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THE AMERICAN BOOKS

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The American Books

The
American Navy

By
Rear-Admiral French E. Chadwick
(U. S. N., Retired)

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1915

Copyright, 1915, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian

TO
MY COMRADES OF THE NAVY
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Rear-Admiral French Ensor Chadwick was born at Morgantown, W. Va., February 29, 1844. He was appointed to the U. S. Naval Academy from West Virginia (then part of Virginia) in 1861, and graduated in November, 1864. In the summer of 1864 he was attached to the Marblehead in pursuit of the Confederate steamers Florida and Tallahassee. After the Civil War he served successively in a number of vessels, and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Commander in 1869; was instructor at the Naval Academy; on sea service, and on lighthouse duty (1870-1882); Naval Attaché at the American Embassy in London (1882-1889); commanded the Yorktown (1889-1891); was Chief Intelligence Officer (1892-1893); and Chief of the Bureau of Equipment (1893-1897).

During the war with Spain he was Admiral Sampson’s Chief of Staff, and also commanded the flagship New York. He participated in all the more important engagements in the Atlantic during the war; was advanced five numbers in rank for conspicuous conduct in battle, and was presented with a sword of honor by citizens of his native state.

From 1900 to 1903 he was President of the Naval War College at Newport; was promoted Rear-Admiral October 11, 1903, and in 1904 became commander-in-chief of the South Atlantic squadron. He retired February 28, 1906.

Rear-Admiral Chadwick is one of the most influential friends of the United States navy; he has written extensively on diplomatic and naval topics, and is the author of “Causes of the Civil War” in the “American Nation Series.” He is also much interested in problems of municipal government, is a member of the Newport Representative Council, a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, corresponding member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, member of the American Historical Association, etc.

INTRODUCTION

The navy in all countries has ever been, and, as far as we can now judge, ever will be, a preëminent instrument of government. It was through her navy that Greece destroyed the power of Persia; Rome that of Carthage; the allies at Lepanto that of the Turks; England that of Holland and later that of France in America; the navy of France, in turn, caused the relinquishment of Great Britain’s sovereignty over the thirteen colonies which formed the United States, and a generation later it was the British navy which made the efforts of the great Napoleon the “baseless fabric of a vision.”

Coming to days within the ken of many still living, the navy was the power which made possible the preservation of the Union in our great Civil War by the cutting off of the Southern Confederacy from its means of support by sea and reducing its forces thereby to practical inanition. For had the Confederacy had free access to the sea and control of the Mississippi River, no armies of the North could have conquered well-supplied armies of the South. So, too, the control of the sea decided the outcome of the Spanish War. When Sampson’s fleet destroyed Spain’s only battle squadron off Santiago de Cuba, Spain could no longer reinforce her army in Cuba, and surrender was a necessity. Even as this is written Germany’s every sea outlet is closed by the British fleet, so superior in number to the German, and German commerce on the sea is for the time entirely swept away, leaving Great Britain for the moment navally and commercially supreme upon the ocean. As one attempts to look into the future the vastness of the possible changes startles the imagination, but in it all is ever present the power that goes with the ubiquitous warship, from whose threat no port of the world is free. Military power fades to insignificance, through its narrow limits of mobility, when compared with the meaning of a great fleet. The present sketch of history is to show what the warship has done for us.

THE AMERICAN NAVY

CHAPTER I

When Great Britain attempted to reduce to obedience the rebellious colonies which were to form the United States of America she was dealing with a people who in the North at least had long been conversant with the building and sailing of ships. A New England built ship entered the Thames in 1638, only eighteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts. The New England men, with a sterile coast, with limitless fishing grounds and unsurpassed harbors, turned as naturally to the sea for livelihood as did the South, more kindly treated by nature, to agriculture. In 1670 it was estimated that two thirds of the British shipping was employed in the American trade. The Dutch, who had been great carriers on the sea, were excluded from this trade by the navigation laws of the period. Scotland was not admitted to the trade of the American plantations until her union with England in 1707, and Ireland not until 1780, while in 1670 nothing could be imported into the American colonies but what was laden in England in English-built ships. But while none of their products could be carried anywhere (except to other of the plantations) till they were first landed in England, the ships built in America were reckoned as English, and this fact gave great impetus to American shipbuilding. American shipping prospered amazingly. But while thus prospering, it was the attempted repression of our commerce afloat and ashore (which included such things as forbidding the exportation of hats, restricting the manufacture of iron, and forbidding commerce with the foreign-owned islands of the West Indies) which did much more to develop the idea of independence than did the Stamp Act. But the net result of conditions was to foster shipping, and our competition had so increased by 1725 that in that year “the shipwrights of the river Thames came up to Whitehall with a complaint that their business had declined and their workmen emigrated because the plantations furnished England with ships.”

On the register of the underwriters at Lloyd’s for 1775, comprehending the shipping of the three preceding years, there were 3,908 British-built vessels of 605,545 tons, and 2,311 of American build with a tonnage of 373,618 tons. The average size of the ship of the time was about 400 tons displacement. One 100 feet in length and 26 to 28 feet broad was a good-sized ship. They were but cockle boats in comparison with the vast ships of to-day, many of which are full a hundred times 400 tons displacement.

The foregoing will show that when there came a time to dispute the sea with Great Britain there was no difficulty in supplying the ships, and the many ironworks which had been established, particularly in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, despite Great Britain’s restrictions, could furnish guns in the manufacture of which our foundries were adepts before the war.

The larger men-of-war of the period were greater in size than the largest merchantmen. The greater ships-of-the-line (by which expression is meant those which could take their place in the line of battle, the formation of which was in a single extended column) varied from 4,000 to 3,000 tons displacement. The larger of these, which carried guns on three main decks and some light guns on the upper deck, to the number altogether of 100, or even 120, were 180 to 190 feet on the gun deck, with about 53 feet beam. The most usual size, however, was the “74,” carrying nominally that number of guns, but usually six or eight more, on two main decks (and thus known as a two-decker). This class was about 168 feet long on the gun deck and 47 feet broad. Below this class there were many ships of sixty, fifty, or even forty-four guns, with two gun decks. Such, for a long period, formed part of the line of battle.

The frigates had but one covered gun deck. They varied in length from 115 to 130 feet on the gun deck, and were from 32 to 36 feet beam, roughly a fourth of their length. They formed no part of a line of battle, their duty when accompanying a fleet being to remain clear of the line and repeat the admiral’s signals. There was also a small class of ship called a sloop-of-war, which carried guns on only the upper, or spar, deck as it came to be called. These vessels were ship-rigged; that is, they had three masts with square sails on each. They were usually about 100 feet long and about 27 feet beam.

The three-deckers, or 100-gun ships, carried about 900 men; the 74’s about 600; the frigates about 160. The guns of the period were of course all smooth-bores and muzzle-loaders. In the large ships, the heavier guns, usually 32-pounders, were carried on the lower gun decks to give stability to the ship; 18’s or 24’s were carried on the middle deck, 9’s and 12’s on the upper, 9’s and 6’s on the quarter deck, which was the part of the upper deck aft of the mainmast, and on the forecastle, which was the part of the upper deck forward of the foremast; the space between the two was called the waist. The larger frigates usually carried 18’s on the gun deck; the smaller, 12’s or 9’s. The sloops carried 9’s or 6’s. The greatest range of even the heavier guns was but little over 2,000 yards, as the ports rarely allowed more than 8° or 9° elevation. Such guns were but toys compared with modern ordnance, but they were common alike to all nations, and all were thus on the same footing.

An immense difference between that day and this was in the motive power which then and for two and a half generations later consisted of lofty wooden masts, reaching skyward in the greater ships about 200 feet, crossed by “yards,” the larger of which were about 100 feet long, the former supported by a great mass of rigging known as shrouds and stays, the latter moved by “braces” and the sails worked by a maze of running rigging. All this, of course, was subject to being shot away, and ships were thus frequently completely dismasted or disabled in action. The same result was often, too, produced by a gale of wind, it being no uncommon thing for a fleet to be thus completely incapacitated for the continuance of a voyage.

Weeks or fortnights were spent in a voyage now done in days. Of certainty as to time of reaching port, there was none. And amid all there was the danger from enemies, legal or piratical, for the world was only slowly ridding itself of the latter; and from the inherent dangers of the sea itself to the clumsy ships which slowly worked their way across it. How great these last were, through the ignorance at that time of the law of storms, may be known by the fate of a great fleet which in 1782 left the West Indies under Admiral Graves, with ten line-of-battle ships convoying nearly a hundred merchantmen. Among the former were six of the prizes taken in Rodney’s great naval battle of April 12, 1782. Caught in a fierce gale southeast of Nova Scotia, five of the battleships foundered with nearly all on board. One of those which went down with every soul was the Ville de Paris, which had been the flagship of the unfortunate Count de Grasse. The total loss of men was estimated at 3,500.

Such was the setting of the period which saw the birth of the first American navy, which was to have an existence of but eight short years, to be succeeded, however, nine years after (1794) by the modest beginnings which have grown into the great fleet of to-day, and whose history is one of uninterrupted success and honor.

CHAPTER II

In September, 1744, there met at Philadelphia, then our foremost city, representatives of each of the thirteen colonies, called together on account of the increasing difficulties which had arisen with the mother country. These difficulties arose mainly from the tendency of parliament to govern the colonies as it would, say, any county of England. This right the Americans denied. They were good subjects of the King, but they objected to parliamentary rule. The underlying idea which governed the action of the Americans was thus that of a federalism which only in these latter days has laid hold in any considerable degree of the minds of the English, who now debate the possibility of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa becoming states of a federation somewhat akin to our own. But at the time of the outbreak of our Revolution there was no widespread idea of separation. It was, however, in the air, and by some openly advocated. Had there been a complete renouncement of the right of parliament to make laws governing the colonies there would, for the time at least, have been a reconciliation. It was upon this principle we divided. Thus the war began.

There was at this time on our coast a British naval force of four ships of from seventy to fifty guns (these at Boston), and twenty from twenty to six guns distributed from New Hampshire to Florida. The whole was a very moderate force considering the long-standing discontent and the difficulties of the existing situation. The British navy, in which, as in the administration of every other department of the British public service of the period, inefficiency and dishonesty reigned to an almost unbelievable degree, had been allowed to run down sadly after the Seven Years’ War which ended in 1763. The total number of ships was but 270 and the number of seamen but 18,000. Before the war closed the ships were to number 468, of which 174 were ships-of-the-line (carrying from sixty to one hundred guns), and the seamen were to number 110,000.

The situation of the United States was much akin to that of the Southern Confederacy. Its resources were too meagre to carry on a war without the importation of much that was necessary to keep an army in efficiency. Thus the true plan of England was a strict blockade and the reduction to inanition of our forces, such as we ourselves carried on against the South in our Civil War. This action was advocated strongly by Viscount Barrington, the Secretary for War, who urged that the navy only should be employed, and that the ships should take possession of all our ports and establish a complete blockade. Fortunately for the revolutionists, his advice was not heeded.

On April 19, 1775, at Concord and Lexington, the long-prepared fagots of revolution were lighted into flame. Two months later, June 17th, came Bunker Hill and the immediate assembling near Boston (where lay almost the whole of the British force in America) of a multitude of country people ill-provided with everything that goes to make the efficiency of an army but high determination and spirit. By a stroke of prescience which would seem a providence, Washington was appointed the commander-in-chief.

There had been fights afloat between the Americans and the British some years before the actual outbreak of the Revolution. In 1769 the sloop Liberty, employed in revenue protection, had been seized and burned by the people of Newport, Rhode Island; in 1772 a schooner, the Gaspee, used for similar service in Narragansett Bay and which had grounded while in chase of a suspected vessel near Providence, was boarded by a party of men who burned her, and but a month after the first fights ashore occurred there were attacks with some loss of life upon an armed schooner and barges which attempted the seizure of livestock on the islands of Boston Bay. The lively fights at Machias in June, 1775, in which the inhabitants had captured the sloop Unity and another which had been sent to Machias for lumber and which were under the escort of an armed tender, the Margaretta, were, however, the first of the actual War of the Revolution. They are proud recollections of local history and have caused the name of the town to appear on the navy list as that of a small cruiser of to-day. On August 9, 1775, the Falcon, sloop-of-war under Captain Linzee, pursued into Gloucester harbor two schooners bound from the West Indies; one he seized, and the other succeeding in getting into the harbor was attacked by boats from the Falcon. The militia and inhabitants gathered, and the action which came on and which lasted several hours resulted in the capture of thirty-five of the Falcon’s men who had come into the harbor in the captured schooner and in their own boats, both schooners remaining in the hands of the Americans.

To Washington himself was due the first organized force of the Americans in the Revolution upon the sea. Throughout his career he recognized the importance of its control, and immediately on his arrival at Cambridge to take the command of the American army then collected before Boston, he began to look into the question of a naval force, with a view to capturing the enemy’s supplies. Such capture would not only be a deprivation to the British forces, but a much needed aid to the Americans who needed everything which goes to support an army, excepting food, which the surrounding country supplied for the moment plentifully enough. But arms, both small and great, clothing, ammunition, and tentage were imperatively needed. Such in quantities were on the ocean on their way to America for the British army, and the first need was to bring them into American hands. Washington thus established a little navy of his own, with a prize court necessary to pass upon the propriety of the capture and commissioners to take charge of captured material. He continued such efforts even after the transfer of the army to New York, and did not cease from them until the Continental Congress took the subject in hand.

The beginning of Washington’s fleet was the schooner Hannah, which sailed under Captain Nicholas Broughton from Beverly, Massachusetts, on September 5, 1775, and returned two days later with a prize. Naturally many of the improvised army assembled at Cambridge, which was mainly made up of New Englanders, were men of the sea, and thus soon there were eight small vessels, officered and manned from the army in service. The administration of this improvised navy was not an easy task. Washington, writing to the President of the Congress on December 4, 1775, says: “The plague, trouble, and vexation I have had with the crews of all the armed vessels is inexpressible. I do not believe there is on earth a more disorderly set.” Successes came, however, and with these greater contentment among the crews. Captain John Manley was particularly successful, especially in the capture of the brigantine Nancy, which carried ordnance stores of the highest value to our poorly equipped army. The inventory of her cargo gives, among other things, 2,000 muskets, thirty-one tons of musket shot, 3,000 round shot, a considerable quantity of powder, and a thirteen-inch mortar, which was promptly mounted in Cambridge and called the “Congress.”

The British evacuated Boston through want of food, on March 17, 1776, going first to Halifax and thence to New York. Washington had already transferred his army thither and continued his navy, such as it was, until he himself retreated from New York as the result of the unfortunate battle of Long Island.

Rhode Island had, however, taken action toward a sea force several months before Washington had formed his little fleet. The Rhode Island Assembly had, on June 15, 1775, two days before the battle of Bunker Hill, ordered the chartering of two sloops and had appointed Abraham Whipple to the chief command. Whipple was prompt to act, for on the same day he captured the tender to the frigate Rose, the first prize of the war. His evident courage and vigor caused his appointment later as captain in the regular navy which was soon to come.

Rhode Island has also the honor of being the first state to take action toward the establishment of a national navy. Her delegates were instructed on August 26, 1775, to bring the question of a fleet before Congress. This was done on October 3d. The subject received an almost immediate impetus through the arrival of information of two brigs which had left England for Quebec with arms, powder, and stores. A committee of three was proposed to prepare a plan to intercept these, but the idea met with strong opposition as being initiatory to a Continental navy, as in fact it was. It was declared by some opposed to be the “most wild, visionary, mad project that had ever been imagined. It was an infant taking a mad bull by the horns, ... it would ruin the character and morals of our seamen; it would make them selfish, piratical, mercenary, bent wholly upon plunder.” Much of such criticism of the project might have been spared. Our seamen had been living through an age of privateering, and one in which the latter often recked but too little of legal capture, and they had too long been accustomed to the general system of illicit commerce with the islands of the West Indies belonging to France and Spain to have their morals upset by fighting for their country. The better sense prevailed and the three men who had urged most strongly the proposed action were, on October 5, 1775, appointed a committee to report a scheme of action. These were John Adams of Massachusetts, John Langdon of New Hampshire, and Silas Deane of Connecticut.

The immediate advice of the committee which was to instruct Washington to procure two cruisers in Massachusetts, one to carry ten, and the other fourteen, guns, for the purpose of intercepting the two brigs mentioned, was soon changed in a report of October 30, 1775, advising to add two more vessels, one to mount not more than twenty, the other not more than thirty-six, guns, to be employed “for the protection and defence of the United Colonies.” The question of the capture of special ships had been dropped; the subject had become national.

On December 14, 1775, the “Naval Committee” was replaced by a committee of thirteen chosen by ballot. The membership was remarkably like that of some naval committees of later times. Scarcely any on it were really conversant with matters of the sea, but it held one man, Robert Morris of Pennsylvania, whose energy, resource, and ability caused Congress to put in his sole control, before the war ended, all the affairs of the navy. Agents were employed to superintend construction, and prize agents were appointed. On November 6, 1776, Paul Jones wrote in his usual vigorous way to Robert Morris, declaring the necessity of a Board of Admiralty, and on October 28, 1779, one was established. Two of the members were to be members of Congress; the other three, called commissioners, were to be men possessing knowledge of naval matters. The Marine Committee then came to an end, but the navy boards at Philadelphia and Boston, each of “three persons well-skilled in maritime affairs,” appointed by Congress “to execute the business of the navy under the direction of the Marine Committee,” in what became known as the Middle and Eastern districts, and the navy agents were retained under this reorganization. The Board of Admiralty, however, never materialized. On February 7, 1781, Congress resolved that naval affairs should be under a single person, to be called the Secretary of Marine. The office was never filled. Naval matters had, as just said, gradually drifted into the efficient hands of the Superintendent of Finance, Robert Morris, and there they remained until the navy of the Revolution disappeared in the sale of the last ship, the Alliance, in August, 1785. The fact is that naval affairs in the Revolution suffered equally with those of the army through the ineptitude and inefficiency of a Congress which was rather a board of advice than a government, even when the Articles of Confederation were adopted, which was not finally done until March 2, 1781.

On November 2, 1775, $100,000 was voted for ships, and the committee was authorized to select officers and seamen. On November 10th were authorized two battalions of marines. The first intention was to take them from the army, but Washington objecting to such weakening of his force, they were to be raised independently and, with a curious misunderstanding of their use, it was provided that they should be “such as are good seamen.” Rules for the government of the navy were passed November 28th, and the offices of Captain, Lieutenant, Master, Master’s Mate, Surgeon, Chaplain, and Warrant Officer established. The monthly pay of captain was $32; of able seaman $6.67, later raised to $8. A prize court was established. The rules, naturally, were taken from those of the British service, and throughout the whole existence of our navy there has run a strong similarity, until of late years when there have been many changes in the nomenclature of the ratings of the enlisted men. Both services had the “Banyan day,” when no meat was served,[1] though in the American navy this soon ceased to be an actuality. Such phrases as “Chips” (the carpenter) and “Jimmy Legs” (the master-at-arms) were among the many common to both services; but one, “Jack-of-the-Dust” (an adjunct of the paymaster’s department), which is to-day a rating in the American navy, is no longer a part of British ratings.

On December 13, 1775, Congress authorized the building of thirteen frigates, and next day, December 14th, a committee of thirteen was chosen by ballot to superintend their construction and equipment; five of these were to be of 32 guns; five of 28; and three of 24. The Raleigh, of 32 guns, was built at Portsmouth, New Hampshire; the Hancock, 32, and Boston, 24, at Salisbury and Newburyport, Massachusetts; the Warren, 32, and Providence, 28, at Providence, Rhode Island; the Trumbull, 28, at Chatham, on the Connecticut River; the Montgomery, 24, and Congress, 28, at Poughkeepsie, New York; the Randolph, 32, Washington, 32, Effingham, 28, and Delaware, 24, at Philadelphia; the Virginia, 28, at Baltimore. Six of these—the Montgomery, Congress, Washington, Effingham, Delaware, and Virginia—never got to sea, all being destroyed to prevent capture except the Virginia which, having grounded and lost her rudder in the Chesapeake, was taken by a British force in the bay.

These ships were to cost on the average but $66,666, and the whole were expected to be ready by March, 1776. They varied from 121 to 132 feet in length on the gun deck, with a breadth of from 32.6 to 34.5½. Their armament was that of the frigates of the day: 12-pounders on the main deck and 6-pounders on the quarter deck and forecastle. All should have been ready by the time named, for the Raleigh was launched at Portsmouth but two months after her keel was laid. But ill-luck pursued them throughout, and particularly in that the free life and greater gains of the privateersman made it almost impossible to get crews.

Thus the four ships the purchase of which was authorized on October 30, 1775, were the first of our navy. These were the Alfred, of 24 guns; Columbus, 20; Andrew Doria, 14, and the Cabot, 16.

Such was the beginning of the Continental navy which was to have a life of but ten years. A few words will complete our story of naval construction. On November 20, 1776, Congress resolved to build “immediately” a 74 in New Hampshire; a 74 and a 36 in Massachusetts; a 74, a brig, 18, and a packet boat in Pennsylvania; two frigates, 36 each, in Virginia; and two frigates, 36 each, in Maryland. But in July, 1777, on account of the high cost of wages and material, Congress authorized stopping work on such as the committee might judge proper, and the final result was the completion and getting to sea of but three: the Alliance, 36, the General Gates, 18, both built in Massachusetts, and the Saratoga, 16, in Pennsylvania. Only one 74 was built. This was the America, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and she was not launched until the war had practically ended.

During the early part of 1776 there were built on Lake Champlain, under the direction of Benedict Arnold, two schooners with eight 6 and 4 pounders; a sloop with ten guns of like calibre; a cutter with one 12, one 9, and two 6; one galley with two 18-pounders and eight 12, and two others of nearly equal armament; eight gondolas with three 8 and 9 pounders, and two other small craft. These, as will be seen later, were to fight a memorable action.

