dotted with marks of shot that
did not penetrate, partly because of the long range,
partly because the Americans in this action seemed
to show a tendency to overload their carronades.
There was a carronade in the Scorpion which upset
down the hatchway as soon as it got hot ; and one
of the long guns on the Ariel burst. On the other
side, the Detroit had her own difficulties. There
were no locks for her guns, thanks to the hurry
with which she had been prepared, and they had to
be discharged by flashing pistols at the touch-holes.
Nevertheless, Barclay fought her to perfection, and
the trained artillerists among his seamen and soldiers
aimed the guns so well that Perry had his hands
full. The Caledonia came down beside the Lawrence,
helping to divert the attention of the Hunter and
the Queen Charlotte from her. But Elliott handled
the Niagara poorly. He did not follow Perry to
close quarters, but engaged the Queen Charlotte at
a distance which rendered the carronades of both
vessels useless. In fact, the only effective fighting

Great Britain and the United States 199

at the rear of the lines was that done by the four
American gun vessels astern of the Niagara. Each
of these had a long 32 or 24, of which, on such
smooth seas, she could make good use against the
Lady Prevost, Queen Charlotte, and Hunter; the
latter having an absurd armament of little guns
which threw a broadside of thirty pounds all told.
Both Commander Finnis, of the Queen Charlotte,
and his first lieutenant, Thomas Stokoe, were killed
early in the action. Her next in command, the
Canadian Lieutenant Irvine, finding that he could
make no effective answer to the long guns of the
schooners, drew forward and joined in the attack
on the Laurence at close quarters. The Niagara
was left practically without any antagonist, and, at
the end of the line, the fight became one at long
range between the Somers, Tigress, Porcupine, and
Trippe on the one side, and the Lady Prevost and
Little Belt on the other. The Lady Prevost' s arma-
ment consisted chiefly of 12-pr. carronades. She
made a noble fight, but such an armament at long
range in smooth water was utterly useless against
the heavy guns of the schooners. Her commander,
Lieutenant Buchan, and her first lieutenant, Francis
Rolette, were both seriously wounded, and she was
greatly cut up, and began to fall to leeward.

The fight at the head of the line was waged
with bloody obstinacy between the Scorpion, Ariel,
Laurence, and Chesapeake, on the one hand, and the
Caledonia, Detroit, Queen Charlotte, and Chippeway

200 Naval Operations of the War Between

on the other. Instead of pairing in couples, the
ships on each side seemed to choose the largest
opponents as special targets. The Americans con-
centrated their fire on the Queen Charlotte and
Detroit ; while the British devoted their attention
mainly to the Lawrence, which had already suffered
severely while working down to get within range of
her carronades. The Queen CJiarlotte was soon al-
most disabled. The Detroit was also pounded prac-
tically to a standstill, suffering especially from the
raking fire of the gunboats. Barclay was fighting
her himself with the utmost gallantry ; but he was
so badly wounded that he was at last obliged to
quit the deck. His first lieutenant, John Garland,
was also wounded mortally ; but Lieutenant George
Inglis, to whom the command was turned over,
continued the fight as gamely as ever.

Meanwhile the Lawrence was knocked to pieces
by the combined fires of her adversaries. Of the
one hundred and three men who had been fit for
duty when she began the action, eighty-three were
killed or wounded. As the vessel was so shallow,
the ward-room, which was used as the cockpit into
which the wounded were taken, was mainly above
water, and the shots came through it continually.
Many of the wounded were killed or maimed while
under the hands of the surgeons. The first lieu-
tenant, Yarnall, was hit three times, but refused to
leave the deck, and fought the ship to the last.
The only other lieutenant on board, Brooks, of the

Great Britain and the United States 201

marines, was mortally wounded. Every brace and
bowline was shot away, and the hull was so riddled
that it looked like a sieve. One by one the guns on
the engaged side were dismounted, while the men
were shot down until they could not man even the
guns that were left. However, the slaughter of
four-fifths of his crew before his eyes did not daunt
Perry in the least. When there were no men left
to serve the last three or four guns, he called down
through the skylight for one of the surgeon's assist-
ants. The call was repeated and obeyed, until all
those officers had been used up. Then he shouted
down, " Can any of the wounded pull a rope ? "
and three or four of them hobbled up on deck to
help him lay the last guns. Finally, Perry himself
was left with only the purser and chaplain, and by
their aid he fired a final shot ; and, immediately
afterwards, the gun which he had used, the only
one left, was disabled.

Meanwhile Mr. Turner in the Caledonia, having
put his helm up, had passed the Lawrence and run
into the British line, where he engaged at half
pistol-shot distance, though his little brig was abso-
lutely without quarters.

Perry's vessel lay an unmanageable hulk on the
water, while the shot ripped through her sides, and
there was not a gun that could be fired in return ;
but Perry had not the slightest intention of giving
up the fight. He had gone into the battle flying on
his flag Lawrence's dying words, " Don't give up the

202 Naval Operations of the War Between

ship " ; and he intended to live up to the text. The
Niagara was at that time a quarter of a mile to
windward of the Lawrence on her port-beam. She
was steering for the head of Barclay's line, and was
almost uninjured, having taken very little part in
the combat, and never having been within a dis-
tance that rendered her carronades of any use.
Perry instantly decided to shift his broad pennant
to her. Leaping into a boat with his brother and
four seamen, he rowed to the fresh brig, having
literally been hammered out of the Lawrence by the
pounding which he had received for two hours and
a half. As soon as he reached the Niagara, he
sent Elliott astern to hurry up the three rearmost
schooners ; for the sloop Trippe, on her own account,
had steered straight for the British line, and was
very near the Caledonia. The Laivrence, having but
fourteen sound men left, struck her colours ; but the
action began again before possession could be taken
of her, and she drifted astern out of the fight. At
a quarter to three the schooners had closed, and
Perry bore up to break Barclay's line, the powerful
brig to which he had shifted his broad pennant
being practically unharmed, as indeed were his
rearmost gun-vessels.

The British ships had fought till they could fight
no longer. The two smallest, the Chippeway and
Little Belt, were not much damaged ; but the other
four were too disabled either to fight or to man-
oeuvre effectively so as to oppose fresh antagonists.

Great Britain and the United States 203

However, they answered as best they could, with
great guns and musketry, as the Niagara stood
down and broke the British line, firing her port
battery into the Chippeway, Little Belt, and Lady
Prevost, and her starboard battery into the Detroit,
Queen Charlotte, and Hunter, raking on both sides.
The Detroit and Charlotte had been so cut up aloft,
almost every brace and stay being shot away, that
they could not tack, and tried to wear; but they
fell foul of one another, and the Niagara luffed
athwart their bows, firing uninterruptedly, while,
under their sterns, the Caledonia and the schooners
stationed themselves so close that some of their
grape-shot, passing over the British vessels, rattled
through Perry's spars. The Lady Prevost had sagged
to leeward, an unmanageable wreck. Barclay had
done everything in the power of man to do. The
first and second in command of every one of his six
vessels had been either killed or wounded ; and at
three o'clock his flag was struck. The Chippeivay
and Little Belt tried to escape, but were overtaken
and brought-to by the Trippe and the Scorpion, the
commander of the latter, Mr. Stephen Champlin,
firing the last shot of the battle, as he had likewise
fired the first on the American side.

None of the American ships had suffered severely,
excepting the Lawrence, to whose share over two-
thirds of the total loss had fallen. In breaking the
line, however, the Niagara had suffered somewhat ;
and the Caledonia, Ariel, Scorpion, and Trippe had

204 Naval Operations of the War Between

come in for some of the pounding. All told, twenty-
seven men had been killed and ninety-six wounded,
three mortally. The British loss amounted to forty-
one killed and ninety-four wounded, chiefly in the
Detroit and Queen Charlotte. Barclay's letter is a
model of its kind for generosity and manliness,
stating matters precisely as they were. He needed
no justification, for the mere recital of the facts was
proof enough of his gallantry and skill. In his
letter he stated, " Captain Perry has behaved in the
most humane and attentive manner, not only to
myself and officers, but to all the wounded." *

The victory was decisive, giving the Americans
complete control of the upper lakes ; and it was
very important in its effects, putting an end to any
effort to wrest from them the supremacy on the
western frontier. Perry and the American ship-
wrights are entitled to high praise for the energy
and forethought with which they prepared the
squadron. Moreover, Perry showed the most de-
termined courage and great fertility in resource,
which enabled him not merely to destroy, but also
to annihilate his enemy ; and he deserved the credit
he received. Both sides displayed the same dogged
courage ; but, on the whole, Barclay and his captains

1 Lieutenant Robert Heriot Barclay had his Commander's com-
mission confirmed on November 19th, 1813, ere news of the disaster
reached the Admiralty. He was tried at Portsmouth for the loss of
his flotilla on September 16th, 1S14, and was "most fully and
honourably acquitted." He was posted on October 14th, 1824, and
died on May 12, 1837. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 205

unquestionably showed superior skill in the actual
fighting. The disposition of the American line was
such that it was brought into action by fragments.
Captain Elliott did not fight the Niagara well ; and
four of the American gunboats were kept so far
astern as to prevent their being of much use at first,
so that the brunt of the action fell on the Lawrence,
even during the early part of the action, when the
fighting was at long range and her carronades were
useless. Perry, towards the end, showed ability to
use his force to the best advantage, and his own
ship was faultlessly handled and fought ; but some
of his captains did not support him, nor one an-
other, as they should have done. Whether through
his fault or through his misfortune, he failed to get
from them the full co-operation which he should
have received.

Barclay's dispositions, on the contrary, were fault-
less ; and the British captains supported one an-
other, so that the disparity in damage done was not
equal to the disparity in force. Barclay could not
arrange his ships so as to be superior to his antag-
onists. In any circumstances, whether in rough
water or in smooth, the Americans were the more
formidable in force. All that he could do he did.
Perry, in making his attack, had shown the same
headlong energy as he had previously shown in pre-
paring his squadron, and he behaved with that
indomitable determination not to be beaten, than
which, after all, there is no greater merit in any

206 Naval Operations of the War Between

fighter, afloat or ashore. The superior force of the
Americans had been brought into action in such a
manner that the head of the line was crushed by the
inferior force opposed; but, when literally ham-
mered out of his own ship, Perry had brought up
her powerful twin sister, and overwhelmed the shat-
tered hostile squadron, pushing the victory with
such energy that all the opposing ships were cap-
tured. In other words, Providence, as so often
before, declared in favour of the heavier battalions,
when those battalions were handled with energy and
resolution. The victory was due to heavy metal, as
in many another sea fight between far greater forces.
Like the victories of La Hougue and of Camperdown,
waged between huge armadas, this combat between
the little lake flotillas shows, what certainly ought
not to need showing, that energy and forethought in
preparing a superior force, and energy and courage
in using it, will ensure victory if the skill and
bravery on both sides be equal, or even if there be a
slight advantage in skill on the part of the enemy.

The destruction of Barclay's squadron left the
Americans undisputed masters of the upper lakes ;
but exactly as they had begun their career by
a cutting-out expedition, which enabled them to
acquire the nucleus of their squadron, so now they,
in their turn, suffered by a couple of cutting-out
expeditions, in which the British performed, at their
expense, two really brilliant feats, though on a
small scale. Neither feat was of weight enough to

Great Britain and the United States 207

interfere with the American supremacy, but both
exploits reflected great credit on the victors, and
caused much mortification to the vanquished.

In July, 1814, Captain Arthur Sinclair, U.S.N.,
sailed into Lake Huron with five of Perry's smaller
vessels. He attacked the fort at Macinaw, but was
repulsed, and then destroyed the British blockhouse
on the Nattagawassa, together with an armed
schooner;1 but the crew of the schooner, under
Lieutenant Miller Worsley, R.N., escaped up the
river. Sinclair then departed for Lake Erie, leav-
ing the Scorpion, under Lieutenant Turner, and the
Tigress, under Sailing Master Champlin, to keep a
watch on the river. The two commanders grew
very careless, and paid the penalty ; for the Indians
brought word to the British that the two American
vessels were in the habit of stationing themselves
far apart, and it was at once resolved to attempt
their capture. Accordingly, the effort was made
with four boats, one manned by twenty seamen,
under Lieutenant Miller Worsley, the other three
by seventy-two soldiers, under Lieutenants Bulger,
Armstrong, and Raderhurst of the army. Two
light guns accompanied the expedition. After
twenty-four hours' search the party discovered one
vessel, the Tigress, late on the evening of September
3rd. It was very dark, and the British were not
detected until they had come within fifty yards.

1 This schooner was the Nancy, belonging to the North- West
Company. — W. L. C.

2o8 Naval Operations of the War Between

Champlin at once fired his long-gun at them ; but,
before it could be reloaded, the four boats had run
him on board, two on the starboard and two on the
port side. The gunboat had no boarding nets, and
the assailants outnumbered the crew by more than
three to one, but there was a sharp struggle before
she was carried. Of the twenty-eight men on board
her, three were killed and five wounded, including
Champlin himself, whose hurt was very severe. Of
the assailants, the loss was still heavier, for it in-
cluded two killed and a dozen wounded, one of
whom was Lieutenant Bulger. The latter showed
himself prompt to recognise courage in others, in
addition to exhibiting it by his own acts. In his
letter he wrote, " The defence of this vessel
did credit to her officers, who were all severely
wounded." *

Forty-eight hours afterwards the Scorpion rejoined
her consort, entirely ignorant of what had occurred.
She anchored two miles from the Tigress, and, in
the dawn, the latter, with the American ensign and
pennant still flying, ran her on board. The first
notice her crew of thirty men had was a volley
which killed two, and wrounded two others ; and she
was carried without resistance. No one had time
even to seize his arms.2

1 Letter of Lieut. A. H. Bulger, Sept. 7th, 1814.

2 For these services Lieutenant Miller Worsley was made a Com-
mander on July 13th, 1815. He died, still in that rank, on May 2nd,
1835. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 209

This was an exceedingly creditable and plucky
enterprise. At almost the same time an even more
daring cutting-out expedition took place at the foot
of Lake Erie. The three American schooners, Ohio,
jSomers, and Porcupine, each with thirty men, under
Lieutenant Conkling, were anchored at the outlet of
the lake to flank the works at Port Erie. Several
British vessels * were lying off the fort in the Ontario
waters, and their officers determined to make an
effort to carry the American gunboats by surprise.
On the night of August 12th Commander Alexander
Dobbs and Lieutenant Copleston Radcliffe, with
seventy-five seamen and marines, made the attempt.2
Aided by some militia, they carried a gig and five
bateaux twenty-eight miles overland to Lake Erie,
launched them, and rowed toward the gunboats. At
about midnight the look-out in the JSomers discov-
ered and hailed them. They answered, " provision
boat," which deceived the officer on deck, as such
boats were passing and repassing every night. In
another moment they drifted across his hawser cut
his cables and ran him on board. The two men on
deck were shot down, and, before the others could
get up, the schooner was captured. In another
moment the British boats were alongside the Ohio,

1 Including the Charwell, Commander Alexander Dobbs, Netley,
Lieutenant Copleston Radcliffe, and Star. — W. L. C.

2 James, in his ' Naval Occurrences,' gives the best account of
this expedition ; the American historians touch very lightly on it ;
precisely as, after the first year of the war, the British authorities
ceased to publish official accounts of their defeats.

