' ^'^ " -*^ ■.^^^^^' V.^' .C^^V^ "^..^'^ -^^ « v y"^^ "7" missing. Killed 23 25 reached shore. 255 255 The explanation probably is that Hilyar's "wounded" do 28 Naval War of 1812 very candid testimony to the defence of the Essex having been effective enough to at one time render the result doubtful, saying : "Our first attack . . . produced no visible effect. Our second . . . was not more successful; and having lost the use of our main-sail, jib, and main-stay, appearances looked a little inauspicious." Throughout the war no ship was so desperately defended as the Essex, taking into account the frightful odds against which she fought, which always enhances the merit of a defence. The Lawrence, which suffered even more, was backed by a fleet; the Frolic was overcome by an equal foe; and the Reindeer fought at far less of a disadvantage, and suffered less. None of the frigates, British or American, were defended with anything Kke the resolution she displayed. But it is perhaps permissible to inquire whether not include Porter's "27 slightly wounded," and that his "161 prisoners" include Porter's "25 who reached shore," and his "25 who reached shore" comes under Porter's "31 missing." This would make the accounts nearly tally. At any rate in Porter's book are to be found the names of all his killed, wounded, and missing; and their relatives received pensions from the American Government, which, if the returns were false, would certainly have been a most elaborate piece of deception. It is far more likely that Hilyar was mistaken; or he may have counted in the Essex Junior's crew, which would entirely account for the discrepancies. In any event it must be remembered that he makes the American killed and wounded iii (Porter, 124), and not 6g, as James says. The latter's statement is wilfully false, as he had seen Hil- yar 's letter. On the Ocean 29 Porter's course, after the accident to his top-mast occurred, was altogether the best that could have been taken. On such a question no opinion could have been better than Farragut's, although of course his judgment was ex post facto, as he was very young at the time of the fight. "In the first place, I consider our original and greatest error was in attempting to regain the an- chorage; being greatly superior in sailing powers we should have borne up and run before the wind. If we had come in contact with the Phoebe we should have carried her by boarding; if she avoided us, as she might have done by her greater ability to manoeuvre, then we should have taken her fire and passed on, leaving both vessels behind until we had replaced our top-mast, by which time they would have been separated, as unless they did so it would have been no chase, the Cherub being a dull sailer. "Secondly, when it was apparent to everybody that we had no chance of success under the circum- stances, the ship should have been run ashore, throwing her broadside to the beach to prevent raking, and fought as long as was consistent with humanity, and then set on fire. But having deter- mined upon anchoring we should have bent a spring on to the ring of the anchor, instead of to the cable, where it was exposed, and could be shot away as fast as put on." 30 Naval War of 1812 But it must be remembered that when Porter de- cided to anchor near shore, in neutral water, he could not anticipate Hilyar's deliberate and treach- erous breach of faith. I do not allude to the mere disregard of neutrality. Whatever international moralists may say, such disregard is a mere ques- tion of expediency. If the benefits to be gained by attacking a hostile ship in neutral waters are such as to counterbalance the risk of incurring the enmity of the neutral power, why then the attack ought to be made. Had Hilyar, when he first made his ap- pearance off Valparaiso, sailed in with his two ships, the men at quarters and guns out, and at once at- tacked Porter, considering the destruction of the Essex as outweighing the insult to Chili, why his behavior would have been perfectly justifiable. In fact this is unquestionably what he intended to do; but he suddenly found himself in such a position, that In the event of hostilities, his ship would be the captured one, and he owed his escape purely to Porter's over-forbearance, under great provocation. Then he gave his word to Porter that he would not infringe on the neutrality; and he never dared to break it, until he saw Porter was disabled and almost helpless ! This may seem strong language to use about a British officer, but it is justly strong. Exactly as any outsider must consider Warrington's attack on the British brig Nautilus in 181 5 as a On the Ocean 31 piece of needless cruelty ; so any outsider must con- sider Hilyar as having most treacherously broken faith with Porter. After the fight Hilyar behaved most kindly and courteously to the prisoners; and, as already said, he fought his ship most ably, for it would have been quixotic to a degree to forego his advantages. But previous to the battle his conduct had been over- cautious. It was to be expected that the Essex would make her escape as soon as practicable, and so he should have used every effort to bring her to action. Instead of this he always declined the fight when alone ; and he owed his ultimate success to the fact that the Essex instead of escaping, as she could several times have done, stayed, hoping to bring the Phoebe to action single-handed. It must be remem- bered that the Essex was almost as weak compared to the Phoebe as the Cherub was compared to the Essex. The latter was just about midway between the British ships, as may be seen by the following comparison. In the action the Essex fought all six of her long 12's, and the Cherub both her long 9's, instead of the corresponding broadside carronades which the ships regularly used. This gives the Es- sex a better armament than she would have had fighting her guns as they were regularly used ; but it can be seen how great the inequality still was. It must also be kept in mind, that while in the bat- 32 Naval War of 1812 ties between the American 44's and British 38's, the short weight 24 pounders of the former had in reahty no greater range or accuracy than the full weight i8's of their opponents, in this case the Phoebe's full weight i8's had a very much greater range and accuracy than the short weight 12's of the Essex. Men. Phahe, 330 COMPARATIVE FORCE. Broadside Guns. Weight. 13 long i8's I " 12 I " 9 7 short 32 s • " 18 23 guns. 497 lbs. 234 Ihs. I? " 9 " 224 " 18 " Cherub, i8o J long 9's 7 short i8's 9 " 3z's 13 gnns. 500 men, 36 gntis. 18 lbs. 288 " 342 lbs. Total ('5S) (18) (334) 839 lbs., metal. )273 long, f I 566 short, f Buex. 255 6 long 12's 17 short 32's 66 lbs, 504 bs. ( Taking 7 per cent off for short weight. 255 men, 23 guns. 570 lbs. All accounts agree as to the armament of the Essex. I have taken that of the Phoebe and Cherub from James ; but Captain Porter's official letter, and all the other American accounts make the Phoebe's broadside 15 long iS's and 8 short 32's, and give the Cherub, in all, 18 short 32's, 8 short 24's, and two long nines. This would make their broadside 904 lbs., 288 long, 616 short. I would have no On the Ocean 23 doubt that the American accounts were right if the question rested solely on James' veracity; but he probably took his figures from official sources. At any rate, remembering the difference between long guns and carronades, it appears that the Essex was really nearly intermediate in force between the Phoebe and the Cherub. The battle being fought, with a very trifling exception, at long range, it was in reality a conflict between a crippled ship throw- ing a broadside of 66 lbs. of metal, and two ships throwing 273 lbs., who by their ability to manoeu- vre could choose positions where they could act with full effect, while their antagonist could not return a shot. Contemporary history does not af- ford a single instance of so determined a defence against such frightful odds. The official letters of Captains Hilyar and Porter agree substantially in all respects ; the details of the fight, as seen in the Essex, are found in the "Life of Farragut." But, although the British captain does full justice to his foe, British historians have universally tried to belittle Porter's conduct. It is much to be regretted that we have no British account worth paying attention to of the proceedings before the fight, when the Phoebe declined single combat with the Essex, James, of course, states that the Phoebe did not decline it, but he gives no authority, and his unsupported assertion would be valueless 34 Naval War of 1812 even if uncontradicted. His account of the action is grossly inaccurate as he has inexcusably garbled Hilyar's report. One instance of this I have already mentioned, as regards Hilyar's account of Porter's loss. Again, Hilyar distinctly states that the Essex was tvi^ice on fire, yet James (p. 418) utterly denies this, thereby impliedly accusing the British captain of falsehood. There is really no need of the corrob- oration of Porter's letter, but he has it most fully in the "Life of Farragut," p. 37 : "The men came rushing up from belov^, many with their clothes burning, which were torn from them as quickly as possible, and those for whom this could not be done were told to jump overboard and quench the flames. . . . One man swam to shore with scarcely a square inch of his body which had not been burned, and, although he was deranged for some days, he ultimately recovered, and afterward served with me in the West Indies." The third unfounded state- ment in James' account is that buckets of spirits were found in all parts of the main deck of the Essex, and that most of the prisoners were drunk. No au- thority is cited for this, and there is not a shadow of truth in it. He ends by stating that "few even in his own country will venture to speak well of Captain David Porter." After these various para- graphs we are certainly justified in rejecting James' account in toto. An occasional mistake is perfectly On the Ocean ss excusable, and gross ignorance of a good many facts does not invalidate a man's testimony with regard to some others with which he is acquainted ; but a wilful and systematic perversion of the truth in a number of cases throws a very strong doubt on a historian's remaining statements, unless they are supported by unquestionable authority. But if British historians have generally given Por- ter much less than his due, by omitting all reference to the inferiority of his guns, his lost top-mast, etc., it is no worse than Americans have done in similar cases. The latter, for example, will make great allowances in the case of the Essex for her having carronades only, but utterly fail to allude to the Cyane and Levant as having suffered under the same disadvantage. They should remember that the rules cut both ways. The Essex having suffered chiefly above the wa- ter-line, she was repaired sufficiently in Valparaiso to enable her to make the voyage to England, where she was added to the British navy. The Essex ^Junior was disarmed and the American prisoners embarked in her for New York, on parole. But Lieutenant McKnight, Chaplain Adams, Midship- man Lyman, and 1 1 seamen were exchanged on the spot for some of the British prisoners on board the Essex Junior. McKnight and Lyman accompanied the Phoebe to Rio Janeiro, where they embarked on 3^ Naval War of 1812 a Swedish vessel, were taken out of her by the Wasp, Captain Blakely, and were lost with the rest of the crew of that vessel. The others reached New York in safety. Of the prizes made by the Essex, some were burnt or sunk by the Americans, and some retaken by the British. And so, after nearly two years' uninterrupted success, the career of the Essex terminated amid disasters of all kinds. But at least her officers and crew could reflect that they had afforded an example of courage in adversity that it would be difficult to match elsewhere. The first of the new heavy sloops of war that got to sea was the Frolic, Master-Commandant Joseph Bainbridge, which put out early in February. Shortly afterward she encountered a large Cartha- ginian privateer, which refused to surrender and was sunk by a broadside, nearly a hundred of her crew being drowned. Before daylight on the 20th of April, lat. 24° 12' N., long. 81° 25' W., she felt in with the British 36-gun frigate Orpheus, Capt. Pigot, and the 12-gun schooner Shelburne, Lieut. Hope, both to leeward. The schooner soon weath- ered the Frolic, but of course was afraid to close, and the American sloop continued beating to wind- ward, in the effort to escape, for nearly 13 hours; the water was started, the anchors cut away, and finally the guns thrown overboard — a measure by On the Ocean 37 means of which both the Hornet, the Rattlesnake, and the Adams succeeded in escaping under similar circumstances, — but all was of no avail, and she was finally captured. The court of inquiry honor- ably acquitted both officers and crew. As was to be expected James considers the surrender a dis- graceful one, because the guns were thrown over- board. As I have said, this was a measure which had proved successful in several cases of a like nat- ure; the criticism is a piece of petty meanness. Fortunately we have Admiral Codrington's dictum on the surrender ("Memoirs," Vol. I, p. 310), which he evidently considered as perfectly honorable. A sister ship to the Frolic, the Peacock, Capt. Lewis Warrington, sailed from New York on March 12, and cruised southward ; on the 28th of April, at seven in the morning, lat. 17° 47' N., long. 80° 7' W., several sail were made to windward.^^ These were a small convoy of merchantmen, bound for the Bermudas, under the protection of the i8-gun brig-sloop Epervier, Capt. Wales, 5 days out of Havana, and with $118,000 in specie on board.^^ The Epervier when discovered was steering north by east, the wind being from the eastward; soon afterward the wind veered gradually round to the southward, and the Epervier hauled up close on the ^* Official letter of Captain Warrington, April 29, 18 14. '* James, vi, 424. 38 Naval War of 1812 port tack, while the convoy made all sail away, and the Peacock came down with the wind on her star- board quarter. At 10 a.m. the vessels were within gunshot, and the Peacock edged away to get in a raking broadside, but the Eperuier frustrated this by putting her helm up until close on her adversary's Hf f>e/!coeif UM6, bow, when she rounded to and fired her starboard guns, receiving in return the starboard broadside of the Peacock at 10.20 a.m. These first broadsides took effect aloft, the brig being partially dismantled, while the Peacock's fore-yard was totally disabled by two round shot in the starboard quarter, which On the Ocean 39 deprived the ship of the use of her fore-sail and fore-top-sail, and compelled her to run large. How- ever, the Epenner eased away^"^ when abaft her foe's beam, and ran off alongside of her (using her port guns, while the American still had the starboard battery engaged) at 10.35. The Peacock's fire was now very hot, and directed chiefly at her adversary's hull, on which it told heavily, while she did not suffer at all in return. The Epei'vier coming up into the wind, owing somewhat to the loss of head-sail, Capt. Wales called his crew aft to try boarding, but they refused, saying "she's too heavy for us,"^^ and then at 11.05 the colors were hauled down. Except the injury to her fore-yard, the Peacock's damages were confined to the loss of a few top-mast and top-gallant backstays, and some shot-holes through her sails. Of her crew, consisting, all told, of 166 men and boys,^® only two were wounded, both slightly. The Epervier, on the other hand, had 45 shot-holes in her hull, 5 feet of water in her hold, main-top-mast over the side, main-mast nearly in two, main-boom shot away, bowsprit wounded se- verely, and most of the fore rigging and stays shot " According to some accounts she at this time tacked. '* James, "Naval Occurrences," p. 243. 