CHAPTER III

The ships put afloat by Congress and which may be taken as the regular navy of the Revolution were, however, strongly supplemented by the navies of the states (except New Jersey and Delaware), and by the multitude of privateers which cruised under both state and Continental commissions. Massachusetts led in the number of state ships; but South Carolina in size and importance. Massachusetts had sixteen vessels, the only one of any size being the Protector, a ship carrying 26 light guns. All the others carried but from ten to twenty. This “navy” made about seventy captures during the war. But the state made one most unfortunate venture, the Penobscot Expedition, to be mentioned later. New Hampshire had one small ship, the Hampden, of 22 guns; Georgia, four galleys (vessels propelled by both sails and oars). Connecticut had a navy of ten vessels, the largest of which were the Oliver Cromwell, of 18 guns, and the Defence, of 14. All had disappeared by loss or capture by July, 1779, after having made some thirty captures. There was, however, throughout the war great activity in Long Island Sound where there was a warfare of boats against the illicit traffic carried on to supply the British at New York. As always, greed frequently overcame patriotism, and smuggling in both directions was rife throughout the war.

The situation of New York, with its one port in possession of the enemy, precluded anything of a patriot naval force except a few galleys on the Hudson. Pennsylvania, however, had in 1777 a total of fifty-one vessels on the Delaware, the only important one in size being the small purchased ship Montgomery; all the others were but armed boats of the type known as galleys. In 1777 there were in the state naval service (which was administered by a board of six, later of ten) a total of about 700 officers and men. The activities of this force were confined to the Delaware River and Bay, and when the British army was transferred to Philadelphia in 1777 these activities were very active indeed, including the burning of a British line-of-battle ship, the Augusta, 64, and the sloop-of-war Merlin, 18, which had grounded. All these vessels were finally driven up the Delaware by an overpowering force, except the Montgomery and several smaller craft, which had to be burned to escape capture. What remained after the British evacuation of Philadelphia in 1778, when the French fleet had appeared on our coast under the alliance just made with France, were sold in December of that year. This remainder consisted of ten galleys, nine armed boats, the brig Convention, the sloops Speedwell, Sally, Industry, and Black Duck, and the schooner Lydia.[2]

Maryland in 1776 invested in a ship called the Defence carrying twenty-two 6-pounders, the largest vessel of her coming small navy; two schooners and seven row galleys formed the remainder. All except two galleys and a schooner were sold in 1779, but British success in the South renewed depredations in the Chesapeake, and four large barges to carry twenty-five men each and 9 and 18 pounders and a schooner to carry ten 4-pounders were ordered. In 1782, depredations continuing, a ship and four additional barges were ordered, and in November of that year such vessels fought a severe and most gallant action with an overpowering British force of the same character, the Protector, which bore the brunt of the action on the American side, losing fifty-four killed and wounded out of her crew of sixty-five. “Except when used for commercial purposes, Maryland’s vessels rarely passed outside the capes at the mouth of the Chesapeake.” Virginia entered upon the question of a navy with enthusiasm and a number of vessels were authorized; the two frigates voted were, however, never built. Actual construction was confined to galleys and schooners; the number first and last, though very considerable, is indefinite. The state established a navy yard on the Chickahominy, operated a ropewalk, and established naval magazines. The whole force practically disappeared during the raid by Phillips and Arnold when on April 27, 1780, a few miles below Richmond, six ships, eight brigs, five sloops, two schooners, and several smaller vessels and the ropewalk at Warwick were destroyed; twelve were captured which had escaped destruction, and but one vessel remained in the Virginia navy, the armed boat Liberty. A small force later, in 1782, was gathered which operated in the Chesapeake (within which the Virginia force remained almost entirely during the war) until peace in 1783.

Almost foremost in naval activity and expenditure was South Carolina. The state owned in all some fifteen vessels, of which the most important was the Bricole, purchased in France, and mounting forty-four 24’s and 18’s, though pierced for sixty. She, with nearly all the other ships of the state, was sunk as an obstacle to the British in the siege ending in the surrender of May 11, 1780. She was the largest American ship of the Revolution in actual service. There survived the Indian, “rented” by Alexander Gillon, who had been commissioned as commodore and sent abroad to raise some £71,000 with which to build three frigates. The only result was the renting of the Indian, which had been built by Congress in Holland, but which, to prevent international complications, had been sold to the King of France and by him given to the Chevalier Luxembourg. The Indian was renamed the South Carolina and given an armament of twenty-eight 32’s and twelve 12’s, an unusually heavy battery. It was not until August, 1781, that she got to sea, cruised for a time in the North Sea, but arrived at Havana on January 12, 1782, with five valuable prizes. She formed one of a combined American and Spanish expedition in May to the Bahamas, which was successful. On May 28th she arrived at Philadelphia, where an agent of Luxembourg caused the removal of Gillon and the appointment of a Captain Joyner; she refitted and left for sea in December. Scarcely outside the Capes of the Delaware, she was chased by a British squadron and taken after a two hours’ fight. Luxembourg demanded under the contract an indemnity of 300,000 livres (francs). This Gillon denied, claiming his removal to be a breach of contract. The claims were unsettled until December, 1874, when the state of South Carolina paid $28,894 to the heirs of Luxembourg as a final settlement. South Carolina is still prosecuting her claims against the United States for a reimbursement of her expenditures for this ship.[3]

The efforts at a state navy of North Carolina, Georgia, and Rhode Island were of too moderate a character to need much comment. That of the first consisted of three brigantines in 1778 and the addition of a small ship, the Caswell, in 1778. By June, 1779, all had disappeared by sale or (in the case of the Caswell) by sinking at Ocracoke. Georgia had but four galleys. But two sloops and two galleys were the extent of Rhode Island’s navy, though it was this state, as mentioned, which took the first steps toward naval defence.

Of vastly greater importance than the state navies were the privateers, a service congenial to the New England seamen from every point of view. There was “more money in it”; there was the absence of a strict and irksome discipline, and the cruises were short. The great number of privateers fitting out made it a matter of extreme difficulty to find men for the ships of the regular service, which thus not infrequently had to lie idle and unemployed. Had a tithe of the effort expended upon privateers been expended upon the building and equipment of a navy, it is not unfair to say that the general results would probably have been much better. But privateering had already been a much-indulged-in occupation. The Seven Years’ War had ended only in 1763, and during this period many American privateers were afloat. The slave trade also was a favorite New England occupation, and piracy itself at the period was not altogether disreputable if applied only to those “natural enemies,” the French and Spanish. Nearly all the officers of the new Continental navy had their first war training in privateers, and very frequently during the Revolution officers took a hand at privateering in the moments of enforced leisure when there was no naval ship to which they could be assigned.

Congress authorized privateering on March 23, 1776, and a list printed by the Library of Congress shows the number and kind of vessels furnished with letters of marque by the Continental Congress. This gives a total of such of 1,697. Of these there were ships 301; brigs and brigantines, 541; schooners and sloops, 751; boats and galleys, 104. These are accredited to the several states as follows: New Hampshire, 43; Massachusetts, 626; Rhode Island, 15; Connecticut, 218; New York, 1; New Jersey, 4; Pennsylvania, 500; Maryland, 225; Virginia, 64; South Carolina, 1. Distributed by years there were afloat in 1776, 34; 1777, 69; 1778, 129; 1779, 209; 1780, 301; 1781, 550; 1783, 22. These altogether carried 14,872 guns and 58,400 men. It is, of course, almost a certainty that many of these vessels were duplicated in this list, but such duplication is more than offset by the issuance of letters of marque by the several states and in France and the West Indies which, according to an excellent authority, would carry the number to over 2,000, with 18,000 guns and 70,000 men. “Judging from the scanty information at hand concerning British privateering, it is probable that their vessels engaged in this form of warfare were considerably less numerous but decidedly superior in force to the Americans; the latter seem to have carried on an average between eight and nine guns and less than thirty-five men; the British about seventeen guns and seventy-five or more men.”[4]

The value of the captures of the privateers was about $18,000,000; that of the captures of the navy, which had thirty-one ships afloat in 1776, thirty-four in 1777, and but seven in 1782, was, proportioned to the number of ships employed, much greater, being some $6,000,000. Altogether (i. e., by both services) some 800 vessels were captured. Our own losses were also very great, but not nearly so great as those of Britain. About 16,000 prisoners were taken afloat, only 6,000 less than those taken by the army.

By July, 1776, the British fleet in the vicinity of New York, where the attack was about to take place on the American army assembled on Long Island near Brooklyn, which resulted in our defeat and the occupancy of New York for the remainder of the war, consisted of nine ships of from 50 to 64 guns; three of 44; twenty-seven of from 28 to 32; fourteen of 20; eleven of 14 to 18; sixteen of from 8 to 10—a total of eighty ships of war. This fleet was under the command of Richard Viscount Howe, whose brother, General Howe, was commander-in-chief of the army of 34,614 men, of whom 13,167 were of the 29,867 Hessians hired for the war by Great Britain. These two brothers were for some two years to conduct the British main operations in America. One, the admiral, was an officer of great ability and rose to high distinction; the General was handicapped by a slothful and unenterprising disposition with a character marred by an extreme looseness in moral conduct. His want of enterprise may have been due in part to the attitude of the Whig party in England, to which he was attached, and which was opposed in general to the use of force against America. In any case, his qualities were such that they went a long way toward the establishment of American independence.

In addition to Howe’s fleet there were, under Commodore Sir Peter Parker, two 50-gun ships, four of 28, two of 20, and three of 8 guns. These were to be employed against Charleston, South Carolina.

On Lake Champlain the British were to have during 1776 a ship of eighteen 12-pounders, a schooner of fourteen 6-pounders; another of 12; three “Radeaux” (flat-bottomed craft), one carrying six 24-pounders, one six 12-pounders, and one two howitzers. There were also a gondola (with oars) carrying seven 9-pounders, and twenty gunboats, each with a brass field piece of from 24 to 9 pounds.

The naval force here mentioned was at times reinforced by accessions of line-of-battle ships, as many as twenty-one being at times available. The British, however, with an unwise conception of the true strategy of the situation, were constantly diverting these to the West Indies, which, during our Revolution, after war was declared by France and Spain, was the great field of naval action. It is within bounds to say that they lost the United States for the sake of the West India Islands.

CHAPTER IV

It was not until February, 1776, that what may be termed a strictly naval event took form in the sailing of the little fleet in command of Commodore Esek Hopkins, under orders which were sufficiently explicit in primary meaning, viz.: to proceed to Chesapeake Bay and destroy the powerful flotilla which the royal governor of Virginia had gathered together and with which he was harassing the Chesapeake shores. Hopkins was then to proceed to the Carolinas and act in like manner against the enemy’s forces, after which he was to go to Rhode Island. A final phrase, however, left a loophole for other action: “if bad winds or stormy weather” or any other accident should prevent, he was to use his own judgment.

Hopkins flew his broad-pennant in the Alfred, in which also was then hoisted by the hands of Lieutenant John Paul Jones a Continental flag which bore a rattlesnake and a motto, “Don’t tread on me,” on a yellow ground. The exact date of this incident is unknown. The other vessels of the squadron were the ship Columbus, 20; the brig Andrew Doria, 14; brig Cabot, 14; brig Providence, 12; sloop Hornet, 10; schooner Wasp, 8; schooner Fly, 8. The number of men was about 880.

Hopkins, instead of going to the Chesapeake, directed his course, on the plea of bad weather, to New Providence in the Bahamas, where there were considerable stores of powder and cannon of which the newly formed Continental army was in utmost need. Though blamed later by enemies, Hopkins took the wiser course. His advent there on March 3d was a complete surprise: 250 men were landed and possession taken of the little town and forts without resistance. Two weeks was spent in getting aboard the guns, of which there were seventy-one, from 9 to 32 pounders. There were also fifteen brass mortars and twenty-four barrels of powder. The governor, unfortunately, had succeeded in sending away 150 of the latter. The guns, however, were an extremely important prize, and to carry these and other public property seized, a sloop was impressed. Hopkins sailed north on March 17th, carrying the governor, lieutenant-governor, and another official. By this time Newport, Rhode Island, was occupied by a British force, and New London was selected instead as a port of return. When off Block Island the British man-of-war Glasgow, of 20 guns and 150 men, was sighted, and a running action took place, in which the Glasgow, though much injured, escaped into Newport. The explanation of the American commander was that the firing must bring aid from Newport to the Glasgow’s rescue, and in fact two vessels in the harbor did get under way to go out. The force in Newport, however, which was only the small frigate Rose, of 20 guns, the Nautilus and Swan, of 16 each, and several tenders, was no more than an equal match for our own. As far as one can read into this event, there was not the energy shown by our people which should have been. Giving up the action, the American squadron reached New London with all its prize intact. The Commodore’s practical disobedience of orders was fully condoned by Congress, and he received a letter of congratulation from President John Hancock.

The British squadron, suffering a good deal from fire from batteries on shore, had left Newport on April 5th, and Hopkins entered Narragansett Bay, going to Providence on April 25th. So many of his men had sickened on the cruise from the poor food, bad water, and want of general hygiene aboard ship at that period, that he had landed 200 at New London. He now found it impossible to get men. Some soldiers who had been temporarily lent from the army were demanded back by Washington, and there ensued a painful period for the unhappy Commodore. Great complaints of ill-treatment went to Congress. Hopkins’ manners to his officers were severely criticised, and the whole ended in an official inquiry which included his disobedience of orders, his allowing the Glasgow to escape, and his inactivity since his return. He was not entirely cleared on the first two charges, but the prevalent sickness among his men and the impossibility of getting new crews on account of the active fitting out of privateers were certainly sufficient to exonerate him from the third. Notwithstanding, and although he was energetically defended by John Adams, he received a formal censure from Congress, but was allowed for the moment to retain his command. In regard to the question of roughness toward his subordinates which was involved in the charges, it must be considered that all officers of the period had entered the Continental service from the rough life of the merchantman of the time; many had served in privateers; the officers of the British navy itself were themselves not altogether lamblike, if we are to believe Smollet, who had personal experience as a surgeon’s mate. It was in many ways a rough age afloat and ashore and in every society, and such charges as were brought against Hopkins cannot justly be judged from our present standpoint. Certainly John Paul Jones, his first lieutenant, wrote him at this time a kindly and sympathetic letter regarding this trial. Though Hopkins remained yet some time in the service, it was not for long. His enemies, and apparently they were not few, again brought charges against him. As a result, Congress on March 26, 1777, resolved that he be suspended from his command, and on January 2, 1778, he was dismissed from the service. That the service suffered thereby can hardly be said, as he was now sixty years old, an old age for that period, and was scarcely equal to the exercise of vigorous command, but the fact remains that he met unduly harsh treatment.

Hopkins’s squadron was now broken up, though the several ships had remained under his general orders until his dismissal. They cruised chiefly “down East” off New England and Nova Scotia, making a number of prizes, one of which, the Mellish, taken by the Alfred, now commanded by Jones, carried a cargo of soldiers’ clothing for Burgoyne’s army of 13,000 men now in Canada, intended to proceed by Lake Champlain to New York and thus occupy a line which would separate New England entirely from the rest of the country.

A considerable fleet chiefly of gunboats had, as mentioned, been built by the British for service on Lake Champlain. The offset to this, by the building of a flotilla under Arnold, has also already been noted. The building of this little fleet was to change history.

The British naval preparations were so delayed that it was not until October, 1776 (on the 11th and 13th), that the two forces came together, with the result, after a most gallant contest, of a defeat to the Americans, who retreated up the lake, destroying all their vessels but one galley, a sloop, and two small schooners, and the galley Washington, which last was captured. The gallantry of the American force is all the more to be commended as it was one gathered from raw material, most of which was unaccustomed to work of the kind it was called upon to do; the British, on the other hand, were all men-of-war’s men “detached from his Majesty’s ships and vessels in the river St. Lawrence to serve on Lake Champlain,” to the number of 670.

As the Americans were about 700, the forces were almost equal in numbers. It was far otherwise in strength, the British in numbers of vessels, in size, and in armament far outclassing the Americans. They were in numbers 29 to 15, and the ship Inflexible alone, which carried eighteen 12-pounders, was able to look after a large proportion of the American squadron. The American loss was over eighty; that of the British did not exceed forty. The former had lost all, but to good purpose, for this little fleet had delayed the advance southward of Burgoyne’s army another year, thus giving time to prepare resistance, and what perhaps was equally to the purpose, so far as the fortunes of America were concerned, affording time to General Howe to carry out, in July, 1777, his views as to the necessity of occupying Philadelphia; for had Burgoyne, as proposed, started from Canada in the summer of 1776, Howe, with his whole large army would have been at New York within easy support of this movement of so vital moment to the British. As it was, in 1777, the forces were widely separated, and Burgoyne, instead of being aided as he had expected, went to his destruction. Thus “Never,” says Clowes in the great history of “The Royal Navy,” speaking of this action, “had any force, big or small, lived to better purpose or died more gloriously.” “That the war spread from America to Europe, from the English Channel to the Baltic, from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean, from the West Indies to the Mississippi, and ultimately involved the remote waters of Hindostan, is traceable, through Saratoga, to the rude flotilla which in 1776 anticipated its enemy in the possession of Lake Champlain.”

It was as just mentioned when Burgoyne most needed support in his advance south the next year (1777) that, Sir William Howe (the British commander-in-chief in America) embarked 14,000 men, and escorted by the fleet under command of his brother, Lord Howe, sailed from Sandy Hook, the expedition numbering 280 ships, including the transports and men-of-war. Eight thousand men were left at New York under Sir Henry Clinton. Howe’s objective was Philadelphia. His first intention was to go up the Delaware, but obstructions in the river being reported by one of the naval captains, he changed to the very roundabout way of the Chesapeake Bay. He was not able to land his troops at the head of the bay until August 25th. He defeated Washington at the battle of the Brandywine on September 11th, and on the 26th occupied Philadelphia.

The General’s brother, Lord Howe, in command of the fleet, was a good month returning from the head of the Chesapeake round to and up the Delaware as far as Chester, where he arrived on October 6th, so slow and uncertain were the movements of sailing ships in those days. A small squadron had been sent in advance to clear the channel. This move on the part of the British to occupy the river was necessary to keep up the supplies of their army. In this fleet there were eleven vessels, two of which were 64’s, one 50, and three frigates of 28 to 44 guns. The total of their armament was 364 guns, 74 of which were 24-pounders, with somewhat over 2,000 men. To resist this powerful force there were in the river the new Continental frigate Delaware, of twenty-four 12-pounders; the brig Andrew Doria, of fourteen 6-pounders; and the sloop Hornet, with twelve 9-pounders; besides six smaller vessels carrying from four to ten 9-pounders, and twelve galleys with one gun each, of 18, 24, or 32 pounds. These were assisted by the whole of the Pennsylvania navy, which consisted of the ship Montgomery, of fourteen 14-pounders, and thirty-eight small craft carrying fifty-one guns varying from 4 to 18 pounders. The total armament was 175 guns. The combined Continental and state fleets were under the command of Commodore John Hazelwood of the latter. To support these there were Fort Mifflin on an island, with also two small batteries on the mainland, just below the mouth of the Schuylkill and two miles from League Island on the Pennsylvania side, and opposite, on the New Jersey shore, at Red Bank, Fort Mercer; a battery opposite Hog Island, and three and a half miles below this, another. Obstructions of heavy timbers, shod at their points with iron, were placed opposite this last battery and in the channel near Fort Mifflin.

The Delaware River has a somewhat tortuous, and in places a narrow, channel. Its defensive advantages are thus very strong, and the Americans had a fair chance of success. The most powerful of the naval defence was lost in the beginning by the grounding of the Delaware near a British battery on the city front.

Notwithstanding, the Americans made a fine defence of more than six weeks. It was not until November 10th that the British succeeded in clearing the river to Philadelphia and then with heavy loss in men and in ships, two of which, a ship-of-the-line and a sloop-of-war, were burned. Later, in May, 1778, they invaded the river above Philadelphia. The frigates Washington and Effingham, nearly ready for sea, had to be burned, and besides these a ship of 18 guns, and brigs, schooners, and small craft, some fifty-four in all, destroyed; a sad ending to a long and gallant struggle.

It was in the Delaware that in December, 1777, David Bushnell made a second trial of his torpedoes (the first having been in the Hudson). He used kegs of powder fitted with a detonating fuse, which should have succeeded. No damage was done through, as Bushnell claims, bad management. The British fleet was alarmed enough, however, to justify Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of American Independence, in producing the well-known poem of the “Battle of the Kegs,” once a favorite with our fathers.

The Randolph, Hancock, Raleigh, and Boston were the only frigates at sea in this year. The Hancock, Captain Manley, was captured July 7th, on this her first cruise, by a British forty-four; the Raleigh, under Captain John Barry, during an action with two British ships, one of which was of 50 guns, ran on a rocky islet near Penobscot Bay, September 27, 1778. Her crew escaped ashore, but the ship, though an effort had been made to burn her, was hauled off by the British. Both the captured ships were taken into the British service. The Randolph, which had been one of the earliest of the new frigates to get to sea, had, in the period of her sea service, been actively cruising in our southern waters under the command of Captain Biddle, and was ordered to France in October, 1777. She remained there but a short time owing to the protests of the British ambassador against our ships remaining in French ports, and returned to Charleston, whence she had sailed. Here a squadron was organized with four other small vessels of the South Carolina navy, which went to sea February 12, 1778, and cruised in the vicinity of the Windward Islands. On March 7th was met the Yarmouth, 64. Biddle gallantly engaged the ship twice his force, but the Randolph after an action of about fifteen minutes blew up. Only four men were saved, and these were picked up five days after the explosion, on a piece of wreckage, by the Yarmouth, which meanwhile had been actively cruising. The incident is certainly among the most extraordinary of happenings even on the sea, so prolific in adventures. Three hundred and eleven men were lost besides officers. The loss of Captain Biddle, one of the most promising of our sea officers, was specially deplored.

CHAPTER V

Silas Deane had been the first American agent abroad, reaching Europe in July, 1776. Franklin and Arthur Lee arrived in France in December of that year, the former in the brig Reprisal, which was the first American man-of-war to visit the eastern hemisphere. Seldom has there been a ship whose safety meant so much; for upon Franklin’s great social and political influence was to depend the aid of France, and upon this aid, American independence. The Reprisal had taken several prizes which she had carried into Nantes, and the reception of these and the many to come later into French and Spanish ports caused strong protests from England to which these governments had to give heed. The commissioners were to purchase or hire eight line-of-battle ships as well as a frigate and two cutters, but their endeavors fell far short of such a program. Nevertheless, all things considered, aid in money, and particularly in much needed army stores, was forthcoming to a surprising degree, and the name of Beaumarchais in France and that of Gardoqui in Spain, who acted at Bilbao as Beaumarchais’s agent, deserve lasting remembrance by Americans. In 1778 Deane was replaced by John Adams, who, accompanied by his son, John Quincy, then eleven years old, sailed from Boston on February 15th in the frigate Boston, and reached Bordeaux on April 1st. Naval interests, after Deane’s recall, were taken over chiefly by Franklin.