14

210 Naval Operations of the War Between

Lieutenant Conkling's own vessel. The sound of
the firing had awakened his people, and, disordered
though they were, they attempted resistance, and
there was a moment's sharp struggle ; but Conkling
himself, and the only other officer on board, sail-
ing master Cally, together with five seamen, were
shot or cut down, and Dobbs carried the gunboat
sword in hand. Lieutenant Radcliffe was killed,
however, and seven British seamen and marines
were killed or wounded. Dobbs then drifted down
stream with his two prizes, the Porcupine being too
demoralised to interfere. It was a very bold and
successful enterprise, reflecting the utmost credit on
the victors.1

At the beginning of the war the Americans had
the supremacy on Lake Champlain, possessing two
little sloops, each mounting eleven small guns, and
six row-galleys, mounting one gun each, under the
command of Lieutenant Sidney Smith. On June
3rd, 1813, Smith took his two sloops to the Sorrel
River, the outlet of the lake, where he saw three
British row-galleys, each mounting one long-gun.
The wind was aft, and he imprudently chased the
row-galleys down the river to within sight of the
first British fort. The river was narrow, and the
infantry at the fort promptly came to the assistance

1 Alexander Dobbs, born in 1784, was a Commander of Feb-
ruary Hth, 1814, and was posted on August 12th, 1819. He died
at Milan in 1827. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 2 1 1

of the galleys, and began to fire on the sloops from
both banks. The sloops responded with grape, and
tried to beat back up the stream, but the current
was so strong and the wind so light that no head-
way could be made. The row-galleys turned and
began to fire with their long 24's, while the light
guns of the sloops could not reach them in return.
After three hours' manoeuvring and firing, a shot
from one of the galleys struck the Eagle under her
starboard quarter and ripped out a whole plank.
She sank at once, but in such shoal water that all
her men got ashore. The Groiuler continued the
fight alone, but her forestay and main-boom being
shot away, she became unmanageable, ran ashore,
and was captured. Of the 112 men on board the
two sloops, twenty were killed or wounded and the
rest captured. No one was touched in the galleys,
but three of the British soldiers ashore were
wounded by grape.1

Captain Thomas Macdonough was in command
on the lake from that time onwards, and he set to
work to build some new sloops. Until this was
done there was nothing to interfere with the British.
They rechristened the captured Growler and Eagle,
Chubb and Finch, and with these and three row-
galleys conveyed an expedition of about one thou-
sand British troops, under Colonel Murray, which
destroyed all the barracks and stores at Plattsburg

1 Letter of Major Taylor (British) to General Stone, June 3rd,
1S13.

212 Naval Operations of the War Between

and at Saranac on the last day of July. Three
days later Macdonough completed three sloops1
which, with his six row-galleys, restored to him
the command of the lake. Nothing more was done
during 1813.

In 1814, however, Lake Champlain became the
scene of the greatest naval battle of the war.2 In
August a British army of eleven thousand men,
under Sir George Prevost, undertook the invasion
of New York by advancing along the bank of Lake

1 President, 12 ; Preble, 7 ; and Montgomery, 9. — W. L. C.

2 The squadrons engaged in the action on Lake Champlain,
September 11, 1814 : —

BRITISH.

Suips.

Guns.

Commanders.

Confiance

37
16
11
11

Commander George Downie.

„ Daniel Pring.
Lieutenant James M'Ghie.

„ William Ilicks.

12 gunboats or row-galleys, mounting 17 guns and carronades in all.

AMERICAN.

Ships.

Guns.

Commanders.

Preble

26

20

17

7

Captain Thomas Macdonough.

,, Robert Henley.
Lieut.-Com. Stephen Cassin.

10 gunboats or row-galleys, mounting 16 guns and carronades in all.

— W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 213

Champlain. He got as far as the Saranac River,
where the Americans had thrown up extensive
earthworks. To cover Prevost's flank it was nec-
essary that the British squadron on the lake should
be able to overcome the American squadron. This
squadron was put under the command of Captain
George Downie. Both Downie and Macdonousrh
were forced to build and equip their vessels with
the utmost speed ; and the two squadrons were
both very deficient in stores, etc., some of the guns
of each being without any locks, so that they had
to be fired by means of pistols flashed at the touch-
holes. Captain Macdonough took the lake a couple
of days before his antagonists, and came to anchor
in Plattsburg Bay. Captain Downie moved out of
Sorrel River on September 8th ; and on the morning
of the 11th sailed into Plattsburg Harbour to the
attack.1

The largest vessel of Downie' s squadron was the
ship Confiance. She was frigate built, of about
1200 tons' burden, and carried on her main deck

1 Official letters of Prevost, Macdonough, and Pring. Admiral
Codrington's ' Memoirs,' i. 3*22. Letter of Midshipman Lea, ' Naval
Chronicle,' xxxii, 272. Cooper : both his ' History,' and especially
his two articles in ' Putnam's Magazine.' James's 'History 'and
' Naval Occurrences.' The various articles in ' Xiles's Register' for
September and October, 1811. Captain J. H. Ward's ' Manual of
Naval Tactics.' Lossing's ' Field-book of the War of 1812,' i. 868,
quoting Admiral Paulding. Navy Dept. MSS. : Letters of Mac-
donough before the battle : Log-book of the Surprise (Eagle), etc.
Roosevelt's 'Naval War,' 117, 376. American State Papers, xiv.
572.

214 Naval Operations of the War Between

thirty long 24's. On her poop were two 32-pr.
carronades, and on her top-gallant forecastle were
four 32-pr. carronades and a long 24 on a pivot.
Thanks to having a furnace, she was able to employ
hot shot in the battle. His next vessel was the
Linnet, a brig of 350 tons, mounting sixteen long
12's. The Chubb and the Finch were of about 110
tons each, carrying eleven light guns apiece. There
were also twelve row-galleys of from 40 to 70 tons
each. They carried seventeen guns, long 24's and
18's, and 32-pr. carronades. The crews aggregated
from nine hundred to one thousand.1 In all there
were sixteen vessels, of about 2400 tons' total
burden, with a total of ninety-two guns, throwing a
broadside of 1192 pounds, 660 of which were from
long guns, and 532 from carronades.

Macdonough had one heavy corvette, the Sara-
toga, of 734 tons, carrying eight long 24-pounders,
and six 42-pr., and twelve 32-pr. carronades; a
large brig, the Eagle, of about 500 tons, carrying
eight long 18's and twelve 32-pr. carronades; a
schooner, the Ticonderoga,2 about the size of the
Linnet, carrying eight long 12's, four long 18's, and
five 32-pr. carronades ; a sloop, the Preble, mounting
seven light guns, and ten row-galleys of about the

1 James (vi. 346, ed. 1837), I know not upon what authority
puts the total of the British crews at 537 ; and he publishes a state-
ment, which appears to be misleading, of the comparative forces
engaged. — W. L. C.

2 She had been a steamer, but her machinery continually got out
of order, and she was changed to a schooner.

Great Britain and the United States 215

same size as the British, and mounting sixteen guns
— 24's, 18's, and 12's. His aggregate of crews
amounted to less than nine hundred men.1 His
fourteen vessels were of about 2200 tons, with
eighty-six guns, throwing a broadside of 1194
pounds, only 480 of which were from long guns.
In tonnage, number of men in crew, number of guns,
and weight of metal in broadside, there was no
great difference ; but Downie possessed one marked
advantage, for most of his pieces were long guns,
whereas the weight of the American broadside was
from carronades. In ordinary circumstances this
made his flotilla much the stronger. Even under
the conditions in accordance with which the battle
was fought, the range was so long that the carron-
ades could not be used with proper efficiency.
Downie was almost as much superior in strength to
Macdonough as Chauncey had been to Ye oon Lake
Ontario in the summer of 1813, the difference in
armament of the two squadrons being very similar
in each case. Macdonough, having the weaker
force, chose his position with such skill, and exer-
cised such careful forethought, that he more than
neutralised the material superiority of his opponents.
Both the squadrons were makeshifts. The row-
galleys on both sides were manned chiefly by
soldiers. The larger vessels, however, were manned
mainly by sailors from the regular navies, British
and American. The crews were gathered hastily,

1 James puts the American force at 950 men. — W. L. C.

2i 6 Naval Operations of the War Between

and had little training while on the lake, so that
they betrayed various shortcomings, especially as
artillerists, except in the Confiance, where Downie,
and in the Linnet, where Pring, had the men at the
highest point of efficiency. The armaments of the
ships were of the most haphazard description, car-
ronades and long-guns of different calibres being all
jumbled together. The vessels were of every kind
and rig. The Americans had a ship, a brig, a
schooner, a sloop, and two kinds of row-galleys.
The British possessed a ship, a brig, two sloops, and
two kinds of row-galleys. It would have been
exceedingly difficult for either squadron to undertake
any kind of manoeuvring in any kind of weather, as
no two craft were alike in speed or handiness.
Indeed, in a seaway, the frigate-built Confiance
would have been a match for Macdonough's whole
squadron, and the Saratoga, a heavy corvette, for all
Downie' s squadron except the Confiance. In point
of fighting capacity the men who manned the two
squadrons were about equal, for though some of the
British accounts accuse certain of the British row-
galleys of cowardice in the fight, the exhibition was
probably due to the disheartening circumstances of
seeing the big vessels fail, which, of course, ensured
the repulse of the open galleys. In some circum-
stances an engagement on the lake would have
been very much to Downie's advantage, and would
have enabled him to make good use of his superiority
in force ; but Macdonough, a very cool and compe-

Great Britain and the United States 217

tent commander, had the advantage of the defensive,
and utilised it to the full. All he had to do was
to hold Downie in check, whereas Downie had to
win a decisive victory if the invasion was to be a
success.

Accordingly, Macdonough decided to await the
attack at anchor in Plattsburg Bay, which is deep,
and which opens to the southward. The lake being
long and narrow, and running north and south, the
winds usually blow up or down it, while the current
sets northward toward the outlet. All the vessels
were flat and shallow, and beat to windward with
difficulty. In September, there are often sudden
and furious gales which make it risky for any
squadron to lie outside the bay until the wind suits ;
whereas, inside the bay, the breezes are apt to be
light and baffling. A wind which would enable
Downie to come down the lake would render it
difficult for him to beat up the bay; and Mac-
donough made his arrangements accordingly. He
moored his vessels in a north and south line, out of
range of the shore batteries, and just south of the
outlet of the Saranac. The head of his line was so
close to shore as to render it very difficult to turn it.
To the south a flank attack was prevented by a
shoal, on which was a small island containing a
hospital, and mounting one 6-pounder gun. The
Eagle lay to the north : then came the Saratoga, the
Ticonderoga, and the Preble, all at anchor, while
the galleys, under their sweeps, formed a second line

2i 8 Naval Operations of the War Between

forty yards back. By this arrangement it was
rendered impossible for Downie to double the line,
or to anchor completely out of reach of the Ameri-
can carronades ; and his attack had to be made
by standing in bows on. Macdonough realised
thoroughly that he had to deal with a foe of superior
physical force, and of great courage and seamanship,
and he made every preparation possible. Nothing
was left to chance. Not only were his vessels pro-
vided with springs, but also with anchors to be used
astern in any emergency, so that they might shift
their broadsides when necessary. If one battery
was knocked to pieces he intended to use the other.
Macdonough further prepared the Saratoga by lay-
ing a kedge broad off on either bow, with a hawser
and preventer hawser, hanging in bights under
water, leading from each quarter to the kedge on
that side.

The morning of September 11th opened with a
light breeze from the north-east, and Downie1
weighed anchor at daylight, and came down the
lake with the wind nearly aft, while Macdonough's
sailors watched the upper sails of the British ships
across the narrow strip of land which formed the
outer edge of the bay. When he had opened the
bay, Downie hove to with his four larger vessels,
and waited until the row-galleys came up.

1 Downie, it should be explained, was not ready, and weighed
only at the urgent solicitation of General Sir George Prevost, who
desired his co-operation. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 2 1 9

At about half-past eight1 the British squadron
stood gallantly in on the starboard tack, in line
abreast. The Chubb stood to the north, while next
came the Linnet, both heading for the Eagle, which
they expected to weather, while the Confiance was to
be laid athwart the hawse of the Saratoga, and the
Finch and the row-galleys were to engage the Ticon-
deroga and the Preble, with the American row-
galleys behind them. There were a few minutes
of perfect quiet as the distance between the two
squadrons lessened, the men waiting under great
nervous tension for the moment of action. Then
the Eagle fired her long 18's, but prematurely, for
the shots fell short. Soon afterwards the Linnet, in
her turn, fired her long 12's at the Saratoga, but
these shots also fell short, except one that struck a
hencoop which happened to be on board Mac-
donough's vessel. There was a gamecock inside,
and when the coop was knocked to pieces he
jumped up, clapped his wings, and crowed lustily.
To the nervously-expectant sailors it seemed a good
omen. They laughed and cheered, and, immediately
afterwards, Macdonough himself fired one of his
long 24's. His aim was good, and the ball ranged
the length of the Confiance, killing and wounding
several men. All the American long-guns opened,
and those of the British galleys replied.

1 According to the times in the British accounts, Downie filled
and made sail at 7.40 a. m. See Pring's letter of September 12th to
Yeo. — W. L. C.

220 Naval Operations of the War Between

The Chubb and the Linnet escaped nearly un-
scratched, and anchored on the Eagle s beam, for
both the Saratoga and the Eagle devoted their atten-
tion chiefly to the Confiance. The latter frigate
stood steadily in without replying to the American
fire, but she was terribly cut up, losing both her port
bow anchors; and she suffered much in her hull.
She ported her helm, and came to while still about
four hundred yards from the Saratoga. Downie
came to anchor in grand style, making everything
tight, and then delivered a well aimed and terribly
destructive broadside into the Saratoga. Two or
three of the British galleys took part in the attack
on the head of the American line, where there were
also five or six of the American row-galleys. Mean-
while the Finch, under her sweeps, led the remaining
British row-galleys to the attack of the Ticonderoga,
where the four or five weakest of the American row-
galleys were also stationed.

At the foot of the line the British effort was to
turn the American flank. At first the fighting was
at long range, but gradually the assailants closed.
On both sides there was great variety in the indi-
vidual behaviour of the galleys, some being handled
with the utmost courage, and others rather timidly,
as was not unnatural, for the men in them were not
used to their work, nor to act with one another;
and the attack of each depended upon who its com-
mander happened to be. Moreover, as they were
open boats, it was easy to inflict very heavy

Great Britain and the United States 221

slaughter among the closely-crowded crews. The
British galleys which took part in the attack on the
Ticonderoga and the Preble were under the command
of Lieutenant Christopher James Bell, and were
well handled. Two or three of them hung back, as
did those at the head of the line, where it was
impossible to expect them to make head against the
Saratoga and the Eagle ; but where Bell himself led
them, they followed him with the utmost determina-
tion. About an hour after the discharge of the first
gun, the Finch got close to the Ticonderoga, only to
be completely crippled by the broadsides of the
latter. Half her crew were killed or wounded ; and
she drifted helplessly away, grounding near Crab
Island, where she surrendered to the patients in the
hospital. At about the same time the Preble, on the
American side was forced out of line by the British
gunboats, and drifted ashore out of the fight. The
American gunboats in that part of the line also
gave way. Two or three of the British row-galleys
had already been so roughly handled by the long
guns of the Ticonderoga that they made no further
effort to come within effective range, so that, at the
foot of the line, the fight became one between the
Ticonderoga, under Lieutenant-Commander Stephen
Cassin, on the one side, and the remaining British
gunboats, under Lieutenant Bell, on the other.
Bell's attack was most resolute, and the defence
of the American schooner was equally obstinate.
Cassin walked the quarterdeck, paying no heed to

222 Naval Operations of the War Between

the balls singing round him, while he scanned the
movements of the galleys, and directed his guns to
be loaded with canister and bags of bullets when the
British tried to board. He was well seconded by
his officers, especially by a young midshipman
named Hiram Paulding. When Paulding found
that the matches of his division were defective, he
fired his guns by flashing pistols at the touch-holes
during the remainder of the fight. Bell's galleys
were pushed to within a boat-hook's length of the
schooner ; but her fire was so heavy that they could
not get alongside, and one by one they drew off, so
crippled by the slaughter that they could hardly
man the oars.