29"Niles' Register," vi, 196, says only 160; the above is taken from Warrington's letter of June i, preserved with the other manuscript letters in the Naval Archives. The crew contained about ten boys, was not composed of picked men, and did not number 185 — vide James. 40 Naval War of 1812 away; and of her crew of 128 men (according to the list of prisoners given by Captain Warrington; James says 118, but he is not backed up by any offi- cial report) 9 were killed and mortally wounded, and 14 severely and slightly wounded. Instead of two long sixes for bow-chasers and a shifting car- ronade, she had two 18-pound carronades (accord- ing to the American prize-lists ;3^ Capt. Warring- ton says 32's). Otherwise she was armed as usual. She was, like the rest of her kind, very "tubby," being as broad as the Peacock, though 10 feet short- er on deck. Allowing as usual, 7 per cent for short weight of the American shot, we get the COMPARATIVE FORCE Peacock Epervier No. Broadside Weight Tons Guns Metal 509 11 315 477 9 274 Crew 166 128 Loss 2 23 That is, the relative force being as 12 is to 10, the relative execution done was as 12 is to i, and the Epervier surrendered before she had lost a fifth of her crew. The case of the Epervier closely re- sembles that of the Argus. In both cases the officers behaved finely ; in both cases, too, the victorious foe was heavier, in about the same proportion, while neither the crew of the 'Argus, nor the crew of the Epervier fought with the determined bravery dis- 30 American State Papers, vol. xiv, p. 427. On the Ocean 41 played by the combatants in almost every other struggle of the war. But it must be added that the Epervier did worse than the Argus, and the Peacock (American) better than the Pelican. The gunnery of the Epervier was extraordinarily poor ; "the most disgraceful part of the affair was that our ship was cut to pieces and the enemy hardly scratched." ^^ James states that after the first two or three broad- sides several carronades became unshipped, and that the others were dismounted by the fire of the Pea- cock; that the men had not been exercised at the guns; and, most important of all, that the crew (which contained "several foreigners," but was chiefly British; as the Argus' was chiefly American) was disgracefully bad. The Peacock, on the con- trary, showed skilful seamanship as well as excellent gunnery. In 45 minutes after the fight was over the fore-yard had been sent down and fished, the fore-sail set up, and everything in complete order again f^ the prize was got in sailing order by dark, though great exertions had to be made to prevent her sinking. Mr. Nicholson, first of the Peacock, was put in charge as prize-master. The next day the two vessels were abreast of Amelia Island, when two frigates were discovered in the north, to lee- ward. Capt. Warrington at once directed the prize 3' "Memoirs of Admiral Codrington," i, 322. ^'^ Letter of Captain Warrington, April 29, 1814. 42 Naval War of 1812 to proceed to St. Mary's, while he separated and made sail on a wind to the south, intending to draw the frigates after him, as he was confident that the Peacock, a very fast vessel, could outsail them.^^ The plan succeeded perfectly, the brig reaching Sa- vannah on the first of May, and the ship three days afterward. The Epervier was purchased for the U. S. navy, under the same name and rate. The Peacock sailed again on June 4th,^^ gc^ing first northward to the Grand Banks, then to the Azores : then she stationed herself in the mouth of the Irish Channel, and afterward cruised off Cork, the mouth of the Shannon, and the north of Ireland, capturing several very valuable prizes and creating great con- sternation. She then changed her station, to elude the numerous vessels that had been sent after her, and sailed southward, off Cape Ortegal, Cape Finis- terre, and finally among the Barbadoes, reaching New York, Oct. 29th. During this cruise she en- countered no war vessel smaller than a frigate ; but captured 14 sail of merchant-men, some containing valuable cargoes, and manned by 148 men. On April 29th, H.M.S. schooner Ballahou, 6, Lieut. King, while cruising off the American coast was captured by the Perry, privateer, a much heav- ier vessel, after an action of 10 minutes' duration. *^ Letter of Captain Warrington, May 4, 1814. 2* Ibid., October 30, 1814. On the Ocean 43 The general peace prevailing in Europe allowed the British to turn their energies altogether to America; and in no place was this increased vigor so much felt as in Chesapeake Bay, where a great number of line-of-battle ships, frigates, sloops, and transports had assembled, in preparation for the assault on Washington and Baltimore. The de- fence of these waters was confided to Capt. Joshua Barney,^^ with a flotilla of gunboats. These con- sisted of three or four sloops and schooners, but mainly of barges, which were often smaller than the ship's boats that were sent against them. These gunboats were manned by from 20 to 40 men each, and each carried, according to its size, one or two long 24, 18, or i2-pounders. They were bad craft at best ; and, in addition, it is difficult to believe that they were handled to the fullest advantage. On June ist Commodore Barney, with the block sloop Scorpion and 14 smaller "gunboats," chiefly row galleys, passed the mouth of the Patuxent, and chased the British schooner St. Lazvrence and seven boats, under Captain Barrie, until they took refuge with the Dragon, 74, which in turn chased Barney's flotilla into the Patuxent, where she blockaded it in company with the Albion, 74. They were after- '^ He was born at Baltimore, July 6, 1759; James, with habitual accuracy, calls him an Irishman. He makes De- catur, by the way, commit the geographical solecism of being born in "Maryland, Virginia." 44 Naval War of 1812 ward joined by the Loire, 38, Narcissus, 32, and Jasseur, 18, and Commodore Barney moved two miles up St. Leonard's Creek, while the frigates and sloop blockaded its mouth. A deadlock now ensued ; the gunboats were afraid to attack the ships, and the ships' boats were just as afraid of the gun- boats. On the 8th, 9th, and nth skirmishes occurred; and on each occasion the British boats came up till they caught sight of Barney's flotilla, and were promptly chased off by the latter, which, however, took good care not to meddle with the larger ves- sels. Finally, Colonel Wadsworth, of the artillery, with two long i8-pounders, assisted by the marines, under Captain Miller, and a few regulars, offered to cooperate from the shore while Barney assailed the two frigates with the flotilla. On the 26th the joint attack took place most successfully ; the Loire and Narcissus were driven off, although not much damaged, and the flotilla rowed out in triumph, with a loss of but 4 killed and 7 wounded. But in spite of this small success, which was mainly due to Col- onel Wadsworth, Commodore Barney made no more attempts with his gunboats. The bravery and skill which the flotilla men showed at Bladensburg prove conclusively that their ill success on the water was due to the craft they were in, and not to any failing of the men. At the same period the French On the Ocean 45 gunboats were even more unsuccessful, but the Danes certainly did very well with theirs. Barney's flotilla in the Patuxent remained quiet until August 22d, and then was burned when the British advanced on Washington. The history of this advance, as well as of the unsuccessful one on Baltimore, concerns less the American than the Brit- ish navy, and will be but briefly alluded to here. On August 20th Major-General Ross and Rear-Ad- miral Cockburn, with about 5,000 soldiers and ma- rines, moved on Washington by land; while a squadron, composed of the Seahorse, 38, Eiiryalus, 2,6, bombs. Devastation, ^tna, and Meteor, and rocket-ship Erchiis, under Captain James Alexander Gordon, moved up the Potomac to attack Fort Washington, near Alexandria ; and Sir Peter Park- er, in the Menelaus, 38, was sent "to create a diver- sion" above Baltimore. Sir Peter's "diversion" turned out most unfortunately for him : for, having landed to attack 120 Maryland militia, under Col- onel Reade, he lost his own life, while fifty of his followers were placed hors de combat and the re- mainder chased back to the ship by the victors, who had but three wounded. The American army, which was to oppose Ross and Cockburn, consisted of some seven thousand militia, who fled so quickly that only about 1,500 British had time to become engaged. The fight was 46 Naval War of 1812 really between these 1,500 British regulars and the American flotilla men. These consisted of 78 ma- rines, under Captain Miller, and 370 sailors, some of whom served under Captain Barney, who had a battery of two i8's and three 12's, while the others were armed with muskets and pikes and acted with the marines. Both sailors and marines did nobly, inflicting most of the loss the British suffered, which amounted to 256 men, and in return lost over a hun- dred of their own men, including the two captains, who were wounded and captured, with the guns.^^ Ross took Washington and burned the public build- ings; and the panic-struck Americans foolishly burned the Columbia, 44, and Argus, 18, which were nearly ready for service. Captain Gordon's attack on Fort Washington was conducted with great skill and success. Fort Wash- ington was abandoned as soon as fired upon, and the city of Alexandria surrendered upon most humiliat- ing conditions. Captain Gordon was now joined by the Fairy, 18, Captain Baker, who brought him orders to return from Vice- Admiral Cochrane; and the squadron began to work down the river, which was very difficult to navigate. Commodore Rod- gers, with some of the crew of the two 44's, Guer- '* The optimistic Cooper thinks that two regular regiments would have given the Americans this battle — which is open to doubt. On the Ocean 47 riere and Java, tried to bar their progress, but had not sufficient means. On September ist an attempt was made to destroy the Devastation by fire-ships, but it failed; on the 4th the attempt was repeated by Commodore Rodgers, with a party of some forty men, but they were driven off and attacked by the British boats, under Captain Baker, who in turn was repulsed with the loss of his second lieutenant killed, and some twenty-five men killed or wounded. The squadron also had to pass and silence a battery of light field-pieces on the 5th, where they suffered enough to raise their total loss to seven killed and thirty-five wounded. Gordon's inland expedition was thus concluded most successfully, at a very trivial cost ; it was a most venturesome feat, reflect- ing great honor on the captains and crews engaged in it. Baltimore was threatened actively by sea and land early in September. On the 13th an indecisive con- flict took place between the British regulars and American militia, in which the former came off with the honor, and the latter with the profit. The regu- lars held the field, losing 350 men, including Gen- eral Ross; the militia retreated in fair order with a loss of but 200. The water attack was also unsuc- cessful. At 5 A.M. on the 13th the bomb vessels Meteor, ^fna. Terror, Volcano, and Devastation, the rocket-ship Erebus, and the frigates Severn, 48 Naval War of 1812 Euryalus, Havannah, and Hehrus opened on Fort McHenry, some of the other fortifications being oc- casionally fired at. A furious but harmless cannon- ade was kept up between the forts and ships until 7 A.M. on the 14th, when the British fleet and army retired. I have related these events out of their natural order because they really had very little to do with our navy, and yet it is necessary to mention them in order to give an idea of the course of events. The British and American accounts of the various gun- boat attacks differ widely ; but it is very certain that the gunboats accomplished little or nothing of im- portance. On the other hand, their loss amounted to nothing, for many of those that were sunk were afterward raised, and the total tonnage of those de- stroyed would not much exceed that of the British barges captured by them from time to time or de- stroyed by the land batteries. The purchased brig Rattlesnake, 16, had been cruising in the Atlantic with a good deal of success ; but in lat. 40° N., long. 33° W., was chased by a frigate from which Lieutenant Renshaw, the brig's commander, managed to escape only by throwing overboard all his guns except two long nines; and on June 22d he was captured by the Leander, 50, Captain Sir George Ralph Collier, K.C.B. On the Ocean 49 The third of the new sloops to get to sea was the Wasp, 22, Captain Johnston Blakely, which left Portsmouth on May first, with a very fine crew of 173 men, almost exclusively New Englanders; there was said not to have been a single foreign seaman on board. It is, at all events, certain that during the whole war no vessel was ever better manned and commanded than this daring and resolute cruiser. The Wasp slipped unperceived through the blockad- ing frigates, and ran into the mouth of the English Channel, right in the thick of the English cruisers; here she remained several weeks, burning and scut- tling many ships. Finally, on June 28th, at 4 a.m., in lat 48° 36' N., long. 11° 15' W.,^'^ while in chase of two merchantmen, a sail was made on the weath- er-beam. This was the British brig-sloop Reindeer, 18, Captain William Manners,^^ with a crew of 118, as brave men as ever sailed or fought on the narrow seas. Like the Peacock (British) the Reindeer was only armed with 24-pounders, and Captain Manners must have known well that he was to do battle with a foe heavier than himself; but there was no more gallant seaman in the whole British navy, fertile as it was in men who cared but little for odds of size or strength. As the day broke, the Reindeer made sail for the Wasp, then lying in the west-southwest. ^' Letter of Captain Blakely, July 8, 1814. ^^ James, vi, 429. Vol. X.