The war had lasted three years, but now in this year of 1778 it was to take a new development. The immediate cause was the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga on October 17, 1777. The chain of causes was, as already mentioned, the resistance offered on Lake Champlain the previous year (1776) by the flotilla under Arnold, the transfer of the main part of the British force from New York to Philadelphia when it should have been employed to support Burgoyne, and the too leisurely movement of Clinton up the Hudson with a large portion of the 8,000 men left at New York. Clinton captured the forts at the Highlands, but he was too late to save Burgoyne, who surrendered the day after the British army burned Kingston. The surrender was a fitting nemesis for such an act. A greater strategic failure than was this campaign on the part of the British is not recorded in history, nor has there ever been one with more momentous consequences. It convinced the French Government, smarting under its loss of Canada in the treaty of 1763, that there was now a fair chance of American success, and on February 6, 1778, was signed the treaty of alliance which brought the ships the aid of which was so vital to our success. Two months later, April 13, 1778, Vice-Admiral Charles Henri Theodat d’Estaing du Saillans, generally known to us as the Count d’Estaing, sailed from Toulon with twelve battleships and five frigates. Two of these ships were of 80 guns, six of 74, three of 64, and one of 50. The naval story of our Revolution, though its greatest exploits in the cruise of Paul Jones and the capture of the Serapis were yet to come, must, henceforward, be largely of French ships.

The French commander had one of the greatest chances in history. The British fleet was in the Delaware awaiting the preparation of the British army to return to New York from Philadelphia. Howe had but six 64’s, three 50’s, and six frigates. They had been a sure prey to the French had there been in command a man of greater energy. But d’Estaing had been transferred at the mature age of thirty-five from the army to the navy, the profession of all others which requires a life-long familiarity, and where the rigidity and formality of the army school of the period were wholly out of place. There have been rare exceptions to the general rule, Blake being a notable example, but d’Estaing was not one of these. He was, says a French writer, “detested from the first—the word is not too strong—by most of his officers.”[5]

Whether through bad luck or want of energy, he was more than a month (thirty-three days) in even reaching the Straits of Gibraltar, 700 miles from Toulon, thus making an average of but twenty-one miles a day.

A British frigate was noted by the French in passing Gibraltar, which “tranquilly and comfortably watched the French fleet defile by in three columns.” But this same ship followed for ninety leagues into the Atlantic, to make sure of the French course, and then hastened to England. It arrived there on June 5th, fifty-three days after d’Estaing had left Toulon and twenty after he had passed the Straits. This knowledge, however, was not necessary to British action. A force equal to d’Estaing’s and to be commanded by Vice-Admiral Byron had already been in preparation, though it had been hampered as much by poor dockyard administration and want of men as was d’Estaing by his own want of push.

It was not until July 7, 1778, that the French fleet anchored at the Capes of the Delaware. But the quarry had gotten away. The British army had left Philadelphia on June 18th on its march to Sandy Hook. The scores of transports carrying the army baggage and stores had started down the Delaware next day. They did not get clear of the Capes until June 28th, and, convoyed by the men-of-war, reached inside of Sandy Hook on June 30th. Never was greater opportunity lost. A little earlier and with Howe’s fleet captured, the fall of New York, practically undefended, was a certainty. But for d’Estaing’s want of push the war would have ended in 1778 instead of five years later.

Howe had heard of d’Estaing’s approach. He made admirable preparations to resist the entry of New York Bay. D’Estaing arrived off Sandy Hook, but though offering the large sum of 150,000 francs, pilots were unobtainable, probably by reason of fearing the vengeance of the British if they should be taken. On July 22d there was a fresh northeast wind and a spring (a highest) tide. There was ample water for any ship of his fleet, but d’Estaing and his officers were unacquainted with the region and did not dare to venture. “At eight o’clock,” wrote an eyewitness in the British fleet, “d’Estaing, with all his squadron, appeared under way. He kept working to windward as if to gain a proper position for crossing the bar by the time the tide should serve. The wind ... blew from the exact point from which he could attack us to the greatest advantage. The spring tides were at the highest.... We consequently expected the hottest fray that had been fought between the two nations. On our side all was at stake. Had the men-of-war been defeated, the fleet of transports and victualers must have been destroyed, and the army of course fallen with us. D’Estaing, however, had not spirit equal to the risk; at three o’clock we saw him bear off to the southward, and in a few hours he was out of sight.”[6]

Naturally Washington’s disappointment over d’Estaing’s failure was great. The great prize had been lost. He had, however, arranged with d’Estaing that should the latter not attack New York, he would go to Newport, Rhode Island, and assist General John Sullivan in attacking the British force of some 6,000, which, supported by six ships-of-war, held Newport.

D’Estaing anchored off Newport (outside the bay) on July 29, 1778. The next day Suffren, with two ships-of-the-line, went into the channel west of Conanicut Island, and two frigates and a sloop-of-war entered Sakonnet; whereupon the British burned the Kingfisher, of 16 guns, and some galleys stationed there. The British general, Sir Robert Pigot, withdrew 1,500 Hessians from Conanicut and concentrated his forces about the town. Goat Island, where is now the United States Torpedo Station and where for many years was a fort, was also occupied, as this commanded the main channel and the entrances to the inner harbor. On August 5th Suffren with his two ships went into the main channel near the north end of Conanicut, two others taking his former place. Captain John Brisbane, the senior British naval officer, now destroyed four frigates, the Flora, Juno, Lark, and Orpheus, of 32 guns each, and the corvette Falcon, of 16 guns, two being sunk at the south end of Goat Island. Five transports were sunk between Goat and Coasters’ Harbor Island, thus closing both entrances to the inner harbor. The guns, ammunition, and the thousand or so men of their crews went to strengthen the forces of the batteries.

It was not until August 8th that d’Estaing with the eight remaining ships-of-the-line ran the batteries and anchored between Coasters’ Harbor Island and Conanicut. He was now joined by the others except one which remained as a lookout in the West Channel. The long delay of ten days from the time of arrival had been at Sullivan’s request, who was not yet ready. Two thousand men had been sent by Washington under Lafayette, but the expected militia were slow to come in. Things now looked very black for the British, but the delay had been fatal.

D’Estaing on August 9th landed on Conanicut such of his thousand soldiers in the fleet as were fit for duty and some two thousand seamen, in readiness for the morrow’s attack as arranged. Scarcely were these landed when the lifting of the fog revealed the English fleet at anchor off Point Judith, seven miles southwest of Narragansett Bay. Though there were some thirty ships, there were but one 74, six 64’s, and five 50’s, a force wholly inadequate to meet d’Estaing’s. Howe, thus inferior, could not have ventured into the bay, but his presence caused d’Estaing to lose his judgment. The latter had begun to get his ships into position for defence, in the prevailing calm, but next morning when the wind came out from the northeast, fair for leaving port, but making it impossible for Howe to come in even had his force allowed, d’Estaing in over haste cut his hemp cables and went to sea. Howe, unable to meet him, did the same, and now the day and part of the next were spent in maneuvering for position in face of a rising storm. The wind had gradually increased and finally blew with such force as to make action impossible. Next day (August 12th) it developed into an “August storm,” a West India hurricane, which had taken its usual course up our coast, scattering both fleets and inflicting heavy damage, particularly upon the French, whose flagship, the Languedoc, completely dismasted and with tiller broken, came near being taken on the 13th by a much weaker but wholly manageable British 50-gun ship, the Renown. Only night saved her. D’Estaing, with several ships under jury masts, anchored east of Cape May and gradually collected his damaged fleet. He was seen here by Howe, who had now but two of his ships in company. By August 20th d’Estaing was again off Newport, but only to hold a council of war at which were present Sullivan and Lafayette. D’Estaing was willing to remain two days if the American officers would guarantee the surrender of Newport in that time. This they could not do, and the fleet left for Boston, which was mentioned in the admiral’s orders as the place in which he was to refit in case of need. It is of no use to dwell upon the bitter feeling aroused among the Americans, who felt that the British army at Newport was, with the aid of the fleet, in their power. In all fairness, however, the failure was really due to Sullivan’s own delay, which changed completely naval conditions. The siege was raised; the great effort had gone for nothing but the destruction of a few unimportant British ships. The British fleet, now heavily reinforced by the thirteen powerful ships under Byron which had left England in June, had command of the sea.

D’Estaing spent two months refitting at Boston, and then following the letter of his orders, left on November 4, 1778, for the West Indies, where he was much more fortunate, but where we cannot follow him. His departure left our coast open to invasion at every point, and thus Savannah was occupied in December by a strong British force; it was the beginning of the Southern invasion which was to cost us dear.

Pressed by our people, d’Estaing in the summer of 1779, though he had received orders to return with his own particular squadron to France, determined to attempt to dislodge the British at Savannah. He thus left Santo Domingo with twenty ships-of-the-line and seven frigates, and anchored, on August 31, 1779, off Tybee at the mouth of the Savannah River, on which, eighteen miles from the sea, is Savannah, then but a small village. Troops were landed by the French, an attack made, and an expedition, expected to be completed in eight days, extended to two months. It ended in disaster; gale after gale crippled the French fleet here on an unprotected coast, until on October 28th it was wholly dispersed. The flagship was driven to sea with the loss of both her only remaining anchors, and it was not until well into December that the main portions came together again in the West Indies. D’Estaing himself, however, was driven so far to sea that he determined to return alone to France. This he did, fortunately meeting the Provence which gave him an anchor, and reached Brest on December 7, 1779.

He returned, having accomplished nothing in aid of the United States itself, however fortunate in the West Indies. He was severely judged by naval officers of his service. One, however, need not go to the extent of Captain La Clocheterie, whom the Vicomte de Charlus (who kept a journal when crossing the Atlantic with Rochambeau’s expedition next year) reports as saying: “He was a coward and a man of no talent.” His failure is found rather in the mot of a really great French sailor, Suffren: “If he had only been as much of a seaman as he was brave——”

The whole conduct of d’Estaing’s campaign illustrates what superior strength at sea might accomplish but, in this case, did not. If he had, in going to America, pressed westward, even to the extent of towing his slow sailers, he would have made one of the great successes of history, and have ended the war in America. Failing this, he could, at once on his arrival, have forced the surrender of Newport, upon which he had but to close his hand and the place, with its 7,000 soldiers and sailors, and the bay would have been in possession of the allies. His fault, militarily considered, was in acceding to Sullivan’s request for delay. Reading into the psychics of the question, this request had its basis in Sullivan’s desire to make as good a showing as possible in the combined operations, and not from actual necessity, as the powerful French fleet in itself commanded the situation, and d’Estaing’s compliance came from a natural desire to meet the wishes of the American commander. But on neither side was it war. His leaving the bay at the crisis of events was an unfortunate want of judgment. His later action was but part of the ill-judged strategy of the time which ended in the fall of Charleston and the British occupancy of the whole South, its wholesale devastation and well-nigh subjugation.

But neither side, British nor French, could understand how completely the whole was a question of naval domination. Washington saw, but he was powerless to do more than proclaim again and again the truth, until finally in 1781 he was listened to, the result of which was one of the decisive triumphs of all time.

CHAPTER VI

The new treaty with France was to bring into special prominence one of the most remarkable characters of his time, John Paul Jones. On October 10, 1776, he had been made the eighteenth captain on a list of twenty-four then established. He considered himself ill-treated, and justly so, as having been first on the list of lieutenants he should have been placed higher. His animadversions on the subject, in a letter to Robert Morris, are worth quoting. It showed along with some very just criticisms that he had a high and fitting estimate of his duties as a sea officer, and of the demands of his calling. He said:

“I cannot but lament that so little delicacy hath been observed in the appointment and promotion of officers in the sea service, many of whom are not only grossly illiterate, but want even the capacity of commanding merchant vessels. I was lately on a court-martial where a captain of marines made his mark and where the president could not read the oath which he attempted to administer without spelling and making blunders. As the sea officers are so subject to be seen by foreigners, what conclusions must they draw of Americans in general, from characters so rude and contracted? In my judgment the abilities of sea officers ought to be as far superior to the abilities of officers in the army as the nature of a sea service is more complicated and admits of a greater number of cases than can possibly happen on the land; therefore the discipline by sea ought to be the more perfect and regular, were it compatible with short enlistments.”[7]

On June 14, 1777, Jones was assigned to the command of the little cruiser Ranger, just completed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On the same day Congress established the Stars and Stripes as the national flag, and it is said, and is probable, that Jones was the first to hoist this flag on a man-of-war. His ship was but 116 feet overall and 28 feet broad. She mounted eighteen 6-pounders.

The delay in fitting out is not to the credit of the energy of those charged with providing the ship’s equipment. The sails were not ready until late in October. With a crew of about one hundred and forty, “nearly all full-blooded Yankees,” she sailed on November 1st, for France, carrying dispatches from Congress and taking two prizes on the way. Jones arrived at Nantes on December 2, 1777.

He had a long wait in France before he again got to sea, but his frequent consultations with our commissioners, his always excellent advice in naval matters, and his general activity were worth the delay. It was not until April 10th that he got to sea, starting on his famous cruise in the Irish Sea during which he took a number of prizes, among them the Drake, a sloop-of-war carrying twenty 6-pounders. He landed at Whitehaven, Scotland, and burned a ship, one of many which he had hoped to destroy in this port, and made the famous descent upon Lord Selkirk’s estate, where his men carried off the family silver. But Jones had a mutinous crew, thirsting for booty, and his concession of plunder was a case of force majeure. He later redeemed the silver, giving to the crew several hundred pounds as its valuation as prize, and returned it to the family. Jones had had much difficulty with both officers and crew, partially no doubt through his own roughness (mentioned in Fanning’s narrative) toward the former, and particularly through the peculiar ideas of liberty prevalent, which sometimes went so far as to claim that the movements of the ship should be put to a vote.

Jones having arrived at Brest in May, 1778, with his prize, the Drake, sought a larger command. He had to wait a year for it. After many strivings, one was found in the Duc de Duras, a fourteen-year-old East Indiaman, which was bought, fitted as a man-of-war, and renamed the Bonhomme Richard in compliment to Franklin as being the nearest approach in French to the “Poor Richard” of the famous almanac. The ship was far from meeting requirements, being slow and weakly built, so that she finally carried twenty-eight 12 and 9 pounders instead of 18’s on the gun deck, eight 6’s on the forecastle, and on the after part of the lower deck six 18’s, forty-two guns in all. She was provided with a mixed crew of Americans, French, English, a few Scandinavians, and eighty-three Irish and Scotch, Jones himself being of the latter by birth. Of the first there were in the beginning but seventy-nine, chiefly exchanged prisoners. Later, owing to mutinous conduct of the British element, many of these were discharged and replaced by forty-three newly arrived Americans just released from prison, and thirty Portuguese. The total was 227 officers and seamen, besides 130 French soldiers placed aboard to serve as marines.

Jones’s ideas were large: they included the fitting out of a large French squadron to act in concert and carrying a considerable number of troops to make an attack upon the English coast. This, however, fell through, and a squadron was organized of the Bonhomme Richard, 42; the Alliance, 32; the Pallas, 32; the Cerf, cutter, 18, and the Vengeance, brigantine, of 12 guns.

The Alliance had arrived at Brest, twenty-three days from Boston, carrying Lafayette, on February 6, 1779. She had an unreliable crew, with many English and Irish, and a still more unreliable captain, Landais, who had been an officer in the French navy. He had been appointed a captain in the American service on the recommendation of Silas Deane, who seemed to have a faculty for making errors of the kind. Landais was to give much and continuous trouble.

The squadron did not finally get off until August 14, 1779. Its orders, prepared by Franklin, with the advice of Sartine, the French Minister of Marine, were to cruise to the north of the British islands and after six weeks to go into the Texel, Holland. There were varying incidents of capture of prizes, designs to attack Leith, insubordinations of the French captains, etc., but on September 23d, when a convoy of forty vessels accompanied by two men-of-war was discovered off Flamborough Head, a prominent point a few miles south of Scarborough, England, Jones’s moment had come.

It was not until seven o’clock in the evening that the Bonhomme Richard came within gunshot of the larger ship which turned out to be the Serapis, Captain Richard Pearson, of 50 guns, 18 of which were 18-pounders. She carried 320 men. There then ensued the most remarkable duel in naval history. Jones was left unsupported by his accompanying subordinates, and he went into action short sixteen of his best men and a lieutenant, Lunt, who had been sent to secure a prize. The story of this remarkable battle must of necessity here be short; the full details must be sought elsewhere. But short as it must be, there is enough of it, however baldly told, to stir the blood.

Jones closed with his antagonist early in the action, and as they came in contact the two ships were lashed together by Jones, the stern of the Serapis being at the bow of the Bonhomme Richard. The latter’s main deck battery of 12-pounders was silenced, two of the old six 18-pounders on the lower deck had burst, killing nearly all the guns’ crews. Only three 9-pounders on the quarter deck could be used, and one of these had to be shifted from the off side. The guns of the Serapis were still active, but her upper deck had been cleared by the musketry fire from the tops of the Bonhomme Richard. The latter’s prisoners (some 200) were released without orders, and in their fright that the ship was sinking, willingly worked the pumps; both ships were frequently afire. The men in the Bonhomme Richard’s tops crawled along the yards into the tops of the Serapis and dropped hand grenades whenever any one appeared on deck; these grenades, at times going down the hatches and exploding on the lower deck, finally brought about an explosion of cartridges below which ran from gun to gun. This went far toward determining the battle. Meantime the erratic Landais fired three broad-sides, chiefly to the damage of the Bonhomme Richard, as the shot holes were found in the latter’s unengaged side. There can be little question that he hoped this ship would surrender when, with his own unharmed, he would capture both. Jones’s doggedness won the day: at half-past ten Captain Pearson, influenced no doubt somewhat by the presence of the Alliance, surrendered. He stated that an incomplete list of his killed and wounded were forty-nine of the former and sixty-eight of the latter, or more than a third of the whole 320. Jones estimated his loss at about 150, without stating the proportions.

While this action was going on, the Pallas, 30, Captain Cottineau, had engaged and taken the Countess of Scarborough, of 20 guns. The Baltic fleet under convoy was not attacked, as it should have been by the Alliance or the Vengeance, a curious instance of inertia and incapacity or worse, so long as neither chose to take part in the main action.

Both the Serapis and Bonhomme Richard were terribly mauled. The latter’s rudder, stern frame, and transoms were cut away, and the sides between the ports were at points driven in. It was ten next morning before the fires could be extinguished. On examination it was decided that it would be impossible to keep the ship afloat if rough weather should come on (which in fact was the case), and during the night and next morning the wounded were removed. The men who had been brought from the Pallas to work the pumps were taken off the evening of the 25th (two days after the battle). Says Jones:

“They did not abandon her until after nine o’clock; the water was then up to the lower deck, and a little after ten I saw with unexpressible grief the last of the Bonhomme Richard. No lives were lost with the ship, but it was impossible to save the stores of any sort whatever. I lost even the best part of my clothes, books and papers; and several of my officers lost all their clothes and effects.”

The masts of the Serapis fell soon after the surrender, and jury masts were rigged from spars furnished by the Alliance, all the spare spars of the Serapis being too badly cut by shot. On September 26th she was able to steer for Holland in company with the rest of the squadron, and on October 3d entered the Texel after some demur on the part of the Dutch. Though Jones’s instructions gave the Texel as the port to be made at the end of his six weeks’ cruise, his own wish was to go into Dunkirk and thus be under the shelter of an ally. The other captains adhered to the letter of the instructions, and Jones felt obliged to yield. Much trouble would have been saved had his views prevailed. As an offset, however, to such disabilities as arose from the inability of Jones to dispose of the Serapis, the anger of the British Government against the Dutch as to the reception of the squadron in Dutch waters went far to bringing later the declaration of war by England against Holland. Jones was allowed to land his sick and wounded, who were cared for on an island in the bay, as were the prisoners, numbering 537, sufficient to release by exchange all the American seamen who were prisoners in England.

For Jones’s further history, his having to put all his ships but the Alliance under the French flag to avoid the difficulties raised by Great Britain with Holland; his going in the Alliance to Lorient, France; the arrival there and sale of the Serapis; the charges against Landais; his short cruise in the Alliance; his unjust treatment by Arthur Lee, by which Landais regained command of the Alliance; Lee’s embarkation in the Alliance for America and the necessity during the voyage of depriving Landais of the command on account of evident insanity; the dismissal of Landais from the service; Jones’s arrival in command of the Ariel at Philadelphia, February 18, 1781, after more than three years’ absence, and his reception of the thanks of Congress; his appointment to the command of the new line-of-battle ship America which he lost through its presentation to France; his return to Europe, and the rest of his adventurous career must be read in the many books devoted to the history of his life, not the least interesting part of which is to be found in Fanning’s graphic narrative. He will always stand out boldly as one of the most fearless spirits of the sea, and had he lived in the Napoleonic epoch he would have been met by Napoleon as a kindred soul who might have saved him the great misfortune of Trafalgar, which so changed the history of Europe and the world.

CHAPTER VII

The activity of American privateers as well as Continental ships in British waters during 1777-1779 was very great, that of the Reprisal, Lexington, Dolphin, and Revenge (the first two, Continental brigs) being particularly notable.