At the head of the line the advantage had been
with the British. The Chubb, however, was too
light for the company she was in, and speedily
suffered the fate of the Preble and the Finch, being
driven out of the line. Her cable, bowsprit, and
main-boom were shot away, and, when she drifted
inside the American ships, she was taken possession
of by a midshipman from the Saratoga. The Linnet,
which was remarkably well handled by her captain,
Daniel Pring, paid no attention to the American
gunboats, directing her whole fire against the Baffle.
The Eagle was a much heavier vessel, but she was
also partially engaged with the Confiance ; and,
moreover, the Linnet was fought with the utmost
courage and skill. After keeping up a heavy fire
for a long time, the Eagle s springs were shot away,

Great Britain and the United States 223

and she hung in the wind, unable to answer the
Linnet with a single shot. Accordingly, she cut her
cables, started home her topsails, and ran down
between, and in shore of, the Saratoga and Ticon-
deroga, where she again came to anchor and opened
fire on the Confiance. The Linnet was then able to
give her undivided attention to the American row-
galleys. After she had driven them off she sprang
her broadside so as to rake the Saratoga.

The Saratoga had already suffered heavily. The
first broadside of the Confiance s double-shotted long
24's had crashed into her hull with a shock which
threw half her people on the deck, knocking down
many, and either killing or crippling them. Her
first lieutenant, Peter Gamble, was among the slain,
being killed just as he knelt down to sight the bow-
gun. Macdonough himself worked like a tiger in
pointing and handling his favourite piece. While
bending over to sight it the spanker-boom above his
head was cut in two by a round shot. It fell on
him, and knocked him senseless for two or three
minutes. Leaping to his feet, he again returned
to the gun. Immediately afterwards a round shot
took off the head of the captain of the gun, and
drove it into Macdonough' s face with such force as
to knock him to the other side of the deck.

The broadsides of the Confiance, however, grew
steadily less effective. Her guns had been levelled
to point-blank range at first, but the quoins were
loosened by the successive broadsides, and, as they

224 Naval Operations of the War Between

were not properly replaced, her shot kept going
higher and higher so as to pass over the enemy.
Very soon after the beginning of the action the
gallant Downie was slain, a shot from the Saratoga
throwing one of the long 24's oh0 its carriage against
his right groin. His death was instantaneous, though
the skin was not broken.

No ships could bear the brunt of such a battle
without suffering. After a few minutes, the fire
from both the Confiance and the Saratoga began to
decrease. One by one the guns were disabled, and
the lack of complete training among the crews
showed itself in the way in which each side helped
to disable its own battery. The American sailors
overloaded their carronades, cramming their guns
until the last shot reached the muzzle. The British
on board the Confiance made an even worse showing.
They became demoralised by the confusion and
slaughter, and spoiled one or two of the guns by
ramming the wadding and round shot into them
without any powder, or by putting in two cartridges
of powder and no shot. When, however, the Linnet
was able to devote herself exclusively to the Sara-
toga, the latter began to get rather more than she
wanted. Macdonough had his hands full, with the
frigate on his beam, and the brig raking him.
Twice the Saratoga was set on fire by the hot shot
of the Confiance; one by one her long-guns were
disabled by the enemy's fire ; and her carronades
either suffered from the same cause, or else were

Great Britain and the United States 225

rendered useless by overcharging. At last only one
carronade was left in the starboard battery ; and on
firing it the gun flew off the carriage and fell down
the main hatch. This left the Saratoga without a
single gun which she could fire, and, though the
Confiance had been almost as roughly handled, the
British ship still had a few port guns that could be
used. On both sides the unengaged batteries, the
starboard battery of the Confiance and the port
battery of the Saratoga, were practically unharmed.

The British victory would now have been secure
had not Macdonough provided in advance the means
for meeting just such an emergency.

The anchor suspended astern of the Saratoga was
let go, and the men hauled in on the hawser that
led to the starboard quarter, bringing the ship's
stern up over the kedge. The ship then rode by
the kedge, and by a hawser that had been bent to
a bight in the stream cable. In that position she
was exposed to a raking fire from the Linnet, and
suffered much from the accuracy of Pring's long
12's. By hauling on the line, however, the ship
was at length got so far round that the aftermost
gun of the port broadside bore on the Confiance.
The men had been sent forward to keep them as
much out of harm's way as possible. Enough were
now called back to man the piece, and they at once
began a brisk and accurate fire. Again the crew
roused on the line until the next gun bore, and it,
too, was manned, and opened with effect on the

15

226 Naval Operations of the War Between

Confiance. Then the ship hung, and would go no
farther round. But Macdonough was not at the
end of his resources. The hawser leading from the
port quarter was got forward under the bows, and
passed aft to the starboard quarter. The Saratoga
gradually yielded to the strain, and, a minute later,
her whole port battery opened with fatal effect.
The Confiance, meanwhile, had also attempted to
round. The springs of the British ships were on
the starboard side, and so, of course, could not be
shot away as the Eagles were ; but as the Confiance
had nothing but springs to rely on, her efforts did
little beyond forcing her forward ; and she hung
with her head to the wind. She could not stand
the pounding of the fresh battery. Over half her
crew were killed or wounded ; all but three or four
of the guns on the engaged side were dismounted ;
her stout masts looked like bundles of splinters ;
and her sails were in shreds and tatters. Nothing
more could be done, and the Confiance struck about
two hours after she had fired her first broadside.
Without pausing a minute the Saratoga again
hauled on her starboard hawser till her broadside
was sprung to bear on the Linnet, and the ship and
brig began a brisk single fight ; for the Eagle, in
her then berth, could not fire at the Linnet, and the
Ticonderoga was driving off the British galleys.
The shattered and disabled state of the Linnet" s
masts, sails, and yards rendered it utterly hopeless
for Pring to try to escape by cutting his cable ; and

Great Britain and the United States 227

most men would have surrendered at once. But
Pring kept up a most gallant fight with his greatly
superior foe, hoping that some of the gunboats
would come and tow him off. Meanwhile he had
despatched to the Confiance a lieutenant, who re-
turned with news of Downie's death. The British
gunboats had been driven half a mile off, and were
evidently in no state to render aid to any one ; so,
after having maintained the fight single-handed for
fifteen minutes, until, from the number of shot
between wind and water, the lower deck was flooded,
the plucky little brig hauled down her colours, and
the fight ended a little over two hours and a half
after the first gun had been fired. Not one of the
American vessels had a mast that would bear can-
vas, and the captured British vessels were in a
sinking condition.

The British row-galleys had drifted to leeward,
and they now pulled slowly off. The American
row-galleys were in no position to interfere with
their retreat, which was not molested.

The battle had been bloody and destructive. The
Confiance had been struck in the hull one hundred
and five, and the Saratoga fifty-five times ; about
two hundred men were killed or wounded on the
American side, and over three hundred on the
British.1 This does not include those who were

1 The Confiance had 41 killed and about 60 wounded; the Linnet,
10 killed and 14 wounded ; the Chubb, 6 killed and 16 wounded ;
and the Finch, 2 wounded. There were further losses in the
gunboats. — W. L. C.

228 Naval Operations of the War Between

merely knocked down, or bruised, or grazed by
flying splinters ; indeed, an officer of the Confiance
reported that at the close of the action there were
not five men in her who were unhurt. Macdonongh
appreciated the gallantry of his adversaries, and
at once returned the British officers their swords ;
and Pring, the senior British officer left, expressed
in his official letter his acknowledgment of the
generosity, courtesy, and humanity with which
Macdonough had treated himself and his men.
Pring, and Cassin of the Ticondcroga, shared with
Macdonough the honour of the day.

This lake fight decided the fate of the invasion of
Sir George Prevost,1 who retired at once with his
army. Macdonough had performed a most notable
feat, one which, on the whole, surpassed that of any
other captain of either navy in this war. The con-
sequences of the victory were very great, for it had a
decisive effect upon the negotiations for peace which
were then being carried on between the American
and the British commissioners at Ghent. The Duke
of Wellington, who had been pressed to take com-
mand of the British army in Canada, advised
against any prolongation of the war, if it could be
terminated on the basis of each nation being left

1 Prevost's failure to co-operate with the squadron, as he had
undertaken to do, was largely responsible for the disaster. Sir
James Lucas Yeo preferred certain charges against him in conse-
quence ; but Prevost died before he could be brought before a court-
martial. See Mems. of C M. on Pring and others, August 28th,
1815. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the U

? %es

in the position which it had i triem \Z-u IS n
struggle, giving this advice on the ground that ti
failure of the British to obtain control of the lakes
rendered it impossible to expect any decisive triumph
of the British arms.1 Indeed, in the war of 1812,
the control of the lakes was the determining factor
in the situation on the Canadian border, for at that
time the frontier between the two countries nowhere
passed through any thickly-settled regions, except
in the immediate neighbourhood of great bodies of
water ; and the military operations that were under-
taken had to be conducted with this condition in
view.

1 Wellington's Dispatches, xii. 224; Supplementary Dispatches,
i. 426, and ix. 438. See Adams, viii. 102-112, for this battle, and
ix. 36-41, for its effects on the negotiations for peace.

In his letter of November 9th, written after the receipt of the
news of the battle of Lake Champlain, Wellington advises the Cabi-
net that they " have no right, from the state of the war, to demand
any concession of territory from America," and gives as the main
reason, " the want of the naval superiority on the lakes."

>l7''"»'^

THE BLOCKADE AND THE CRUISERS

"TN ESTRUCTION of Barney's gunboats — Capture of Washington
•*-^ — Gordon at Alexandria — Repulse at Baltimore — Lockyer
in Lake Borgne — Repulse at Fort Bowyer — The case of the
Erebus — Increase of American privateering — The Chasseur, of
Baltimore — British indignation — Capture of the St. Lawrence —
The General Armstrong — The Prince de Neufchdtel — Capture of
the Frolic — The Peacock and the Epervier — The Wasp and the
Reindeer — The Wasp and the Avon — Loss of the Wasp — The
Endymion and the President — Capture of the Levant and Cyane —
Escape of the Constitution — The Hornet and the Penguin — Escape
of the Hornet — The Peacock and the Nautilus — End of the war —
Novel weapons in the American navy — A drawn quarrel.

THE inability of America in any way to inter-
rupt the British blockade of her coast was
now to bear fruit in the disgrace of the
loss of the national capital. Of course, so long as the
British possessed absolute control of the sea, they
could take the offensive whenever and wherever they
wished, and could choose their own point of attack,
while the American government never knew what
point to defend. From Maryland to Georgia the
militia were under arms literally by the hundred
thousand, and they were less efficient than one-tenth
the number of regulars. While in the field they suf-
fered greatly from disease, so that there was much
loss of life, although there was hardly any righting ;
and on the few occasions when it was possible to

Naval Operations 231

gather them soon enough to oppose them to a British
raiding party, they naturally showed themselves
utterly incompetent to stand against trained regu-
lars. The loss of life and the waste of wealth by the
employment of these militia in the southern states,
though they were hardly ever used in battle, offset
many times over the expense that would have been
incurred by building a fighting fleet sufficient to
prevent a blockade, and therefore to obviate all
the damage which it cost during the two years
when it was in force — damage which the pri-
vateers only partially avenged, and in no way
averted.

Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander F. I. Cochrane had
succeeded to the command of the British fleet on the
coast of North America in the summer of 1814.
Rear-Admiral George Cockburn was in command in
the Chesapeake, whither Cochrane himself sailed in
August, together with a fleet of transports contain-
ing a small British army under Major-General
Robert Ross. At about the same time Cochrane
had issued a general order to the British blockading
squadrons, instructing them to destroy and lay
waste the towns and districts which they could suc-
cessfully assail, sparing only the lives of the unarmed
inhabitants. This was done in alleged retaliation for
the conduct of a party of American soldiers on the
Canadian boundary, who had wantonly destroyed
the little town of Newark ; although the destruction
of Newark had been promptly avenged by the de-

232 Naval Operations of the War Between

struction of Buffalo and one or two other small
American towns, while the officer who had ordered
Newark to be destroyed had been court-martialled
for his conduct. A curious feature of Cochrane' s
order, which was of course, grossly improper, was
that it applied only to the Navy ; and Ross showed
by his actions how strongly he disapproved of it, for
though the Navy did a great deal of plundering and
burning, in accordance with the instructions given,
Ross's troops at first paid scrupulous heed to the
rights of the citizens, and in no way interfered with
private property.1

The first duty of the fleet was to get rid of Cap-
tain Joshua Barney's flotilla of gunboats. This
flotilla had indulged in several indecisive long-range
skirmishes with various ships of the blockading
squadron, and it was now forced to put into the
Patuxent, where it was burned when Ross advanced
on Washington. Barney's flotilla-men then joined
the motley forces gathered to defend the capital city,
and offered a striking contrast in their behaviour on
the field of battle to the rabble of militia around
them, who fled while the sailors fought.2

About the middle of August Cochrane and Ross
were ready for action. On the 20th Ross's troops
were disembarked on the Maryland shore, some fifty
miles distant from Washington ; Cockburn proceeded

1 Adams, viii. 126.

2 ' Biographical Memoir of the late Commodore Joshua Barney,'
p. 315.

Great Britain and the United States 233

up the Patuxent * on the Maryland side. On the
23rd they definitely made up their minds to attack
Washington first and Baltimore later. Meanwhile
a British squadron, composed of the frigates Sea-
horse, 38, Captain James Alexander Gordon (1), and
Euryalus, 36, Captain Charles Napier (2), with four
bombs and rocket ships, moved up the Potomac. In
addition Captain Sir Peter Parker (2), in the Mcne-
laus, 38, was sent to create a diversion above Balti-
more ; but he happened to meet a party of militia,
who fought well, for when he landed at Bellair to
attack them, on August 30th, he was himself killed
and his party beaten back, with a loss of forty-one
men.2

1 Rear-Admiral Cockburn had under his orders the armed boats
and tenders of the fleet, having on board Royal Marines under Capt.
John Robyns, and Royal Marine Artillery under Captain James H.
Harrison. The boats were under the general superintendence of
Captain John Wainwright (2), of the Tonnant, and were in three
divisions, commanded as follows : I. Commanders Thomas Ball
Sulivan aud William Stanhope Badcock ; II. Commanders Rowland
Money and Kenelm Somerville ; III. Commander Robert Ramsay.
Following the boats, so far as the depth of water permitted, were
the Severn, 40, Captain Joseph Nourse, Hebrus, 42, Captain Ed-
mund Palmer, and Manly, 12, Commander Vincent Newton ; but
the frigates could not get higher than Benedict, whence their Cap-
tains, with their boats, proceeded to join Cockburn. — W. L. C.