— C 50 Naval War of 1812 The sky was overcast with clouds, and the smoothness of the sea was hardly disturbed by the light breeze that blew out of the northeast. Cap- tain Blakely hauled up and stood for his antagonist, as the latter came slowly down with the wind near- ly aft, and so light was the weather that the vessels kept almost on even keels. It was not till quarter past one that the Wasp's drum rolled out its loud challenge as it beat to quarters, and a few minutes afterward the ship put about and stood for the foe, thinking to weather him; but at 1.50 the brig also tacked and stood away, each of the cool and skilful captains being bent on keeping the weather-gage. At half past two the Reindeer again tacked, and, tak- ing in her stay-sails, stood for the Wasp, who furled her royals; and, seeing that she would be weath- ered, at 2.50 put about in her turn and ran off, with the wind a little forward the port beam, brailing up the mizzen, while the Reindeer hoisted her flying- jib, to close, and gradually came up on the Wasp^s weather-quarter. At 17 minutes past three, when the vessels were not sixty yards apart, the British opened the conflict, firing the shifting 12-pound carronade, loaded with round and grape. To this the Americans could make no return, and it was again loaded and fired, with the utmost delibera- tion; this was repeated five times, and would have been a trying ordeal to a crew less perfectly dis- On the Ocean 51 ciplined than the Wasp's. At 3.26 Captain Blakely, finding his enemy did not get on his beam, put his helm a-lee and hiffed up, firing his guns from aft forward as they bore. For ten minutes the sloop and the brig lay abreast, not twenty yards apart, while the cannonade was terribly destructive. The concussion of the explosions almost deadened what little way the vessels had on, and the smoke hung over them like a pall. The men worked at the guns with desperate energy, but the odds in weight of metal (3 to 2) were too great against the Reindeer, where both sides played their parts so manfully. Captain Manners stood at his post, as resolute as ever, though wounded again and again. A grape- shot passed through both his thighs, bringing him to the deck; but, maimed and bleeding to death, he sprang to his feet, cheering on the seamen. The vessels were now almost touching, and putting his helm a-weather, he ran the Wasp aboard on her port ^^ quarter, while the boarders gathered for- ward, to try it with the steel. But the Carolina captain had prepared for this with cool confidence; the marines came aft; close under the bulwarks crouched the boarders, grasping in their hands the naked cutlasses, while behind them were drawn up 35 Letter of Captain Blakely, July 8, 1814. Cooper says starboard; it is a point of little importance; all accounts agree as to the relative oositions of the craft. 52 Naval War of 1812 the pikemen. As the vessels came grinding to- gether the men hacked and thrust at one another through the open port-holes, while the black smoke curled up from between the hulls. Then through the smoke appeared the grim faces of the British seadogs, and the fighting was bloody enough; for the stubborn English stood well in the hard hand play. But those who escaped the deadly fire of the top-men, escaped only to be riddled through by the long Yankee pikes ; so, avenged by their own hands, the foremost of the assailants died, and the others gave back. The attack was foiled, though the Rein- deer's marines kept answering well the American fire. Then the English captain, already mortally wounded, but with the indomitable courage that nothing but death could conquer, cheering and ral- lying his men, himself sprang, sword in hand, into the rigging, to lead them on ; and they followed him with a will. At that instant a ball from the Wasp*s main-top crashed through his skull, and, still clenching in his right hand the sword he had shown he could wear so worthily, with his face to the foe, he fell back on his own deck dead, while above him yet floated the flag for which he had given his life. No Norse Viking, slain over shield, ever died bet- ter. As the British leader fell and his men recoiled. Captain Blakely passed the word to board; with wild hurrahs the boarders swarmed over the ham- On the Ocean ^2 mock nettings, there was a moment's furious strug- gle, the surviving British were slain or driven be- low, and the captain's clerk, the highest officer left, surrendered the brig, at 3.44, just 27 minutes after the Reindeer had fired the first gun, and just 18 after the Wasp had responded. Both ships had suffered severely in the short struggle ; but, as with the Shannon and Chesapeake, the injuries were much less severe aloft than in the I Mjf0 SJt6 hulls. All the spars were in their places. The Wasp's hull had received 6 round, and many grape ; a 24-pound shot had passed through the foremast; and of her crew of 173, 11 were killed or mortally wounded, and 1 5 wounded severely or slightly. The Reindeer was completely cut to pieces in a line with her ports; her upper works, boats, and spare spars being one entire wreck. Of her crew of 118 men, 33 were killed outright or died later, and 34 were wounded, nearly all severely. 54 Naval War of 1812 COMPARATIVE FORCE. Broadside Weight No TooSk Cons. Metal. Men. Loss. fVasp, 509 II 315 173 26 Reindeer, 477 10 210 118 67 It is thus seen that the Reindeer fought at a great- er disadvantage than any other of the various Brit- ish sloops that were captured in single action during the war; and yet she made a better fight than any of them (though the Frolic, and the Frolic only, was defended with the same desperate courage) ; a pretty sure proof that heavy metal is not the only factor to be considered in accounting for the Amer- ican victories. "It is difficult to say which vessel behaved the best in this short but gallant com- bat." *** I doubt if the war produced two better single-ship commanders than Captain Blakely and Captain Manners; and an equal meed of praise at- taches to both crews. The British could rightly say that they yielded purely to heavy odds in men and metal; and the Americans, that the difference in execution was fully proportioned to the difference in force. It is difficult to know which to admire most, the wary skill with which each captain ma- noeuvred before the fight, the perfect training and discipline that their crews showed, the decision and promptitude with which Captain Manners tried to retrieve the day by boarding, and the desperate *" Cooper, ii, 287. On the Ocean ^^ bravery with which the attempt was made; or the readiness with which Captain Blakely made his preparations, and the cool courage with which the assault was foiled. All people of the English stock, no matter on which side of the Atlantic they live, if they have any pride in the many feats of fierce prowess done by the men of their blood and race, should never forget this fight ; although we can not but feel grieved to find that such men — men of one race and one speech; brothers in blood, as well as in bravery — should ever have had to turn their weapons against one another. The day after the conflict the prize's foremast went by the board, and, as she was much damaged by shot. Captain Blakely burned her, put a portion of his wounded prisoners on board a neutral, and with the remainder proceeded to France, reaching rOrient on the 8th day of July. On July 4th Sailing-master Percival and 30 vol- unteers of the New York flotilla *^ concealed them- selves on board a fishing-smack, and carried by surprise the Eagle tender, which contained a 32- pound howitzer and 14 men, 4 of whom were wounded. On July 1 2th, while off the west coast of South Africa, the American brig Syren was captured after a chase of 1 1 hours by the Medway, 74, Capt. Brine. *' Letter of Com. J. Lewis, July 6, 1814. $6 Naval War of 1812 The chase was to windward during the whole time, and made every effort to escape, throwing over- board all her boats, anchors, cables, and spare spars.^^ Her commander. Captain Parker, had died, and she was in charge of Lieut. N. J. Nichol- son. By a curious coincidence, on the same day, July 1 2th, H. M. cutter Landrail, 4,^^ of 20 men, Lieut. Lancaster, was captured by the American privateer Syren, a schooner mounting i long heavy gun, with a crew of 70 men; the Landrail had 7, and the Syren 3 men wounded. On July 14th Gunboat No. 88, Sailing-master George Clement, captured after a short skirmish the tender of the Tenedos frigate, with her second lieutenant, 2 midshipmen, and 10 seamen.^* The Wasp stayed in I'Orient till she was thor- oughly refitted, and had filled, in part, the gaps in her crew, from the American privateers in port. On Aug. 27th Captain Blakely sailed again, mak- ing two prizes during the next three days. On Sept. I St she came up to a convoy of 10 sail under the protection of the Armada, 74, all bound for Gib- raltar; the swift cruiser hovered round the mer- chantmen like a hawk, and though chased off again •'^ Letter of Captain Brine to Vice- Admiral Tyler, July 12, 1814. ^^ James, vi, 436: his statement is wrong as regards the privateer. •" Letter of Captain Isaac Hull, July 15, 1814. On the Ocean 57 and again by the line-of-battle ship, always returned the instant the pursuit stopped, and finally actually succeeded in cutting off and capturing one ship, laden with iron and brass cannon, muskets, and other military stores of great value. At half-past six on the evening of the same day, in lat. 47° 30' N., long. 11° W., while running almost free, four sail, two on the starboard bow, and two on the port, rather more to leeward, were made out.*^ Capt. Blakely at once made sail for the most weatherly of the four ships in sight, though well aware that more than one of them might prove to be hostile cruisers, and they were all of unknown force. But the determined Carolinian was not one to be troubled by such considerations. He probably had several men less under his command than in the former action, but had profited by his experience with the Reindeer in one point, having taken aboard her 12- pounder boat carronade, of whose efficacy he had had very practical proof. The chase, the British brig-sloop Avon, 18, Cap- tain the Honorable James Arbuthnot,^^ was steer- ing almost southwest ; the wind, which was blowing fresh from the southeast, being a little abaft the port beam. At 7.00 the Avon began making night sig- nals with the lanterns, but the Wasp, disregarding *^ Official letter of Captain Blakely, September 8, 1814. ^ James, vi, 432. 58 Naval War of 1812 these, came steadily on; at 8.38 the Avon fired a shot from her stern-chaser,^''^ and shortly afterward another from one of her lee or starboard guns. At 20 minutes past 9 the Wasp was on the port or weather-quarter of the Avon, and the vessels inter- changed several hails; one of the American officers then came forward on the forecastle and ordered the brig to heave to, which the latter declined doing, and set her port foretop-mast studding sail. The Wasp then, at 9.29, fired the 12-pound carronade into her, to which the Avon responded with her stern-chaser and the aftermost port guns. Capt. Blakely then put his helm up, for fear his adver- sary would try to escape, and ran to leeward of her, and then ranged up alongside, having poured a broadside into her quarter. A close and furious engagement began, at such short range that the only one of the Wasp's crew who was wounded, was hit by a wad; four round shot struck her hull, killing two men, and she suffered a good deal in her rig- ging. The men on board did not know the name of their antagonist; but they could see through the smoke and the gloom of the night, as her black hull surged through the water, that she was a large brig ; and aloft, against the sky, the sailors could be dis- cerned, clustering in the tops.*^ In spite of the darkness the Wasp's fire was directed with deadly *"> James, vi, 432. *^ Captain Blakely's letter. On the Ocean 59 precision ; the Avon's gaff was shot away at almost the first broadside, and most of her main-rigging and spars followed suit. She was hulled again and again, often below water-line; some of her carron- ades were dismounted, and finally the main-mast went by the board. At 10.00, after 31 minutes of combat, her fire had been completely silenced and Captain Blakely hailed to know if she had struck. No answer being received, and the brig firing a few random shot, the action recommenced; but at 10.12 the Avon was again hailed, and this time answered that she had struck. While lowering away a boat to take possession, another sail (H. B. M. brig- sloop Castilian, 18, Captain Braimer) was seen astern. The men were again called to quarters, and everything put in readiness as rapidly as pos- sible; but at 10.36 two more sail were seen (one 6o Naval War of 1812 of which was H. B. M. Tartarus, 20^^). The braces being cut away, the Wasp was put before the wind until new ones could be rove. The Castil- ian pursued till she came up close, when she fired her lee guns into, or rather over, the weather-quar- ter of the Wasp, cutting her rigging slightly. Re- peated signals of distress having now been made by the Avon (which had lost 10 men killed and 32 wounded), the Castilian tacked and stood for her, and on closing found out she was sinking. Hardly had her crew been taken out when she went down. Counting the Wasp's complement as full (though it was probably two or three short), taking James' statement of the crew of the Avon as true, includ- ing the boat carronades of both vessels, and consid- ering the Avon's stern-chaser to have been a six- pounder, we get the COMPARATIVE FORCE Tons No. Guns Weight Metal Wasp Avon 509 477 12 II 327 280 No. Men Loss 160 3 117 42 It is self-evident that in the case of this action the odds, 14 to II, are neither enough to account for the loss inflicted being as 14 to i, nor for the rapid- ity with which, during a night encounter, the Avon was placed in a sinking condition. "The gallantry of the Avon's officers and crew can not for a mo- 49 Niles' "Register," vi, 216. On the Ocean 6i ment be questioned ; but the gunnery of the latter ap- pears to have been not one whit better than, to the discredit of the British navy, had frequently before been displayed in combats of this kind. Nor, judging from the specimen given by the Castilian, is it likely that she M^ould have performed any bet- ter." 50 On the other hand, "Capt. Blakely's con- duct on this occasion had all the merit shown in the previous action, with the additional claim of engag- ing an enemy under circumstances which led him to believe that her consorts were in the immediate vicinity. The steady, officer-like way in which the Avon was destroyed, and the coolness with which he prepared to engage the Castilian within ten minutes after his first antagonist had struck, are the best encomiums on this officer's character and spirit, as well as on the school in which he had been trained." ^^ The Wasp now cruised to the southward and westward, taking and scuttling one or two prizes. On Sept. 2ist, lat. 33° 12' N., long. 14° 56' W., she captured the brig Afalanta, 8, with 19 men, which proved a valuable prize, and was sent in with one of the midshipmen, Mr. Geisinger, aboard, as prize-master, who reached Savannah in safety on Nov. 4th. Meanwhile the Wasp kept on toward the southeast. On Oct. 9th, in lat. 18° 35' N., long. '0 James, vi, 435. s' Cooper, ii, 291. 