France was at this period (1777) made a basis for the fitting out of Continental vessels and privateers, and for the supply of men in a way which would be far from possible to-day. Captain Lambert Wickes of the Continental brig Reprisal and Gustavus Conyngham of the Continental lugger Surprise and cutter Revenge, both of which latter were bought and fitted out by our commissioners in France, were two of those most active and prominent in the operations on the British coast. Their names have come down to this day as specially brave and adventurous men. The former had cruised very successfully on our own coast and in the West Indies in 1776, and had been the first, as mentioned, to carry a ship of the regular navy to Europe, December, 1776, though privateers had preceded him. Two prizes taken into Nantes caused strong protests from Great Britain. The treaty of Utrecht, 1713, expressly closed the ports of either power to the enemies of the other, so that the British case had a very sound basis. Vergennes unquestionably, before our alliance, had to hold a course favoring the Americans which was full of difficulties. The details of the diplomacy of the moment cannot be entered upon. Suffice that the Reprisal refitted went to sea early in 1777, and brought in five prizes to add to Vergennes’s difficulties. The British Ambassador, Stormont, demanded their release. He was answered that both captor and captured had been ordered to leave port and were probably already at sea, to which Stormont was later able to make reply that the Reprisal was undergoing repairs at Lorient, and that the five prizes had been sold. The questions were bandied to and fro between the American commissioners, the French Minister, and the British Ambassador, with the result that the Reprisal received orders not to cruise near the French coast, but apparently the prizes remained in the hands of the purchasers. On May 28th Wickes sailed in the Reprisal from St. Nazaire with the Continental brig Lexington, Captain Henry Johnson, and the cutter Dolphin, Captain Nicholson, all under Wickes as senior officer, for a cruise through the Irish Channel. They were back in St. Malo on June 27th, having captured twenty prizes, of which three were released and seven sunk. In July the commissioners were obliged to give orders that the Reprisal and Lexington should return directly to America, for which the Dolphin had already sailed as a packet, and to cruise no longer in Europe. They left in September; when only two days out the Lexington was captured. The Reprisal was lost on the Newfoundland Banks, but one man being saved. The loss of her enterprising captain was keenly felt and deplored.

Gustavus Conyngham had been selected to command the lugger Surprise fitting at Dunkirk, and was given one of the commissions, of which a number had been sent out in blank signed by Hancock, President of Congress, and dated March 1, 1777. He got to sea by May and, returning almost at once with two prizes, was, on the demand of the British Ambassador, with most of his crew, put in prison. His vessel was seized and the prizes released. His commission was taken from him and not returned. Released, he was at once put in command of a newly purchased cutter, the Revenge, with a crew of 106 men. He was given a new commission which was dated May 2, 1777. He cruised off the coast of Spain with remarkable success and then went to the West Indies. He was reported to have captured, by the time of his arrival there, sixty vessels, twenty-seven of which had been sent into port and thirty-three sunk or burned. After cruising successfully in the West Indies he arrived at Philadelphia on February 21, 1779. The Revenge was sold, but the purchaser fitted her out as a privateer with Conyngham in command, using his Continental commission, dated May 2, 1777; this nearly caused Conyngham to lose his life, for he was captured by a British frigate in April, taken to New York, confined in irons, and was sent to England under an accusation of piracy in that his cruise and captures in the Revenge early in 1777 had been before the date of this commission. In November, 1779, he escaped from Mill prison, where he had been confined. His active career, however, was ended.[8]

In 1779 occurred one of the great naval disasters of the war. Some 800 British troops convoyed by ships-of-war had in June taken possession of Penobscot Bay to establish there some of the many loyalists who had gone to Halifax, their chief refuge during the war. Maine was then a part of Massachusetts, and it was this state which took on the burden of dislodging the enemy. The Navy Board at Boston lent the Warren, 32; the Providence (sloop), 14; and the Diligent, 12. These and three state brigantines, of 14 or 16 guns each, and thirteen privateers (insured by the state) made up the naval part. In all they mounted 324 guns and were manned by over 2,000 men. Captain Dudley Saltonstall was in chief command. There were about 1,000 militia commanded by General Solomon Lovell. This carefully prepared effort was a complete failure through the incompetency and want of push of Saltonstall. Arriving in the bay on July 25, 1779, the attack on three British vessels present and on the fort which was now ready was so dilatory and ineffective that at length, on August 13th, a British fleet which had had time to come from New York appeared and drove the American vessels up the river, where all except two, which were captured, were burned. The American loss was 474 men. The remainder had to find their way back with great hardship through the Maine woods. This humiliating affair cost Massachusetts a debt estimated at $7,000,000.

The year 1779, however, had been the most brilliant of the war for the small American navy. The exploits of John Paul Jones, of Gustavus Conyngham and Lambert Wickes in European waters made an undying page of history; nor should those of our small frigates, the Queen of France, Deane (later the Hague), Warren, Boston, and Ranger on our own coasts as well as of the swarms of privateers in this year (289 of which were commissioned by Congress alone) and whose sweeping captures of the enemy’s commerce went so far to supply the needs of our ever-dwindling army, be forgotten.

American affairs were now (at the beginning of 1780) at their lowest ebb. The struggle had lasted nearly five years. It was with difficulty that an army, nominally of 6,000 men, could be kept together. The men were “half-starved, imperfectly clothed, riotous, and robbing the country people ... from sheer necessity. Desertion was continual, from one to two hundred men a month going over to the enemy.... Only a miracle, thought Washington, could keep America from the humiliation of seeing her cause upheld solely by foreign arms. Throughout the land there was a weariness of war, a desire for peace at any price.”[9]

At least a third of our population is estimated to have been loyalist, and another third lukewarm. At several periods there were more loyalists in the British service than in our own. Nor was this situation wholly confined to the army, for in 1779 there were fitted out at New York one hundred and twenty-one privateers in British employ, thirty-four of which carried from twenty to thirty-six guns. The whole were manned by between 9,000 and 10,000 men.

The navy was reduced almost as much as the army. The Boston, Providence, Ranger, and Queen of France had arrived at Charleston on December 23, 1779. The first three fell into the hands of the enemy on the surrender of Charleston on May 11, 1780, and became part of the British navy, the fourth along with the South Carolina ships Bricole, 44; the Truite, 26; General Moultrie, 20, and Notre Dame, 16, had been sunk in the river, as also two small French ships-of-war L’Aventure and Polacre. There thus remained in the latter part of 1780 but one of the original thirteen frigates, the Trumbull, which with the Dean, Confederacy, Alliance, and Saratoga (the last a sloop-of-war), formed in this year the entire Continental navy in service. The Deane (renamed the Hague) and the Alliance were the only two of these to survive the year.

CHAPTER VIII

The now unopposed command of the sea by the British navy and the consequent invasion and overrunning of the South brought darkest gloom and despondency to the American cause.

It was well that Providence had given America Washington who, when all things seemed to fail, held firm and carried us to victory. Without him the nation could not have survived the throes of birth. Calm and undismayed, he made up for the inefficiency of Congress, the lethargy of the states, the discontent of all. Whatever our national shortcomings—past, present, or future—America can ever be proud of having produced this king of men, the greatest character in history. He was, in fact, the Revolution personified. The war was fought without even the semblance of a government, for even the “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union” reported on July 12, 1776, by a committee appointed on June 10th (the same day as that on which the committee was appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence), were not agreed to by Congress until November 17, 1777, and a sufficient number of states under the conditions of these articles did not ratify the action of Congress until March 1, 1781. Thus nearly six years of war passed before we had anything approaching a confederacy, and even then, as Washington well said, it was “but a shade without a substance.” “The organized and carefully barricaded impotence of this scheme of government,” says an able authority, “is probably unequalled in history, with any nation surviving.” Congress could only “request” of the several states, and but too often these requests bore no fruit whatever. Attendance in Congress lagged, interest dwindled, and by 1780 but for Washington, so far as mortal can judge, the Revolution would have come to a dismal end.

But Washington’s time of cheer was at hand. From February, 1779, to March, 1780, Lafayette was in France and unceasing in his efforts in support of the American cause. It was chiefly due to his efforts that on May 2, 1780, seven line-of-battle ships and three frigates left Brest under the Chevalier de Ternay, convoying thirty-six transports carrying 5,027 troops, officers and men, under Lieutenant-General Count de Rochambeau. The enemy had, on October 25, 1779, withdrawn from Narragansett Bay to New York fearing an attack by d’Estaing’s great fleet after its operations against Savannah. The French fleet anchored at Newport on July 11th.

The death of de Ternay in December, due, in Lafayette’s judgment, to despondency caused by his hopeless view of things; the treason of Arnold which came to light in September; the blockade for most of the coming winter of the French squadron by, now, a superior British force; the arrival in the West Indies at the end of April, 1781, of the Count de Grasse with a powerful addition to the French fleet; the information that he expected to come on to the American coast; the pressing messages to him from Washington and Rochambeau to hasten his departure; the reply received on August 14th that he would sail on August 13th for the Chesapeake with 3,300 troops, artillery, and siege guns, and 1,200,000 livres (francs) in money, determined the move of the small allied armies to Virginia, where Cornwallis, now some months in that state, was finally to take up an entrenched position at Yorktown, his move from Portsmouth being completed on August 22d.

The American and French armies, after a whole year’s inaction, joined on July 6, 1781, taking position on a line from Dobbs’ Ferry to the Bronx. The Fates were surely with America. Everything conspired for the allies’ success; the position taken had convinced Clinton that New York was to be attacked; he pressed Cornwallis to send him every man he could spare, but Cornwallis could spare none. Rodney in the West Indies, misinformed as to De Grasse’s intentions, and thinking he was to take but half his fleet instead of the whole, detached but fourteen of his own command to go north under Sir Samuel Hood to reinforce Admiral Graves at New York. Rodney himself left for England on leave of absence, carrying four ships with him. The two vessels dispatched to Graves with information of British intentions never reached him. He was east with his squadron when one, arriving at New York, was sent on to him but was driven ashore on Long Island by a superior force and destroyed; the other and more important one, giving word of Hood’s departure, was captured. For this reason, though Graves returned to New York on August 16th, he still remained in the dark as to Hood’s movements. The whole was a marvel of good fortune for the Americans, while every move of De Grasse’s fleet and of the allied armies were to fit with the perfection of mechanism.

Hood left the West Indies on August 10th. On the 25th he looked into the Chesapeake and, finding nothing, went on to Sandy Hook, where he arrived August 28th. That same evening word was received that De Barras (who had arrived from France as the successor of De Ternay) had sailed from Newport with his whole division of eight of the line, four frigates, and eighteen transports. It was now known to the British general that the allied armies were on their way south and that De Grasse was bound for the Chesapeake. Graves, with five of the line and a 50-gun ship, all that could be got ready in the time, joined Hood off Sandy Hook on August 31st and started south. He had nineteen ships-of-the-line to De Grasse’s twenty-eight. But De Grasse was already inside the capes, which he had reached on August 30th, and was at anchor in Lynnhaven Bay, just within Cape Henry. He had at once landed his troops and had stationed cruisers in James River to prevent Cornwallis attempting to escape to North Carolina. His dispositions reduced his available ships to twenty-four of the line. At this moment Washington “was crossing the Delaware on his way south, with 6,000 regular troops, 2,000 American and 4,000 French, to join Lafayette,” who now, with the 3,300 French from the fleet, had 8,000 regulars and militia.

On September 5th Admiral Graves’s fleet was sighted by the French in the northeast. It was at first thought to be that of De Barras, but, on discovering the mistake, De Grasse took a course which risked all by getting under way and going outside the capes to fight a battle. To get twenty-four heavy sailing ships under way and attempt to get them in any formation in a reasonable time, even with the ebb tide which was running, was, with the wind north-northeast, a difficult operation. Several had to tack in order to clear Cape Henry, and by the time they reached the open sea the French ships must have been in very straggling condition. Graves failed to take advantage of such an opportunity. Instead of crowding sail, with a wind as fair as he could wish, and pressing down for the French, whom he might have attacked in detail, he formed a line heading out to sea, to fight a battle, partially under the old rule of parallel columns with each ship engaging her opposite, and partially under new ideas of tactics which Graves, just from England, had imbibed but which most of his captains had scarcely heard of.

The action began about four o’clock, signals were not understood, and, taken all in all, the handling of the British fleet was badly botched. Furthermore, Sir Samuel Hood, who commanded the rear division and was an officer of highest reputation, showed no initiative such as, in the circumstances, might have been expected, his division getting scarcely into gunshot. Thus at sunset, when the battle ceased, the British were in decidedly the worse plight, with a loss of 90 killed and 246 wounded, against about 200 killed and wounded of the French, and with several ships very severely injured, one, the Terrible, 74, so much so that she was in sinking condition, and five days later was burned. Though the two fleets were yet in sight of each other for four days, neither showed a wish to renew the action. On September 10th, when morning broke, the French were out of sight. Next day they reëntered the Chesapeake, capturing near the entrance two frigates sent by Graves to reconnoitre, one of which was the Iris which had been the American Hancock. They found at anchor within the capes the division of Barras which the day before had arrived from Newport with the siege artillery intended for use at Yorktown. On the 13th the British fleet stood in for the capes and sighted the French at anchor. There was nothing to do but to return north. On the 19th it was again at Sandy Hook, and American independence was won.

Washington had not heard until September 5th of De Grasse’s arrival. “Standing on the river bank at Chester, he waved his hat in the air as the Comte de Rochambeau approached, and with many demonstrations of uncontrollable happiness he announced to him the good news.” Had he known that at that moment De Grasse was under way to go to sea and fight a battle, he would have been less joyous. For it was only the want of initiative on the part of the British admiral that saved the situation. For had the latter at any time in the six days which the French spent at sea himself entered the Chesapeake, he could have held the position, and De Grasse’s venture would have gone for nought. It is highly improbable that in such circumstances de Grasse would have shown such initiative as to attack New York. It is clear that neither admiral had a clear sense of the strategy involved, for De Grasse himself but a little later was again desirous of leaving the Chesapeake to seek the British fleet, and was only held by the most earnest remonstrances of Washington. As it was, the army was transported by September 26th to Williamsburg, and on October 19th Lord Cornwallis surrendered, thus, virtually, closing the war. De Grasse sailed November 4th to the West Indies and to ruin; for on April 12, 1782, he was signally defeated by Rodney and became a prisoner.

The French army was an aid to our success; the French navy was a necessity. The result completely filled the dictum of Washington, who foresaw by a hundred years that which is to-day an axiom and one particularly applicable to our own country: “In any operation and under all circumstances, a decisive naval superiority is to be considered a fundamental principle and the basis upon which every hope of success must ultimately depend.”[10] He would have made a great admiral, a career he narrowly escaped when it was proposed that he should go as midshipman under Admiral Vernon. The Fates fortunately decreed otherwise.

The operations of the Continental navy were now confined to very few ships. The Alliance, under Captain Barry, had left Boston February 11, 1781, carrying Colonel John Laurens and Thomas Paine. The former bore a letter which, addressed by Washington to Laurens, was to be shown Vergennes, putting strongly the necessity of money and ships, and giving the whole logic of the situation in the sentence: “Indeed, it is not to be conceived how [the British] could subsist a large force in this country if we had the command of the seas to interrupt the regular transmission of supplies from Europe.”

The Alliance was unhappy in the character of her crew, which illustrated the exigencies to which we were now driven. A large number were British prisoners. These on the return voyage formed a conspiracy to carry the ship to Ireland, in the suppression of which Barry exhibited courage and qualities for command of a high order. On the way he captured two British cruisers, of 16 and 14 guns, the smaller of which was made a cartel to carry his prisoners, now about 250, into Halifax. The larger was retaken by a squadron near Cape Cod. The Marquis de Lafayette, a French privateer which had left France at the same time as the Alliance, with a valuable cargo of military stores, suffered the same fate.

The Deane, Confederacy, and Saratoga cruised this year in the West Indies, with small fortune, which was turned into very bad, by the capture of the Confederacy by a British squadron on April 15th. The Trumbull, at sea on her first cruise, with a mixed crew of wretched quality, was dismasted in a gale and was taken on August 8th by the Iris and the General Monk, both of which were captured American ships taken into the British service, one, as just said, being the Hancock, and the latter a privateer, the General Washington. The Iris, as but just mentioned above, was taken by the French only a month later and the General Monk on April 7th of the next year by the Hyder Ally, under Captain Joshua Barney, in one of the notable actions of the war.

Up to the peace signed September 3, 1783, privateering had continued active, 383 letters of marque being granted by Congress in 1782, but the Continental navy had practically disappeared. There were but five ships remaining: the frigates Alliance, Hague, and Bourbon (the last not yet launched), and the ships General Washington and Duc de Lauzun. Only the first two were in commission. Our only line-of-battle ship, the newly launched America, had been given to France to replace the Magnifique, wrecked coming into Boston harbor. The few ships mentioned gradually disappeared: the Duc de Lauzun was sent to France as a transport and sold; the Bourbon, launched at Middletown, Connecticut, July 31, 1783, was advertised for sale two months later, as was the Hague in August; the General Washington was sold the next year. Sentiment preserved the Alliance until August, 1785, when, with her sale, the Continental navy passed into history.

To recapitulate some data of the first chapter:

The British navy had at the beginning of the war 270 ships, of which 131 were of the line (from 100 to 60 guns), and but 18,000 seamen. At the end, January 20, 1783, there were 468 ships, of which 174 were of the line, and 110,000 seamen. They had lost (taken, destroyed, burned, foundered, or wrecked) 202 ships carrying 5,130 guns. The Continental and state navies had lost (taken, destroyed, burned, foundered, or wrecked) 39 ships, carrying 876 guns. The French had lost (in all the ways just mentioned) 72 ships, with 2,636 guns; the Spanish 24, with 960 guns; the Dutch 9, with 364 guns.

The British during the war lost 3,087 merchant vessels, taken by Americans, French, Dutch, and Spanish; 879 of these were retaken or ransomed. They lost 89 privateers, of which 14 were retaken or ransomed. They captured 1,135 merchantmen, of which only 27 were retaken or ransomed, and 216 privateers, of which only one was retaken.[11] The net result was heavily against them.

The navy of the Revolution, however insufficient and ineffective as an instrument of real war, served a good purpose. It kept up our communication with Europe; made many captures of material in ordnance, ammunition, and stores of utmost importance to our forces, and fought many gallant actions. But actions between small cruisers and captures of merchantmen are not the means which bring control of the sea. The action of greatest moment was that of the little flotilla on Lake Champlain in 1776, and this, even though defeated, was a main instrument in gaining the French alliance and thus our independence. It is the battleship, in that day known as the ship-of-the-line, which decides the question of command of the world’s highway and thus decides the outcome of war between powers separated by the ocean. The services of the small Continental navy thus from the very nature of things could effect comparatively little so long as the ship-of-the-line could go and come as it pleased. It was the French battleship in larger numbers than the English that completely changed the melancholy outlook of 1780 and 1781. In July of the latter year Rochambeau, in a letter to De Grasse urging him to come north, could use the words: “General Washington has but a handful of men.... This country has been driven to bay and all its resources are giving out at once.” He told but the painful fact. The presence of a dominating fleet gave us victory and independence; without it the Revolution would have failed. It took us a hundred years to realize the truth of the principle here stated, and we have yet to frame a policy in accord with its meaning.

With the passing of the ships passed all semblance of naval organization. The Board of Admiralty had really consisted of Robert Morris only, and the Congress of the loosely bound Confederation was itself almost moribund. The United States found itself free, but it was the freedom of disorganization, an atrophy of government. The Revolution had been fought until March, 1781, without an established government. This is a remarkable fact. We had yet to wait four years from the peace for a real instrument of government, the Constitution of 1787. The adoption of this on September 13, 1787, was the true birthday of the Republic rather than the 4th of July, 1776. The Revolution of 1787 was quite as momentous as that of the war just ended.

THE PRINCIPAL SHIPS OF THE CONTINENTAL NAVY

CHAPTER IX

Stretching along the southern shore of the Mediterranean some 1,800 miles, in the latitude, roughly speaking, of Cape Hatteras, are the regions known to our forefathers as Barbary. The westernmost was Morocco, then Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. The last three were nominally appanages of the Turkish Empire. Anciently there had been along these shores a high civilization. Carthage (now Tunis) had disputed with Rome the empire of the Mediterranean; she failed through Rome’s final dominancy at sea, and her power was utterly wrecked, as was the city itself. Rome ruled and built thriving cities throughout the coastline mentioned, the remains of which now mark but dimly the footsteps of civilization and history.

With the rise of Mohammedanism, the Arab power swept westward over the entire region. The antagonism of religion brought a continuous warfare between the European and African shores which developed into a piracy which lasted almost to our own days. A relic of the fear which Europe had for these bold corsairs, who captured vessels of all nations and carried crews and passengers into cruel slavery, is in the many towers of refuge still along the French and Italian rivieras, and the memory is yet in the Litany in the prayer-book of the Episcopal Church in England and America, where we pray for “all prisoners and captives.” Long after the writer entered our navy, the Saturday evening toast, after “Sweethearts and Wives,” was, “Here’s to the downfall of the barbarous Moor.” It was an echo of the epic period of the American navy. For we once did great things in Barbary, of which the average American to-day (and more’s the pity) is almost wholly ignorant. It is in its earlier phase a tale of national humiliation in which all Europe also had full share, but in which our navy had no part; its later phase in which the navy came into action is a very proud story.

The depredations of the Barbary powers were not confined to the Mediterranean, but extended into the North and Irish seas, many inhabitants being carried from these coasts into slavery. There were various efforts to punish these raiding powers in the seventeenth century by Dutch, French, and English, and as late as 1775 a great expedition was fitted out by Spain of nearly four hundred vessels, against Algiers, which, however, ended in disaster. This has special interest to us, as Joshua Barney, who was to act a conspicuous part in our naval annals, was impressed, with the Baltimore ship which he commanded, to assist in the transport of troops.

The Barbary vessels were in general large, narrow rowboats, carrying usually two masts, with the lateen sail of the Mediterranean for use in fair winds. The name “galley” was applied in Europe to the largest of such in ordinary use. There was, however, a much larger development in the galleasse, some few of which, used by the Neapolitans, carried 700 men, 300 of whom would be convicts at the oars. There was finally the galleon, the precursor of the frigate, which had masts and sails alone for propulsion. In the large galleys there might be as many as six men at an oar. It may be said that in general the development of the corsair ship followed slowly but fairly closely that of the ship of Europe, and in later years they had a number of the usual square-rigged vessels.[12]

The Christian slaves were employed not only in the galleys, but did all kinds of labor; the crew of our frigate Philadelphia, which in 1803 grounded near Tripoli and thus was captured, was employed in building one of the defences against our own ships, which took the name of the American fort. In the main, however, the captivity was humane and not oppressive.

The claim of the Barbary powers was expressed in a statement of their envoy while in London in 1786, to our minister, John Adams: “That Turkey, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco were the sovereigns of the Mediterranean; and that no nation could navigate that sea without a treaty of peace with them.”[13] Europe had practically accepted a situation of the most degrading kind; every nautical power paid tribute in money or presents and all had representatives among the Barbary slaves. Even as late as 1816, when the English finally acted, there were eighteen Englishmen among the slaves released by Lord Exmouth’s expedition.