2 Sir Peter Parker (2), Bart., was eldest son of Vice-Admiral
Christopher Parker (2), and was born in 1786. He was a Captain
of October 22nd, 1805, and, in 1811, had succeeded to the Baronetcy
of his grandfather, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Peter Parker (1). In
the affair at Bellair, near Baltimore, 11 British were killed, includ-
ing, besides Parker, Midshipman John T. Sandes; and 27 were
wounded, including Lieutenants Benjamin George Benyon and
George Poe, R.M. — W. L. C.

234 Naval Operations of the War Between

Ross and Cockburn moved against Washington,
and, on August 24th, encountered a huddle of seven
thousand American militia at Bladensburg. It could
not be called an army. A few companies were in
uniform. The rest were clad as they would have
been clad in the fields, except that they had muskets.
They were under two or three worthless generals,
one named Winder being in supreme command ; and
various members of the cabinet, notably Monroe,
accompanied President Madison in riding or driving
aimlessly about among the troops. Not a third of
Ross's little army was engaged,1 for the militia fled
too quickly to allow the main body of the assailants
to get into action. As they were running off the
field, however, Barney appeared, with his sailors
from the flotilla, also on the run, but in the opposite
direction. He had with him about four hundred
and fifty seamen and marines, the latter being under
their own officer, Captain Miller; and he also had a
battery of five guns. It was a sufficiently trying
situation, for Barney's force was hopelessly outnum-
bered by the victorious troops whose attack he was
advancing to meet through a throng of fugitive
militia ; but the sailors and marines were of excel-
lent stuff, and were as little daunted by the flight of

1 In the action at Bladensburg the British army lost 64 killed
and 185 wounded. The Navy lost only 1 killed and 6 wounded.
Among the naval officers present were Rear- Admiral George Cock-
burn, Captain Edmund Palmer, Lieutenant James Scott (2), of the
Albion, Midshipman Arthur Wakefield, Lieutenant John Lawrence,
R.M.A., and Lieutenant Athelstau Stephens, R.M. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 235

their friends as by the advance of their foes. Again
and again the sailors repulsed the troops who at-
tacked them in front. They were then outflanked,
and retired, after half an hour's fighting, a hundred
of their men having been killed or wounded. Both
Barney and Miller were wounded and captured, to-
gether with the guns. One of the British officers,
writing afterwards of the battle, spoke with the
utmost admiration of Barney's men. " Not only
did they serve their guns with a quickness and pre-
cision that astonished their assailants, but they stood
till some of them were actually bayoneted with fuses
in their hands ; nor was it till their leader was
wounded and taken, and they saw themselves de-
serted on all sides by the soldiers, that they left the
field." 1 The victorious British showed every atten-
tion to Barney and his men, treating them, as
Barney said, "as if they were brothers." 2

As Ross and Cockburn led their troops into
Washington they were fired on from a house, Ross's
horse being killed. They then proceeded to burn the
Capitol and the White House, together with various
other public buildings.3 Next day the work of de-
struction was completed,4 a few private buildings

1 Gleig's ' Subaltern,' p. 68.

2 Barney's report, Aug. 29th, 1814.

8 Letters of Cockburn, Aug. 27th, and Ross, Aug. 30th; Inger-
soll, ii. 188; James's 'Military Occurrences,' ii. 495; Am. State
Papers, Military Affairs, i. 550 ; Niles, September 1814.

4 The Americans themselves destroyed the Argus, 22, and a frig-
ate which was nearly ready for launching, in order to save them
from capture. — W. L. C.

236 Naval Operations of the War Between

sharing the same fate, while Cockburn took particu-
lar pleasure in destroying one of the newspaper offices,
as he seemed much to resent the criticism of him-
self in the American press. Having completed their
work, Ross and Cockburn marched back to the
coast, leaving behind them most of their wounded
to be cared for by the Americans.

Whatever discredit attached to the burning and
plundering of Washington attached to both Ross and
Cockburn, though Ross evidently disliked the work
as much as Cockburn enjoyed it. It was only an
incident in the general destruction undertaken by
Cochrane' s orders. Washington was burned just as,
along the shores of the Chesapeake, hamlets and
private houses were burned. The pretext was that
this was done to avenge the destruction of the public
buildings at York, and of the town of Newark, in
the American descents upon Canada. The public
buildings at York, however, were but partially
destroyed by stragglers, whose work was at once
checked by the American officers in command. The
burning of Newark had been promptly repudiated by
the American government, and, moreover, had
already been amply avenged. The destruction of
the public buildings at Washington was indefensible ;
and it was also very unwise so deeply to touch the
national pride. The affair had a perceptible effect
in making the country more determined to carry on
the war. It is, however, nonsense to denounce the
act in the language that has so often been applied

Great Britain and the United States 237

to it. Cockburn and Ross undoubtedly treated the
capital of the American nation in a way "which jus-
tified an eager desire for revenge ; but Americans
should keep the full weight of their indignation for
the government whose supineness and shortsighted-
ness rendered such an outrage possible. Jomini has
left on record the contemptuous surprise felt by all
European military men when a state, with a popu-
lation of eight million souls, allowed a handful of
British soldiers to penetrate unchecked to its capital,
and there destroy the public buildings. The first
duty of a nation is self-defence ; and nothing ex-
cuses such lack of warlike readiness as the Ameri-
cans had shown. The incidents which accompanied
the capture of Washington were discreditable to the
British, but the capture itself was far more discred-
itable to the Americans.

Meanwhile Captain Gordon's little squadron !
worked its way up the Potomac, and, on August
28th, took Alexandria, where it remained for four
days, loading the vessels with whatever the ware-
houses contained.2 Then the squadron began its
descent of the river, which was shoal, and very

1 Seahorse, 38, Captain James Alexander Gordon; Euryalus, 36,
Captain Charles Napier (2) ; Devastation, bomb, Commander Thomas
Alexander (2) : sEtna, bomb, Commander Richard Kenah ; Meteor,
bomb, Commander Samuel Roberts ; Erebus, rocket-vessel, Com-
mander David Ewen Bartholomew ; Fairy, 18, Commander Henry
Loraine Baker (joined with orders, after the fall of Alexandria) ;
and Anna Maria, dispatch-boat. — W. L. C.

2 Letter of Captain Gordon, Sept. 9th, 1814.

238 Naval Operations of the War Between

difficult to navigate. Captain John Rodgers, with
some of the crews of two new 44' s which were build-
ing, tried to bar his way, but lacked sufficient means.
Twice Rodgers attempted to destroy one of the
British vessels with fire-ships, but failed, and once,
in his turn, he repelled an attack by the British
boats. The squadron also passed, without much
damage, a battery of light field-pieces. On Septem-
ber 6th Gordon silenced and passed the last of the
batteries, having taken six days to go down from
Alexandria. He had lost forty-two men1 all told,
and had thus concluded successfully, at a very
trivial cost, a most venturesome expedition, which
reflected great honour on the crews engaged in it.

The very rough handling received by Sir Peter
Parker (2) put a check to the marauding of the
British frigates and sloops. As soon as Gordon
rejoined him Cochrane sailed from the mouth of the
Potomac to the mouth of the Patapsco River, on
which Baltimore stands. Formidable earthworks
had been thrown up about Baltimore, however;
and to guard it against attack by sea there were
good forts, which were well manned by men who
had at last begun to learn something. Ross ad-
vanced against the city by land, and was killed in
a sharp encounter with a body of militia. The

1 Viz., 7 killed, including Lieutenant Charles Dickinson (Fairy),
and 35 wounded, including Captain Charles Napier (2), Commander
David Ewen Bartholomew, Lieutenant Reuben Paine, and Master's
Mate Andrew Reid. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 239

troops found the earthworks too strong to assault ;
the ships bombarded the forts without any effect ;
and then both the soldiers and the sailors ! retired.2
Not long afterwards Cochrane left for Halifax,3 and
the British troops for Jamaica, so that operations in
the Chesapeake ceased.

During this time the British Navy had protected
an expedition which overran, and held until the
close of the war, a part of the Maine sea-coast, and
in September, 1814, a large British force, under
Rear- Admiral Edward Griffith, destroyed the Ameri-
can corvette Adams, 28, which had run up the
Penobscot for refuge.

After leaving Baltimore the British prepared
for a descent on New Orleans, and gathered a
large fleet of line-of-battle ships, frigates, and small
vessels, under Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander F. I.
Cochrane, convoying a still larger number of store-

1 In the attack on Baltimore, the 600 seamen who were landed
were under Captain Edward Crofton, and Commanders Thomas
Ball Sulivan, Rowland Money, and Robert Ramsay, and the Royal
Marines under Captain John Robyns. In the affair of September
12th, -when Major-General Ross fell, the Navy lost 7 killed and 48
wounded, among the latter being Captain John Robyns, R.M.,
Lieutenant Sampson Marshall, and Midshipman Charles Ogle (2).
During a subsequent expedition up the Coan River, on October 3rd,
Commander Richard Kenah, of the jEtna, was killed. — W. L. C.

2 Cochrane's report, Sept. 17th, 1814.

8 Cochrane sailed for Halifax on September 19th to make prepa-
rations for the New Orleans expedition. On the same day Rear-
Admiral Cockburn departed for Bermuda; and on October 14th,
Rear- Admiral Pulteney Malcolm quitted the Chesapeake for Negril
Bay, Jamaica. — W. L. C.

240 Naval Operations of the War Between

ships and transports, containing the troops under
Major-General Sir Edward Pakenham. The expe-
dition made its appearance at the mouth of the
Mississippi on December 8th. The first duty which
fell to the boats of the squadron was to destroy five
American gunboats which lay in the shallow bayou
known as Lake Borgne. Accordingly, forty-two
launches, each armed with a carronade in the bow,
and carrying nine hundred and eighty seamen and
Royal Marines all told, were sent off, under Com-
mander Nicholas Lockyer,1 to effect their destruc-
tion. The gunboats carried an aggregate of one
hundred and eighty-two men, under the command
of Lieutenant Thomas Ap Catesby Jones, U.S.N.
Each was armed with one heavy long-gun, and
several light pieces.2 The attack was made on the
morning of December 14th, 1814.3 Jones had
moored his five gun-vessels in a head and stern line

1 Commander Nicholas Lockyer, of the Sophie, 18, was assisted
by Commanders Henry Montresor, of the Manly, and Samuel
Roberts, of the Meteor, bomb, and each commanded a division of
boats. The boats engaged were those of the Tonnant, Norge, Bed-
ford, Ramillies. Royal Oak, Armide, Seahorse, Cydnus, Trave, Sophie,
Meteor, Belle Poule, Gorgon, Alceste, and Diomede. A medal for the
action was granted in 1847. — W. L. C.

2 Lieutenant Jones's account gives his full force as 5 gunboats,
mounting in all three long 32's, two long 24's, twenty-two long 6's,
four 12-pr. carronades, two 5-in. howitzers, and twelve swivels, and
having 182 men on board. He had also with him the schooner Sea-
horse, which he detached to Bay St. Louis before the attack, and the
little sloop Alligator. — W. L. C.

» Letters of Captain Lockyer, Dec. 18th, 1814, and of Lieutenant
Jones, March 12, 1815.

Great Britain and the United States 241

in the channel off Malheureux Island passage, with
their boarding nettings triced up, and everything in
readiness; but the force of the current drifted his
own boat and another out of line, a hundred yards
down. Jones had to deal with a force five times
the size of his own, and to escape he had only to
run his boats on shore ; but he prepared very coolly
for battle.

Commander Lockyer acted as coolly as his an-
tagonist. When he had reached a point just out of
gunshot, he brought the boats to a grapnel, to let
the sailors eat breakfast and get a little rest, for
they had been rowing most of the time for a day
and a night, and a cutting out expedition meant
murderous work. When the men were refreshed
he formed the boats in open order, and they pulled
gallantly on against the strong current. At ten
minutes past eleven the Americans opened fire, and,
for a quarter of an hour, had the firing all to them-
selves. Then the carronades and light guns on
both sides were brought into play. Lockyer led
the advance in a barge of the Seahorse. The near-
est gunboat was that of the American commander.
Accordingly, it was these two who first came to
close quarters, Lockyer laying his barge alongside
Lieutenant Jones's boat. An obstinate struggle
ensued, but the resistance of the Americans was
very fierce, and the barge was repulsed, most of
her crew being killed or crippled, while her gal-
lant captain was severely, and the equally gallant

16

242 Naval Operations of the War Between

Lieutenant George Pratt mortally, wounded. An-
other boat, under the command of Lieutenant James
Barnwell Tatnall, grappled the gunboat and was
promptly sunk. But the other boats pulled steadily
up, and, one after another, were laid on board the
doomed vessel. The boarding-nets were slashed
through and cut away ; with furious fighting the
deck was gained; the American commander and
many of his crew were killed or wounded, and the
gunboat was carried. Her guns were turned on
the second boat, which was soon taken, and then
the British dashed at the third, which was carried
with a rush after a gallant defence, her commander,
Lieutenant Robert Spedden, being badly wounded.
The next gunboat fell an easy prey, her long-gun
having been dismounted by the recoil, and the
fifth then hauled down her flag. Forty-one of the
Americans, and ninety-four of the British,1 were
killed or wounded.

A brigade of British sailors took part in the
battles before New Orleans, and shared the disasters
that there befell the British army ; but their deeds
belong to military rather than to naval history.

1 The British lost 17 killed and 77 wounded, out of a total of
about 980 engaged. Among the killed were Midshipmen Thomas
W. Moore, John Mills, and Henry Symons ; among the wounded
were Commander Nicholas Lockyer, Lieutenants William Gilbert
Roberts, John Franklin, Henry Gladwell Etough, and George Pratt
(mortally), and Lieutenant James Uniacke, R.M. For the gallantry
displayed, Commander Lockyer was posted on March 29th, 1815,
and Commanders Henry Montresor and Samuel Roberts were simi-
larly advanced on June 13th following. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 243

The British navy did not confine itself to attacks
in Chesapeake Bay and at the mouth of the Missis-
sippi. On September 15th, 1814, the Hermes, 20,
Captain the Hon. Henry "William Percy, Carron, 20,
Captain the Hon. Robert Churchill Spencer, and
18-gun brig-sloops Sophie, Commander Nicholas
Lockyer, and Childers, Commander John Brand
Umfreville, with a land force of about two hundred
men, made an attack on Fort Bowyer, at Mobile
Point.1 The attack failed completely. The car-
ronades of the ships were unfit for such a contest,
and no damage was done to the fort, while the
Hermes grounded and was burnt, and the assailants
were repulsed, losing about eighty men all told.

Early in 1815 Rear- Admiral George Cockburn
began to harry the coast of Georgia. He gathered
a great deal of plunder, and did much destruction
in an expedition up the St. Mary's River. As usual,
the militia were helpless to impede his movements
or relieve the threatened points. One or two of his
boat attacks failed ; and the small force of Ameri-
can seamen which manned the little flotilla of gun-
boats in the shallow waters of the South Atlantic
twice themselves made cutting-out expeditions, in
which they captured two boats of one of his frigates,
the Hebrus, and the tender of another, the Severn?
These little checks, however, were merely sufficient
to irritate the British ; and Savannah was in an

1 James, vi. 356 (ed. 1837).

2 Navy Dept. MSS., Captains' Letters, vol. 42, Nos. 100 and 130.

244 Naval Operations of the War Between

agony of well-grounded fear lest she should suffer
the fate of Washington, when peace came, and
Cockburn reluctantly withdrew. A disagreeable
incident occurred after the news of peace had come.
The British 20-gun sloop Erebus, Commander David
Ewen Bartholomew, came across an American gun-
boat, under the command of Mr. Hurlburt, and
ordered her to lie to. The gunboat refused, where-
upon the sloop gave her a broadside, and she fired
her only gun, and struck.1 Afterwards Bartholomew
apologised, and let the gunboat proceed. His gun-
nery had been bad, and none of the gunboat's crew
were hurt. A few months later, on June 30th,
1815, a parallel incident, with the parties reversed,
occurred in the China Seas, J where the American
sloop Peacock, 22, met the little East India Com-
pany's brig Nautilus, 14. 2 The meeting will be
described later.