62 Naval War of 1812 30° 10' W., she spoke and boarded the Swedish brig Adonis, and took out of her Lieut. Mc Knight and Mr. Lyman, a master's mate, both late of the Essex, on their way to England from Brazil. This was the last that was ever heard of the gal- lant but ill-fated Wasp. How she perished none ever knew ; all that is certain is that she was never seen again. She was as good a ship, as well manned, and as ably commanded as any vessel in our little navy ; and it may be doubted if there was at that time any foreign sloop of v^rar of her size and strength that could have stood against her in fair fight. As I have said, the Wasp was manned almost ex- clusively by Americans. James says they were mostly Irish; the reason he gives for the assertion being that Capt. Blakely spent the first 16 months of his life in Dublin. This argument is quite on a par with another piece of logic which I can not re- sist noticing. The point he wishes to prove is that Americans are cowards. Accordingly, on p. 475: "On her capstan the Constitution now mounted a piece resembling 7 musket barrels, fixed together with iron bands. It was discharged by one lock, and each barrel threw 25 balls. . . . What could have impelled the Americans to invent such extra- ordinary implements of war but fear, downright fear?" Then a little further on: "The men were On the Ocean 62 provided with leather boarding-caps, fitted with bands of iron, , . . another strong symptom of fear!" Now, such a piece of writing as this is sim- ply evidence of an unsound mind ; it is not so much malicious as idiotic. I only reproduce it to help prove what I have all along insisted on, that any of James's unsupported statements about the Ameri- cans, whether respecting the tonnage of the ships or the courage of the crews, are not worth the paper they are written on ; on all points connected purely with the British navy, or which can be checked off by official documents or ships' logs, or where there would be no particular object in falsifying, James is an invaluable assistant, from the diligence and painstaking care he shows, and the thoroughness and minuteness with which he goes into details. A fair-minded and interesting English critic,^^ whose remarks are generally very just, seems to me to have erred somewhat in commenting on this last sloop action. He says that the Avon was first crip- pled by dismantling shot from long guns. Now, the Wasp had but one long gun on the side engaged, and, moreover, began the action with the shortest and lightest of her carronades. Then he continues that the Avon, like the Peacock, "was hulled so low that the shot-holes could not be got at, and yielded '^ Lord Howard Douglas, "Treatise on Naval Gunnery," p. 416. 64 Naval War of 18 12 to this fatal circumstance only." It certainly can not be said when a brig has been dismasted, has had a third of her crew placed hors de combat, and has been rendered an unmanageable hulk, that she yields only because she has received a few shot be- low the water-line. These shot-holes undoubtedly hastened the result, but both the Peacock and the Avon would have surrendered even if they had re- mained absolutely water-tight. The Adams, 28, had been cut down to a sloop of war at Washington, and then lengthened into a flush-decked, heavy corvette, mounting on each side 13 medium i8's, or columbiads, and i long 12, with a crew of 220 men, under the command of Capt. Charles Morris, late first lieut. of the Constitution.^^ She slipped out of the Potomac and past the block- aders on Jan. 18th, and cruised eastward to the African coast and along it from Cape Mount to Cape Palmas, thence to the Canaries and Cape de Verd. She returned very nearly along the Equator, thence going toward the West Indies. The cruise was unlucky, but a few small prizes, laden with palm- oil and ivory, being made. In hazy weather, on March 25th, a large Indiaman (the Woodhridge) was captured; but while taking possession the weather cleared up, and Capt. Morris found himself to leeward of 25 sail, two of which, a two-decker On the Ocean 6$ and a frigate, were making for him, and it took him till the next day to shake them off. He entered Savannah on May ist and sailed again on the 8th, standing in to the Gulf Stream, between Makanilla and Florida, to look out for the Jamaica fleet. He found this fleet on the 24th, but the discovery failed to do him much good, as the ships were under the convoy of a 74, two frigates, and three brigs. The Adams hovered on their skirts for a couple of days, but nothing could be done with them, for the mer- chantmen sailed in the closest possible order and the six war vessels exercised the greatest vigilance. So the corvette passed northward to the Newfound- land Banks, where she met with nothing but fogs and floating ice, and then turned her prow toward Ireland. On July 4th she made out and chased two sail, who escaped into the mouth of the Shannon. After this the Adams, heartily tired of fogs and cold, stood to the southward and made a few prizes ; then, in lat. 44° N., long. 10° W., on July 15th, she stum- bled across the i8-pounder 36-gun frigate Tigris, Capt. Henderson. The frigate was to leeward, and a hard chase ensued. It was only by dint of cutting away her anchors and throwing overboard some of her guns that the Adams held her own till sunset, when it fell calm. Capt. Morris and his first lieu- tenant, Mr. Wadsworth, had been the first and sec- ond lieutenants of Old Ironsides in Hull's famous 66 Naval War of 1812 cruise, and they proved that they had not forgotten their early experience, for they got out the boats to tow, and employed their time so well that by sunrise the frigate was two leagues astern. After 18 hours' more chase the Adams dropped her. But in a day or two she ran across a couple more, one of which, an old bluff-bows, was soon thrown out; but the other was very fast, and kept close on the corvette's heels. As before, the frigate was to leeward. The Adams had been built by contract; one side was let to a sub-contractor of economical instincts, and ac- cordingly turned out rather shorter than the other; the result was, the ship sailed a good deal faster on one tack than on the other. In this chase she finally got on her good tack in the night, and so escaped.^* Capt. Morris now turned homeward. During his two cruises he had made but 10 prizes (manned by 161 men), none of very great value. His luck grew worse and worse. The continual cold and damp produced scurvy, and soon half of his crew were prostrated by the disease; and the weather kept on foggy as ever. Off the Maine coast a brig-sloop (the Rifleman, Capt. Pearce) was discovered and " "Autobiography of Commodore Morris," Annapolis, 1880, p. 172. '* This statement is somewhat traditional ; I have also seen it made about the John Adams. But some old officers have told me positively that it occurred to the Adams on this cruise. On the Ocean 67 chased, but it escaped in the thick weather. The fog grew heavier, and early on the morning of Aug. 17th the Adams struck land — literally struck it, too, for she grounded on the Isle of Haute, and had to throw over provisions, spare spars, etc., before she could be got off. Then she entered the Penobscot, and sailed 27 miles up it to Hampden. The Ri^e- man meanwhile conveyed intelligence of her where- abouts to a British fleet, consisting of two line-of- battle ships, three frigates, three sloops, and ten troop transports, under the joint command of Rear- Admiral' Griffeth and Lieutenant-General Sher- brooke.^^ This expedition accordingly went into the Penob- scot and anchored off Castine. Captain Morris made every preparation he could to defend his ship, but his means were very limited ; seventy of his men were dead or disabled by the scurvy ; the remainder, many of them also diseased, were mustered out, to the number of 130 officers and seamen (without muskets) and 20 marines. He was joined, how- ever, by 30 regulars, and later by over 300 militia armed with squirrel guns, ducking, and fowling- pieces, etc, — in all between 500 and 550 men,^^ only 180 of whom, with 50 muskets among them, could be depended upon. On Sept. 3d the British ad- vanced by land and water, the land-force being un- " James, vi, 479. ** "Autobiography of Commodore Morris." 68 Naval War of 1812 der the direction of Lieutenant-Colonel John, and consisting of 600 troops, 80 marines, and 80 sea- men. ^'^ The flotilla was composed of barges, launches, and rocket-boats, under the command of Captain Barry of the Dragon, 74. In all there were over 1,500 men. The seamen of the Adams, from the wharf, opened fire on the flotilla, which returned it with rockets and carronades ; but the advance was checked. Meanwhile the British land forces at- tacked the militia, who acted up to the traditional militia standard, and retreated with the utmost promptitude and celerity, omitting the empty for- mality of firing. This left Captain Morris surround- ed by eight times his number, and there was nothing to do but set fire to the corvette and retreat. The seamen, marines, and regulars behaved well, and no attempt was made to molest them. None of Captain Morris' men were hit; his loss was con- fined to one sailor and one marine who were too much weakened by scurvy to retreat with the others, who marched to Portland, 200 miles off. The Brit- ish lost ten men killed or wounded. On Sept. 9th Gunboats No. 160 and 151, com- " James, vi, 481. Whenever militia are concerned James has not much fear of official documents and lets his imagina- tion run riot; he here says the Americans had 1,400 men, which is as accurate as he generally is in writing about this species of force. His aim being to overestimate the number of the Americans in the various engagements, he always sup- plies militia ad libitum, to make up any possible deficiency. On the Ocean 69 manded by Mr. Thomas M. Pendleton, captured off Sapoleo Bar, Ga., the British privateer Fortune of War, armed with two heavy pivot guns, and 35 men. She made a brief resistance, losing two of her men.^^ On Sept. 15th the British 20-gun ship-sloops Hermes and Carron, and i8-gun brig-sloops Sophie and Childers, and a force of 200 men on shore,^* attacked Fort Bowyer, on Mobile Point, but were repulsed without being able to do any damage what- ever to the Americans. The Hermes was sunk and the assailants lost about 80 men. On the 26th of September, while the privateer- schooner General Armstrong, of New York, Cap- tain Samuel C. Reid, of one long 24, eight long 9's, and 90 men, was lying at anchor in the road of Fayal, a British squadron, composed of the Plantag- enet, 74, Captain Robert Floyd, Rota, 38, Captain Philip Somerville, and Carnation, 18, Captain George Bentham, hove in sight.^*^ One or more boats were sent in by the British, to reconnoitre the schooner, as they asserted, or, according to the American accounts, to carry her by a coup de main. At any rate, after repeatedly warning them off, the privateer fired into them, and they withdrew. Cap- *^ Letter from Commodore H. E. Campbell, St. Mary's, Sept. 12, 1814. ^» James, vi, 527. *" Letter of Captain S. C. Reid, October 7, 1814; and of John B. Dabney, Consul at Fayal, October 5, 1814. yo Naval War of 1812 tain Reid then anchored, with springs on his cables, nearer shore, to await the expected attack, which was not long deferred. At 8 p.m. four boats from the Plantagenet and three from the Rota, containing in all 180 men,^^ under the command of Lieutenant William Matterface, first of the Rota, pulled in tow- ard the road, while the Carnation accompanied them to attack the schooner if she got under way. The boats pulled in under cover of a small reef of rocks, where they lay for some time, and about mid- night made the attack. The Americans opened with the pivot gun, and immediately afterward with their long 9's, while the boats replied with their carron- ades, and, pulling spiritedly on amid a terrific fire of musketry from both sides, laid the schooner aboard on her bow and starboard quarter. The struggle was savage enough, the British hacking at the nettings and trying to clamber up on deck, while the Americans fired their muskets and pistols in the faces of their assailants and thrust the foremost through with their long pikes. The boats on the quarter were driven off; but on the forecastle all three of the American lieutenants were killed or dis- abled, and the men were giving back when Captain Reid led all the after-division up and drove the Brit- ish back into their boats. This put an end to the *' James, vi, 509: Both American accounts say 12 boats, with 400 men, and give the British loss as 250. I take each side's statement of its own force and loss, as usual. On the Ocean 71 assault. Two boats were sunk, most of the wounded being saved as the shore was so near; two others were captured, and but three of the scattered flotilla returned to the ships. Of the Americans, 2 were killed, including the second lieutenant, Alexander O. Williams, and 7 were wounded, including the first and third lieutenants, Frederick A. Worth and Robert Johnson. Of the British, 34 were killed and 86 were wounded ; among the former being the Rota's first and third lieutenants, William Matter- face and Charles R. Norman, and among the latter her second lieutenant and first lieutenant of marines, Richard Rawle and Thomas Park. The schooner's long 24 had been knocked off its carriage by a car- ronade shot, but it was replaced and the deck cleared for another action. Next day the Carnation came in to destroy the privateer, but was driven off by the judicious use the latter made of her "Long Tom." But affairs being now hopeless, the General Arm- strong was scuttled and burned, and the Americans retreated to the land. The British squadron was bound for New Orleans, and, on account of the de- lay and loss that it suffered, it was late in arriving, so that this action may be said to have helped in saving the Crescent City. Few regular commanders could have done as well as Captain Reid. On October 6th, while Gunboat No. 160 was con- voying some coasters from Savannah, it was car- 72 Naval War of 1812 ried by a British tender and nine boats.^^ The gun- vessel was lying at anchor about eight leagues from St. Mary's, and the boats approached with muffled oars early in the morning. They were not discov- ered till nearly aboard, but the defence though short was spirited, the British losing about 20 men. Of the gunboat's 30 men but 16 were fit for action; those under Sailing-master Thomas Paine behaved well. Mr. Paine, especially, fought with the great- est gallantry ; his thigh was broken by a grape-shot at the very beginning, but he hobbled up on his other leg to resist the boarders, fighting till he was thrust through by a pike and had received two sabre cuts. Any one of his wounds would have been enough to put an ordinary man hors de combat. On October nth, another desperate privateer bat- tle took place. The brigantine Prince-de-N eufchatel, Captain Ordronaux, of New York, was a superbly built vessel of 310 tons, mounting 17 guns, and originally possessing a crew of 150 men.^^ She had made a very successful cruise, having on board goods to the amount of $300,000, but had manned and sent in so many prizes that only 40 of her crew were left on board, while 2)7 prisoners were confined in the hold. One of her prizes was in company, but had drifted off to such a distance that *^ Letter from Commander H. C. Campbell, Oct. 12, 1814. *2 "History of American Privateers," by Geo. Coggeshall, p. 241. New York, 1876. On the Ocean 73 she was unable to take part in the fight. At mid- day, on the nth of October, while off Nantucket, the British frigate Endymion, 40, Captain Henry Hope, discovered the privateer and made sail in chase.