But England’s attitude had not been one of honor. There was no time when she might not have ended the foul situation. Franklin could say in a letter on July 25, 1783, to our secretary of foreign affairs: “I think it not improbable that these rovers may be privately encouraged by the English to fall upon us and to prevent our interfering in the carrying trade; for I have in London heard it is a maxim among the merchants, that if there were no Algiers it would be worth England’s while to build one. I wonder, however, that the rest of Europe do not combine to destroy those nests and secure commerce from their future piracies.”[14] Three years later John Adams, our minister in London, was writing Secretary Jay (February 17, 1786): “There are not wanting persons in England who will find means to stimulate this African [the Tripolitan envoy] to stir up his countrymen against American vessels.”[15] British statesmanship, then as ever, was jealous of rival commerce on the seas. Lord Sheffield, in a pamphlet on American commerce, could say: “It will not be in the interest of any of the great maritime powers to protect [Americans] from the Barbary States. If they know their interests, they will not encourage the Americans to be carriers—that the Barbary States are advantageous to the maritime powers is obvious.”

It is odd that at this period two men whose lives were of a sort that one would have supposed they would have advised each directly otherwise, exchanged characters. Thus while Thomas Jefferson, our minister to France, advised in 1785 force as the best protection, John Adams in England, influenced perhaps by his surroundings, advised following the usual plan of paying an annual tribute. Jefferson later, most unhappily for his country, was violently antagonistic to the establishment of a navy. Adams was, and always had been, quite the reverse. But he now felt that the country was too poor and too embarrassed by debt to use force. He wrote John Jay, Foreign Secretary, December 15, 1784: “As long as France, England, Holland, the Emperor, etc., will submit to be tributaries to these robbers and even encourage them, to what purpose should we make war upon them? The resolution might be heroic but would not be wise ... we cannot hurt them in the smallest degree.... Unless it were possible, then, to persuade the great maritime powers of Europe to unite in the suppression of these piracies, it would be very imprudent for us to entertain any thoughts of contending with them.”[16]

The two ministers had an extended correspondence, and though Adams said: “I will go all lengths with you in promoting a navy, whether it be applied to the Algerines or not,” he still doubted the economy of dealing with Barbary by force. Jefferson’s tone was now, for him, strangely combative. He wrote, August 20, 1785: “The question is whether their peace or war will be cheapest? But it is a question which should be addressed to our honor as well as our avarice, nor does it respect us as to these pirates only, but as to the nations of Europe. If we wish our commerce to be free and uninsulted, we must let these nations see that we have an energy which at present they disbelieve. The low opinion they entertain of our powers cannot fail to involve us soon in a naval war.”

Jefferson’s views involved an association which would furnish one or more cruisers each to act against piracy in the Mediterranean. It included Portugal, Naples, the two Sicilies, Venice, Malta, Denmark, and Sweden, an extremely difficult combination; but he doubted the good faith of others. In a letter to Monroe, August 11, 1786, he says: “I think every power in Europe would soon fall into it except France, England, and perhaps Spain and Holland. Of these there is only England who would give any real aid to the Algerines....” He added: “Were the honor and advantage of establishing such a confederacy out of the question, yet the necessity that the United States should have some marine force, and the happiness of this, as the ostensible cause of beginning it, would decide on its propriety. It will be said there is no money in the treasury. There never will be money in the treasury till the confederacy shows its teeth.... Every rational citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties nor occasion bloodshed; a land force would do both.”[17]

This was Jefferson at his best. It is extraordinary that when the time came to really assert ourselves against the seizure of our seamen and property by other powers than those of Barbary, he should have so completely failed. But in any case, at the time he was proposing his floating confederacy, our inchoate system of government of the period, which required each state to be solicited by Congress for funds, would no doubt, as Adams thought, have made it impossible to provide the needed ships. Our vessels continued to be seized and their crews enslaved.

It would be unjust to the memory of John Adams, to whom the Continental navy chiefly owed its beginnings, and who was ever the vigorous supporter of the newer navy, not to record his life-long views as expressed to the House of Representatives in November, 1800: “I confidently believe that few persons can be found within the United States who do not admit that a navy, well-organized, must constitute the natural and efficient defence of this country against all foreign hostility.” To this he was consistent through the whole of his long life. In 1785 he was simply doubtful of the travesty of government which then existed and was to have two more years of its ineffective life.

In January, 1791, the United States, having now through its newly formed Constitution of 1787 crystallized into a real nationality, the Senate Committee on Mediterranean Trade agreed that our trade could “be protected but by a naval force, and that it will be proper to resort to the same as soon as the state of the public finances will admit.” But a year later the Senate was stating its “readiness to ratify treaties with Algiers providing for peace at a cost of forty thousand dollars at the outset and annual tribute of twenty-five thousand; and also for the ransom of the captives, then thirteen in number, for forty thousand.”

Fifty thousand dollars was appropriated to begin with, and Paul Jones was appointed consul at Algiers and as our envoy to make a peace. But Jones died at Paris, July 18, 1792. Thomas Barclay, our consul in Morocco, was appointed; he also died very shortly, and David Humphreys, our minister to Portugal, succeeded him. But the Dey of Algiers refused to receive him. The seizures continued, and in 1793 eleven vessels were captured and the crews enslaved. There were now in Algiers over a hundred American captives. The English consul, who of course was acting on orders from home, was blamed by Humphreys for the situation. Finally the House resolved on January 2, 1792, but only by a majority of two, that a naval force should be provided. A bill providing for six ships at a cost of $600,000 was finally passed with a proviso that if peace could be arranged with Algiers work on these should stop. There had been much opposition, many arguing “that we should follow the example of Europe by buying peace, or should hire a European navy to protect our trade; that a navy was a menace to liberty....” Madison opposed the bill, partly on the ground that a navy would lead to international complications, particularly with England, and this opinion was shared by others. The opposition was chiefly from the South, the New England members, who represented a constituency which was suffering from the depredations, naturally favored the action. The bill provided for four ships to carry forty-four guns and two to carry thirty-six each, with full complements, pay, and rations, and $688,888.82 was finally voted. The date of the approval of this bill, March 27, 1794, marks the establishment of the American navy. Joshua Humphreys of Philadelphia was the fortunate selection as naval architect. His view was that these ships should be the most powerful of their class afloat, and this was finally supported by General Knox, the Secretary of War, whose department was for some years to control the navy.

But notwithstanding this action, we continued the negotiation of a treaty with Algiers, Thomas Humphreys being authorized July 19, 1794, to spend $800,000 (the cost of two ships-of-the-line) to effect it. Washington was at this time President, and Jefferson Secretary of State. The treaty was concluded after much insulting conduct on the part of the Dey, on September 5, 1795, and only on the offer, as an additional present, of a 36-gun frigate. It was ratified by the Senate on March 6, 1796, and had “cost up to January, 1797, nearly a million dollars, including $525,000 for ransom of the captives, various presents, and miscellaneous expenses; this was exclusive of the annuity in naval stores valued at something over $21,000, according to the estimate, which afterward proved far too low.”[18] Truly weakness came high.

Notwithstanding the proviso of cessation of building in case a treaty should be made, Washington’s advice to continue the building of the ships was accepted by Congress, and in 1797 there were launched the United States, the Constitution, and Constellation, all to become famous in our country’s history. The last two are still afloat and their old age proudly cared for.

In his annual message of December, 1796, Washington urged a naval force as indispensable, saying: “To secure respect to a neutral flag requires a naval force, organized and ready to vindicate it from insult or aggression. This may even prevent the necessity of going to war by discouraging belligerent powers from committing such violations of the rights of the neutral party as may, first or last, leave no other option.”

The following, which illustrates the result of the meanness of spirit in Congress, is scarcely pleasant reading for an American to-day. Says the Portsmouth newspaper of January 20, 1798: “On Thursday morning, about sunrise, a gun was discharged from the Crescent frigate as a signal for getting under way, and at 10 A.M. she cleared the harbor with a fine leading breeze. Our best wishes follow Captain Newman, his officers and men. May they arrive in safety at the place of their destination and present to the Dey of Algiers one of the finest specimens of naval architecture which was ever borne upon Piscataqua’s waters.

“Blow all ye winds that fill the prosperous sail,

And hush’d in peace be every adverse gale.

“The Crescent is a present from the United States to the Dey as a compensation for delay in not fulfilling our treaty stipulations in proper time[!]...

“The Crescent has many valuable presents on board for the Dey, and when she sailed was supposed to be worth at least three hundred thousand dollars. Twenty-six barrels of dollars constituted a part of her cargo. It is worthy of remark that the captain, chief of the officers, and many of the privates of the Crescent frigate have been prisoners at Algiers.”[19]

There must be few Americans who do not blush for the want of public spirit which in this ship was so concretely exhibited.

A treaty had been concluded with Tripoli in November, 1796, at a cost of nearly fifty-six thousand dollars, and one arranged with Tunis in August, 1797, at an estimated expense of one hundred and seven thousand dollars, but these estimates were much increased by our yielding to later demands. This treaty, finally concluded March 26, 1797, was ratified by our Senate on January 10, 1800. Its conclusion was due largely to the efforts of William Eaton, who had been appointed consul to Tunis in July, 1797. He held true views of the situation. “The United States set out wrongly and has proceeded so. Too many concessions have been made to Algiers. There is but one language which can be held to these people and this is terror.”

Eaton, born in Connecticut in 1764, was a Revolutionary soldier at sixteen, a graduate later of Dartmouth College, and in 1792 a captain in the army. He was a most interesting character whom it would have been well, on account of his bold and active spirit, to have put in entire control of our diplomatic affairs in Barbary. We shall hear of him later.

CHAPTER X

The depredations of the new French Republic had come to give an impetus to our new navy, and on April 27, 1798, $950,000 was appropriated for its increase, and a regular navy department created. Benjamin Stoddart, of Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, was the first secretary. War against France was formally declared, in so far as authorizing, on July 9, 1798, the capture of French ships, and authorizing the President to issue commissions for privateers. On the same day a marine corps of 881 of all ranks was established, to be commanded by a major. By July 16th the total force authorized then and previously was twelve frigates, twelve sloops-of-war from 20 to 24 guns, six smaller sloops, besides galleys and revenue cutters; a total of thirty.

The first ship to get to sea under the new organization was the Ganges, a purchased Indiaman, which sailed under command of Captain Richard Dale on May 22, 1798, on a coasting cruise with orders to capture all French cruisers on our coast with hostile intent. The Constellation, 38, Captain Truxton, and Delaware, 20, Captain Decatur, followed in June. The last made the first capture, a French privateer of 14 guns and 70 men. She was condemned and bought into the navy under the name of Retaliation, with Lieutenant Bainbridge in command. The United States, 44, Captain Barry, went to sea early in July, followed by the Constitution, 44, on the 20th, with four revenue brigs of from 10 to 14 guns each. There were at sea in all, in 1798, fifteen ships of the navy and eight revenue vessels, many of which latter were finally taken into the navy. It is worthy of note that one of these, the Pickering, was Preble’s first command.

All of these vessels except the George Washington, Merrimack, and Ganges, the Montezuma, Baltimore, and Delaware, and the Herald, Richmond, and Retaliation were built by the Government.[20]

One of the first affairs of the new navy was a notable case of impressment of British seamen from the Baltimore, acting as convoy to a number of merchantmen. Meeting a powerful British squadron off Havana, Captain Phillips of the Baltimore was informed by the British commodore of his intention to remove all British seamen from his ship. Phillips announced his intention of surrendering his ship rather than to submit to the outrage. Unfortunately there was a lawyer on board as passenger, and Phillips asked his judgment as to the legality of the British commander’s procedure. Had Phillips acted as he at first intended, viz.: to resist to the utmost, short of an engagement which would have been folly against three line-of-battle ships, he would have done well, but his legal friend found reasons for yielding, which was done. Five men were taken, and three ships of the convoy seized, for what actual reason Cooper, who gives this case in great detail, does not say. Phillips was handicapped by his inexperience as a naval officer, having been only just appointed into the navy from the merchant service. There were, too, dissentient opinions even among patriotic Americans of standing as to the justice of the British claims, many upholding the, then, British doctrine of inalienable allegiance. Even so considerable a person as Gouverneur Morris, one of the ablest men America has produced and of large diplomatic and political experience, maintained the view. It was the first of many cases which had so large a part in bringing on the War of 1812.

In November the Retaliation was captured by a French squadron, and Bainbridge was a prisoner for the first, though not for the last, time in his career. By the good fortune of the release of his schooner as a cartel he was enabled to return home.

During 1799 we had twenty-eight vessels in active service. Most of the captains and many of the officers of lesser rank were men who had seen service during the Revolution, which, it must be remembered, had ended but sixteen years before; many of them of course were men with no experience of naval life, which differs from that of the merchant service much as does that of the raw militiaman from that of the seasoned soldier.

There was a squadron of ten ships under Commodore Barry, with his broad-pennant in the United States; a second of five under Captain Truxton in the Constellation; and a third of three under Captain Tingey. A number of French privateers were captured by each, but on February 8, 1799, the Constellation sighted near the island of Nevis the French frigate L’Insurgente, of forty 12-pounders and 409 men, which, after a hot action of an hour, surrendered. The Constellation carried 38 guns, those on her main deck being 24-pounders, and a crew of only 309. She was, however, distinctly superior in weight of gunfire. Among her midshipmen was David Porter of future fame, who was to be the father of an even more famous son. The Insurgente was carried into St. Kitts under very difficult circumstances by Lieutenant Rodgers, later one of the navy’s worthies, and the progenitor of a famous family with now its sixth successive generation in the naval service.

It was now, in 1799, that Preble, promoted to be a captain and in command of the Essex, 32, carried the first American man-of-war east of the Cape of Good Hope. By the beginning of 1800 France was disposed to peace, and on November 3d the United States sailed with the American envoys.

The victory of the Constellation had warmed the American blood, and Congress in 1800 appropriated $2,482,593.90 for the naval service. This strictly naval war had now lasted a year and a half, and during 1800 we had thirty-five ships in the West Indies. Again the Constellation, and under the same captain, was the lucky ship. On February 1, 1800, she sighted off Guadaloupe a French frigate, La Vengeance, of 52 guns, which, deep with valuables which she was transporting to France, tried to avoid action. This, however, after a chase extending into the evening of the next day, was brought on, and lasted until 1:00 A.M. of the 3d, when the French frigate hauled by the wind. In the endeavor to follow, the Constellation’s mainmast, every shroud of which had been shot away, went by the board despite the efforts to repair damages, carrying with it midshipman Jarvis and the topmen aloft, all but one of whom were lost. The Constellation had fourteen men killed and twenty-five wounded, eleven of whom died later of their wounds. Her quarry got into Curaçao dismasted and in a sinking condition with fifty killed and one hundred and ten wounded. The engagement had lasted five hours within pistol shot.

These brilliant actions not only brought Truxton a gold medal from Congress and a great name, but greatly increased the popularity of the navy, service in which was now sought by the best young manhood of the country.

There were many other successes in this year which included the capture of nearly fifty privateers, for the detail of which there is no space; but one of these actions, the cutting out of a French privateer, the Sandwich, in Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo, is notable as being brilliantly carried out by Isaac Hull, the first lieutenant of the Constitution, and who, as captain of the same ship twelve years later, was to capture the Guerrière.

The only other capture of special note was that of the French cruiser Le Berceau, “a singularly fine vessel of her class,” by the Boston, on October 12, 1800, which was returned to France under the treaty of peace which had already been signed on September 30th.

The year involved some sea losses. The Insurgente, which had been taken into the service, sailed in July and was never again heard of; the Pickering sailed in August to a like fate.

CHAPTER XI

The ending of the war with France was but to find, shortly, another on our hands, for which the former, however, was an admirable preparation at a minimum cost; for it had caused provision of the absolute essentials to meet the new emergency: ships, officers, and men. The lesson to be learned was, however, largely to be disregarded by those now to come into political power.

Fenimore Cooper began the seventeenth chapter of his classic history of the navy by some words of political wisdom which are applicable to this day, and apparently always will be: “Every form of government,” he says, “has evils peculiar to itself. In a democracy there exists a standing necessity for reducing everything to the average comprehension, the high intelligence of a nation usually conceding as much to its ignorance as it imparts. One of the worst consequences in a practical sense, of this compromise of knowledge, is to be found in the want of establishments that require foresight and liberality to be well managed, for the history of every democracy has shown that it has been deficient in the wisdom which is dependent on those expenditures that foster true economy, by anticipating evils and avoiding the waste of precipitation, want of system, and a want of knowledge.” In every epoch of difficulty—the French spoliations, the British impressments, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, our Civil War, and the Spanish War—this truth has been painfully apparent in the want of foresight and preparation of an adequate army and navy. It has cost us dear.

In 1801 came into power a new political school of which Jefferson was the great exponent. With strong French sympathies, he had not favored the naval war with France, and his party was bent upon naval economy. Thus an early act of his administration, which began March 4, 1801, was to carry into effect a law passed toward the close of the Congress which had just expired, it is true, but which had been elected under the new political inspiration. The law referred to empowered the President to sell all or any of the vessels of the navy with the exception of thirteen frigates, and obliged him to reduce the list of officers to nine captains, thirty-six lieutenants, and one hundred and fifty midshipmen. The selling of twenty of the smaller ships was not so great an evil in itself, as new ordnance was coming into use and small guns of light calibre, carrying balls from six to nine and twelve pounds, were being superseded by carronades—short guns with thin walls and very small charges. They were of two calibres, 32 and 24 pounders. The former with a powder charge of two pounds had a range of about 300 yards. It is evident that at long range the long gun with a much heavier charge had a great advantage. The carronade was only fit for close quarters. This change required vessels of much stouter build than the light sloops-of-war such as most of those sold were. But the mistake was that they were not replaced. The law of 1798 had authorized the building of six ships-of-the-line to carry 74 guns each. This was now unhappily suspended; an error bitterly to be repented.

It was a period of utmost world unrest when we were to be ground between the upper and nether millstones of Napoleonic authority and British arrogance. Depredations upon our commerce were constant, not only by Barbary corsairs but by highly civilized France and England which latter also for years impressed our seamen at will. It was a period when true statesmanship demanded a powerful naval force; when but a mere fraction of the losses by seizure of our merchant marine and of the cost of the War of 1812 would have built a fleet of ships-of-the-line and would have saved us both the spoliation and the war. But Jefferson, though he had taken the finer stand as to the Barbary outrages, seemed incapable of understanding that his views as to these were of universal application, and that they held good against Britain and France as well as against Algiers and Tripoli. He seemed obsessed with an enmity to any naval force. He expressed the view that a navy was “a ruinous folly.”[21] And in his annual message of December 15, 1802, advised “to add to our navy yard at Washington a dock within which our vessels may be laid up dry and under cover from the sun.” Perhaps no more extraordinary views as to national defence ever came from any one with a claim to be a statesman.

Jefferson’s election had only just been preceded by one of the most extraordinary incidents of our naval history: the impressment in 1800 of the frigate George Washington by the Dey of Algiers to carry a shipload of tribute to the Sultan of Turkey. This ship, commanded by Captain William Bainbridge, one of the most capable officers of our service, had been sent with our own tribute to Algiers, where he arrived September, 1800. The Dey had got into disfavor by making peace with France while Turkey was at war with that country on account of the occupancy of Egypt by Bonaparte. Hence the desire of the Dey for restoration to favor. He threatened instant war against the United States in case of Bainbridge’s refusal. The George Washington lay under the guns of the port and escape was extremely doubtful; there was the strong probability of the seizure of the ship, the slavery of the officers and crew, and the consequent subjection of our large commerce in the Mediterranean to destruction. Bainbridge, gallant man as he was, esteemed it his duty to sacrifice, possibly, his good name and comply. Our consul advised his so doing and he finally yielded, though in bitterness of spirit, aggravated by the attitude of the Dey, who said: “You pay me tribute by which you become my slaves. I have therefore a right to order you as I please.” The situation was but the outcome of years of compliance with such a system.

Bainbridge sailed on October 19, 1800, for Constantinople with a mixed cargo: an ambassador and suite of a hundred, a hundred negro women and children, four horses, a hundred and fifty sheep, twenty-five cattle, four lions, four tigers, four antelopes, twelve parrots, and funds and specie and presents amounting to nearly a million dollars; all this in a small ship with accommodations for a crew of 131. An element of humor in the situation was the necessity of laying the ship’s head to point to Mecca at the frequent times of prayer, one being stationed at the compass to insure correctness of direction. The fact that the ship was named George Washington added to the incongruity of the situation. Death had saved Washington himself from the pain of knowledge. The cruise, however, had one benefit, in making known our flag and country to the Turks. During his stay in Constantinople, Bainbridge’s personal qualities and the excellent order of his ship made a deep impression and were of lasting benefit to his country.

Throughout the year 1800 the attitude of the Dey of Tripoli had become steadily more threatening, and by February, 1801, he was demanding a new treaty with a payment of $250,000 and an annual tribute of $20,000. On May 10, 1801, he declared war, and about June 1st Captain Richard Dale (Paul Jones’s first lieutenant in the Bonhomme Richard) sailed from Hampton Roads with three frigates: the President, Philadelphia, and Essex, and the schooner Enterprise, to protect our commerce by blockade of Tripoli and Tunis if necessary. A humiliating element of the situation was the carrying of $30,000 which it was hoped the Dey of Tripoli would accept as a compensation for the annuity of naval stores.

Dale’s arrival off Tripoli caused much disturbance in the mind of the Dey, but nothing occurred until on August 1st, when the Enterprise captured a Tripolitan vessel of 14 guns and 80 men, after an action of three hours, which was returned to Tripoli an empty hulk, Dale’s orders not allowing him to take prizes, but to sink, burn, or destroy. This curious phase of things arose from the extraordinary views of President Jefferson as to his constitutional powers. War, as he saw things, could not exist except by declaration of Congress, however active the enemy in seizing American ships and making slaves of American citizens and seamen. The situation was remedied by Congress on February 6, 1802, which gave the President full powers to act, and was practically a declaration of war.