Thus, throughout the last year of the war, the
American coast had been blockaded, and harassed,
and insulted by harrying parties, as well as by
descents in force, from the St. John's to the Missis-
sippi. Virginia, Maryland, Maine, and Georgia had
been equally powerless to repel or avenge the
attacks from which they had suffered. Alexandria
had been plundered and Hampton burned, the

1 Navy Dept. MSS., Captains' Letters, vol. 43, No. 125. Niles's
Register, viii. 104, 118.

2 The Nautilus, however, fared worse than Mr. Hurlburt's gun-
boat, for she lost 6 killed, and 9, including her commander, Lieu-
tenant Charles Boyce, wounded. — W. L. C.

i

Great Britain and the United States 245

Georgia coast ravaged and part of Maine perma-
nently held ; and only at the month of the Missis-
sippi — and there, thanks solely to the genius of
Andrew Jackson — had the invaders met a bloody
and crushing defeat. Moreover, the blockade was
so vigorous that the shipping rotted at the wharves
of the seaports, and grass grew in the business
quarters of the trading towns. Of course very
swift and very lucky merchant vessels now and
then got in or out, but they had to charge for
their wares prices that would repay the great risk
of capture ; and, for an impoverished people, those
prices were nearly prohibitory. The general suffer-
ing was very great, and the people, instead of realis-
ing that their own shortcomings were at fault,
stormed at the administration — with very good
reason, it must be confessed. The war had really
done a great service ; but this the people, naturally
enough, failed to recognise at the moment ; and the
discomfort and humiliation to which they were sub-
jected made them long for peace. For eight months
the overthrow of Napoleon had left Great Britain
free to put her whole strength against the United
States. The result had by no means come up to her
expectations, for her aggressive movements, at Platts-
burg Bay and at New Orleans, had met with defeat.
But the ceaseless pressure of the blockade told heav-
ily in her favour. Every American citizen felt in his
pocket and on his table the results of the presence
of the British warships off the harbour mouths.

246 Naval Operations of the War Between

No stringency of the blockade, however, could
keep the American cruisers in port. The sloops of
war and the big privateers were commanded and
manned by men whose trade it was to run risks and
overcome dangers. Daringly and skilfully handled,
they continually ran in and out of the ports, ever
incurring the risk of capture, but ever doing damage
for which their capture could not atone.

Thanks to their numbers, and to the fact that
they only fought when they had to, the privateers
did more damage than the sloops to British com-
merce. Like the privateers, the sloops cruised, by
choice, right in the home waters of Britain, but
they never went after merchantmen when there was
a chance of tackling men-of-war ; and the chief
harrying of the British commerce was left to the
men who did it for personal reasons, actuated half
by love of gain and half by love of adventure.

The deeds of the commerce-destroyers in this war
are very noteworthy. In spite of the fact that the
stringency of the blockade of the American coast
increased steadily, and of the further fact that,
during the latter part of the war, the British were
able to employ their whole Navy against the Ameri-
cans, the ravages of the American cruisers grew
more and more formidable month by month until
the peace. The privateers were handled with a
daring and success previously unknown. Always
before this, in any contest with a European power,
the British Navy had in the end been able to get

Great Britain and the United States 247

the hostile privateers completely under, and to pre-
vent any large portion of British trade from being
driven into neutral bottoms. France possessed
treble the population of the United States, and
she had a great fighting fleet ; while her harbours
were so near the English coast as to offer an excel-
lent base of operations against British commerce.
But, when the American war broke out, Britain had
very nearly driven the French privateers from the
ocean, and had almost entirely expelled them from
British home waters. The result was that, in 1812,
British commerce was safer at sea than it had been
during the early period of the French war. But
nothing of the kind happened in the American war.
The boldness of the privateers, and the severity of
their ravages, increased every year. In 1814 the
privateers that put to sea were large, well-built,
formidably armed, and heavily-manned vessels, of
about the size of the smaller sloops of war, and
faster than any other craft afloat. England was
near to continental Europe, and America was
divided from her by the broad Atlantic ; yet no
European nation ever sent her privateers so boldly
into British home waters as did America.

Wherever on the ocean the British merchantmen
sailed, thither the American privateers followed.
Their keels furrowed the waters of the Indian
Ocean and the China Seas ; and they made prizes
of vessels that sailed from Bombay, Madras, and
Hong Kong. They swarmed in the West Indies,

248 Naval Operations of the War Between

where they landed and burnt small towns, leaving
behind them proclamations that thus they had
avenged the burning of Washington. They haunted
the coasts of the British colonies in Africa ; they
lay off the harbour of Halifax, and plundered the
outgoing and incoming vessels, laughing at the
ships of the line and frigates that strove to drive
them off. Above all they grew ever fonder of
sailing to and fro in the narrow seas over which
England had for centuries claimed an unquestioned
sovereignty. They cruised in the British Channel,
where they captured, not only merchantmen, but
also small regularly armed vessels. The Irish Sea
and the Irish Channel were among their favourite
cruising grounds ; they circled Scotland and Ireland ;
one of them ransomed a Scottish town. The Chas-
seur of Baltimore, commanded by Thomas Boyle
cruised for three months off the coast of England,
taking prize after prize, and in derision sent in, to
be posted at Lloyd's, a proclamation of blockade of
the sea-coast of the United Kingdom.1 In Septem-
ber 1814 the merchants of Glasgow, Liverpool, and
Bristol held meetings, and complained bitterly to
the British Government of the damages inflicted
upon them. The Liverpool meeting recited that
some ports, particularly Milford, were under actual
blockade. The merchants, manufacturers, ship-
owners, and underwriters of Glasgow protested that
the audacity of the American privateers had become

1 Coggeshall's book is filled with incidents of this kind.

Great Britain and the United States 249

intolerable ; that they harassed the British coasts ;
and that the success with which their enterprise
had been attended was not only injurious to British
commerce, but also humbling to British pride ; and
they added a significant comment upon the damage
which had been done by " a Power whose maritime
strength had hitherto been impolitically held in con-
tempt." The rates of insurance rose to an unpre-
cedented height. For the first time in history a
rate of 13 per cent, was paid on risks to cross the
Irish Channel. The Secretary of the Admiralty,
Mr. Croker, was forced to admit the havoc wrought
even in the Irish and Bristol Channels, and could
only respond that, if the merchantmen would never
sail except under the convoy of a sufficient number
of men-of-war, they would be safe. Such a state-
ment was equivalent to admission that no un-
guarded ship could safely go from one British port
to another ; and it sufficed to explain why the rate
of insurance on vessels had gradually risen to double
the rate which had prevailed during the great war
with France.1 On February 11th, 1815, the Times
complained in these bitter words of the ravages of
the American sloops of war and privateers : " They
daily enter in among our convoys, seize prizes in
sight of those that should afford protection, and if
pursued ' put on their sea-wings ' and laugh at the
,clumsy English pursuers. To what is this owing ?
Cannot we build ships? ... It must indeed be

1 Adams, viii. 200.

250 Naval Operations of the War Between

encouraging to Mr. Madison to read the logs of
his cruisers. If they fight, they are sure to conquer ;
if they fly, they are sure to escape."

The privateers were not fitted to fight regular
war-vessels. As a rule they rarely made the effort.
When they did they sometimes betrayed the faults
common to all irregular fighting men. Many in-
stances could be cited where they ran away from,
submitted tamely to, or made but a weak defence
against, equal or even inferior forces. But such
was by no means always the case. Exceptionally
good commanders were able to get their crews into
a condition when they were formidable foes to any
man-of-war of their weight in the world ; for,
though naturally the discipline of a privateer was
generally slack, yet the men who shipped on board
her were sure to be skilful seamen, and trained to
the use of arms, so that, with a little drilling, they
made good fighting stuff. The larger privateers
several times captured little British national vessels,
cutters and the like. On February 26th, 1815,
the famous Baltimore schooner Chasseur, of four-
teen guns and seventy men, under Thomas Boyle,
captured in fair fight the British war-schooner
St. Lawrence, Lieutenant Henry Cranmer Gordon,1

1 The St. Lawrence mounted twelve 12- pr. carronades and one
long 9, and had, according to James (vi. 370, ed. 1837), 51 men and
boys, besides passengers, on board. She lost 6 killed and 18
-wounded. The Chasseur mounted eight 18-pr. carronades and six
long 9's. James, without specifying his authority, says that she
lost 5 killed and 8 wounded, out of a complement of 115. O'Byrne

Great Britain and the United States 251

of almost exactly the same force, after an obstinate
action.1

Some of the bloodiest engagements of the war were
between British cutting-out parties and privateers.
The two most notable cases were those in which the
two famous New York privateers, the Prince de
Neufchdtel and the General Armstrong were the
chief figures. Both were large swift vessels. The
latter was a brig and the former a brigantine, and
both had committed exceptionally severe ravages on
British commerce, having been unusually lucky in
the prizes they had made. As with all of these pri-
vateers, it is difficult to get at full particulars of
them, and in some accounts, both are called schooners.
The General Armstrong was armed with one heavy
long-gun and eight long 9's. The Prince de Neuf-
chdtel carried 17 guns, 9's and 12's, being the larger
vessel of the two.

On the 26th of September, 1814, the General
Armstrong was lying at anchor in the road of Fayal.
Her master was Samuel Chester Reid,2 and she had
a crew of ninety men on board. A British squadron

(408), in his notice of Lieutenant H. C. Gordon, entirely ignores the
affair, and says that Gordon, after receiving his first commission, on
February 4th, 1815, never served again. I cannot find any official
report of the action. — W. L. C.

1 Letter of Boyle, March 2nd, 1815.

2 His father, while serving in the British Navy, had been made
prisoner by the Americans, whose cause he had subsequently joined.
He had in the meantime married a colonial lady, Rebecca Chester.
The son, born in 1783, survived until 1861. He was originally in
the U.S. Navy. — W. L. C.

252 Naval Operations of the War Between

composed of the Plantagenet, 74, Captain Robert
Lloyd (2) ; Rota, 38, Captain Philip Somerville (1) ;
and Carnation, 18, Commander George Bentham,
hove in sight towards sundown. Experience had
taught the Americans not to trust to the neutrality
of a weak Power for protection ; and Reid warped
his brig near shore, and made ready to repel any
attempt to cut her out. Soon after dark, Captain
Lloyd sent in four boats. He asserted that they
were only sent to find out what the strange brig
was; but of course no such excuse was tenable.
Four boats, filled with armed men, would not ap-
proach a strange vessel after nightfall merely to
reconnoitre her. At any rate, after repeatedly warn-
ing them off, Reid fired in to them, and they withdrew.
He then anchored, with springs on his cables, nearer
shore, and made every preparation for the desperate
struggle which he knew awaited him. Lloyd did
not keep him long in suspense. Angered at the
check he had received, he ordered seven boats of the
squadron manned by about a hundred and eighty
picked men, to attack the privateer. He intended
the Carnation to accompany them, to take part in
the attack ; but the winds proved too light and
baffling, and the boats made the attempt alone.
Under the command of Lieutenant William Matter-
face, first of the Rota, they pulled in under cover of
a small reef of rocks, where they lay for some time ;
and, at about midnight, they advanced to the attack.
The Americans were on the alert, and, as soon as

Great Britain and the United States 253

they saw the boats rowing in through the night, they
opened with the pivot-gun, and immediately after-
wards with their long 9's. The British replied with
their boat carronades, and, pulling spiritedly on
amidst a terrific fire from both sides, laid the
schooner aboard on her bow and starboard quarter.
A murderous struggle followed. The men-of-war's
men slashed at the nettings and tried to clamber up
on the decks, while the privateersmen shot down the
assailants, hacked at them with cutlass and toma-
hawk, and thrust them through with their long
pikes. The boats on the quarter were driven off ;
but on the forecastle the British cut away the net-
tings, and gained the deck. All three of the Amer-
ican mates were killed or disabled, and their men
were beaten back ; but Reid went forward on the
run, with the men of the after division, and tum-
bled the boarders back into their boats. This put
an end to the assault. Two boats were sunk, most
of the wounded being saved as the shore was so near ;
two others were captured ; and the others, crippled
from their losses, and loaded with dead and disabled
men, crawled back towards the squadron. The loss
of the Americans was slight. Two were killed and
seven wounded. The fearful slaughter in the Brit-
ish boats proved that they had done all that the
most determined courage could do. Two-thirds of
the assailants were killed or wounded.1

1 The number killed was 34, including Lieutenants William
Matterface and Charles R. Norman. The number wounded was

254 Naval Operations of the War Between

The brig's long 24 had been knocked off its car-
riage by a carronade shot, but it was replaced and
the deck again cleared for action. Next day the
Carnation came in to destroy the privateer, but was
driven off by the judicious use of the long-gun.
However, as soon as the wind became favourable,
the Carnation again advanced. Further resistance
being hopeless, the Genwal Armstrong was scuttled
and burned, and the Americans retreated to the

land.1

The Prince de Neufchatel was attacked on October
11th, 1814. She had made a very successful cruise,
and had on board goods to the amount of 300,000
dollars, but had manned and sent in so many prizes
that only forty of her crew were left, while thirty-
seven prisoners were confined in the hold. At mid-
day on the 11th, while off Nantucket, the British
frigate Endymion, 40, Captain Henry Hope, dis-
covered her and made sail in chase. Soon after
nightfall it fell calm, and the frigate despatched
her boats, with one hundred and eleven men, under
the command of the first lieutenant, Abel Hawkins,
to carry the brigantine by boarding. The latter
triced up the boarding nettings, loaded her guns
with grape and bullets, and made everything ready

86, including Lieutenant Richard Rawle, Lieutenant Thomas Park,
R.M., Purser William Benge Basden, and two midshipmen.—
W. L. C.

1 Letter of Captain S. C. Reid, Oct. 7th, 1814, and of Consul
John B. Dabney, Oct. 5th, 1S14. James, vi. 349 (ed. 1837). Let-
ter of Captain Lloyd ; Adams, viii. 202.

Great Britain and the United States 255

for the encounter. The rapid tide held back the
boats as they drew near, but they laid the brigantine
aboard, and a most desperate engagement followed.
Some of the British actually cut through the net-
tings and reached the deck, but they were killed by
the privateersmen as fast as they mounted. Once
the boats were repulsed ; again they came on, but
again they were beaten back ; the launch was cap-
tured, and the others pulled back to the frigate.
The slaughter had been very heavy, considering the
number of combatants. The victorious privateer
had lost seventeen killed, and fifteen badly, and
nine slightly, wounded, leaving but nine untouched.
Of the British, about half were killed or wounded,
including among the former Lieutenant Hawkins
himself, and, in addition, the launch was taken with
the twenty-eight men in her.1 The master of the
Prince de Neafchatel was John Ordronaux, a New
Yorker. His name caused the Captain of the
Endymion to put him down as a Frenchman.