^^ At 8.30 p.m., a calm having come on, the frigate despatched 5 boats, containing in men,®^ under the command of the first lieutenant, Abel Hawkins, to take the brigantine; while the latter triced up the boarding nettings, loaded the guns with grape and bullets, and prepared herself in every way for the coming encounter. She opened fire on the boats as they drew near, but they were soon alongside, and a most desperate engagement ensued. Some of the British actually cut through the net- tings and readied the deck, but were killed by the privateersmen ; and in a few minutes one boat was sunk, three others drifted off, and the launch, which was under the brigantine's stern, was taken posses- sion of. The slaughter had been frightful, consid- ering the number of the combatants. The victorious privateersmen had lost 7 killed, 15 badly and 9 slightly wounded, leaving but 9 untouched! Of the Endymion' s men, James says 28, including the first lieutenant and a midshipman, were killed, and 37, " James, vi, p. 527. "According to Captain Ordronaux; James does not give the number, but says 28 were killed, 37 wounded, and the crew of the launch captured. Ten of the latter were unwounded, and 18 wounded. I do not know if he included these last among his "37 wounded." Vol. X.-D 74 Naval War of 1812 including the second lieutenant and a master's mate, wounded; "besides which the launch was captured and the crew made prisoners." I do not know if this means 37 wounded, besides the wounded in the launch, or not;®® of the prisoners captured 18 were wounded and 10 unhurt, so the loss was either 28 killed, 55 wounded, and 10 unhurt prisoners, or else 28 killed, 37 wounded, and 10 prisoners; but whether the total was 93 or 75 does not much mat- ter. It was a most desperate conflict, and, remem- bering how short-handed the brigantine was, it re- flected the highest honor on the American captain and his crew. After their repulse before Baltimore the British concentrated their forces for an attack upon New Orleans. Accordingly a great fleet of line-of-battle ships, frigates, and smaller vessels, under Vice-Ad- miral Cochrane, convoying a still larger number of store-ships and transports, containing the army of General Pakenham, appeared off the Chandeleur Islands on Dec. 8th. The American navy in these parts consisted of the ship Louisiana and schooner Carolina in the Mississippi river, and in the shallow bayous a few gunboats, of course without quarters, low in the water, and perfectly easy of entrance. There were also a few tenders and small boats. *^ I think James does not include the wounded in the launch, as he says 28 wounded were sent aboard the Safurn; this could hardly have included the captured. On the Ocean 75 The British frigates and sloops anchored off the broad, shallow inlet called Lake Borgne on the 12th; on this inlet there were 5 gunboats and 2 small tenders, under the command of Lieut. Thomas Catesby Jones. It was impossible for the British to transport their troops across Lake Borgne, as contemplated, until this flotilla was destroyed. Ac- cordingly, on the night of the 12th, 42 launches, armed with 24-, 18-, and 12-pounder carronades, and 3 unarmed gigs, carrying 980 seamen and marines, under the orders of Capt. Lockyer,®^ pushed off from the Armide, 38, in three divisions ; the first under the command of Capt. Lockyer, the second under Capt, Montresor, and the third under Capt. Roberts.^^ Lieut. Jones was at anchor with his boats at the Malheureux Islands, when he dis- covered, on the 13th, the British flotilla advancing toward Port Christian. He at once despatched the Seahorse of one 6-pounder and 14 men, under Sail- ing-master William Johnston, to destroy the stores at Bay St. Louis. She moored herself under the bank, where she was assisted by two 6-pounders. There the British attacked her with seven of their smaller boats, which were repulsed after sustaining for nearly half an hour a very destructive fire 69 *■" James, vi, 521. «8 Letter of Captain Lockyer to Vice-Admiral Cochrane, December 18, 1814. *9 James, vi, 521. 76 Naval War of 1812 However, Mr. Johnston had to burn his boat to prevent it from being taken by a larger force. Meanwhile Lieut. Jones got under way with the five gun-vessels, tiying to reach Les Petites Co- quilles, near a small fort at the mouth of a creek. But as the wind was light and baffling, and the cur- rent very strong, the effort was given up, and the vessels came to anchor off Malheureux Island pass- age at I A.M. on the I4th.'^^ The other tender, the 'Alligator, Sailing-master Sheppard, of one 4-pound- er and 8 men, was discovered next morning trying to get to her consorts, and taken with a rush by Capt. Roberts and his division. At daybreak Lieut. Jones saw the British boats about nine miles to the eastward, and moored his 5 gun vessels abreast in the channel, with their boarding nettings triced up, and everything in readiness; but the force of the current drifted two of them, Nos. 156 and 163, a hundred yards down the pass and out of line. No. 156 being the headmost of all. Their exact force was as follows: No. 156, Lieut. Jones, 41 men and 5 guns (i long 24 and 4 12-pound carronades) ; No. 163, Sailing-master Geo. Ulrick, 21 men, 3 guns (i long 24 and 2 12-pound carronades) ; No. 162, Lieut. Robert Speddes, 35 men, 5 guns (i long 24 and 4 light sixes) ; No. 5, Sailing-master John D. Ferris, 36 men, 5 guns (i long 24, 4 12-pound " Official letter of Lieutenant Jones, March 12, 1815. On the Ocean 77 carronades) ; No. 23, Lieut. Isaac McKeever, 39 men and 5 guns (i long 32 and 4 light sixes). There were thus, in all, 182 men and a broadside of 14 guns, throwing 212 pounds of shot. The British forces amounted, as I have said, to 980 men, and (supposing they had equal numbers of 24's, l8's, and 12's), the flotilla threw seven hundred and fifty-eight pounds of shot. The odds of course were not as much against the Americans as these figures would make them, for they were stationary, had some long, heavy guns and boarding nettings ; on the other hand the fact that two of their vessels had drifted out of line was a very serious misfor- tune. At any rate, the odds were great enough, con- sidering that he had British sailors to deal with, to make it anything but a cheerful look-out for Lieut. Jones ; but nowise daunted by the almost cer- tain prospect of defeat, the American officers and seamen prepared very coolly for the fight. In this connection it should be remembered that simply to run the boats on shore would have permitted the men to escape, if they had chosen to do so. Captain Lockyer acted as coolly as his antagonist. When he had reached a point just out of gunshot, he brought the boats to a grapnel, to let the sailors eat breakfast and get a little rest after the fatigue of their long row. When his men were rested and in good trim he formed the boats in open order, and 78 Naval War of 1812 they pulled gallantly on against the strong current. At 10.50 the Americans opened fire from their long guns, and in about 15 minutes the cannonade be- came general on both sides. At 11.50'^^ Captain Lockyer's barge was laid alongside No. 156, and a very obstinate struggle ensued, "in which the greater part of the officers and crew of the barge were killed or wounded," "^^ including among the latter the gallant captain himself, severely, and his equally gallant first lieutenant, Mr. Pratt, of the Seahorse frigate, mortally. At the same time Lieut. Tatnall (of the Tonnant) also laid his barge aboard the gunboat, only to have it sunk; another shared the same fate, and the assailants were for the mo- ment repulsed. But at this time Lieut. Jones, who had shown as much personal bravery during the assault, as forethought in preparing for it, received a dangerous and disabling wound, while many of his men received the same fate; the boarding net- tings, too, had all been cut or shot away. Several more barges at once assailed the boats, the com- mand of which had devolved on a young midship- man, Mr. George Parker; the latter, fighting as bravely as his commander, was like him severely wounded, whereupon the boat was carried at 12,10. Its guns were turned on No. 163, and this, the smallest of the gimboats, was soon taken ; then the '• Lieutenant Jones' letter. ''' Captain Lockyer's letter. On the Ocean 79 British dashed at No. 162 and carried it, after a very gallant defence, in which Lieut. Speddes was badly wounded. No. 5 Had her long 24 dismounted by the recoil, and was next carried ; finally, No. 23, being left entirely alone, hauled down her flag at 12.30.'^^ The Americans had lost 6 killed and 35 wounded; the British 17 killed and 'j^ (many mor- tally) wounded. The greater part of the loss on both sides occurred in boarding No. 156, and also the next two gunboats. I have in this case, as usual, taken each command- er's account of his own force and loss. Lieut. Jones states the British force to have been 1,000, which tallies almost exactly with their own account; but believes that they lost 300 in killed and wounded. Captain Lockyer, on the other hand, gives the Americans 225 men and three additional light guns. But on the main points the two accounts agree perfectly. The victors certainly deserve great credit for the perseverance, gallantry, and dash they dis- played; but still more belongs to the vanquished for the cool skill and obstinate courage with which they fought, although with the certainty of ultimate defeat before them, — which is always the severest test of bravery. No comment is needed to prove the effectiveness of their resistance. Even James says that the Americans made an obstinate struggle, " Minutes of the Court of Inquiry, held May 15, 1815. 8o Naval War of 1812 that Lieut. Jones displayed great personal bravery, and that the British loss was very severe. On the night of Dec. 23d Gen. Jackson beat up the quarters of the British encamped on the bank of the Mississippi. The attack was opened by Capt. Patterson in the schooner Carolina, 14; she was manned by 70 men, mounted on each side six 12- pound carronades and one long 12. Dropping down the stream unobserved, till opposite the bivouac of the troops and so close to the shore that his first command to fire was plainly heard by the foe, Pat- terson opened a slaughtering cannonade on the flank of the British, and kept it up without suffering any loss in return, as long as the attack lasted. But on the 27th the British had their revenge, attacking the little schooner as she lay at anchor, unable to ascend the stream on account of the rapid current and a strong head-wind. The assailants had a bat- tery of 5 guns, throwing hot shot and shell, while the only gun of the schooner's that would reach was the long 12; after half an hour's fighting the schooner was set on fire and blown up; the crew escaped to the shore with the loss of 7 men killed and wounded. The only remaining vessel, exclu- sive of some small, unarmed row-boats, was the Louisiana, 16, carrying on each side eight long 24's. She was of great assistance in the battle of the 28th, throwing during the course of the cannonade On the Ocean 8i over 800 shot, and suffering very little in return^* Afterv^ard the American seamen and marines played a most gallant part in all the engagements on shore ; they made very efficient artillerists. SUMMARY The following vessels were got ready for sea during this year: " Name. Rig- Where Baih. Owf. c a 2. c H Remuk* lyasfi. Ship NewburypOTt $77,4 59-60 160 33 y^ Built Frolic, <• Bosttm rJ,094-82 •« • < n <• Peacock, M New York • 75^4-J« • • «« ' it <• Ontario, U BabinMM« SW-4J-69 « If a <• Erie. « n 56,17436 «< «( f4 «• Tom BawUn*. Sch'oer Fortsmoutb IJ/30OJ0O 90 12 360 Pureh'd Lynx, <« Washiogtain 50 6 Bdlt ^fervier. Brig Engtaiui 50/X)o.oo 130 ■8 477 CaptVd Flambeau, «• Bakimore t «< 11 290 «• Chippewajr. Brig R. I. Si,ooaoo 90 14 390 <« . Saranac, «« Middktoo 36,000.00 f them falling into handa Argus, Carolina, 509 230 22 ; 14 \ of enemy. Destroyed by battery. 3.007 ti6 2- CAPTURED, ETC., BY BRITISH NAVY ON OCEAN. Name. Tons. Guns. Essex, 860 46 Captured by frigate and corvette. Froiie, 509 22 " by frigate and schooner. /Rattlesnake,- 2^ i6 ** by frigate. Syren, 250 16 " by seventy-four. 1,877 'oo Total, 4,884 tons. 216 guns. There were also a good many gunboats, which I do not count, because, as already said, they were often not as large as the barges that were sunk and taken in attacking them, as at Craney Island, etc. On the Ocean 83 LIST OF VESSELS TAKEN FROM BRITISR I. CAPTIL/RED BY THE AMERICAM PRiVA,T££&S. Name. Tons. Cons. Ballahou, 86 4 Landrail^ 76 4 Name. Tons. Guas. Efvrvier, Avon, Rehtdeer, Ptctou, 477 477 477 18 captured by sloop Petuock. 20 sunk " *• Wasp. |n •• MUM 14 c^tured by frigate. J. SUNK IM ATTACKING PO&T. Hermest 500 82 2,393 lot Taking into account the losses on the lakes, there was not very much difference in the amount of damage done to each combatant by the other; but both as regards the material results and the moral effects, the balance inclined largely to the Americans. The chief damage done to our navy was by the British land-forces, and consisted mainly in forcing us to burn an unfinished frigate and sloop. On the ocean our three sloops were captured, in each case by an overwhelming force, against which no resist- ance could be made, and the same was true of the captured British schooner. The Essex certainly gained as much honor as her opponents. There were but three single ship actions, in all of which the Americans were so superior in force as to give them a very great advantage; nevertheless, in two 84 Naval War of 1812 of them the victory was won with such perfect im- punity and the difference in the loss and damage inflicted was so very great, that I doubt if the result would have been affected if the odds had been reversed. In the other case, that of the Reindeer, the defeated party fought at a still greater disad- vantage, and yet came out of the conflict with full as much honor as the victor. No man with a par- ticle of generosity in his nature can help feeling the most honest admiration for the unflinching courage and cool skill displayed by Capt. Manners and his crew. It is worthy of notice (remembering the sneers of so many of the British authors at the "wary circumspection" of the Americans) that Capt. Manners, who has left a more honorable name than any other British commander of the war, excepting Capt. Broke, behaved with the greatest caution as long as it would serve his purpose, while he showed the most splendid personal courage afterward. It is this combination of courage and skill that made him so dangerous an antagonist ; it showed that the traditional British bravery was not impaired by re- fusing to adhere to the traditional British tactics of rushing into a fight "bull-headed." Needless ex- posure to danger denotes not so much pluck as stupidity. Capt. Manners had no intention of giv- ing his adversary any advantage he could prevent. No one can help feeling regret that he was killed; On the Ocean 85 but if he was to fall, what more glorious death could he meet ? It must be remembered that while paying all homage to Capt. Manners, Capt. Blakely did equally well. It was a case where the victory be- tween two combatants, equal in courage and skill, was decided by superior weight of metal and number of men. PRIZES MADE Name of Ship Number of Priz Presidetit 3 Constitution .....