Dale had orders to sail for home in October if things should become peaceful, and was to leave the Mediterranean in any case by December 1st. For this there were two reasons: it was deemed unsafe to cruise in the Mediterranean in winter, and the crews were enlisted for but one year. Meanwhile, however, and despite the extraordinary views of the President, Dale carried out his semi-peaceful, semi-warlike orders, so far as to blockade Tripoli and capture ingoing vessels. In one of these were twenty Tripolitan soldiers and an officer, who were exchanged for three American prisoners. Dale completed his orders so far as to return in December with two ships only, leaving the Philadelphia and Essex; the first to watch Tripoli from Syracuse as a base, the second to observe two Tripolitan vessels blockaded at Gibraltar.

A new squadron was now formed with crews enlisted for two years. Commodore Morris was ordered to the command with his broad-pennant in the Chesapeake of such later ill-fortune. The other ships were the Constellation, New York, John Adams, Adams, and Enterprise. It is not often that a family finds itself so honored as was the Adams family in this instance, with two ships of the name in the same squadron. Isaac Chauncey commanded the Chesapeake, John Rodgers the John Adams, Isaac Hull was first lieutenant of the New York, and Oliver Hazard Perry was a midshipman in the Adams. All of these were to rise to high distinction.

The ships of the new squadron sailed as they could be got ready, the Chesapeake on April 27, 1802, the John Adams not until September 19th. There is no special need to follow the blockade of Tripoli by Morris’s squadron: the many attacks upon the galleys, generally so close in shore as to make it difficult to absolutely destroy them; the rough experiences and dangers on such a coast from heavy weather. There were conspicuous cases of gallantry and of conduct which went far to form the character of the service yet in its infancy. Lieutenant David Porter particularly gave evidence of his coming fame. Morris, relieved temporarily by Commodore Rodgers, went home in October, 1803, to meet undeserved charges of want of vigor in his command, which ended in wrongful dismissal from the service.

By the middle of 1803 a new squadron was formed of the Constitution, Philadelphia, and of five brigs and schooners, the Argus, Siren, Nautilus, Vixen, and Enterprise. Edward Preble was the commodore in command.

It is a habit with some to call Paul Jones or John Barry the “father of the navy” as race sentiment or particular inclination may rule, but neither has a claim of the sort. Jones never served in the newly established service or had anything to do with its organization. The ephemeral navy of the Revolution had entirely passed away; the navy of 1794 was not a reconstitution; it was a new birth, and with this Barry’s connection was without special distinction. Jones was a Scot by birth; Barry was an Irishman. Both are in the first rank as naval officers, but neither did anything to form the new navy. This was the work of Edward Preble, American by long descent, tradition, and training. Born in Portland, Maine, August 15, 1761, he ran away when seventeen to go to sea in a privateer; he was shortly made a midshipman in the Protector, the largest ship of the Massachusetts state navy; was in several actions, and when the Protector was captured became a prisoner in the prison ship Jersey, at New York. When released he was immediately again at sea, this time in the state privateer Winthrop, and was of the party which cut out an armed British brig from under the British fort in Penobscot Bay. When the United States navy came to life again he was commissioned one of the first five lieutenants. In 1799 he was promoted to captain and in command of the Essex convoyed fourteen valuable merchantmen to China. His high temper and strict discipline were, in the early part of his Mediterranean service, to make him somewhat unpopular, but his great qualities soon brought an admiration and regard which have come down as a cherished tradition of the service, as warm to-day as a hundred years since. It is to him should be given the credit of establishing the character of the little navy which fought the War of 1812, covering itself with fame, and bringing a new respect to our country which owes his memory every honor, and continues to owe it in much greater measure than ever paid.

The Philadelphia was one of the first of the new squadron to arrive abroad. Her haste brought good fortune. Hearing at Gibraltar of Tripolitan vessels off Cape de Gatt, the southeastern corner of Spain, Captain Bainbridge at once left, and, on the night of August 26th, came in contact not with Tripolitans but with a Moorish ship, the Meshboha, of twenty-two guns with a crew of 120 men, and a captured brig from Boston, the Celia. We were not at war with Morocco, but the Moorish captain said that he had made the capture anticipating war. The Philadelphia secured her prizes at Gibraltar and went to her station off Tripoli.

When the Constitution reached Gibraltar, Preble of course learned at once of the occurrence mentioned, and with his flagship and three other vessels, one of which was the John Adams, flying the broad-pennant of Commodore Rodgers, who, though the senior officer, cheerfully gave his services to the new commander-in-chief, went to Tangier and demanded satisfaction. The result was the complete disavowal by Morocco of the hostile action.

CHAPTER XII

We now come to the other and vastly more honorable phase of our relations with the Barbary powers and to a series of actions which form one of the most dramatic chapters of American naval history. The Philadelphia and schooner Vixen were the only two vessels blockading Tripoli. It was October, with much rough weather. Carried by the gales well to the eastward of Tripoli, the Philadelphia on October 31st was returning, with the wind now shifted into the east, to her station. Sighting a vessel inshore, she gave chase and pursued until the soundings decreased to a danger point and the ship was hauled off shore. The coast was practically uncharted. The depth increased and then again suddenly decreased and the ship drove on to a reef which was one of several to the eastward of the port, and between which, as in most coral formations, was deep water. The chase, knowing well the water, reached the harbor in safety. The firing had brought out nine gunboats and no time was to be lost if the ship were to be saved. She had driven up the smooth eastern slope of the reef her entire length. Guns were thrown overboard, a few only being reserved for defence, anchors cut from the bows, the foremast cut away, and every means taken to lighten the ship without avail. The hostile gunboats took positions from which they could safely fire; night was at hand; the Vixen was unfortunately absent in search of a Tripolitan cruiser, and the situation became such that it was imperative to surrender to save the lives of the ship’s company. The magazine was “drowned,” holes bored in the ship’s bottom, and all done which it was thought would insure the loss of the ship. The colors were then lowered. The Tripolitan crews acted in their usual manner, stripping the men of their clothing and seizing everything valuable, snatching even from Bainbridge his epaulets, gloves, watch, and money when in the boat of his captors. It was ten at night when the 307 prisoners were landed at the town. The officers were very civilly received in state by the Pacha, given supper, and at one o’clock of the morning taken to the former American consulate, a house good enough in itself but almost destitute of furniture and other comforts. But for the kindness then shown by Mr. Nicholas C. Nissen, the Danish consul, then as ever an unswerving friend of American prisoners, their condition would have been greatly more trying. His name should be held in grateful remembrance. He did indeed receive the thanks of Congress and had the lasting gratitude of the officers of the Philadelphia, who, after their release, presented him in grateful recognition of his kindness with a handsome testimonial of silver.

The men were confined in a warehouse much too small but were later transferred to a larger. They were set to various kinds of work, even to the building, as mentioned, of a fort which came to be known as the American fort and received much maltreatment, particularly after the burning of the Philadelphia in the harbor, which soon came to pass.

The ship had been floated largely through the influence of a northerly gale which had raised the water-level on the coast and had on November 5th been brought into the harbor. Her guns and anchors were weighed, the former mounted, and work begun to put the ship in order. It is seldom that the soul of man is more sorely tried than was that of her gallant captain when he became conscious of this success of the enemy.

It was not until November 27th that Preble on his arrival at Malta received news confirming rumors of the Philadelphia’s loss in letters from Bainbridge. In one of December 5, 1803, Bainbridge had suggested the destruction of the Philadelphia, an idea which naturally had already occurred to Preble. On December 17th the latter sailed for Tripoli, taking with him the Enterprise, commanded by Decatur, who captured on the way a ketch (or topsail schooner) named the Mastico, with a crew of seventy. It was this captured vessel, renamed the Intrepid, which was finally used in the coming adventure and has thus come down through more than a century in the list of famous ships.

There was no trouble in finding officers or men for the duty, but the whole was finally turned over to the commander of the Enterprise to arrange, and her crew only was to be employed except that five midshipmen of the Constitution were detailed to assist. Sixty-two men of the Enterprise were taken. The officers were Decatur, commanding; Lieutenants Lawrence, Bainbridge, and Thorn, and Midshipman Macdonough, all of the Enterprise; Midshipmen Izard, Morris, Laws, Davis, and Rowe of the Constitution, and Salvador Catalano as pilot. Nearly two months from the inception had been spent in maturing the plans, and on the evening of February 3d the Intrepid and Siren sailed together from Syracuse and were off Tripoli on the 7th. A gale of wind drove them to sea, and it was not until the 16th that they were again off Tripoli. At dark the Intrepid was two miles from the entrance, and here Midshipman T. O. Anderson, with a boat and nine men from the Siren (which was disguised as a merchantman), was taken on board. This made a total of eighty-four in the Intrepid. A careful division of duties had been made. Decatur, two midshipmen, and fifteen men were to hold the spar (or upper) deck; the others were to look after the lower decks except a midshipman and his boat’s crew who were to secure the Philadelphia’s boats and prevent the escape ashore of the Tripolitan crew. The watchword was “Philadelphia.”

The captured ship had her main and mizzen topmasts housed (partially lowered), the foremast which had been cut away was not yet replaced; the sails were unbent and her lower yards lying across the bulwarks. Her forty guns were all loaded. She was lying in front of the castle well inshore.

The night was almost calm with a smooth sea and a young moon, and the Intrepid crept slowly in, apparently exciting no distrust. The main part of her crew was kept concealed, only some ten or twelve being visible. She was steered straight for the Philadelphia’s bow.

When still some distance off, a hail from the Philadelphia was answered by the pilot, who stated the vessel to be from Malta, and that her anchors having been lost in a gale, permission was asked to make fast to the ship. A sudden shift of wind brought the Intrepid under the frigate’s broadside and she drifted slowly astern, exposed to the Philadelphia’s port broadside at a distance of about forty yards. So completely were the Tripolitans deceived that they lowered a boat and sent a line. Some of the Intrepid’s men had meanwhile got into her boat and taken one to the frigate’s fore chains (supports to the shrouds). They then took the line from the frigate’s boat which had been run from the after part of the ship and made it fast aboard the Intrepid. Both lines were hauled upon by the men lying down concealed on her deck. On getting near the Philadelphia the Intrepid’s anchors were discovered. On this, the Tripolitans prepared to cut the fasts, passing the cry of “Americanos.” A strong pull brought the Intrepid alongside, “where she was secured quick as thought.”

The ship was immediately boarded. The Tripolitans crowded over to the starboard side and forward, offering practically no resistance, and large numbers jumped overboard. There was some struggle below, “but in less than ten minutes Decatur was on the quarter deck in undisturbed possession of his prize.”

The orders to destroy the ship and not attempt to get her away, which in the circumstances of not a sail bent or a yard aloft would have been almost impossible, were imperative. The arrangements for firing her were so complete that the combustibles prepared were alight in a few minutes, and in some twenty-five minutes from boarding the Americans were hastening out of the ship to escape the flames. Their movements were none too quick to escape; the fasts were cut and the Intrepid shoved clear only just in time herself to escape burning. The sixteen sweeps were manned, and, aided by a light breeze, the little vessel with her brave crew intact swept out of the harbor under the fire of the batteries and the thunder of the Philadelphia’s own guns as they heated and discharged themselves, one broadside toward the town, the other toward the English fort. The only shot striking the Intrepid was one passing through her topgallantsail. She was met outside the harbor by the Siren’s boats. The Siren’s commander had seen the rocket-signal, agreed upon, from the Philadelphia, and in the calm had used his sweeps to close in and protect the Intrepid should she be attacked. Before the signal could be answered the flames were running aloft in the Philadelphia. “Presently a boat was seen coming alongside and a man in a sailor’s jacket sprang over the gangway of the brig. It was Decatur to announce his victory!”[22] On the 19th both vessels were again at Syracuse. This brilliant exploit made Decatur a captain at the age of twenty-five and promoted most of those who accompanied him. It remains as one of the most gallant and successful adventures of the sea, remarkable particularly for the coolness of its procedure and calm courage of execution. It was worthy of all the praise given it at the time and which has continued undimmed.

The loss of the Philadelphia and Decatur’s exploit gave an impetus to naval affairs, which struggled then, as ever since, under conditions of want of knowledge in our legislators and a poor system of administration. There was, for example, not a drydock in the whole country. “Facts,” as Fenimore Cooper expresses it, “were still leading opinion, and the gallant men who were slowly fighting themselves into favor were merely performing an office that would seem inseparable from the advancement of every free people in civilization.”

Preble’s whole force before Tripoli in July, 1804, was the frigate Constitution, six small vessels of from 12 to 16 guns each, six gunboats, and two bomb-vessels; an excellent force for blockading and for attacking the Tripolitan gunboats, which hugged the shores, but not for bombarding the batteries in which were 115 guns.

From now on many brilliant actions between the smaller craft took place, in one of which was a famous incident of the general attack of August 4, 1804, when Decatur, having already boarded and taken one gunboat, boarded another. The captain of the second was a large and powerful Turk who seized the pike with which Decatur attacked him and used it against the latter, who parried with his sword which broke at the hilt. The pike entered the fleshy part of Decatur’s breast. Decatur succeeded in tearing it out and grappled with the Turk. Both fell, the Turk uppermost. He felt for his poniard, but Decatur, grasping his arm with one hand, was able to take a small pistol from his waistcoat pocket and passing his arm around the Turk fired it into his back. The ball passed entirely through his foe and lodged in Decatur’s clothes. While this was going on, another raised a sabre to cleave Decatur, but a young seaman, named Daniel Fraisher,[23] interposed his arm, which was nearly severed at the wrist. Lieutenant Trippe of Gunboat No. 6 had an equally desperate encounter. His own and the enemy’s gunboat separated with the shock, leaving only nine Americans aboard the Tripolitan. Trippe was attacked by a powerful young Turk, who inflicted eight sabre wounds in the head and two in the breast. Trippe was brought to his knees, but he was able to give his adversary a final thrust with his short pike, which ended the struggle. When the captain thus fell, the others surrendered. The desperate nature of the struggle undertaken by the six gunboats in the action may be understood when it is known that the two boats captured by Decatur carried about eighty men; of these fifty-two were known to be killed and wounded, many jumped overboard, and only eight unwounded prisoners were taken. Stephen Decatur’s brother James had command of Gunboat No. 2. In boarding, he was shot through the forehead and died that evening.

The details of the many sanguinary actions during Preble’s blockade cannot be given. Three captured gunboats, numbered 7, 8, and 9, were changed in rig and added to the fleet. On August 7th No. 7 blew up in action and of her crew of twenty-eight, ten, including Lieutenant Caldwell, her commander, and Midshipman Dorsey, were killed, and six wounded.

The arrival of the John Adams on August 8th brought the unwelcome word to Preble of the coming of a new and more powerful force under Commodore Samuel Barron, his senior. This, as it was arranged, was an unfortunate necessity, as a new squadron could not be organized without putting in command some of Preble’s seniors, and it was deplored by the Secretary of the Navy in a letter to Preble. It is not, however, readily seen why the crews with Preble, the times of which had expired, could not have been replaced by new crews, and only the two captains junior to him sent. It was an act which showed feeble unaccustomedness to administration. Preble wrote in his private journal: “How much my feelings are lacerated by this supersedure at the moment of victory cannot be described and can be felt only by an officer placed in my mortifying situation.” He kept up his attacks, however, while awaiting his relief, and on the night of August 24th, after being much delayed by heavy weather, a night attack was made by bombardment with little reply. This was renewed on the 28th; one Tripolitan gunboat was sunk, two ran ashore, and the rest retreated. The town was subjected to a heavy bombardment during which a 24-pound shot entered the quarters of the captive Americans, covering Bainbridge in the débris.

On September 3d came Preble’s fifth and last attack by bombardment. The next evening the Intrepid was sent in with the intent of blowing her up in the midst of the Tripolitan fleet. A compartment was built in which was placed 15,000 pounds of powder connected with a slow match expected to take fifteen minutes in burning. Over the powder was placed one hundred 13-inch and fifty 9-inch shells, with a quantity of solid shot and pig-iron ballast. She was commanded by Commander Richard Somers, who volunteered for the work and took with him, as the only other officer, Lieutenant Wadsworth of the Constitution. Ten men were taken. At the last moment, before parting company with the three vessels which accompanied the Intrepid to a point near the entrance and stood by to receive the boats when they should return, Lieutenant Joseph Israel of the Constitution went aboard the Intrepid to carry a message from the commodore and begged so to stay that Somers allowed him to do so.

The night was dark and the Intrepid was soon lost in the gloom, when at 9:47, as marked in the log of the Constitution, there was a terrific explosion, followed by cries of terror and beating of drums in the town and then silence. The boats which were to return never came. The bodies of the three officers and ten men were from time to time recovered by the Tripolitans, but the explosion, which evidently occurred before intended, has ever remained a mystery.

Among the six names which appear on the monument now at the Naval Academy, erected by their brother officers to those killed at Tripoli, are those of the three then lost, the three other names being Caldwell, James Decatur, and Dorsey. The total loss in Preble’s squadron in these eleven months at Tripoli was thirty-two killed and twenty-two wounded.

CHAPTER XIII

Preble left for home without having come to terms with the Pacha of Tripoli. He was not willing to rise above $500 for each of the captives, and would offer nothing for peace or for tribute. Had he remained, it is very possible that he would have forced a peace without a ransom. Peace, however, was to come under his successor largely through one of the extraordinary adventures of our history.

Yusuf Karamanli, the Pacha of Tripoli, was the youngest of three brothers. In 1790 at the age of twenty he murdered the eldest, and when his father died in 1796, and the second brother, Hamet, was absent, he proclaimed himself Pacha. Hamet, rather a weakling, took refuge in Tunis, leaving his family at Tripoli. He had taken up arms against his brother, using Derne, some 500 miles east of Tripoli, as a base, but he was unsuccessful, and in 1804 fled to Egypt. The government in Washington, influenced largely by ex-Consul Eaton, had decided to use Hamet as an asset in the war against Yusuf, and thus placed at the disposition of the commodore a moderate amount of money and military supplies. Eaton was appointed a navy agent under Commodore Barron, with a recommendation from the Secretary of the Navy to use him in connection with an effort to establish Hamet at Tripoli in place of his brother Yusuf. It was a scheme in full accord with Eaton’s adventurous spirit and worthy his real ability.

The Argus, Captain Hull, thus left Malta in September, 1804, for Alexandria, nominally to convoy thence any vessels desiring protection, but really to carry Eaton to find Hamet and convey him to whatever should be decided as the most convenient point from which to act against Tripoli. Hamet was up the Nile. Eaton explained frankly his intentions to the Viceroy and passports were obtained for himself and Hamet out of Egypt. Hamet was finally reached, but such obstacles to leaving by sea were raised through the influence of the French consul that it was decided to go by land, it being feared that the few Arabs whom Hamet had raised might otherwise disappear. The Argus sailed for Malta with a letter from Eaton to the commodore requesting “that the expedition be met at Bomba Bay sixty miles east of Derne, with two more small vessels, a bomb-ketch, two field pieces, a hundred muskets, a hundred marines, and ten thousand dollars.” A convention was made with Hamet, the United States promising to do all that was proper and right to reinstate him, reimbursement of expenses to come from tribute paid by other nations. Eaton was to be recognized as commander-in-chief of the land forces operating against the usurping brother.

The army was a motley array of some four hundred, though Eaton says many thousands could have been had had there been money and subsistence. There were besides Eaton nine Americans: Lieutenant O’Bannon, Midshipman Peck, and seven marines; an English volunteer; forty Greeks; some Arab horsemen, etc., and a caravan of 107 camels and a few asses. These began on March 8th a march across 500 and more miles to Derne. Bomba was reached after immense difficulties on April 15th. Signal-fires were built on a high hill which were sighted by the Argus. She brought a cheering letter from the commodore announcing aid. Two days later the Hornet arrived with an abundance of provisions, and on the 23d, after a rest of a week, the march of sixty miles to Derne was resumed. This was made in two days. Derne was attacked on the 27th from land and from sea by the Hornet and Nautilus (which had also arrived). The town was occupied after a strong resistance and some loss. A Tripolitan force now appeared, and there were unsuccessful efforts to dislodge Eaton’s forces. After May 18th the attacks ceased. Dispatches were sent to the commodore, and only the Argus remained at Derne. On May 19th there came dispatches from the commodore announcing peace negotiations, and on June 11th came the Constellation announcing peace and with orders to evacuate Derne. There was nothing for the Americans to do but to embark, taking with them Hamet and his suite, twenty-five foreign cannoniers with their artillery, and the small party of Greeks. It was a pitiful abandonment of men who were our allies, brought about through the influence of Consul-General Lear, who, as previously mentioned, had been invested with full authority to negotiate a peace.

Lear had spent the winter of 1804-1805 with Commodore Barron at Malta, over whom he acquired, in Barron’s weakened condition of mind and health, a great influence. He was strongly opposed to Eaton’s expedition, and was the main factor in causing it to collapse; the aim of the expedition, which was the capture of Tripoli and dethronement of the Pacha, was not in accord with his views. On May 26th Lear arrived off Tripoli from Malta in the Essex, which delivered to Captain Rodgers of the Constitution a letter from Barron announcing the necessity of the relinquishment by the latter of the command. Lear had already been informed by a letter written by the Danish consul at Tripoli of the probability of the Pacha’s willingness to treat, and at once on his arrival began negotiations. The preliminaries, after parleys of more than a week, were signed on June 3d. Prisoners were to be exchanged, the United States paying a balance of $60,000. A year was allowed to settle disputes before action; prisoners were no longer to be enslaved, and were at the conclusion of peace to be restored without ransom. No tribute was to be paid in future. Hamet was to be “persuaded” to withdraw from Derne, and his family was to be restored to him. There was, however, a secret article which allowed the Pacha four years in which to make this restoration. The unwisdom of placing the negotiations wholly in the hands of Lear had resulted in an unsatisfactory peace, and attacks ensued which must have caused him much bitterness; for General Eaton, as he was now called, pursued him violently in the press and before Congress to the end, in 1811, of Eaton’s life. Lear was strongly criticised in Congress itself, Senator Timothy Pickering declaring his conduct inexcusable. Madison’s instructions as Secretary of State anticipated that peace would be made “without any price or pecuniary compensation whatever”; and so undoubtedly it would have been had negotiations been put in the hands of the commodore of the now powerful force before Tripoli. Nor would Eaton’s wonderful action have gone for nought, nor would Hamet, whom we had made our ally, been thrown overboard with so little consideration. Commodore Rodgers allowed him two hundred dollars monthly to support himself and some fifteen dependents at Syracuse (the winter headquarters of the fleet) until twenty-four hundred dollars was voted him by Congress in 1806. His family, through pressure of our consul, was restored to him in October, 1807, and though his brother gave him residence in Morocco and a pension, and later the governorship of Derne, he had, two years later, to flee with his family to Egypt, where he died.