The commerce-destroying exploits of the Ameri-
can cruisers had a very distinct effect in furthering
the readiness of the British to come to terms. They
helped to make England willing to accept a peace
by which neither side lost or gained anything. The
great service rendered by the American commerce-
destroyers in the war of 1812 must not be blinked ;
but on the other hand, the lesson it teaches must

1 Coggeshall's ' History of American Privateers,' 241; James, vi.
362 (ed. 1837j .

256 Naval Operations of the War Between

not be misread. The swift cruisers cut up the
British trade terribly, and rendered it unsafe even
for the British coasters to go from one port to an-
other ; but it cannot be too often insisted that the
blockading squadrons of Great Britain almost de-
stroyed both the foreign and the coast commerce
of the United States. The commerce-destroyers of
America did their part toward making the war of
1812 a draw; but the great fighting fleets of Eng-
land came near making the war a disastrous defeat
for the Americans. The people of the British sea-
ports, especially the merchants and ship-owners,
were sorely distressed by the war ; but in America
whole regions were brought by the blockade into a
condition of such discontent with their government
that they openly talked treason. Moreover, the
privateers, in spite of their ravages, produced no
such effect on the contest as the regular vessels of
the American navy. The victories of the American
warships kept up the heart of the United States as
no privateer cruiser, however successful, could keep
it up ; and Macdonough's triumph on Lake Cham-
plain had more effect on the negotiations for peace
than the burning and plundering in the Irish
Channel.

The American sloops of war were almost or quite
as swift as the privateers, and were formidable fight-
ers to boot. The smaller man-of-war brigs (with
the exception of the Enterprise) were picked up at
different times by British cruisers, being able neither

Great Britain and the United States 257

to run nor to fight. Of the large sloops there were
by the spring of 1814 four all told, including the
Hornet, 20, and the newly built Wasp, Peacock, and
Frolic, 22. These vessels were as successful in
breaking the blockade as the privateers, and more
successful in evading capture; and each of them
was a menace, not merely to the British merchant-
men, but to all British armed vessels less in force
than a heavy corvette or a small frigate. Like the
privateers, they cruised by preference on the seas
where the British merchantmen and British armed
vessels were most numerous, the immediate neigh-
bourhood of the British Islands being a favourite
haunt.

The British Admiralty had at least partially
solved the problem of meeting the American frig-
ates, by providing that the British frigates, which
were usually lighter ships, should cruise in couples
or small squadrons, and should avoid encounters
with American frigates of superior force ; but it
made no such provision in the case of the sloops,
nor was there any evidence of endeavour to make
better the gunnery of the sloops. In consequence,
the various sloop actions with which the war closed
ended as favourably for the Americans as had the
early fights in 1812. The ordinary British sloop
was the 18-gun brig. She was not so good a ves-
sel as the American ship-sloop carrying twenty or
twenty-two guns. There were corresponding ship-
sloops in the British Navy ; but no effort was made

17

258 Naval Operations of the War Between

to substitute them for the brig-sloops, nor were they
so employed as to bring them into contact with the
Wasp, the Hornet, and their fellows. Moreover, the
brig-sloops proved on the whole to be far more in-
ferior to their opponents in skill than they were in
force. The gunnery of the Americans showed itself
to the end much better than the gunnery of the
British. The former used sights for their guns,
and were trained to try to make each shot tell,
while even in Nelson's day, and still more after his
death, the British cared more for rapidity of fire
than for exactness of aim. They sought to get so
close to their antagonists that the shots could not
well miss. But a badly aimed gun has infinite
capacity for missing, even at close range.

The first of the new American sloops to get to
sea was the Frolic, 22, so named after the prize cap-
tured by the old Wasp in 1812. She cruised for a
couple of months under Master-Commandant Joseph
Bainbridge, and among other deeds, sank a large
Carthagenan privateer, nearly a hundred of her crew
of Spaniards, West Indians, and the like, being
drowned. Finally, "on April 20th, 1814, she was
captured after a long chase by the British 36-gun
frigate Orpheus, Captain Hugh Pigot (3), and the
12-gun schooner Shelbume, Lieutenant David Hope.1

The Peacock, 22, Captain Lewis Warrington,
sailed from New York on March 12th, 1814. On

1 The Frolic was added to the Royal Navy as the Florida. —
W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 259

April 29th, in latitude 27° 47' N.., longitude 80° 7'
W., he encountered a small convoy of merchantmen
under the protection of the British 18-gun brig-sloop
Epervier, Commander Richard Walter Wales. The
Peacock had one hundred and sixty-six men in crew,
and carried two long 12's and twenty 32-pr. carron-
ades, like the rest of her class. The Epervier had
one hundred and eighteen in crew, and carried six-
teen 32-pr. and two 18-pr. carronades. In broadside
force the difference was about five to four. How-
ever, Wales hauled up to engage, while the convoy
made all sail away.

The Peacock came down with the wind nearly aft,
while the Epervier stood toward her close hauled.
At 10.20 a. m. they exchanged broadsides, each using
the starboard battery. The Epervier then eased
away, and the two vessels ran off side by side, the
Englishman firing his port guns, while Warrington
still used the starboard battery, aiming at the brig's
hull. The Epervier did practically no damage
whatsoever, while she was heavily punished by her
adversary. Commander Wales's crew, moreover,
showed a lack of courage such as was very unusual
in the service, muttering sullenly that the American
was too heavy for them. Half an hour after close
action had begun, most of the guns on the engaged
side of the Epervier had been dismounted by the
Peacock's shot, or owing to defective breeching-bolts,
or carelessness in the handling ; her hull had been
struck forty-five times ; her masts were badly

260 Naval Operations of the War Between

wounded ; there were five feet of water in her hold ;
twenty-three of her men were killed or wounded ; *
and she struck her colours. The Peacock had lost
but two men, both slightly wounded ; and there had
been some trifling damage aloft ; but her hull was
not touched. In other words, the Epervier was cut
to pieces, and the Peacock hardly scratched.2 War-
rington put a prize crew on board the captured brig,
and brought her in safety to the United States,
though on the way the vessels were chased by two
British frigates. These Warrington succeeded in
drawing after his own ship, which was very fast,
and could, he was sure, outsail his pursuers. The
event justified his judgment. The Peacock again
sailed on June 4th, and cruised in the mouth of the
Irish Channel, round the west and northern coast of
Ireland, and finally in the Bay of Biscay. She
escaped from the frigates that chased her, and cap-
tured fourteen merchantmen : a record which could
have been equalled by few of the privateers, although
the latter devoted themselves entirely to preying on
commerce.

The Wasp, a sister ship of the Peacock, and named
in honour of the old Wasp, left Portsmouth,
Virginia, on May 1st, 1814, under the command of
Captain Johnston Blakely, with a very fine crew of

1 Among the severely wounded was Lieutenant John Hackett. —
W. L. C.

2 James's 'Naval Occurrences,' 243; Navy Dept. MSS., Letters
of Warrington April 29th and June 1st; American State Papers,
xiv. 427 ; Memoirs of Admiral Codrington, i. 322.

Great Britain and the United States 261

one hundred and seventy-three men, almost exclu-
sively New Englanders. Her cruise, both because of
her signal daring and success, and because of the
tragic mystery of her end, became one of the most
famous in the annals of the American navy. She
slipped through the blockaders and ran right across
to the mouth of the English Channel. There she
remained for several weeks, burning and scuttling
many ships. Finally, on June 28th, in the
morning, she made out a sail which proved to be the
18-gun British brig-sloop Reindeer, Commander
William Manners. The Reindeer was armed with
24-pr. carronades and had a crew of one hundred and
eighteen, so that Manners knew that he had to do
with a foe who was half as heavy again as himself.
But in all the British Navy, rich as it was with men
who cared but little for odds of size or strength, there
was no more gallant or more skilful commander
than Manners, nor were there braver or better
trained men than those under him. As day broke
the Reindeer made sail for the Wasp with the wind
nearly aft. The sky was cloudy and the light
breeze barely rippled the sea, so that the vessels
stood on almost even keels. All the morning they
slowly drew together, each captain striving to get or
to keep the water-gage. The afternoon had well
begun before the rolling drums beat to quarters, and it
was three o'clock when the two sloops came into colli-
sion. The Wasp was running slowly off with the
wind a little forward of the port beam, brailing up

262 Naval Operations of the War Between

her mizen, while the Reindeer closed on her weather
quarter with the flying-jib hoisted. When but sixty
yards apart the British fired their shifting 12-pr.
carronade, loaded with round and grape, into the
Wasjj. This was the only gun in either ship that
would bear, and five times it was discharged, before,
at twenty-six minutes past three, Captain Blakely,
finding that the Reindeer was not coming on his beam,
put his helm a-lee and luffed up, firing his port guns
from aft forward as they bore. A biscuit could have
been tossed from one vessel to the other as the two
lay abreast. The heavy metal of the American was
too much for the Reindeer. Manners himself was
mortally wounded, and was hit again and again, but
he would not leave his post, and continued to cheer
and hearten his men. The vessels had come close
together ; and, putting his helm a-weather, he ran
the Wasp aboard on her port quarter, and called
the boarders forward to try the last desperate chance
of a hand to hand conflict. But Blakely fought with
the same courage and skill as were shown by his
antagonist, and used his greatly superior force to the
utmost advantage. As the vessels ground together
the men hacked and thrust at one another through
the open port holes. The Americans gathered aft
to repel boarders, the marines, cutlassmen and pike-
men clustering close to the bulwarks, while the top-
men kept up a deadly fire. Then through the smoke
the British boarders sprang, only to die or to be
hurled back on their own decks, while the Reindeer s

Great Britain and the United States 263

marines kept answering the American fire. As his
men recoiled, Manners, mortally wounded, but, high
of heart and unconquerable save by death, sprang,
sword in hand, into the rigging to lead them on once
more ; and they rallied behind him. At that
moment a ball from the Wasp's main-top crashed
through his head, and, with his sword closely grasped
in his right hand, he fell back dead on his own deck,
while above him the flag for which he had given his
life still floated. As he fell Blakely passed the word
to board. With wild hurrahs the Americans
swarmed over the hammock nettings ; the wreck of
the British crew was swept away by the rush ; and
the Captain's Clerk, Mr. Richard Collins, the senior
officer left, surrendered the brig just eighteen minutes
after the Wasp had fired her first broadside. Twenty-
six of the Wasps crew and sixty-seven1 of the Rein-
deer s were killed or wounded.2

In neither navy was any ship ever more bravely
and more skilfully fought than either the Wasp or
the Reindeer, and the defeated side showed them-
selves heroes indeed. In courage, seamanship, and
gunnery, there was nothing to choose between the

1 The Reindeer lost 25 killed and 42 wounded. Among the
killed were Commander Manners and Purser John Thomas Teuton;
among the wounded, Lieutenant Thomas Chambers, Master's Mate
Matthew Mitchell, and Midshipman Henry Hardiraan. Manners
was a young Commander of February 7th, 1812. and was an excel-
lent and idolised officer. — W. L. C.

2 Letter of Captain Blakely, July 8th, 1814; Cooper, ii. 287;
James, vi. 294 (ed. 1837).

264 Naval Operations of the War Between

two combatants; and the advantage lay with the
nation whose forethought had provided the better
ship. In all these naval duels no victorious ship,
except the Shannon, suffered so heavy a relative loss
as the Reindeer inflicted on the Wasp, and, before
accepting defeat, the Reindeer herself had suffered
more than any other defeated ship, except the Frolic.
The Wasp burned her prize, and sailed into the
French port of Lorient to refit. On August 27th
she sailed again, making two prizes in the first
three days. On the 1st of September she came
upon a convoy of ten sail under the protection of
the Armada, 74, bound for Gibraltar. Confident in
her speed and in the seamanship of the crew,
Blakely hovered round the convoy, though chased
off again and again by the two-decker, and finally
cut off and captured a ship laden with iron and
brass cannon, muskets, and other military stores of
value. He was then on a cruising ground traversed
in every direction by British warships and mer-
chantmen, and on the evening of the same day he
made out four sail, of whom it afterwards turned
out that three were cruisers, being the British ship-
sloop Tartarus, 20, and the brig-sloops Avon, 18, and
Castilian, 18. Blakely soon became convinced that
three of the four were hostile vessels of war.
Nevertheless he determined to engage one of them
after nightfall, hoping to sink or capture her before
either of her consorts could come to her aid. It was
a very bold determination, but it was justified by

Great Britain and the United States 265

the Wasps efficiency as a fighting machine. Blakely
had less men in crew than when he fought the
Reindeer, but, profiting by his experience with the
latter, he had taken on board her 12-pr. carronade.

The three British sloops were in chase of an
American privateer schooner, while the American
sloop in her turn chased them. The privateer out-
sailed her pursuers, and the latter gradually drew
apart until the headmost, the Castilian, was nine
miles distant from the rearmost, the Avon, when,
late in the afternoon, the Wasp began to approach
the latter. The Avon was under the command of
Commander the Hon. James Arbuthnot. She carried
twenty guns, including sixteen 32-pr. carronades, a
light shifting carronade, two long guns as bow-
chasers, and another light long-gun as stern-chaser.
Her crew numbered one hundred and seventeen.
The odds against her in point of force were thus far
less than in the case of the Reindeer, being about
what they were against the Epervier, or five to four
in weight of broadside. As the Wasp approached,
the Avon, not desiring to encounter her single-
handed, began signalling with her lanterns to her
consorts ahead, and when she met with no response
she fired signal shots to them.1

Soon after 9 p.m. the Wasp, steering free through
the darkness, got on the weather quarter of the
Avon, and the vessels exchanged hails. The action

1 According to some British accounts, the night-signals and the
shots were directed to the Wasp. James, 297 [ed. 1837]. — W. L. C.

266 Naval Operations of the War Between

began by the Wasp firing her 12-pr. carronade, and
the Avon responding, first with her stern-chaser, and
then with her aftermost port guns. Blakely put
his helm up lest his adversary should try to escape,
ran to leeward of her, fired his port broadside into
her quarter, and then ranged up on her starboard
beam.1 A furious night fight followed at very short
range. The Wasp's men did not know the name of
their antagonist, but her black hull loomed clearly
through the night, and aloft in her tops the clus-
tered forms of her sailors could be seen against the
sky. Four round shot struck the Wasp's hull, kill-
ing two men ; and another man was wounded by a
wad. This was all she suffered below, but aloft her
rigging was a good deal cut, for the practice of the
Avon was bad, her guns being pointed too high.
The Wasp's fire, on the contrary, was directed
with deadly precision. The A voris hull was riddled
through and through, until there were seven feet
of water in the hold, the lower masts were wounded,
and the standing and running rigging were cut to
pieces. Five of the starboard guns were dismounted,
and forty-two of the crew killed or wounded.2 Less
than three quarters of an hour3 after the beginning
of the action she struck her colours.

1 Blakely's letter, Sept. 8th, 1814.

2 The number killed was 10, including Lieutenant John Prender-
gast ; the number wounded was 32, including Commander Arbuth-
not, Lieutenant John Plarvey (4), and Midshipman'John Travers. —
W. L. C.