•• 6 Adams lo Frolic 2 Wasp 15 Peacock ^S Hornet ^ Small craft 35 87 CHAPTER II 1814 ON THE LAKES Ontario— The contest one of ship-building merely — Extreme caution of the commanders, verging on timidity — Yeo takes Oswego, and blockades Sackett's Harbor — British gunboats captured — Chauncy block- ades Kingston — Erie — Captain Sinclair's unsuccessful expedition — Daring and successful cutting-out expe- ditions of the British — Champlain — Macdonough's victory ONTARIO THE winter was spent by both parties in prepar- ing more formidable fleets for the ensuing sum- mer. All the American schooners had proved themselves so unfit for service that they were con- verted into transports, except the Sylph, which was brig-rigged and armed like the Oneida. Sackett's Harbor possessed but slight fortifications, and the Americans were kept constantly on the alert, through fear lest the British should cross over. Commodore Chauncy and Mr. Eckford were as unremitting in their exertions as ever. In February two 22-gun brigs, the Jefferson and Jones, and one large frigate of 50 guns, the Superior, were laid; afterward a deserter brought in news of the enormous size of one of the new British frigates, and the Superior (86) On the Lakes 87 was enlarged to permit her carrying 62 guns. The Jeiferson was launched on April 7th, the Jones on the loth, and the Superior on May 2d, — an attempt on the part of the British to blow her up having been foiled a few days before. Another frigate, the Mohawk, 42, was at once begun. Neither guns nor men for the first three ships had as yet arrived, but they soon began to come in, as the roads got better and the streams opened. Chauncy and Eck- ford, besides building ships that were literally laid down in the forest, and seeing that they were armed with heavy guns, which, as well as all their stores, had to be carried overland hundreds of miles through the wilderness, were obliged to settle quarrels that occurred among the men, the most serious being one that arose from a sentinel's accidentally killing a shipwright, whose companions instantly struck work in a body. What was more serious, they had to contend with such constant and virulent sickness that it almost assumed the proportions of a plague. During the winter it was seldom that two-thirds of the force were fit for duty, and nearly a sixth of the whole number of men in the port died before navigation opened.^ Meanwhile Yeo had been nearly as active at Kingston, laying down two frigates and a huge line- of-battle ship, but his shipwrights did not succeed in 1 Cooper mentions that in five months the Madison buried a fifth of her crew. 88 Naval War of 1812 getting" the latter ready much before navigation closed. The Prince Regent, 58, and Princess Char- lotte, 42, were launched on April 15th. I shall an- ticipate somewhat by giving tabular lists of the com- parative forces, after the two British frigates, the two American frigates, and the two American brigs had all been equipped and manned. Commodore Yeo's original six cruisers had been all renamed, some of them rearmed, and both the schooners changed into brigs. The Wolfe, Royal George, Mel- ville, Moira, Beresford, and Sydney Smith, were now named respectively Montreal, Niagara, Star, Charzvcll, Netly, and Magnet. On the American side there had been but slight changes, beyond the alteration of the Sylph into a brig armed like the Oneida. Of the Superior's 62 guns, 4 were very shortly sent on shore again. CHAUNCrS SQUADRON. Rig. Tosnsge. Name. Crew, Broadside Me^al. Suptrtor, rfiip, i,s8o 500 i/sjolbs. Mohawk, M i.SSO Pike, n 87s Madison, Ct S93 Jonei, brig. goo JeffertoH, \% $00 Sylph, <4 JOO Oneida, fC 24S ISO Soo 3C0 160 s6o SS4 }6o 180 Armament. JO long si's 2 " 14'* ' 26 short 41*8 I 26 long 24'$ 2 " IS'S 14 short 32'* [ it long 24*8 2 " 24*8 2 long la's i2 short 32's i long la's . 20 short 32*3 it long 12*8 20 short 32*8 2 long 12's ^ 14 short 24*8 2 long 12's 14 short 24*8 8 vessels. j,g4i 1,870 |,3S2 lbs. gjSguna. On the Lakes 89 This is considerably less than James makes it, as he includes all the schooners, which were abandoned as cruisers, and only used as transports or gunboats. Similarly Sir James had a large number of gun- boats, which are not included in his cruising force. James thus makes Chauncy's force 2,321 men, and a broadside of 4,188 lbs. YEO'S SQUADRON Name. Rig. Tonnage. Crew Prince Regent, ship, mso 485 872 lbs Princtss Charlotte, " 1,215 31S Montreal, Niagara, Charwell, Star, Netly, Magnet, brig. 637 510 262 2i6 .87 80 Broadside Metal. Armament. ( 32 long 24*s \ 4 sliott 68's 22 " 32'S 26 long 24's < 2 short 65*3 14 " 32's 7 long 24's ■ 18 " iS's 2 long «2'3 20 short 32's 2 long 12's 14 short 32*3 2 long 12*3 14 short 32*3 2 long ii's ■ 4 short 24*3 2 long 12*3 12 short 24's 604 8S8 332 236 236 180 .56 8 vessels. 4,756 1,620 2,874 lbs. 209 guns. This tallies pretty well with James' statement, which (on p. 488) is 1,517 men, and a broadside of 2,752 lbs. But there are very probably errors as regards the armaments of the small brigs, which were continually changed. At any rate the Ameri- can fleet was certainly the stronger, about in the proportion of six to five. The disproportion was enough to justify Sir James in his determination not to hazard a battle, although the odds were cer- 90 Naval War of 1812 tainly not such as British commanders had been pre- viously accustomed to pay much regard to. Chauncy would have acted exactly as his opponent did, had he been similarly placed. The odds against the British commodore were too great to be overcome, where the combatants were otherwise on a par, al- though the refusal to do battle against them would certainly preclude Yeo from advancing any claims to superiority in skill or courage. The Princess Char- lotte and Niagara were just about equal to the Mohawk and Madison, and so were the Charwell and Netly to the Oneida and Sylph; but both the Star and Magnet together could hardly have matched either the Jones or the Jefferson, while the maindeck 32's of the Superior gave her a great ad- vantage over the Prince Regent's 24's, where the crews were so equal; and the Pike was certainly too heavy for the Montreal A decided superiority in the effectiveness of both crews and captains could alone have warranted Sir James Lucas Yeo engag- ing, and this superiority he certainly did not possess. This year the British architects outstripped ours in the race for supremacy, and Commodore Yeo put out of port with his eight vessels long before the Americans were ready. His first attempt was a suc- cessful attack on Oswego. This town is situated some 60 miles distant from Sackett's Harbor, and is the first port on the lake which the stores, sent from On the Lakes 91 the seaboard to Chauncy, reached. Accordingly it was a place of some little importance, but was very much neglected by the American authorities. It was insufficiently garrisoned, and was defended only by an entirely ruined fort of 6 guns, two of them dismounted. Commodore Yeo sailed from Kingston to attack it on the 3d of May, having on board his ships a detachment of 1,080 troops. Oswego was garrisoned by less than 300 men,^ chiefly belonging to a light artillery regiment, with a score or two of militia; they were under the command of Colonel Mitchell. The recaptured schooner Growler was in port, with 7 guns destined for the Harbor ; she was sunk by her commander, but afterward raised and carried off by the foe. On the 5th Yeo appeared off Oswego and sent in Captain Collier and 13 gunboats to draw the fort's fire; after some firing between them and the four guns mounted in the fort (two long 24's, one long 12, and one long 6), the gunboats retired. The next day the attack was seriously made. The Prin- cess Charlotte, Montreal, and Niagara engaged the batteries, while the Charwell and Star scoured the woods with grape to clear them of the militia.^ The debarkation of the troops was superintended by Cap- tain O'Connor, and until it was accomplished the » General order of General Jacob Brown, by R. Jones, As- sistant Adjutant-General, May 12, 1814. » Letter of General Gordon Drummond, May 7. 1814. 92 Naval War of 1812 Montreal sustained almost the whole fire of the fort, being set on fire three times, and much cut up in hull, masts, and rigging.^ Under this fire 800 British troops were landed, under Lieutenant-Colonel Fis- cher, assisted by 200 seamen, armed with long pikes, under Captain Mulcaster. They moved gallantly up the hill, under a heavy fire, and carried the fort by assault ; Mitchell then fell back unmolested to the Falls, about 12 miles above the town, where there was a large quantity of stores. But he was not again attacked. The Americans lost 6 men killed, includ- ing Lieutenant Blaney, 38 wounded, and 25 missing, both of these last falling into the enemy's hands. The British lost 22 soldiers, marines, and seamen (including Captain Hollaway) killed, and 73 (in- cluding the gallant Captain Mulcaster dangerously, and Captain Popham slightly) wounded,^ the total loss being 95 — nearly a third of the American force engaged. General Drummond, in his official letter, reports that "the fort being everywhere almost open, the whole of the garrison . . . effected their escape, except about 60 men, half of them wounded." No doubt the fort's being "everywhere almost open" * Letter of Sir James Lucas Yeo, May 17, 1814. 5 Letter of Lieutenant-Colonel V. Fischer, May 17, 1814. James says "18 killed and 64 wounded," why, I do not know; the official report of Colonel Fischer, as quoted, says: "Of the army, 19 killed and 62 wounded; of the navy, 3 killed and II wounded." On the Lakes 93 afforded excellent opportunities for retreat; but it was not much of a recommendation of it as a struc- ture intended for defence. The British destroyed the four guns in the bat- tery, and raised the Growler and carried her off, with her valuable cargo of seven long guns. They also carried off a small quantity of ordnance stores and some flour, and burned the barracks ; otherwise but little damage was done, and the Americans re- occupied the place at once. It certainly showed great lack of energy on Commodore Yeo's part that he did not strike a really important blow by sending an expedition up to destroy the quantity of stores and ordnance collected at the Falls. But the attack itself was admirably managed. The ships were well placed, and kept up so heavy a fire on the fort as to effectually cover the debarkation of the troops, which was very cleverly accomplished; and the soldiers and seamen behaved with great gal- lantry and steadiness, their officers leading them, sword in hand, up a long, steep hill, under a de- structive fire. It was similar to Chauncy's attacks on York and Fort George, except that in this case the assailants suffered a much severer loss com- pared to that inflicted on the assailed. Colonel Mitchell managed the defence with skill, doing all he could with his insufficient materials. After returning to Kingston, Yeo sailed with his r^ 94 Naval War of 1812 squadron for Sackett's Harbor, where he appeared on May 19th and began a strict blockade. This was especially troublesome because most of the guns and cables for the two frigates had not yet arrived, and though the lighter pieces and stores could be carried over land, the heavier ones could only go by water, which route was now made dangerous by the presence of the blockading squadron. The very im- portant duty of convoying these great guns was entrusted to Captain Woolsey, an officer of tried merit. He decided to take them by water to Stony Creek, whence they might be carried by land to the Harbor, which was but three miles distant; and on the success of his enterprise depended Chauncy's chances of regaining command of the lake. On the 28th of May, at sunset, Woolsey left Oswego, with 19 boats, carrying 21 long 32's, 10 long 24's, three 42-pound carronades and 10 cables — one of the lat- ter, for the Superior, being a huge rope 22 inches in circumference and weighing 9,600 pounds. The boats rowed all through the night, and at sunrise on the 29th 18 of them found themselves off the Big Salmon River, and, as it was unsafe to travel by daylight, Woolsey ran up into Big Sandy Creek, 8 miles from the Harbor. The other boat, contain- ing two long 24's and a cable, got out of line, ran into the British squadron, and was captured. The news she brought induced Sir James Yeo at once On the Lakes 95 to send out an expedition to capture the others. He accordingly despatched Captains Popham and Spils- bury in two gunboats, one armed with one 68-pound and one 24-pound carronade, and the other with a long 32, accompanied by three cutters and a gig, mounting between them two long 12's and two brass 6's, with a total of 180 men.® They rode up to Sandy Creek and lay off its mouth all the night, and began ascending it shortly after day- light on the 30th. Their force, however, was ab- surdly inadequate for the accomplishment of their object. Captain Woolsey had been reinforced by some Oneida Indians, a company of light artillery, and some militia, so that his only care was, not to repulse, but to capture the British party entire, and even this did not need any exertion. He accord- ingly despatched Major Appling down the river with 120 riflemen'^ and some Indians to lie in ambush.^ When going up the creek the British marines, under Lieutenant Cox, were landed on the left bank, and the small-arm men, under Lieutenant Brown, on the 6 James, vi, 487; while Cooper says i86, James says the British loss was i8 killed and 50 wounded ; Major Appling says "14 were killed, 28 wounded, and 27 marines and 106 sailors captured." ■" Letter from Major D. Appling, May 30, 1814. 8 Letter of Capt. M. T. Woolsey, June i, 1814. There were about 60 Indians; in all the American force amounted to r8o men. James adds 30 riflemen, 140 Indians, and "a large body of militia and cavalry"— none of whom were present. 96 Naval War of 1812 right bank, while the two captains rowed up the stream between them, throwing grape into the bushes to disperse the Indians. Major Apphng waited until the British were close up, when his riflemen opened with so destructive a volley as to completely demoralize and "stampede" them, and their whole force was captured with hardly any resistance, the Americans having only one man slightly wounded. The British loss was severe, — 18 killed and 50 dangerously wounded, according to Captain Popham's report, as quoted by James; or "14 killed and 28 wounded," according to Major Appling's letter. It was a very clever and successful ambush. On June 6th Yeo raised the blockade of the Har- bor, but Chauncy's squadron was not in condition to put out till six weeks later, during which time nothing was done by either fleet, except that two very gallant cutting-out expeditions were success- fully attempted by Lieutenant Francis H. Gregory, U. S. N. On June i6th he left the Harbor, accom- panied by Sailing-masters Vaughan and Dixon and 22 seamen, in three gigs, to intercept some of the enemy's provision schooners; on the 19th he was discovered by the British gunboat Black Snake, of one 18-pound carronade and 18 men, commanded by Captain H. Landon. Lieutenant Gregory dashed at the gunboat and carried it without the loss of a On the Lakes 97 man; he was afterward obliged to burn it, but he brought the prisoners, chiefly royal marines, safely into port. On the ist of July he again started out, with Messrs. Vaughan and Dixon, and two gigs. The plucky little party suffered greatly from hun- ger, but on the 5th he made a sudden descent on Presque Isle, and burned a 14-gun schooner just ready for launching ; he was off before the foe could assemble, and reached the Harbor in safety next day. On July 31st Commodore Chauncy sailed with his fleet; some days previously the larger British vessels had retired to Kingston, where a lOO-gun two-decker was building. Chauncy sailed up to the head of the lake, where he intercepted the small brig Magnet. The Sylph was sent in to destroy her, but her crew ran her ashore and burned her. The Jef- ferson, Sylph, and Oneida were left to watch some other small craft in the Niagara ; the \Jones was kept cruising between the Harbor and Oswego, and with the four larger vessels Chauncy blockaded Yeo's four large vessels lying in Kingston. The four American vessels were in the aggregate of 4,398 tons, manned by rather more than 1,350 men, and presenting in broadside 77 guns, throwing 2,328 lbs. of shot. The four British vessels measured in all about 3,812 tons, manned by 1,220 men, and pre- senting in broadside 74 guns, throwing 2,066 lbs. Vol. X.