Eaton was received on his return with honor. Massachusetts granted him ten thousand acres in Maine (then a part of Massachusetts) and Congress met his disbursements. The expedition to Derne had cost forty thousand dollars but Eaton declined everything for himself but his personal expenses. He died in 1811 at the age of fifty-seven, ending, too early, a life of picturesque adventure, patriotic effort, and undaunted courage. He is worthy of memory.

Commodore Rodgers now turned his attention to Tunis, where threatening conditions had arisen from the capture of two Tunis vessels which had attempted to run the blockade of Tripoli. He appeared on August 1st with nearly his whole force. A fortnight later, on an appearance of delay, Rodgers informed Lear officially that the Dey “must do one of three things by simple request or must do all three by force. He must give

Rodgers now in a letter to the Secretary of the Navy of August 21, 1805, laid down the honorable dictum which has ever been a rule of conduct with the navy that: “Peace on honorable terms is always preferable to war.” If chastisement were to be inflicted he begged the honor of being the instrument, pledging that if he should be instructed by March, 1806, that he would obtain an honorable peace before September, making the Dey to pay all the expenses of the war, and that, too, without any increase of force. The Dey had, however, already accepted the proposal of sending a minister to the United States, and had agreed to keep the peace until the result of the mission should be known.

Our Barbary difficulties were, with occasional troubles of a moderate nature, ended for nearly ten years. We continued, under the treaty with Algiers, to send an annual tribute of marine stores to the value of twenty-one thousand dollars. This, however, was but a remnant of our early weakness and an honorable carrying out of a treaty. The spectacle of the treatment of our commerce by France and England roused the envy of the Dey of Algiers, and finally the War of 1812 overcame any good resolutions the then Dey had, and spoliation began anew. Thus, immediately after the peace, a powerful fleet was sent into the Mediterranean under Decatur, followed by another under Bainbridge, whose flagship, the Independence, 74, was the first American ship-of-the-line in foreign waters. Farragut, who had already seen three years of most stirring service and was then but fourteen, was a midshipman aboard. But before Bainbridge had arrived Decatur had appeared before Algiers and “at the mouths of our cannon,” as Decatur expressed in his dispatch to the Navy Department, dictated a peace which abolished tribute in any form forever, released all Americans, and forced compensation for, and restoration of, all American property seized or in the Dey’s hands. This was within six weeks of the sailing of the fleet from home. Decatur then visited Tunis and Tripoli, and forced the instant payment at each place of indemnities for British prizes which, taken into port by an American privateer, had been seized later by the British. Of course the British consul protested, but without avail. He also caused the release of two Danes in remembrance of the unceasing kindness to Americans, through many years, of the Danish consul, Nissen, and of a Sicilian family of eight, in consideration of aid given to Preble by the king of the two Sicilies. It was a fine instance of gratitude acknowledged.

Thus, practically, ended our troubles with Barbary. “It was not to be endured,” said the English naval historian, Brenton, “that England should tolerate what America had resented and punished,” and thus after one abortive threat, when he paid heavy ransom for 1,200 Neapolitans and Sicilians, during the negotiations for which he was grossly insulted, and the British consul and his family treated “in a manner the most scandalous and insulting,”[24] Lord Exmouth was sent in August, 1816, with a powerful fleet, which, combined with a Dutch force, bombarded Algiers to subjection, and Christian slavery was at an end. The Dey shortly before this having shown signs of regretting having made the American treaty, another powerful American fleet appeared shortly after Lord Exmouth’s bombardment, which removed the intention of renewal of hostile acts.

Thus ended, practically, the extraordinary career of piracy and slavery which through so many generations had been submitted to by Europe. It was not, however, until 1824, when the demand for continuance of tribute from Holland was successfully resisted, that Algiers finally dismissed the idea of return to her ancient ways.

It should be a proud memory to Americans that it was the American navy which first resisted and brought to terms the barbarous corsairs, so long the scourge of commerce and enslavers of white men. The Frenchman Dupuy, at the end of his admirable history of our Barbary wars, pays us a fine tribute, saying: “The statesmen [of America], breaking loose from the unworthy yielding of Europe to the Barbary States, had in hardly thirty years broken the abominable traditions which the Christian powers had shamefully respected for ages.”[25]

CHAPTER XIV

While we were fighting the Algerines, we were suffering from depredations on our commerce by France and England a hundredfold more serious than all we had undergone from the African corsairs. The story is as shameful to the statesmanship of the period as our stand with regard to Barbary was honorable.

Napoleon dominated Europe by land; England by sea. The former’s great aim after subjecting the Continental states, rotten with the decaying feudalism of the past centuries, was to destroy English supremacy by closing all Europe to English commerce, an effort which was to fail through one of the greatest instincts of man, that of trade. Almost universal war thus made neutral America the great carrier; our shipping increased by amazing bounds and covered every sea. But between the two great antagonists it was to be heavily ground. Our losses were in many millions, our ships for a considerable period being seized at an average of three a day. It would take a book much larger than this to go into the details of this question which looms so large even to this day. Added to the question of ships was that of impressment of our seamen who were taken out of our merchantmen, and in two cases from men-of-war, to man those of the British navy, on the claim that a British subject was always a subject. In carrying out this dictum, a vast number of Americans were claimed as such from mere appearance or other characteristic or for no reason whatever except that he was a likely man. Over 11,000 were to be so taken before, in 1812, we went to war.

Jefferson was President for the eight years beginning March 4, 1801. His residence as minister in France from 1785 to 1788 had given him as mentioned leanings which affected all his later views, despite the monstrous excesses of the French Revolution. He had very peculiar ideas of the ocean-carrying trade, mentioning it as: “this protuberant navigation which has kept us in hot water from the commencement of the government.” He would “an’ he could,” have made of America a rural community, apparently not being able to comprehend that man is, by nature, a trader; that trade is the real civilizer and missioner beyond all other endeavors combined. Linked with this was a willingness to submit the country to unparalleled insult and injury in the seizure of ships and impressment of our seamen without taking any efficient or reasonable steps to resist such outrages. The extent of our Government’s submission is well shown by Captain Basil Hall in his most interesting reminiscences as a seaman. Describing his life as a midshipman in the Leander, in the middle years of Jefferson’s administration, he says: “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 to, a league or two off 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.”

A crowning outrage came in 1807 when the frigate Chesapeake flying the broad-pennant of Commodore Samuel Barron was leaving for the Mediterranean. She had been preparing for some time for sea, but finally was hurried off in a state wholly unfit to go suddenly into action with any vessel of moderate force, and certainly not with the much more powerful ship which was about to attack her. This ship, the Leopard, of 54 guns, had been lying, along with several other British men-of-war, in Lynnhaven Bay, just within the Capes of the Chesapeake. They were watching for two French frigates then lying off Annapolis. This occupancy, for such a purpose, of our waters, was in itself an insulting abuse of our neutrality, though Jefferson could speak of it as “enjoying our hospitality.”

The Chesapeake passed out of the capes about noon on June 22, 1807. When about ten miles outside the Leopard hailed saying she had a dispatch for Commodore Barron. This “dispatch” proved to be a copy of an order from the British admiral, Berkeley, to search the Chesapeake for deserters from certain British ships, the order to be first shown to her captain. On Barron’s refusal to submit to such outrage the Chesapeake was fired into by the Leopard, without, in the unprepared state of the ship, being able to return a gun. Twenty-one men were killed and wounded, the ship searched and four of the crew, claimed as British deserters, were taken away. “Of these, one was hanged, one died, and the other two, after prolonged disputation, were returned five years later to the deck of the Chesapeake in formal reparation.” A deeper insult to a nation could scarcely have been offered. All the same, it ended only on the part of the administration in what may be called a fit of sulks known as the embargo, which from December, 1807, to March, 1809, took American commerce by the throat and forbade our merchant ships to go to sea. It was much as if a man should reduce himself to bread and water as a revenge against an enemy.

Jefferson, meanwhile, with the British practically blockading our ports and taking men from vessels entering New York and other harbors, was seized with a passion for gunboats, and shortly after the Chesapeake incident, which cried aloud for ships-of-the-line instead of the two hundred petty toys he devised and caused to be built, and which could not go to sea without striking their one gun into the hold, we find him saying: “Believing, myself, that gunboats are the only water defence which can be useful to us, and protect us from the ruinous folly of a navy, I am pleased with everything which promises to improve them.”[26] It was a mind far better fitted to deal with the manipulations of a political party than with the care of a nation which he was not so very far from wrecking by an insensate policy of peace at any price. Peace, however, cannot be kept by one only of the interested parties declaring such a preference. One must be in a position to command peace, and this failure was Jefferson’s great mistake, a mistake which from every point of view was to cost us dear. “Whether with or without a war, a navy would have saved us the six years of humiliation which were to intervene between 1806 and 1812; it would have saved the embargo which was to tie to the wharves in rotting idleness more than a million tons of shipping which had been engaged in foreign trade; to bring grass-grown streets to our greatest ports, and strain the sentiment of the several sections of the Union to the point of separation. It would have saved the War of 1812, the capture and burning of Washington, and the shameful ineptitude, with one brilliant exception, of our army commanders in that contest.... There would have been a cessation of British impressment and there would have been no such orders in council as those directed to the destruction of American commerce; or had these come before America was ready with her navy there would have been quick renunciation.”[27]

Gallatin, Jefferson’s Secretary of the Treasury, pressed to apply the surplus of two millions a year (“and,” said he, “it is a very low calculation”), which he considered would be lost in case of war, wholly “to the building of ships of the line.”[28] Said Gouverneur Morris in the Senate (and it was the expression of one of the ablest minds of the country): “When we have twenty ships-of-the-line at sea, and there is no good reason why we should not have them, we shall be respected by all Europe.... The expense compared with the benefit is moderate, nay, trifling. Whatever sums are necessary to secure the national independence must be paid.... If we will not pay to be defended, we must pay for being conquered.”[29]

Instead of a fleet which would have commanded respect, the United States had built in the years 1801-1811 “two sloops of 18 guns and two brigs of 16, and out of twelve frigates had permitted three to rot at their moorings”; and this while 917 American ships had been seized by the British, many more than this number by the French, and our men taken from our vessels by the thousand and impressed into the British service. There is an official record of 6,257 of these, but it is known that the number ran to over 11,000. Such things, if we were to survive as a nation, could only bring war, whether Jefferson and Madison wished war or not. The instigators of such conditions had not long to wait to repent their folly.

The affair of the Chesapeake had stirred the soul of the little navy, at least, to its depth. There were now, in 1810, in commission, the President, 44; Constitution, 44; United States, 44; Essex, 32; John Adams, 24; Wasp, 18; Hornet, 18; Argus, 16; Siren, 16; Nautilus, 12; Enterprise, 12, Vixen, 12. The whole list is given, as nearly all these were to make names for themselves. Attention, too, began to be turned to the lakes, for war was now foreseen by all naval officers and at least some of the administration. The British had a considerable force upon the American coast, but they were now more chary of giving offence. The danger was emphasized on May 16, 1811, when the President, carrying Commodore Rodgers’s broad-pennant, and at sea on account of having heard of the impressment of a seaman near Sandy Hook, sighted a strange man-of-war which stood away. The President gave chase but did not come near until about 8:30 in the evening when, on a hail from the President, the stranger fired a gun which struck the President’s mainmast. The latter at once fired a broadside, and recognizing shortly that her antagonist was disabled ceased fire. The other began anew but was soon silenced. At daylight the President sent a boat and found that the ship was the British sloop-of-war, Little Belt, of 18 guns. She had suffered severely and thirty-one of her people had been killed and wounded. Offers of aid were given but declined, and the British cruiser stood for Halifax.

Naturally the strong tension already existing was increased and matters moved rapidly. On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war.

At the moment of America’s declaration of war against England Napoleon was on his way to Russia with an army destined never to return. Spain was being desolated by the struggle of the French and British in the peninsula; all the Spanish provinces in South America were in revolution. With the entry of the United States the whole western world was at war.

Our population at this time, excluding negroes, was about 7,500,000; that of Great Britain was about 15,000,000. We had a navy of three large and one small frigate, one sloop-of-war, and seven smaller vessels, with 500 officers, of whom twelve were captains. There were 5,230 men in the enlisted force, of whom 2,436 were destined for the cruising ships, “the remainder being for service at the forts and navy yards, in the gunboats, and on the lakes.” In the British navy were over a thousand ships.

There can of course be no comparison between such forces; nor could there in the long run be any doubt as to the result, but the American navy was to achieve, in the unequal struggle, a series of victories which brought results psychically the equal of victories of great fleets. It is not that we were continuously victorious, but in the main our success was so great and of a character to which the British navy and public were so unaccustomed that our victories were a staggering blow to Britain’s self-sufficiency. It must be remembered that the French navy of Louis XVI’s time had been, so far as officers and morale were concerned, swept out of existence by the French Revolution. The French fleet of the Consular and Napoleonic period was now not only ill-officered, but through the constant blockades of the British had but little of the sea habit by which only a navy can be efficient. The Spanish navy had no real organization or other qualities of success under circumstances of even much worse neglect. The British ships, well officered, well manned, and with constant sea practice, had no real antagonists, for it is absurd to compare in efficiency such organizations as that which fought under Nelson at Trafalgar and those under Villeneuve and Gravina in the same battle. The American navy was to show a different standard.

CHAPTER XV

There were three important and epoch-making events in the war: the victory of the Constitution over the Guerrière, the battle of Lake Erie, and the battle of Lake Champlain. Each of these was of such immense importance that they overshadow all others, picturesque and striking as others were.

The administration had at first only considered the laying up of our ships, but the indignant protests of our naval officers caused another course. The first ships to get to sea were those at New York: the President, 44, Commodore Rodgers; the Essex, 32, Captain David Porter; and the Hornet, 18, Master Commandant Lawrence. These were joined down the bay on June 21st by the United States, 44, Commodore Decatur; and the Congress, 36, Lieutenant Commandant Sinclair from Norfolk. All except the Essex, which was overhauling her rigging, got to sea on the 21st, immediately after the reception of the declaration of war, and stood southeast to intercept a reported fleet of West Indiamen. On June 23d, however, a frigate, later known to be the Belvidera, was sighted and chased. On nearing her, Rodgers himself went forward to direct the firing, and at 4:30 he fired the starboard forecastle gun, the first shot of the war. The next gun was fired from the main deck by the officer of the division, and a third was fired by Rodgers. The three shots had all struck the chase, killing and wounding seven men. A fourth was now fired from the main deck. This gun burst, lifting the forecastle deck, killing and wounding sixteen men. Among the latter was Rodgers, who was thrown into the air and in falling broke his leg. The forward guns being thrown out of action, the President was obliged to yaw from time to time to bring her broadside guns to bear. This gave the chase an advantage which was added to by her throwing overboard boats and anchors and fourteen tons of water. By midnight she was out of danger. The President does not seem to have been handled as well as she might have been, but account must be taken of the very serious accident aboard and of the injury to the commodore. The Belvidera’s fire killed and wounded six of the President’s crew. She was well handled and her captain, Richard Byron, deserves marked credit for his escape. Rodgers continued his cruise in pursuit of the West Indiaman as far as the entrance to the English Channel, but by August 31st was in Boston, having made but seven prizes and one recapture.

The Essex did not leave New York until June 23d. The ship carried, mostly, only carronades which were totally inefficient except at close quarters. This fact placed her at a great disadvantage when in meeting a convoy of troops she was unable to bring to action the convoying frigate. She cut out, however, one ship with 197 soldiers aboard. But on August 13th she captured the sloop-of-war, Alert, of twenty 18-pounder carronades, the first man-of-war prize of the war. The Essex returned to New York on September 7th, having taken ten prizes and 423 prisoners.

The Constitution, Captain Hull, had returned, just before the outbreak of the war, from Europe where she had been sent to pay the interest on our Dutch loan. She shipped a new crew, and on July 12th sailed from Annapolis. On the 17th when off the Virginia coast, and barely out of sight of land, six vessels were discovered, one of which, as it turned out, and much the nearest, being the Guerrière. The next morning, the weather almost calm, there were four frigates, a ship-of-the-line, and a brig and a schooner just out of gunshot; the two last were prizes. There then ensued a chase famous in American naval annals for the admirable way in which the Constitution was handled, and for her success. She hoisted out her boats in the calm and towed; the enemy put the boats of two ships to tow the headmost. Their advantage was overcome by Hull’s using all the cordage of the ship available for such a purpose in running a kedge ahead nearly half a mile and hauling in upon the hawser. The kedges thus employed caused the Constitution to gain largely until the enemy discovered the method and himself applied it. For two days this most exciting and exhausting chase continued. On the evening of the 20th there was a heavy squall, which was utilized by Hull with the utmost judgment and during which a large gain in distance was made. On its clearing away all apprehension ended; all but two of the frigates were far distant and most of the fleet hull down. At 8:15 next morning the English gave up the chase, thus ending as exciting three days and nights as any of the war. The admirable manner in which the Constitution was handled has ever been the admiration of seamen.

The Constitution went into Boston, but Hull, fearing orders for detachment, which in fact were on the way from Washington, hurried to sea again on August 2d. On the 19th, at a point some 400 miles southeast of Halifax, he met the British frigate, Guerrière, Captain Dacres. The latter on the Constitution’s near approach lay-to with her maintopsail to the mast, showing her willingness to engage. The battle began a little after 6:00 P.M., and before seven the Guerrière was dismasted and in a sinking condition. Her crew was taken off; she was set afire, and in a quarter of an hour blew up. The Constitution was practically uninjured and in a few hours could have gone into action again. She was, it is true, the heavier ship, with thirty 24-pounders against the Guerrière’s thirty 18’s, and twenty-four 32-pounder carronades against the Guerrière’s sixteen; and a total of 55 guns and 468 men against the Guerrière’s 49 guns and 272 men, but the injury was entirely disproportionate. The Guerrière had seventy-nine men killed and wounded. The Constitution had seven killed and seven wounded. The Guerrière lost every mast and her hull was so riddled that she could not be carried into port. So little was the Constitution injured that in the same evening all damage was repaired and another ship, supposedly an enemy, which appeared at 2:00 A.M., sheered off.

The ships were not markedly different in size, the Constitution being 1,576 tons American measurement, the Guerrière 1,338 British. But by the latter the Constitution would have been but 1,426. The difference in size and force, however, was a small matter considering the fact that before the outbreak of the war it was confidently affirmed that British sloops-of-war would lie alongside American frigates with impunity.

The capture of the Guerrière by the Constitution is a great landmark in our history—a second “shot heard round the world.” It was not simply the taking of a British frigate; it was a second declaration of American independence. We had so long been called spaniels and curs in the British press; we had so long submitted basely (the word is none too strong to describe our administration of the Jeffersonian period); there had become so strongly entrenched in the British and French mind that we would submit to any insult so long as our ships might sail, even at the cost of the immense toll they took of them, that our going to war was considered impossible. New England, the chief sufferer, was in a dangerous spirit which threatened secession. All this changed instantly when the news spread from town to town, from farm to farm. The Americans became another people. It revived the dormant spirit of nationality and gave a deathblow to the disunionist spirit of the period. How it permeated the soul of the country was shown in a remarkable way at the death of a lady of the Adams family in 1903. Born in 1808, she was but four years old at the time of the battle, but so vividly had the exultation of her elders been impressed upon the child’s mind, that on the day of her death, more than ninety years after, her mind reverted to but one thought, the most deeply impressed of her childhood. In tremulous tones, though otherwise apparently unconscious, she kept repeating through this last day of her life the expression of her elders in 1812: “Thank God for Hull’s victory.”[30] Nothing could show more strongly the immensity of exultation and relief. The Constitution was to have other victories, was to come unscathed through the war, and was for many years to carry our flag in honor in many seas; but this victory alone should enshrine the ship in the hearts of all true Americans as an instrument which went far to preserve this Union and its government. Fortunately, through Oliver Wendell Holmes’s noble poem, she still remains, honored in her old age, a glorious memory of victory in a noble cause.

On October 18th the sloop-of-war Wasp, of 18 guns and 135 men, commanded by Captain Jacob Jones, captured the British brig Frolic, of 19 guns and 110 men. The first lieutenant, Biddle, who had gallantly led the boarders, hauled down the Frolic’s flag at 12:15, forty-three minutes after the beginning of the action. Almost at once afterward both of the Frolic’s masts went by the board. Not twenty of her men had escaped unhurt. Every officer was wounded, and the first lieutenant and master died soon after. Her total loss was thus ninety killed and wounded. Says the distinguished French Admiral Jurien de la Gravière, commenting on this action: “On occasions when the roughness of the sea would seem to render all aim excessively uncertain the effects of [the American] artillery were not less murderous than under more advantageous conditions.” Unfortunately, a little later, the British Poictiers, 74, came in sight, and the Wasp not only had to yield her capture but was herself carried a prize into Bermuda, where Jones and his men were later exchanged. Captain Jones was promoted to the command of the Macedonian, which had been captured by the United States only a week after the Wasp’s own brilliant action.

The United States and Argus, under Commodore Decatur, had left Boston on October 8th in company with Commodore Rodgers, commanding the President and the Congress. The latter was successful in making one valuable prize and eight others of but small value, and reëntered Boston on December 31st. Decatur had separated from Rodgers’s command on October 12th, and on the 18th, about 500 miles south by west of the Azores, he met the frigate Macedonian, of 49 guns and 301 men, commanded by Captain Richard Carden. There was about the same difference in force as between the Constitution and Guerrière and about the same in destruction. The Macedonian had forty-three killed and mortally wounded, and sixty-one wounded; the United States had a lieutenant and six seamen killed or mortally wounded, and five wounded. The action lasted an hour and a half. The Macedonian had received over a hundred shot in the hull, her mizzenmast had gone by the board, and her fore and maintopmasts at the cap. Her rigging was badly cut and many of her guns had been dismounted. On the other hand, the United States had suffered no injuries which could not at once be repaired. It was clear that the American gunnery was immensely superior, though the Macedonian had been regarded a crack ship. The British ship had on board eight impressed Americans. These, though objecting to fighting their countrymen, were obliged to stay at the guns, and three were killed.