3 According to the British accounts, the action began at 9.26 p. m.,

Great Britain and the United States 267

While Blakely was lowering away the boat to
take possession, the Castilian, Commander George
Lloyd (actg. ), made her appearance, and soon after-
wards the Tartarus also approached.1 They had
been recalled by the noise of the cannonade, and
had come up under a press of sail. When the
Castilian came in sight Blakely again called his men
to quarters, and made ready for battle; but the
appearance of the Tartarus forced him to relinquish
the idea of fighting. Accordingly, the braces having
been cut away, the Wasp was put before the wind
until new ones could be rove. The Castilian fol-
lowed her, but the Avon had begun to fire minute-
guns and make signals of distress, and Commander
Lloyd deemed it his duty to put back to her assist-
ance. He accordingly returned to his consort, after
firing his lee guns over the weather quarter of the
Wasp, cutting her rigging slightly, but not touching
a man, nor doing any other damage. He consoled
himself by reporting that if he had been able to
attack the Wasp she would have " fallen an easy
prey " to him, and that he did not doubt that his
broadside was "most destructive."2 The Avon sank
soon afterwards.

James comments on this action as follows : " The
gallantry of the Avon's crew cannot for a moment

and the Avon surrendered at 10.12 p.m. ; but James (vi. 298, ed.
1837) shows grounds for believing that the surrender occurred at
nearly 11 p. if. — W. L. C.

1 NUes's Register, vi. 216.

2 Letter of Lloyd, Sept. 2nd, 1814 ; Adams, viii. 190.

268 Naval Operations of the War Between

be questioned, but the gunnery of the latter appears
to have been not a whit better than, to the discredit
of the British Navy, had frequently before been dis-
played in combats of this kind. Nor, from the
specimen given by the Castilian, is it likely that she
would have performed any better." 1 As for the
Wasp, she had performed a most notable feat of
cool daring and skilful prowess.

She next cruised southward and westward, taking
and scuttling or sending in several prizes, one of
much value. On October 9th she spoke the Swedish
brig Adonis, which had on board a couple of the
officers formerly of the Essex, on their way to
England from Brazil. This was the last that was
heard of the gallant Wasp. How she perished none
ever knew. All that is certain is that she was never
seen again. In all the navies of the world at that
time there were no better sloop and no braver or
better captain and crew.

The blockading squadrons watched with special
vigilance the harbours containing American frigates.
Three frigates cruised off Boston, where the Consti-
tution lay, and four off New York, where Decatur
kept the President ready to put to sea at the first
opportunity. The Constitution, always a lucky ship,
managed to take advantage of a temporary absence
of the three frigates that were watching her and
slipped to sea. The President made a similar
attempt, but fared badly.

1 James, vi. 299 (ed. 1837).

Great Britain and the United States 269

The Peacock and Hornet were lying with her, all
three intending to start on a cruise for the East
Indies, where they hoped to do much damage to
British trade. The blockading squadron off the
port consisted of the Majestic, 56, Captain John
Hayes, with long 32-prs. on the main-deck, and
42 pr. carronades on the spar-deck, the Endymkm,
40, Captain Henry Hope, carrying twenty-six 24-prs.
on her main-deck, and twenty-two 32-pr. carronades
and two bow-chasers on her spar-deck, with a crew
of about three hundred and fifty men ; and the two
38-gun frigates Pomone, Captain John Richard
Lumley, and Tenedos, Captain Hyde Parker (3).
On January 14th, 1815, a severe snow-storm blew
them off the coast. Hayes was sure that the Presi-
dent would take advantage of their absence to slip
out ; and he shaped his course back with a view to
the course which the escaping American would be
apt to take.1 The event justified his judgment.

The President had tried to put to sea in the gale,
but she struck on the bar, where she beat heavily
for an hour and a half, springing her masts and
becoming so hogged and twisted that she would
have put back to port if the storm had not blown
so furiously as to render it impossible.2 Before day-
light next morning, Sandy Hook bearing W.N.W.,
fifteen leagues distant, she ran into the British

1 Letters of Rear-Adm. the Hon. Sir Henry Hotham, Jan. 23rd,
1715, and Captain Hayes, Jan. 17th, 1815.

2 Letters of Decatur, Jan. 18th and March 6th, 1814; Report of
court-martial, April 20th, 1815.

270 Naval Operations of the War Between

squadron, and a headlong chase followed. During
the early part of the day, when the wind was still
strong, the powerful Majestic went better than any
of the other ships, and fired occasionally at the
President without effect. The Pomone towards
noon began to gain rapidly, and would have over-
taken the President had she not been sent to
investigate the Tenedos, which turned up in an
unexpected quarter, and was mistaken for another
American ship. In the afternoon the wind became
light and baffling, and the Endymion forged to the
front and gained rapidly on the President, which
was making a large amount of water in consequence
of the injuries which she had received while on the
bar. For three hours the ships occasionally inter-
changed shots from their bow and stern chasers. At
about half-past five the Endymion drew up close, and
began to pour in her broadsides on the President's
starboard quarter, where not a gun of the latter
would bear. For half an hour the President bore
the battering as best she might, unable to retaliate ;
and she did not like to alter her course, lest she
should lessen her chance of escape. Moreover,
Decatur expected the Endymion to come up abeam.
But Captain Hope kept his position by yawing, not
wishing to forfeit his advantage. In this he was
quite right, for the President suffered more during
the half-hour when she had to endure the unre-
turned fire of her opponent than during the entire
remainder of the combat. At six o'clock Decatur

Great Britain and the United States 271

found his position unbearable, and kept off, heading
to the south. The two frigates ran abreast, the
Americans using the starboard, the British the port,
battery. Decatur tried to close with his antagonist,
but the latter, being both a lighter and a swifter
ship, hauled up and frustrated the attempt. The
President then endeavoured to dismantle the British
frigate, and thus get rid of her. In this she was
successful. The Endymion s sails were cut from her
yards, and she fell astern, the fire gradually dying
away on both sides. The last shot was fired from
the President.1 Three hours afterwards, at eleven
o'clock, the Pomone caught up with the President,
and gave her two broadsides, which killed and
wounded a considerable number of people. The
Endymion was out of sight astern. Decatur did not
return the fire, but surrendered, and was taken pos-
session of by the Tenedos. He delivered his sword
to Captain Hayes of the Majestic. In the President
twenty-four were killed, and fifty wounded ; 2 in the
Endymion eleven were killed and fourteen wounded.
Two days afterwards, in a gale, all three of the
President's, and two of the Endymion s masts went
by the board, and the Endymion, in addition, had to
throw overboard her quarter-deck and forecastle
guns.

1 Log of Pomone, ' Naval Chronicle,' xxxiii. 370.

2 Neither Hope nor Hayes in his letter gives details of the loss
suffered by the President. James (vi. 365, ed. 1837), without speci-
fying his authority, says that the President lost 35 killed and 70
wounded. — W. L. C.

272 Naval Operations of the War Between

This was an important success for the British.
It was won by the vigilance of Captain Hayes, and
the foresight of the British in stationing ample
blockading squadrons off the harbours where the
American frigates lay. The Endymion was a much
lighter ship than the President, and could not be
expected to capture her, for the President had a
hundred more men in crew, two more guns in broad-
side on the main-deck, and 42's instead of 32's on
the spar-deck. What Captain Hope could do he
did ; that is, hang on the quarter of an enemy who
had no choice but flight, pouring in broadsides
which could not be returned, and then, when he
did engage, keep up the battle as long as possible,
and do as much damage as he could, before dropping
out of the combat. The relative loss is of course
no criterion of the merits of the fight, because the
President was trying to escape. She did not at-
tempt to return the earliest and most destructive
broadsides of the Endymion, and afterwards devoted
her attention chiefly to the effort to unrig her
opponent, while part of her loss was caused by the
two unreturned broadsides of the Pomone. So far
as the Endymion is concerned, Decatur seems to have
done all he could, and no severe censure could be
passed on him for surrendering when attacked by a
fresh frigate, with another close astern. It cer-
tainly seems, however, that it would have been
worth his while to try at least a few broadsides on
the Pomone. A lucky shot might have taken out

Great Britain and the United States 273

one of her masts and then he would have had a
chance to dispose of the Tenedos and make good his
escape. Of course it was not much of a chance,
but there were plenty of captains in both the British
and the American navies who would certainly have
taken advantage of it.

After escaping from Boston, the Constitution, 44,
Captain Charles Stewart, went to Bermuda, thence
to the Bay of Biscay, and finally towards Madeira.
On February 20th, 1815, the latter island bearing
W.S.W. 60 leagues, she encountered two British
ships, the frigate-built Cyane, 22, Captain Gordon
Thomas Falcon, and the flush-decked Levant, 20,
Captain the Hon. George Douglas. The Cyane
carried twenty-two 32-pr. carronades on her main-
deck, and, on her spar-deck, two long 6's, eight
18-pr. carronades, and a 12-pr. boat carronade.
The Levant carried eighteen 32-pr. carronades, and
two long 9's, together with a 12-pr. boat carronade.
The Cyane had about 170, and the Levant about 130
in crew. The Constitution carried about 450 men.

The two ships together could not be considered as
powerful as a 08-gun frigate like the Java or the
Guerriere, which the Constitution had already cap-
tured. Nevertheless the two British captains very
gallantly, but not very discreetly, came to the con-
clusion to try their luck with the Constitution. Five
years earlier two such vessels, the Rainbow and the
Avon, had fought a draw with the French 40-gun
frigate JVJreide, the odds against them being just

18

274 Naval Operations of the War Between

about as heavy as against the Cyane and Levant;
but on this occasion the two small craft had to deal
with a much more formidable antagonist than any
French frigate; and nothing in their own skill, or
in the events of the preceding three years of warfare
with the Americans, warranted their making the
experiment.

The Constitution came down off the wind, while
the two ships hauled close to the wind to try to
weather her, so as to delay action until after night-
fall, when they hoped that the darkness would
favour their manoeuvres. The frigate came down
too fast, however, and the British stripped to fight-
ing canvas, and stood on the starboard tack, the
Levant a cable's length ahead of the Cyane. The
Const (tul ion's long guns would have enabled her to
cut the two craft to pieces without damage to her-
self, as she was to windward ; but this would have
involved the risk of one or the other of them escap-
ing ; and she ranged up to windward of them, with
the Levant on her port bow and the Cyane on her
port quarter, close enough for the marines to begin
firing soon after the engagement began.1 There was
a bright moon, but the smoke hung so heavily that
at one time the firing ceased, the antagonists not
being able to distinguish one another. There was
some dexterous manoeuvring, all three ships endeav-

1 Letter of Captain Charles Stewart, May 20th, 1815; Log of
Constitution Feb. 20th, 1815; 'Naval Chrouicle,' xxxiii. 466; Niles,
viii. 219, 363, 383.

Great Britain and the United States 275

ouring to rake or avoid being raked, and at 6.50 p.m.,
just forty minutes after the beginning of the action,
the Cyane submitted and was taken possession of.

When the prize had been manned, Stewart made
sail after her consort, which had run off to leeward.
Captain Douglas had only gone out of the combat to
refit, however, and, as soon as he had rove new
braces, he hauled to the wind and stood back in
search of his consort, an act of loyal gallantry which
should not be forgotten. At 8.50 p.m.1 he met the
huge frigate, and passed under her battery, the Con-
stitution and Levant going in opposite directions and
exchanging broadsides. Finding that the Cyane had
surrendered, and it being, of course, utterry impos-
sible for a ship of his force to fight the Constitution,
Douglas crowded all sail to escape, but was over-
taken and captured half an hour afterwards. Of
the 302 men on board the British ships, 41 were
killed or wounded ; 2 of the 451 men on board the
Constitution, 15 were killed or wounded, and she was
hulled eleven times, more often than by either the
Guerriere or the Java. She was of such superior
force that only a very real inferiority of skill on her
part would have enabled her enemies to make it a
drawn combat. As a matter of fact both sides
fought well ; but the Constitution captured her foes

1 The time given in the British accounts is 8.30 p. m., and the
time of striking at 10.30 p. M. — W. L. C.

2 The Levant had G killed and 16 wounded ; the Cyane, 6 killed
and 13 wounded. — W. L. C.

276 Naval Operations of the War Between

without suffering any material loss or damage. The
gallantry of the two British captains was con-
spicuous, but they did not show good judgment in
engaging, for, as has been said, there was nothing
in their experience to justify the belief that their
conduct would result otherwise than it did, — that is,
in an easy victory for their antagonist.1

Stewart took his prizes to the Cape de Verde
Islands, and anchored in Porto Praya on March 10th.
A hundred of the prisoners were landed to help fit
out a brig which was taken as a cartel. Next day
the weather was thick and foggy, with fresh breezes,
and at noon the upper canvas of a large vessel was
suddenly made out, just above the fog bank, sailing
towards the harbour. Immediately afterwards the
canvas of two other ships was discovered, and it
became evident that all three were heavy frigates.
In fact they were the very three ships which had
blockaded the Constitution off Boston : the Leander,
50, Captain Sir George Ralph Collier, K. C. B. ; the
Newcastle, 50, Captain Lord George Stuart ; and the
Acasta, 40, Captain Alexander Robert Kerr.2
Captain Stewart knew that the neutrality of the
port would not save him, and that there was not a
minute to lose if he wished to escape. As it was,

1 Captains Douglas and Falcon were tried on board the Akbar, at
Halifax, on June 28th, 1815, for the loss of their ships, and were
most honourably acquitted. — W. L. C.

2 Log of Constitution, March 11th, 1815; Letters of Lieut. Hoff-
man, April 10th, and of Lieut. Ballard, May 2nd ; Marshall's ' Naval
Biography,' ii. 533.

Great Britain and the United States 277

only the perfect training of his officers and men
enabled him to get out. Signalling to his prizes to
follow him, he cut his cables, and, in less than ten
minutes from the time when the first frigate was
seen, all three vessels were standing out of the
harbour, the Levant being commanded by Lieutenant
Hoffman, and the Cyane by Lieutenant Ballard.
The prisoners on shore promptly manned a Portu-
guese battery and delivered a furious, but ill-directed
firQ at the retreating Constitution, Levant, and C/jane.
They stood out of the harbour in that order on the
port tack, all to windward of the British squadron.
The Americans made out the force of the strangers
correctly, and the Acasta discerned the force of the
Americans with equal clearness ; but the Leander
and Neivcastle mistook the two sloops for American
frigates — an error, by the way, which the American
Captain Rodgers had once committed in regard to a
couple of British ships which he encountered, a sloop
and a little 12-pr. frigate.

The British ships made all sail in chase, the New-
castle and Leander on the Constitufioiis lee quarter,
and the Acasta well to windward of them. In an
hour the Cyane had fallen so far astern and to lee-
ward that Captain Stewart signalled to Hoffman
to tack lest he should be cut off. Hoffman did so,
and escaped unmolested, no British ship following
him. He took his prize safely to the United States.
Half an hour later the Newcastle opened on the
Constitution, but the shot fell short. Though so

278 Naval Operations of the War Between

close, the commanders of the two 50-gun ships still
apparently mistook the Levant, which was a low
flush-decked sloop, for an American frigate. At
three o'clock she had sagged so as to be in the same
position as that from which the Cyane had just been
rescued. Accordingly, Captain Stewart signalled to
her to tack. She did so, whereupon all three British
ships tacked in pursuit. Such a movement is inex-
plicable, for, even had the Levant been a frigate, the
rearmost 50-gun ship alone would have been enough
to send after her, while the other two should not
have abandoned the chase of the Constitution. It is
said that there was a mistake in the signalling, but
the blunder was never satisfactorily explained. At
any rate, Stewart got off in safety, and, when he
learned of the peace, returned to New York.