— E 98 Naval War of 1812 of shot. The former were thus superior by about 15 per cent, and Sir James Yeo very properly de- clined to fight with the odds against him — although it was a nicer calculation than British commanders had been accustomed to enter into. Major-General Brown had written to Commo- dore Chauncy on July 13th: "I do not doubt my ability to meet the enemy in the field and to march in any direction over his country, your fleet carrying for me the necessary supplies. We can threaten Forts George and Niagara, and carry Burlington Heights and York, and proceed direct to Kingston and carry that place. For God's sake let me see you : Sir James will not fight." To which Chauncy replied : "I shall afford every assistance in my power to co-operate with the army whenever it can be done without losing sight of the great object for the attainment of which this fleet has been created, — the capture or destruction of the enemy's fleet. But that I consider the primary object. . . . We are in- tended to seek and fight the enemy's fleet, and I shall not be diverted from my efforts to effectuate it by any sinister attempt to render us subordinate to, or an appendage of, the army." That is, by any "sinister attempt" to make him co-operate intelli- gently in a really well-concerted scheme of inva- sion. In further support of these noble and inde- pendent sentiments, he writes to the Secretary of the On the Lakes 99 Navy on August loth.^ "I told (General Brown) that I should not visit the head of the lake unless the enemy's fleet did so. . . . To deprive the enemy of an apology for not meeting me I have sent ashore four guns from the Superior to reduce her arma- ment in number to an equality with the Prince Re- genfs, yielding the advantage of their 68-pounders. The Mohawk mounts two guns less than the Prin- cess Charlotte, and the Montreal and Niagara are equal to the Pike and Madison." He here justifies his refusal to co-operate with General Brown by saying that he was of only equal force with Sir James, and that he has deprived the latter of "an apology" for not meeting him. This last was not at all true. The Mohawk and Madison were just about equal to the Princess Charlotte and Niagara; but the Pike was half as strong again as the Mon- treal; and Chauncy could very well afford to "yield the advantage of their 68-pounders," when in return Sir James had to yield the advantage of Chauncy's long 32's and 42-pound carronades. The Superior was a 32-pounder frigate, and, even without her four extra guns, was about a fourth heavier than the Prince Regent, with her 24-pounders. Sir James was not acting more warily than Chauncy had acted during June and July, 181 3. Then he had a fleet 9 See Niles, vii, 12, and other places (under "Chauncy" in index). LofC. loo Naval War of 1812 which tonned 1,701, was manned by 680 men, and threw at a broadside 1,099 lbs. of shot; and he de- cHned to go out of port or in any way try to check the operation of Yeo's fleet which tonned 2,091, was manned by 770 men, and threw at a broadside 1,374 lbs. of shot. Chauncy then acted perfectly proper, no doubt, but he could not afford to sneer at Yeo for behaving in the same way. Whatever either commander might write, in reality he well knew that his officers and crews were, man for man, just about on a par with those of his antagonists, and so, after the first brush or two, he was exceedingly careful to see that the odds were not against him. Chauncy in his petulant answers to Brown's letter ignored the fact that his superiority of force would prevent his opponent from giving battle, and would, therefore, prevent anything more important than a blockade occurring. His ideas of the purpose for which his command had been created were erroneous and very hurtful to the American cause. That purpose was not, ex- cept incidentally, "the destruction of the enemy's fleet" ; and, if it was, he entirely failed to accomplish it. The real purpose was to enable Canada to be successfully invaded, or to assist in repelling an in- vasion of the United States. These services could only Idc efficiently performed by acting in union with the land-forces, for his independent action could evi- On the Lakes loi dently have Httle effect. The only important ser- vices he had performed had been in attacking Forts George and York, where he had been rendered "sub- ordinate to, and an appendage of, the army." His only chance of accomplishing anything lay in sim- ilar acts of co-operation, and he refused to do these. Had he acted as he ought to have done, and assisted Brown to the utmost, he would certainly have ac- complished much more than he did, and might have enabled Brown to assault Kingston, when Yeo's fleet would of course have been captured. The insubor- dination, petty stickling for his own dignity, and lack of appreciation of the necessity of acting in con- cert that he showed, were the very faults which proved most fatal to the success of our various land commanders in the early part of the war. Even had Chauncy's assistance availed nothing, he could not have accomplished less than he did. He remained off Kingston blockading Yeo, being once or twice blown off by gales. He sent Lieutenant Gregory, accompanied by Midshipman Hart and six men, in to reconnoitre on August 25th; the lieutenant ran across two barges containing 30 men, and was cap- tured after the midshipman had been killed and the lieutenant and four men wounded. On September 2 1 St he transported General Izard and 3,000 men from Sackett's Harbor to the Genesee; and then again blockaded Kingston until the two-decker was I02 Naval War of 1812 nearly completed, when he promptly retired to the Harbor. The equally cautious Yeo did not come out on the lake till Oct. 1 5th ; he did not indulge in the empty and useless formality of blockading his antagonist, but assisted the British army on the Niagara frontier till navigation closed, about Nov. 21st. A couple of days before, Midshipman McGov^an headed an expedition to blow up the two-decker (named the St. Laurence) with a torpedo, but was discovered by two of the enemy's boats, which he captured and brought in ; the attempt was abandoned, because the St. Lawrence was found not to be lying in Kingston. For this year the material loss again fell heaviest on the British, amounting to one' 14-gun brig burned by her crew, one lo-gun schooner burned on the stocks, three gunboats, three cutters, and one gig captured; while in return the Americans lost one schooner loaded with seven guns, one boat loaded with two, and a gig captured and four guns de- stroyed at Oswego. In men the British loss was heavier still relatively to that of the Americans, being in killed, wounded, and prisoners about 300 to 80. But in spite of this loss and damage, which was too trivial to be of any account to either side, the success of the season was with the British, inas- much as they held command over the lake for more than four months, during which time they could co- On the Lakes 103 operate with their army; while the Americans held it for barely two months and a half. In fact the conduct of the two fleets on Lake Ontario during the latter part of the war was almost farcical. As soon as one, by building, acquired the superiority, the foe at once retired to port, where he waited until he had built another vessel or two, when he came out, and the other went into port in turn. Under such circumstances it was hopeless ever to finish the contest by a stand-up sea-fight, each com- mander calculating the chances with mathematical exactness. The only hope of destroying the enemy's fleet was by co-operating with the land-forces in a successful attack on his main post, when he would be forced to be either destroyed or to fight — and this co-operation Chauncy refused to give. He seems to have been an excellent organizer, but he did not use (certainly not in the summer of 1813) his mate- rials by any means to the best advantage. He was hardly equal to his opponent, and the latter seems to have been little more than an average officer. Yeo blundered several times, as in the attack on Sackett's Harbor, in not following up his advantage at Oswego, in showing so little resource in the ac- tion off the Genesee, etc, and he was not troubled by any excess of daring ; but during the period when he was actually cruising against Chauncy on the lake he certainly showed to better advantage than I04 Naval War of 1812 the American did. With an inferior force he won a partial victory over his opponent off Niagara, and then kept him in check for six weeks ; while Chauncy, with his superior force, was not only partially de- feated once, but, when he did gain a partial victory, failed to take advantage of it. In commenting upon the timid and dilatory tac- tics of the two commanders on Ontario, however, it must be remembered that the indecisive nature of the results attained had been often paralleled by the numerous similar encounters that took place on the ocean during the wars of the preceding century. In the War of the American Revolution, the English fought some 19 fleet actions with the French, Dutch, and Spaniards; one victory was gained over the French, and one over the Spaniards, while the 17 others were all indecisive, both sides claim- ing the victory, and neither winning it. Of course, some of them, though indecisive as regards loss and damages, were strategetical victories : thus. Admiral Arbuthnot beat back Admiral Barras off the Chesapeake, in March of 1781; and near the same place in September of the same year the French had their revenge in the victory (one at least in its results) of the Conte de Grasse over Sir Thomas Graves. In the five desperate and bloody combats which De Suffrein waged with Sir Edward Hughes in the East Indies, the laurels were very evenly di- On the Lakes 105 vided. These five conflicts were not rendered inde- cisive by any overwariness in manoeuvring, for De Suffrein's attacks were carried out with as much boldness as skill, and his stubborn antagonist was never inclined to balk him of a fair battle; but the two hardy fighters were so evenly matched that they would pound one another till each was helpless to inflict injury. Very different were the three con- secutive battles that took place in the same waters, on the 25th of April, 1758, the 3d of August, 1758, and on the loth of September, 1759, between Po- cock and d'Ache,^^ where, by skilful manoeuvring, the French admiral saved his somewhat inferior force from capture, and the English admiral gained indecisive victories. M. Riviere, after giving a most just and impartial account of the battles, sums up with the following excellent criticism,^ ^ "It is this battle, won by Hawke, the 20th of No- vember, 1757, and the combats of Pocock and d'Ache, from which date two distinct schools in the naval affairs of the i8th century: one of these was all for promptness and audacity, which were re- garded as the indispensable conditions for victory; the other, on the contrary, praised skilful delays •<"'La Marine Franjaise sous le Regne de Louis XV," par Henri Riviere, Lieutenant de Vaisseau, Chevalier de la Legion d' Honneur. (Paris et Toulon, 1859), pp. 385 and 439. " Ibid., p. 425. I pay more attention to the sense than to the letter in my translation. io6 Naval War of 1812 and able evolutions, and created success by science united to prudence. . . . But these two schools were true only according to circumstances, not ab- solutely. When two fleets of equal worth are fac- ing one another, as in the War of the American Revolution, then tactics should come into play, and audacity would often be mere foolhardiness. If it happens, on the other hand, as in the Republic, or during the last years of Louis XV, that an irreso- lute fleet, without organization, has to contend with a fleet prepared in every way, then, on the part of this last, audacity is wisdom and prudence would be cowardice, for it would give an enemy who distrusts himself time to become more hardy. The only school always true is that one which, freed from all routine, produces men whose genius will unite in one, in knowing how to apply them appropriately, the audacity which will carry off victory, and the prudence which knows how to obtain it In prepar- ing for it." These generalizations are drawn from the results of mighty battles, but they apply just as well to the campaigns carried on on a small scale, or even to single-ship actions. Chauncy, as already said, does not deserve the praise which most American his- torians, and especially Cooper, have lavished on him as well as on all our other officers of that period. Such indiscriminate eulogy entirely detracts from On the Lakes 107 the worth of the writer's favorable criticisms. Our average commander was, I firmly believe, at that time superior to the average commander of any- other nation ; but to get at this average we must in- clude Chauncy, Rodgers, and Angus, as well as Hull, Macdonough, Perry, Porter, Bainbridge, Biddle, Lawrence, and Warrington. Sir James Yeo did to the full as well as his op- ponent, and like him was a good organizer; but he did little enough. His campaigns must be consid- ered as being conducted well or ill according as he is believed to have commanded better men than his opponent, or not. If, as many British writers con- tend, his crews were an overmatch for the Ameri- cans, man for man, even to a slight degree, then Yeo's conduct was very cowardly; if, on the con- trary, the officers and men of the two fleets were on a par, then he acted properly and outgeneraled his opponent. It is to be regretted that most of the histories written on the subject, on either side of the Atlantic, should be of the "hurrah" order of literature, with no attempt whatever to get at the truth, but merely to explain away the defeats or im- mensely exaggerate the victories suffered or gained by their own side. io8 Naval War of 1812 ERIE AND THE UPPER LAKES Hitherto the vessels on these lakes (as well as on Ontario) had been under the command of Commo- dore Chauncy; but they were now formed into a separate department, under Captain Arthur Sinclair. The Americans had, of course, complete supremacy, and no attempt was seriously made