Fortunately the damages to the Macedonian were not so severe that she had to be destroyed; convoyed by the United States, she was carried into New London, reaching there on December 4th.

On October 26, 1812, Commodore Bainbridge sailed from Boston with the Constitution, which he personally commanded, and the Hornet, 18, Captain Lawrence. The Essex, under Captain David Porter, was also to be part of Bainbridge’s squadron, but she was in the Delaware and did not get to sea until two days after Bainbridge left Boston. In anticipation of a long cruise, the ship carried an unusual number of both officers and men. Very unfortunately, she had to retain, against Porter’s protest, a battery of short-range carronades with but six long 12-pounders. She was given the island of Fernando de Noronha, off Brazil, as a rendezvous. She was not to meet her consorts, but to have adventures of her own of a very remarkable character.

Bainbridge, touching at Fernando de Noronha, went into Bahia, Brazil, and found there a British sloop-of-war of the same force as the Hornet. Lawrence challenged her captain to a fight, pledging that the Constitution would not interfere. The challenge, however, was not accepted, among the reasons being that the Bonne Citoyenne had on board £500,000 in species. Bainbridge, leaving the Hornet to watch the British ship, went to sea. December 29th, being still near Bahia, he sighted two ships: one turned out to be the frigate Java; the other a captured ship, the William, in company. The latter was directed to go into Bahia and the Java stood toward the Constitution. The latter stood off to get clear of the land, in plain view, and thus get out of neutral waters. There was a mutual readiness to engage. The Java came down with a light free wind, furling her mainsail and royals. The Constitution, with royal yards aloft, and which she carried throughout the battle, was under about the same canvas. The firing began at 2:00 P.M., with a shot at long range from the Constitution, but the two ships quickly neared to pistol range. They approached so near that they were less than 600 feet apart. The Java was being so much cut up aloft that an attempt was made to board, but during this the Constitution poured in a most destructive raking fire (i. e., lengthwise of the enemy), bringing down the Java’s maintopmast and cutting away the foremast just under the foretop. The attempt to board failed, the ships fell apart and began anew as furiously as ever. Captain Lambert of the Java was killed and the ship continued to be fought gallantly by her first lieutenant, Chads, who was already wounded. But the British, with the wreck of the maintopmast with its hamper over the side, the foretopmast gone, and a little later the mizzenmast and what remained of the foremast, could do no more; the Java’s guns were completely silenced. At 4:05, the Java’s flag being shot away, Bainbridge thought she had struck. He then hauled by the wind and crossed the Java’s bows. The latter’s mainmast fell, leaving her a complete wreck. The Constitution went to windward, spent an hour in repairing the very moderate damages to her rigging, and then again stood down for her enemy, whose flag had again been shown. This, of course, meant nothing in such circumstances, and as soon as the Constitution stood across her bows it was struck.

The Constitution, after her repairs of an hour, was now again, in naval language, all ataunto. Her loss had been eight seamen and one marine killed; the fifth lieutenant, John C. Aylwin, and two seamen mortally wounded; Commodore Bainbridge and twelve seamen severely wounded; seven seamen and two marines slightly wounded; a total killed and wounded of thirty-four.

The Java had been cut to pieces; “she was a riddled and entirely dismasted hulk.” She lost her captain and five midshipmen killed or mortally wounded, and six officers and four midshipmen wounded. Her total loss was forty-eight killed and one hundred and two wounded.[31]

The two ships were not very unequal in force, the Constitution being about 10 per cent. stronger in weight of gunfire and with about 10 per cent. more men. The larger number of men aboard the Java than she usually carried was due to her having on board men for some other ships. Both ships were handled with remarkable skill and coolness, but the American gunnery had shown itself enormously superior. It had so wrecked the Java that Bainbridge, now 5,000 miles from home and on an unfriendly coast, gave up the idea of attempting to save the ship. He lay by for several days removing the wounded and saving the effects of the crew. The Java was then blown up, and the Constitution went into Bahia and paroled the Java’s officers and crew.

“Our gallant enemy,” reported Lieutenant Chads, “has treated us most generously,” and Lieutenant-General Hislop who with his staff were passengers in the Java for the East, presented Commodore Bainbridge with a very handsome sword as a token of gratitude for the kindness with which he had treated the prisoners.[32]

Bainbridge, his ship needing repairs after a long period of service which had begun before the war, sailed from Bahia on January 6, 1813, and reached Boston February 27th, having been absent 119 days. The Hornet had been left at Bahia observing the Bonne Citoyenne, but the arrival of the Montagu, 74, relieved the captain of the British sloop-of-war from risking his ship and treasure. The Hornet, on the Montagu’s arrival, put to sea late in the evening unmolested.

The war had now lasted six months, and instead of the little American navy being swept from the sea, it had been a David to smite a Goliath. The capture of three British frigates in the three successive combats stirred Britain to the quick. Said the Pilot of London: “Five hundred merchantmen [taken] and three frigates! Can this be true? Will the English people read this unmoved? Any man who foretold such disasters this day last year would have been treated as a madman or a traitor. He would have been told that ere seven months had gone the American flag would have been swept from the ocean, the American navy destroyed, and the maritime arsenals of the United States reduced to ashes. Yet not one of the American frigates has struck. They leave their ports when they choose, and return when it suits their convenience. They cross the Atlantic, they visit the West Indies, they come to the chops of the Channel, they parade along the coast of South America. Nothing chases them; nothing intercepts them—nay, nothing engages them but to yield in triumph.”[33]

CHAPTER XVI

The British force on our own coast was now, in 1813, much increased. Particular attention was paid to the approaches of New York and to the Chesapeake, which latter region was devastated. Destruction was carried on under the general orders of the British Admiralty to “destroy and lay waste all towns and districts of the United States found accessive to the attacks of the British armaments.” Hampton, in Virginia, was thus sacked with a brutality which even the very prejudiced British historian, James, called “revolting to human nature.”

On February 24th the Hornet, which we left taking leave of the Montagu, 74, at Bahia, was on January 24th off Demarara. A brig, the Espiegle, was inside the bar; another, standing in for the port, was the Peacock. She was ready to engage, and at 5:25 P.M. action opened; fourteen minutes later the Peacock was a prize and sinking. The two vessels were equal in size and nearly equal in men, the Hornet having aboard 135 to the Peacock’s 122. The Hornet was superior in so far as carrying 32-pound carronades to the Peacock’s 24’s; but weight of shot made no difference for the Peacock’s guns did scarcely any damage. Lawrence, overcrowded with prisoners, returned to the United States, anchoring at Holmes Hole on March 19th. Less than three months later he was to die a defeated man, aboard the Chesapeake, the victim of rashness and over-confidence.

The Chesapeake, throughout her career an ill-omened ship, had made a cruise under Captain Evans, leaving Boston December 13, 1812, and returning there April 9, 1813, having captured five merchantmen. The term of enlistment of the crew was up, and there being a difficulty over prize money, most of the men refused to enlist. Captain Evans on account of ill-health gave up the command, and Lawrence was appointed in his stead. He joined about the middle of May; he left Boston Harbor to fight the Shannon a fortnight later. Thus in two weeks he had to get new officers and a new crew together and prepare for sea. As for target practice, or for even the ordinary “shaking down,” there was no opportunity whatever. So new were some of the men to their ship “that the last draft that arrived still had their hammocks and bags lying in the boats stowed over the booms when the ship was captured.”[34] Privateering had now risen to such prominence that the same difficulties were experienced as to men as in the times of the Revolution, when it was often impossible to man the ships of the navy on account of the attractions which the other and freer service offered. As a consequence a large number of foreigners had to be taken, including some forty British and a number of Portuguese, these latter in the best circumstances being what one would not select from choice. In this case they were particularly troublesome, a Portuguese boatswain’s mate being the ringleader in what became almost a mutiny on account of a question of prize money. The first lieutenant, Page, was ill ashore; he was replaced by a young lieutenant, Ludlow, who had been third on the Chesapeake’s last cruise; the third and fourth were only midshipmen with acting appointments. To go to sea thus and fight a battle with a ship which had been in commission six and a half years, under a particularly able captain, was simple madness. But this, driven by over-confidence and perhaps an over-desire for distinction, is what Lawrence did.

Captain Philip Bowes Vere Broke, to give him his full name, had commissioned the Shannon, a new ship, on September 14, 1806. He was sui generis in his own service, for he carried on target practice twice a week, whereas the usual custom in the British navy of the time was once a year; his guns were furnished with sights, which was also unusual, and he was a kindly captain with the good-will of his crew, likewise unusual in those days of free use of the cat.

The two ships, without going into detail, were practically of equal force, each carrying 52 guns. The Chesapeake had 379 men; the Shannon 330, 30 of whom were new hands. The Shannon had been off Boston for some time, when on June 1st Broke sent a letter to Lawrence challenging him to meet the Shannon later at a given point. It is a great pity that this failed to reach Lawrence in time.

On May 31st the Chesapeake dropped down to the lower bay; the men were stationed at the guns and were exercised at the battery. On June 1st, a little after midday, she stood to sea under all sails, even to studding sails. The Shannon stood off shore under easy sail until about eighteen miles from Boston Light, where she awaited her foe, which had now also reduced her canvas.

There is no need to go into the manœuvres, which can be found in many books. Lawrence brought his ship so close that both vessels suffered severely. He was soon mortally wounded and the sailing master (who looked after the handling of the ship under the captain’s orders) was killed. The two most important officers were thus removed early in the action. A heavy explosion occurred in the Chesapeake, probably by the ignition of cartridges lying on the deck. At six o’clock the two ships came together, the Shannon’s anchor catching in one of the after ports of the Chesapeake. Broke now ordered “away boarders.” The Chesapeake’s first lieutenant, Ludlow, received a wound of which later he died. Cox, the third lieutenant, coming up from the main deck, was so unmanned by the conditions of things that he turned and ran below, an act for which he was later court-martialled and dismissed from the service. As Broke came aboard heading some twenty men, the only opposition that could be offered at the moment came from the nine marines, all that were left unhurt of forty-four. Their commander, Broom, and a corporal, were dead, and both sergeants were wounded. The only officer there at the moment was the chaplain, Livermore, who fired his pistol at Broke, and himself was severely wounded, in return, by a sword cut from Broke. The large number of mercenaries aboard had run below. Lieutenant George Budd, stationed on the main deck, now ran up, followed by some dozen men, and attacked the boarders, killing the purser, Aldham, and the captain’s clerk, Drum, but Budd was soon wounded and knocked down the main hatchway. The wounded Ludlow struggled to the spar deck, and received another wound. Broke himself showed brilliant courage in leading his men and was severely wounded. Just fifteen minutes after the action began, the Chesapeake’s colors were hauled down. “Of her 379 men, 61 were killed or mortally wounded, including her captain, first and fourth lieutenants, the lieutenant commanding the marines, the master, boatswain, and three midshipmen; 85 were wounded more or less severely, including both her other lieutenants, five midshipmen, and the chaplain; total, 148; the loss falling entirely upon the American portion of the crew. Of the Shannon’s men, 33 were killed outright or died of their wounds, including her first lieutenant, purser, captain’s clerk, and one midshipman, and 50 were wounded, including the captain and boatswain; total, 83.”[35]

The Chesapeake was taken to Halifax. Lawrence and Ludlow were buried there with every honor. The remains of the former were later taken to New York, where in the churchyard of old Trinity they now lie. Lawrence’s dying words: “Don’t give up the ship,” were later blazoned on a flag flown by Perry on Lake Erie, where the dead hero was to have his revenge, for hero he was, however mistaken in judgment. His fatal action was the ignoring of the value of preparation in war. Discipline and training are as necessary as valor, an axiom which our people are only too slow to learn.

The result caused immense rejoicing in England. It is the only naval action of the war which to-day receives recognition there, and I doubt if the British people in general, of the present, know of any other. And while treating of it, there is a persistent unfairness in ignoring conditions of the Chesapeake; even in articles which were written in 1913, the hundredth year later, by historians from whom fairness might be expected, no mention was made of them. It is left to another and fairer foreigner, a Frenchman, Admiral Jurien de la Gravière, the most distinguished writer on naval affairs of his nation, to tell the truth, when he said: “Fortune was not fickle, she was merely logical.”

A little later there was an action which was really discreditable to us: that of the Argus, a brig of 298 tons and 10 guns, against the British Pelican, of 467 tons and 11 guns. The Argus had been cruising in the English Channel “capturing and burning ship after ship and creating the greatest consternation among the London merchants.” On August 13th she had captured a brig laden with wine from Oporto, a success which was to be apparently her undoing. Next day she met the Pelican. The Argus’s captain, Allen, was killed early in the action, as were also two midshipmen; her first lieutenant was wounded. The odds were against her, but not to such degree as to account for the too slight resistance later in the action. It is not unlikely, as has been said by competent historians, that the captured port had much to do with this. The results of such actions had previously been so markedly different that there is reason to suspect this. The capture of the Argus was soon offset by that of the British brig Boxer, of 66 men and 14 guns, by the Enterprise, of 104 men and 16 guns. Captain Blyth of the Boxer was killed early in the action, as was also Lieutenant Burrows of the Enterprise. The few remaining American brigs disappeared by capture by much superior forces, most of them by squadrons from which there was no escape.

There had undoubtedly by this time been a falling off in the character of the American crews. The Atlantic now swarmed with privateers which, as in our Revolution, attracted the best men; the navy thus labored under a severe handicap. The privateers did immense damage to British commerce and caused the British merchant to long for peace, but they damaged our real naval interests. This damage would have been more real had not the British naval power now begun to tell in blockade, which became one of absolute strictness. The United States and the captured Macedonian, which had been repaired and commissioned at New York, got to New London by way of Hell Gate, but were so strictly watched that they remained there for the rest of the war. Naval action was now, perforce, to be confined almost entirely to the lakes, where it was momentous in character. The fights on the ocean were but exhibitions of ability and prowess; those on the lakes were vital to the outcome of the war.

CHAPTER XVII

Our army efforts on the frontier of Canada had been great failures. In the very beginning of the war General William Hull, Governor of Michigan, had been obliged to surrender his small army at Detroit for the simple reason that he was faced by starvation. He was tried and sentenced to death, but was reprieved by President Madison. But the fault was not wholly Hull’s. It was, along with Hull’s age and inefficiency, the ineptitude of our own administrative and legislative authorities in Washington. Our northern defence was thus to fall upon the navy.

There was in 1813 no vessel of war on Lake Erie, and but one, the Oneida, of 116 tons, built four years before the war, on Ontario. The British had long had a force on this lake, and in 1812 there were six vessels, carrying in all about 80 guns; the largest was the Royal George, of 22. Had the British commander been competent he could easily have controlled the lake. He attacked Sackett’s Harbor in July, but Lieutenant Woolsey, commanding the Oneida, landed his guns, and with the batteries thus formed beat him off. Commodore Isaac Chauncey was now, in August, 1812, sent to command both lakes. Guns, officers, shipwrights, and stores were transported from New York, and by November a small fleet was ready. Before this, however, Lieutenant L. D. Elliot, who had been sent to Buffalo to look after Lake Erie, had made a brilliant expedition against the Detroit, which had been surrendered at the time of Hull’s disaster, and another vessel, the Caledonia. Both were captured on the Canada side of the lake at Fort Erie by boarding, a small army detachment assisting. The Detroit was burned.

On November 8th Chauncey made a spirited attack on the harbor of Kingston, and kept up his activities until navigation was closed by ice early in December. The winter was spent in building. A new ship, however, named the Madison, had already (November 24th) been launched at Sackett’s Harbor. Nine weeks before her timber had stood in the forest.

By the opening of navigation in 1813 each combatant had a considerable fleet on Lake Ontario, though nearly all were but mere gunboats. The British, recognizing the immense importance of control of the lakes, had selected an able officer, Sir James L. Yeo, to command. The outcome of the season’s operations, however, for the detail of which one should look to larger books, was that the Americans were left in naval control. In the course of the summer the hostile squadrons were three times engaged. Chauncey’s courage and spirit have received, and deserved, high praise for “the rapidity and decision with which he created a force, as it might be in a wilderness, the professional resources which he discovered in attaining this great end, and the combined gallantry and prudence with which he manœuvred before the enemy ... while the intrepidity with which he carried his own ship into action off York has always been a subject of honest exultation in the service to which he belongs.” This high praise from one so able to judge as Fenimore Cooper, himself in early life a naval officer, holds to this day.

What Chauncey did on Lake Ontario, Perry was to do, and much more, on Erie. He had been reared in Preble’s school at Tripoli, but by 1806 he was at Newport superintending the building of some of Jefferson’s absurd gunboats, and to duty such as this he was kept for six years, an inglorious inaction for such a spirit. No attention was paid by a nerveless Secretary of the Navy for his application for the lakes until it was pressed by Chauncey, on which he was ordered to report at Sackett’s Harbor with his best men. Receiving his orders on February 17th, fifty men were on their way before sunset; a hundred more followed, and Perry himself on the 22d. He reached Sackett’s Harbor on March 3d, and, after two weeks, was ordered to Erie. Sailing-master Dobbins and Noah Brown, master shipwright, already had three gunboats well under way and keels laid for two brigs. The timber for their construction had been but a few days before trees in the forest.[36] But nothing had been provided in the way of armament, cordage, stores, men, or officers. These dribbled in through the appeals and constant personal work of Perry. In five months he had his little fleet fairly ready. On August 10th he went in search of the British. He had the brigs Lawrence and Niagara, of 20 guns each, and eight schooners carrying, one three, the others two and one guns each. The British commodore, Barclay, had the ship Detroit, of 19 guns; the Queen Charlotte, of 17; the Lady Prevost, a schooner of 13, and three small craft of 10, 3, and 1. Perry had in all 416 men fit for duty; Barclay 440. On September 10th they met.

The action began at 11:45. How Perry fought his ship unsupported by the Niagara until the Lawrence was a wreck and but 20 of his 100 men were left unhurt; how he fired himself the last heavy gun from his ship with the help of the purser and chaplain, and then jumped into a small boat, pulled by his brother and four seamen, boarded the Niagara, took personal command, and carried her to victory, make a story of courage and resource unsurpassed in any of the sea fights of history. Never did one man more personify a victory.

The British flag was struck at 3:00 P.M., after a most gallant struggle. Twenty-nine Americans were killed or mortally wounded and 94 wounded. The British lost 41 killed and 94 wounded. The moral effect throughout the country, which covered itself with bonfires and rejoicings, was almost equal to that of the victory of the Constitution. But besides this there was the great concrete result of the evacuation of Detroit and Michigan by the British and their occupancy by the Americans. To Perry’s victory and Chauncey’s success on Lake Ontario is due that we preserved our northwestern frontier in the coming peace.

The winter of 1813-1814 was passed on Lake Ontario by both antagonists in building ships for the next campaign. The largest put afloat at Sackett’s Harbor by the Americans, the arming and equipping of which was under enormous difficulties of transportation through the then almost roadless forest, was the Superior, of 62 guns; but the British built a much larger, the St. Lawrence, of 112 guns. But it was not until October 15th that she was in service, too late in the season to affect the situation. Had the war continued, the lakes would have been the scene of naval operations greater than any carried on by us upon the sea, aided curiously enough by the British blockade of our coast, which caused the transfer to the lakes of the crews of the blockaded frigates. We shall hear a little later of still another momentous battle on our inland waters. For the moment we turn again to the ocean.

It may be remembered that the Essex, under Captain David Porter, was to form part of Bainbridge’s command when the latter left Boston October 26, 1812, with the Hornet. Porter was then in Delaware River. He left on October 28th, but when he reached the rendezvous appointed his consorts had gone. On his way thither a British brig transport, the Nocton, was captured, with $55,000 in specie, which in the circumstances to come was to be a most valuable aid. The prize was sent with a crew of seventeen men to the United States, but was overhauled by a frigate and captured after passing Bermuda. Porter continued on to the second rendezvous off Cape Frio, where he arrived December 25th, four days before the capture of the Java. Porter remained on the Brazilian coast until near the end of January, 1813, when, hearing no news of his consorts, he started for the Pacific, where for a full year he was to cruise at will, capturing nearly every British whaler in that ocean, arming some, destroying others, and recapturing and protecting our own. British commerce was swept from what was then called the South Sea. The story of this cruise in which the captain of the Essex showed a surpassing boldness, energy, and resource is one of the most romantic in history.

After nearly a year of continuous success in crippling the enemy’s commerce, during which the Essex supported herself and armed her consorts entirely from her prizes, Porter was desirous of meeting a British man-of-war, and hearing of the dispatch of the frigate Phoebe, of 36 guns, to the Pacific, he went to Valparaiso to await her coming. But instead of one ship came two, the Cherub accompanying the former. This cruising in couples was the outcome of one of the most remarkable orders ever issued by the British Admiralty; its issuance was the highest compliment ever paid any navy. The order in full cannot be omitted, it read:

“My Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty having received intelligence that several American ships-of-war are now at sea, I have their lordships’ commands to acquaint you therewith, and that they do not conceive that any of his Majesty’s frigates should attempt to engage, single-handed, the larger class of American ships, which, though maybe called frigates, are of a size, complement, and weight of metal much beyond that class and more resembling line-of-battle ships.

“In the event of one of his Majesty’s frigates under your orders falling in with one of these ships, his captain should endeavor in the first instance to secure the retreat of his Majesty’s ship; but if he finds that he has an advantage in sailing, he should endeavor to manœuvre, and keeping company with her, without coming to action, in the hope of falling in with some other of his Majesty’s ships, with whose assistance the enemy might be attacked with a reasonable hope of success.

“It is their lordships’ further directions that you make this known as soon as possible to the several captains commanding his Majesty’s ships.”[37]

There is a delightfully ingenuous recognition of the alarm that had been inspired by our victories in the hope that we might be attacked by two together, “with a reasonable hope of success.” It was absurd to compare our frigates with line-of-battle ships. They were undoubtedly heavier than the usual frigate, though some then in the British navy were quite as powerful. But the fact that our ships were as good as any of their class and better than most was all the more to the credit of their designers. But the Constitution, one of our best, was “but very little more than one half the force of one of the smallest true liners England possessed!”[38]