Meanwhile Lieutenant Ballard took the Levant
back to Porto Praya, and anchored a couple of
hundred yards from a heavy battery on the shore.
The event justified the wisdom of Captain Stewart
in not trusting to the neutrality of the port. All
three British frigates opened upon the Levant as
soon as they got into the harbour, while the British
prisoners on shore fired the guns of the battery at
her. The Levant was at anchor, and did not resist ;
and the gunnery of her assailants was so bad that
not a man in her was killed by the broadsides of
the three heavy frigates, though she was a station-
ary target in smooth water. The chief effect of the
fire was to damage the houses of the Portuguese town.

Great Britain and the United States 279

A week after the President's effort to run the
blockade out of New York, the Peacock and Hornet
made the same attempt, with more success. On
January 22nd a strong north-westerly gale began to
blow, and the two sloops at once prepared to take
advantage of the heavy weather. They passed the
bar by daylight under storm canvas, the British
frigates lying-to in the south-east, in plain sight
from the decks of the sloops. A few days out they
parted company, intending to meet at Tristan
d'Acunha.

The Hornet was then under the command of
Captain James Biddle, and she had on board a crew
of about one hundred and forty men.1 She reached
the island on the 23rd of March, and was about to
anchor, when she made out a strange sail, which
proved to be the British brig-sloop Penguin, 18,
Commander James Dickinson ^3), with a crew of
one hundred and thirty-two men, she having taken
on board twelve extra marines from the Medway,
74. The Hornet carried twenty guns, all 32-pr.
carronades, except two long 12's for bow-chasers.
The Penguin carried nineteen guns : sixteen 32-pr.
carronades, two long 6's as bow-chasers, and a
12-pr. carronade. The difference in force was tri-

1 Her muster rolls, in the Treasury Department at Washington,
show that when she left New York she had about 14G officers and
crew all told, including 20 marines ; but she had manned a prize.
The same rolls show the names of 122 prisoners which she took out
of the Penguin; and ten of the Penguin'' s crew were killed in the
fight or died immediately afterwards.

280 Naval Operations of the War Between

fling, but such as it was, it was in favour of the
Americans.

The two ships began action at 1.40 p.m., within
musket-shot of one another, running on the star-
board tack, the Penguin to windward.1 After a
quarter of an hour of close action Commander
Dickinson put his helm a-weather to run his adver-
sary aboard. Almost at the same moment he was
mortally wounded, and the first lieutenant, James
M'Donald, endeavoured to carry out his intentions.
The Penguins bowsprit came in between the Hornet's
main and mizen rigging, but the sea was very
rough, and no attempt at boarding was made. As
the Hornet forged ahead, the Penguins bowsprit
carried away her mizen shrouds, stern davits, and
spanker boom, and the brig then hung on the ship's
starboard quarter, so that none of the big guns
could be used on either side. A British officer
called out something which Biddle understood to be
the word of surrender. Accordingly, he directed
his marines to cease firing, and jumped on to the
taffrail, but was himself at once shot and wounded
rather severely in the neck by two of the marines
on the Penguins forecastle, both of whom were
killed in another moment by the marines of the
Hornet. As the ships drew apart the Penguins
foremast went overboard. Her hull was riddled,

i Biddle's letter, March 25th, 1815; M'Donald's letter, April 6th,
1815; Vice-Adm. Tyler to Commander Dickinson, .Jan. 3rd, 1815;
James, vi. 498 ; Niles, viii. 345.

Great Britain and the United States 281

and most of the guns on her engaged side were dis-
mounted, while thirty-eight of her men were killed
or wounded.1 Thereupon, she struck her colours at
two minutes past two, but twenty-two minutes after
the first gun had been fired. In the Hornet one
man was killed, and ten were wounded, chiefly by
musketry fire, for not a round shot struck her hull.
Next day Biddle destroyed his prize.

This was the last regular action of the war. In
it the British displayed their usual gallantry, but it
is astonishing that their gunnery should have con-
tinued so bad. Dickinson laid down his life for the
flag which he served ; and when a man does that
it is difficult to criticise him ; but the gunnery of
the Penguin was certainly as poor as that of any of
the British ships in 1812. The Hornet showed the
utmost efficiency in every way. There was no
falling-off from her already very high standard of
seamanship and gunnery.

Next day the Peacock joined the Hornet, and on
April 2nd the two started for the East Indies. On
the 27th of the month they made sail after what
they supposed to be an Indiaman, but, when they
got close, discovered, to their consternation, that
she was the Cornwatlis, 74, Captain John Bayley,
bearing the flag of Rear-Admiral Sir George Burl-

1 The Penguin had 6 killed, including Commander Dickinson, 4
mortally wounded, and 28 otherwise wounded, including Lieutenant
John Elwin, Master's Mate John Holmes Bond, and Midshipman
John Noyes. James Dickinson (3) was a Commander of October
21st, 1810. — W. L. C.

282 Naval Operations of the War Between

ton, K.C.B. The Peacock, a very fast vessel, was
speedily out of danger, but the Hornet endured a
forty-eight hours' chase.1 By daylight of the 29th
the 74 was within gunshot of the sloop, and opened
fire upon her. Throughout the early part of the
day the Hornet was several times on the very edge
of capture. More than once she was within fair
range of the 74's long guns, and the latter not only
used her bow-chasers but also hauled up to deliver
broadsides. On each occasion Biddle gained a brief
respite by lightening ship, throwing overboard by
degrees all his spare spars, stores, anchors, shot,
boats, ballast, and all the guns but one. The guns
of the Cormvallis were very unskilfully served, and
but three shot got home. In the afternoon the
sloop was saved by a shift in the wind, which
brought her to windward ; and, as it blew fresher
and fresher, she got further ahead. When day
broke the two-decker was hull down astern, and,
shortly afterwards, abandoned the pursuit.

The Peacock rounded the Cape of Good Hope and
captured four great Indiamen, very valuable prizes.
Then on the 30th of June, in the Straits of Sunda,
she fell in with the East India Company's cruiser
Nautilus, a brig of not half her force.2 The Nautilus
informed Captain Warrington of the peace, but
Warrington chose to disbelieve the information, and
ordered the brig's commander Lieutenant Charles

1 Biddle's letter of June 10th; Log of Hornet.

2 ' History of the Indian Navy,' by Charles Rathbone Low, p. 285.

Great Britain and the United States 283

Boyce, I.N., to haul down his colours. This the
latter refused to do until a couple of broadsides had
been exchanged, when he surrendered, having had
fifteen men killed or wounded. The Peacock was
not even scratched. There was no excuse whatso-
ever for Warrington's conduct. It was on a par
with that of Commander Bartholomew, of the
British sloop Erebus, mentioned above.

This was the last expiring sputter of the war.
Peace had been declared ; and, while Warrington
was cruising in the far Indian seas, his countrymen
at home were building and launching ships of the
line, and Decatur was preparing to lead a squadron
against the Moorish pirates.

The United States' Navy ended the war far
stronger than it had begun it ; and in the list of
the United States' vessels for 1815 there appeared
two novel engines of destruction, the forerunners of
their kind, the heralds of the revolution which, fifty
years later, opened a new era in naval warfare. In
the United States' Navy List for 1815 appeared the
names of the war-steamer Fulton, and of the Torpedo.
During the war several efforts had been made by the
Americans to destroy British vessels with torpedoes,
but nothing had been accomplished beyond maki
some ships wary about venturing into good anchor-
age, especially in Long Island Sound. The Fulton,
with her clumsy central wheel concealed from shot by
a double hull, with scantling so thick that light guns
could not harm her, and with, instead of broadside

284 Naval Operations of the War Between

batteries of light guns, two 100-pr. columbiads on
pivots, was the prototype of the modem steam
ironclad.

The war had ended, and the treaty * left matters
precisely as they were before the war began ; yet it
would be idle to say that, for either side, the war
was not worth fighting. To Great Britain it was
probably a necessary incident of the Napoleonic
struggle, for neither the British statesmen of that
day, nor the people whom they governed, realised
either the power or the rights of the United States.
To America it was certainly a necessary prerequisite
for attaining the dignity and self-respect of a free
nation. The war left enduring memories of glory,
and courage, and love of country, which more than
made up for the loss of blood. Moreover, the war
taught certain lessons which should have been,
although perhaps they were not, well pondered by
the statesmen of the two countries, and especially
by those who had, or have, to do with shaping the
national policy of either. Nations must be prepared
for war: lack of preparation, laxness in organisa-
tion, invite disasters which can be but partially
repaired. The successes of the American cruisers
show that no power can afford to lull itself to sleep

1 A convention was signed at Ghent on December 24th, 1814, but
the convention was only a compromise, which left undecided all the
chief points upon which the two countries had been at issue, and
which reserved certain questions for future negotiation. As has
been seen, definite news of the peace did not reach outlying stations
until two or three months later. — W. L. C.

Great Britain and the United States 285

by the dream of invincibility. A nation should see
that its ships are of the best, and that the men who
man them are trained to the highest point of effi-
ciency. The terrific pressure of the British blockade
on the American coast, and the utter impotence of
America to break it, show, what has already been
shown ten thousand times, that the assumption of a
simple defensive in war is ruin. Success can only
come where war is waged aggressively. It is not
enough to parry the blows of the enemy. In order
to win, the foe must himself be struck, and struck
heavily

The sea-power of the British, the unceasing pres-
sure of the British fleet, veiw nearly made the
struggle a victory for Great Britain ; but the tri-
umphs of the American squadrons on the lakes, and
of the frigates and sloops on the ocean, and the ruth-
less harrying of the British trade by the American
commerce-destroyers, inflicted such severe punish-
ment as to make the British more than willing to
call the fight a draw.1

1 The history of the Hartford Convention is proof enough of how
near the United States were to disaster. The impression produced
in Great Britain by the prowess of the American ships is shown in a
letter from the British naval historian, William James, to George
Canning, in 1827, when war was once more threatened. " One
[merchant] says, ' We had better cede a point or two than go to war
with the United States.' ' Yes,' says another, 'for we shall get
nothing but hard knocks there ! ' ' True,' adds a third, ' and what
is worse than all, our seamen are more than half afraid to meet the
Americans at sea!' Unfortunately this depression of feeling, this
cowed spirit, prevails very generally over the community, even

286 Naval Operations of the War Between

The man who is anxious to learn the lessons of
history aright, and not merely to distort them for
the gratification of his national pride, will do well
to study the differences in comparative prowess shown
in the single-ship fighting of the Americans, British
and French, in 1780, 1798, and 1812 respectively.
Readers of this history, on turning to the single-ship
contests of the war of the American Revolution, will
be struck by the fact that the British ships were
then markedly superior to the American ; whereas
the difference between the former and the French
was very slight. In 1 7 9 8, the year in which America
had a brush with France, a great change had taken
place. At that time America had been forced to
make reprisals at sea against the French, and three
single-ship contests took place. American ships won
twice against antagonists of inferior strength; and
in a third case an American frigate fought a draw
with a more powerful French frigate which, some
time afterwards, was captured by a British frigate no
stronger than her former American antagonist.
Compared with their relative position in the preced-
ing war, the French had fallen very far behindhand,
and, while the British had kept their position of

among persons well-informed on other subjects, and who, were a
British seaman to be named with a Frenchman or Spaniard, would
scoff at the comparison." (Stapleton's Correspondence of George
Canning, ii. 450). See also Lane-Poole's ' Life of Stratford Can-
ning,' i. 302, to show how completely both sides accepted the fact
that there was to be no repetition of the grievances, in the way of
impressment and search, which had caused the war.

Great Britain and the United States 287

primacy, the Americans, leaping forward, had
passed the French, and were close behind the leaders.
In 1812 the relative positions of the English and
French remained unchanged ; but the Americans had
forged still further ahead, and were better than the
British.

Of course, there had been no change of national
character or aptitude for the sea during this period.
The simple facts were that, in the war of the American
Revolution, the American ships were manned by
officers and crews who were without the trainino- of a
regular service ; and so, while occasionally individual
ships did exceedingly well, they often did very badly.
The French navy, on the other hand, was at a high
point of perfection, with excellent ships, and well-
trained captains and crews. Throughout that war,
in the single-ship fighting, victory normally lay with
the heavier vessel, whether she was British, Dutch
or French. In the war of the French Revolution all
that had changed. The Revolution had destroyed
the discipline of the French crews and annihilated
the old school of officers ; while the enthusiasm with
which it inspired the men could not at sea, as it did
on land, in any way take the place of the lack of years
of thorough training. On the other hand, the Ameri-
cans had at last established a regular war navy, and
their ships were officered by men carefully trained to
their profession. During the next dozen years the
French, constantly beaten by the British, were unable
to develop an equality of prowess with the latter;

288 Naval Operations of the War Between

and the British accustomed to almost invariable
victory over foes who were their inferiors alike in
gunnery and seamanship, neglected their own
gunnery, and sank into a condition of ignorant con-
fidence that, even without preparation, they could
" pull through somehow." The small American
navy meanwhile was trained by years of sea-service,
including much scrambling warfare with the Alge-
rians ; and the American captains, fully aware of the
formidable nature of the foe whom they were to meet,
drilled their crews to as near perfection as might be.
In such circumstances, they distinctly outmatched
their average opponents, and could be encountered
on equal terms only by men like Broke and
Manners.

The lesson from this is so obvious that it ought not
to be necessary to point it out. There is unques-
tionably a great difference in fighting capacity, as
there is a great difference in intelligence, between
certain races. But there are a number of races, each
of which is intelligent, each of which has the fight-
ing edge. Among these races, the victory in any
contest will go to the man or the nation that has
earned it by thorough preparation. This prep-
aration was absolutely necessary in the days of
sailing ships ; but the need for it is even greater
now, if it be intended to get full benefit from
the delicate and complicated mechanism of the for-
midable war engines of the present day. The officers
must spend many years, and the men not a few, in

Great Britain and the United States 289

unwearied and intelligent training, before they are
fit to do all that is possible with themselves and
their weapons. Those who do this, whether they
be Americans or British, Frenchmen, Germans, or
Russians, will win the victory over those who do
not.

Doubtless it helps if the sailormen — the sea me-
chanics, as they are now — have the sea habit to
start with ; and they must belong to the fighting
stocks. But the great factor is the steady, intelli-
gent training in the actual practice of their profes-
sion. Any man who has had to do with bodies of
men of varied race origin is forced to realise that
neither courage nor cowardice is a purely national
peculiarity. In an American warship of the present
day, the crews are ordinarily of mixed race origin,
somewhat over half being American born ; while
among the remainder there are sure to be Scandi-
navians, Germans, men from the British Isles, and
probably others, such as French Canadians or Portu-
guese. But the petty officers are sure to be drawn
from all classes indiscriminately, simply because
merit is not confined to any one class ; and, among
the officers, those whose fathers came from Germany
or Ireland will be found absolutely indistinguishable
from their brethren of old native American origin.
The Annapolis education and the after-training have
stamped the officers, and the conditions of actual
sea-service in modern ships under such officers have
stamped the men, with a common likeness. The

19

290

Naval Operations

differences of skill, courage, application and readiness
will not be found to coincide with the differences of
race.

What is true of the ships of one sea power is as
true of the navies of all sea powers. No education
will fit a coward, a fool, or a weakling for naval
life. But, as a rule, the war fleets of great nations
are neither commanded nor manned by cowards, fools,
and weaklings ; and, among brave and intelligent
men of different race-stocks, when the day of battle
comes, the difference of race will be found to be as
nothing when compared with differences in thorough
and practical training in advance.