to contest it with them ; but they received a couple of stinging if not very important defeats. It is rather singular that here the British, who began with a large force, while there was none whatever to oppose it, should have had it by degrees completely annihilated ; and should have then, and not till then, when apparently ren- dered harmless, have turned round and partially re- avenged themselves by two cutting-out expeditions which were as boldly executed as they were skilfully planned. Captain Sinclair sailed into Lake Huron with the Niagara, Caledonia, Ariel, Scorpion, and Tigress, and on July 20th burnt the fort and barracks of St. Joseph, which were abandoned by their gar- rison. On Aug. 4th he arrived off the fort of Machilimacinac (Mackinaw), which was situated on such an eminence that the guns of the vessels could not reach it. Accordingly, the troops under Col. Croghan were landed, covered by the fire of the schooners, very successfully ; but when they tried to carry the fort they were driven back with the loss On the Lakes 109 of 70 men. Thence Sinclair sailed to the Nattaga- wassa Creek, attacked and destroyed a block-house three miles up it, which mounted three light guns, and also a schooner called the Nancy; but the com- mander of the schooner, Lieutenant Worsely, with his crew, escaped up the river. Captain Sinclair then departed for Lake Erie, leaving the Scorpion, Lieutenant Turner, and Tigress, Sailing-master Champlin, to blockade the Nattagawassa. News was received by the British from a party of Indians that the two American vessels were five leagues apart, and it was at once resolved to attempt their capture. On the first of September, in the evening, four boats started out, one manned by 20 seamen, under Lieutenant Worsely, the three other by y2 soldiers under Lieutenants Bulger, Armstrong, and Raderhurst of the army — in all 92 men and two guns, a 6 and a 3-pounder. A number of Indians accompanied the expedition but took no part in the fighting. At sunset on the 2d the boats arrived at St. Mary's Strait, and spent 24 hours in finding out where the American schooners were. At 6 p.m. on the 3d, the nearest vessel, the Tigress, was made out, six miles off, and they pulled for her. It was very dark, and they were not discovered till they had come within fifty yards, when Champlin at once fired his long 24 at them ; before it could be re- loaded the four boats had dashed up, those of Lieu- no Naval War of 1812 tenants Worsely and Armstrong placing themselves on the starboard, and those of Lieutenants Bulger and Raderhurst on the port side. There was a short, sharp struggle, and the schooner was carried. Of her crew of 28 men, 3 were killed and 5, including Mr. Champlin, dangerously wounded. The assail- ants lost three seamen killed, Lieutenant Bulger, seven soldiers and several seamen wounded. ^^ "The defence of this vessel," writes Lieutenant Bulger, "did credit to her officers, who were all severely wounded." Next day the prisoners were sent on shore; and on the 5th the Scorpion was discovered working up to join her consort, entirely ignorant of what had happened. She anchored about two miles from the Tigress, and next morning at 6 o'clock the latter slipped her cable and ran down under the jib and foresail, the American ensign and pendant still flying. When within 10 yards of the Scorpion, the concealed soldiers jumped up, poured a volley into her which killed 2 and wounded 2 men, and the next moment carried her, her surprised crew of 30 men making no resistance. The whole affair reflected great credit on the enterprise and pluck of the Brit- ish, without being discreditable to the Americans. " Letter of Lieutenant A. H. Bulger, September 7, 1814. James says only 3 killed and 8 wounded; but Lieutenant Bulger distinctly says, in addition, "and several seamen wounded." On the Lakes 1 1 1 It was like Lieut. Elliott's capture of the Detroit and Caledonia. Meanwhile a still more daring cutting-out expe- dition had taken place at the foot of Lake Erie. The three American schooners, Ohio, Somers, and Por- cupine, each with 30 men, under Lieut. Conkling, were anchored just at the outlet of the lake, to cover the flank of the works at Fort Erie. On the night of August 1 2th, Capt. Dobbs, of the Charzvell, and Lieut. Radcliffe, of the Netly, with 75 seamen and marines from their two vessels, which were lying off Fort Erie, resolved to attempt the capture of the schooners. The seamen carried the captain's gig upon their shoulders from Queenstown to French- man's Creek, a distance of 20 miles; thence, by the aid of some militia, 5 batteaux as well as the gig were carried 8 miles across the woods to Lake Erie, and the party (whether with or without the militia I do not know) embarked in them. Between 11 and 12 the boats were discovered a short distance ahead of the Somers and hailed. They answered **provis- ion boats," which deceived the officer on deck, as such boats had been in the habit of passing and re- passing continually during the night. Before he dis- covered his mistake the boats drifted across his hawse, cut his cables, and ran him aboard with a volley of musketry, which wounded two of his men, and before the others could get on deck the schooner 112 Naval War of 1812 was captured. In another moment the British boats were alongside the Ohio, Lieut. Conkling's vessel. Here the people had hurried on deck, and there was a moment's sharp struggle, in which the assailants lost Lieut. Radcliffe and one seaman killed and six seamen and marines wounded; but on board the Ohio Lieut. Conkling and Sailing-master M. Cally were shot down, one seaman killed, and four wounded, and Captain Dobbs carried her, sword in hand. The Porcupine was not molested, and made no effort to interfere with the British in their re- treat; so they drifted down the rapids with their two prizes and secured them below. The boldness of this enterprise will be appreciated when it is re- membered that but 75 British seamen (unless there were some militia along), with no artillery, attacked and captured two out of three fine schooners, armed each with a long 32 or 24, and an aggregate of 90 men; and that this had been done in waters where the gig and five batteaux of the victors were the only British vessels afloat. CHAMPLAIN This lake, which had hitherto played but an in- conspicuous part, was now to become the scene of the greatest naval battle of the war. A British army ]-t^o' Log of Pomone, published at Bermuda, January 29, and quoted in full in the "Naval Chronicle," xxxiii, 370. >'^ Letter of Captain Hayes. '^ Letter of Decatur. •« Letter of Decatur. '^ Cooper, ii, 466. >8 Log of Pomone. " Letter of Capt. Hayes. '8 James, vi, 530. " Letter of Decatur. 9 Concluding Operations 147 to close.^^ So things continued for half an hour, during which the President suffered more than dur- ing all the remainder of the combat.^^ At 6 .00 the President kept off, heading to the south, and the two adversaries ran abreast, the Americans using the starboard and the British the port batteries.^^ Decatur tried to close with his antagonist, but when- ever he hauled nearer to the latter she hauled off,^^ and, being the swiftest ship, could of course evade him ; so he was reduced to the necessity of trying to throw her out of the combat^^ by dismantling her. He was completely successful in this, and after two hours' fighting the Endymion's sails were all cut from her yards^^ and she dropped astern, the last shot being fired from the President?^ The En- dymion was now completely silent.^'^ Commodore Decatur did not board her merely because her con- sorts were too close astern f^ accordingly the Presi- dent hauled up again to try her chances at running, having even her royal studding-sails set,^^ and ex- posed her stern to the broadside of the Endymion,^^ but the latter did not fire a single gun.^^ Three hours afterward, at ii,^^ the Pomone caught up '^^ Letter of Decatur. '' Cooper, 470. ^"^ Log of Pomojie. " Report of Court-martial. '■* Letter of Commodore Decatur. '' Letter of Captain Hayes. ^^ Log of Pomone. ''■' Log of Pomojie. ^^ Report of Court-martial. ^* James, vi, 538. 3" Letter of Com. Decatur. ^' Log of Pomone. "^"^ Letter of Captain Hayes. 148 Naval War of 1812 with the President, and luffing to port gave her the starboard broadside ;^^ the Tenedos being two ca- bles' length distance astern, taking up a raking position.^'* The Pomone poured in another broad- side, within musket shot,^^ when the President sur- rendered and was taken possession of by Capt. Parker of the Tenedos.^^ A considerable number of the President's people were killed by these two last broadsides.^'^ The Endymion was at this time out of sight astern.^^ She did not come up, ac- cording to one account, for an hour and three-quar- ters,^^ and according to another, for three hours f^ and as she was a faster ship than the President, this means that she was at least two hours motionless repairing damages. Commodore Decatur delivered his sword to Capt. Hayes of the Majestic, who re- turned it, stating in his letter that both sides had fought with great gallantry.^* The President hav- ing been taken by an entire squadron ,^2 the prize- money was divided equally among the ships. ^^ The 2^ Log of Pomone. ' ^ Decatur's letter. ^^ Log of Pomone. ^^ James, vi, 531. 3' Letter of Commodore Decatur, March 6, 1815; deposition of Chaplain Henry Robinson before Admiralty Court at St. George's, Bermuda, January, 1815. 38 Letter of Decatur, January 18. ^' Log of Pomone. *" Letter of Decatur, March 6. ■" Letter of Captain Hayes. ■" Admiral Hotham's letter, January 23. « Bermuda "Royal Gazette," March 8, 1815. Concluding Operations 149 President's crew all told consisted of 450 men,^^ none of whom were British.*^ She had thus a hun- dred more men than her antagonist and threw about 100 pounds more shot at a broadside; but these ad- vantages were more than counterbalanced by the in- juries received on the bar, and by the fact that her powder was so bad that while some of the British shot went through both her sides, such a thing did not once happen to the Endymion,^^ when fairly hulled. The President lost 24 killed and 55 wounded ;^'^ the Endymion, 11 killed and 14 wounded.^^ Two days afterward, on their way to the Bermudas, a violent easterly gale came on, dur- ing which both ships were dismasted, and the En- dymion in addition had to throw over all her spar- deck guns.^® As can be seen, almost every sentence of this ac- count is taken (very nearly word for word) from the various official reports, relying especially on the log of the British frigate Pomone. I have been thus careful to have every point of the narrative es- tablished by unimpeachable reference: first, because there have been quite a number of British historians ** Depositions of Lieutenant Gallagher and the other officers. ** Deposition of Commodore Decatur. ** Bermuda "Royal Gazette," January 6, r8i8. *' Decatur's letter. *^ Letter of Captain Hope, January 15, 1815. *» James, vi, 534. 150 Naval War of 18 12 who have treated the conflict as if it were a victory and not a defeat for the Endymion; and in the sec- ond place, because I regret to say that I do not think that the facts bear out the assertions, on the part of most American authors, that Commodore Decatur "covered himself with glory" and showed the "utmost heroism." As regards the first point, Captain Hope himself, in his singularly short official letter, does little beyond detail his own loss, and makes no claim to having vanquished his opponent. Ahnost all the talk about its being a "victory" comes from James; and in recounting this, as well as all the other battles, nearly every subsequent British historian simply gives James's statements over again, occasionally amplifying, but more often alter- ing or omitting, the vituperation. The point at issue is simply this: could a frigate which, according to James himself, went out of action with every sail set, take another frigate which for two hours, ac- cording to the log of the Pomone, lay motionless and unmanageable on the waters, without a sail? To prove that it could not, of course, needs some not over-scrupulous manipulation of the facts. The intention with which James sets about his work can be gathered from the triumphant conclusion he comes to, that Decatur's name has been "sunk quite as low as that of Bainbridge or Porter," which, com- paring small things to great, is somewhat like say- Concluding Operations 151 ing that Napoleon's defeat by Wellington and Blucher "sunk" him to the level of Hannibal. For the account of the American crew and loss, James relies on the statements made in the Bermuda pa- pers, of whose subsequent forced retraction he takes no notice, and of course largely overestimates both. On the same authority he states that the President's fire was "silenced," Commodore Decatur stating the exact reverse. The point is fortunately settled by the log of the Pomone, which distinctly says that the last shot was fired by the President. His last resort is to state that the loss of the President was fourfold (in reality threefold) that of the Endym- ion. Now we have seen that the President lost "a considerable number" of men from the fire of the Pomone. Estimating these at only nineteen, we have a loss of sixty caused by the Endymion, and as most of this was caused during the first half hour, when the President was not firing, it follows that while the two vessels were both fighting, broad- side and broadside, the loss inflicted was about equal; or, the President, aiming at her adversary's rigging, succeeded in completely disabling her, and incidentally killed 25 men, while the Endymion, did not hurt the President's rigging at all, and, aiming at her hull, where, of course, the slaughter ought to have been far greater than when the fire was di- rected aloft, only killed about the same number of 152 Naval War of 1812 men. Had there been no other vessels in chase, Commodore Decatur, his adversary, having been thus rendered perfectly helpless, could have simply taken any position he chose and compelled the latter to strike, without sufifering any material additional loss himself. As in such a case he would neither have endured the unanswered fire of the Endymion on his quarter for the first half hour, nor the subse- quent broadsides of the Pomone, the President's loss would probably have been no greater than that of the Constitution in taking the Java. It is diffi- cult to see how any outsider with an ounce of com- mon-sense and fair-mindedness can help awarding the palm to Decatur, as regards the action with the Endymion. But I regret to say that I must agree with James that he acted rather tamely, certainly not heroically, in striking to the Pomone. There was, of course, not much chance of success in doing battle with two fresh frigates ; but then they only mounted eighteen-pounders, and, judging from the slight results of the cannonading from the Endym- ion and the first two (usually the most fatal) broad- sides of the Pomone, it would have been rather a long time before they would have caused much dam- age. Meanwhile the President was pretty nearly as well off as ever as far as fighting and sailing went. A lucky shot might have disabled one of her op- ponents, and then the other would, in all probability, Concluding Operations 153 have undergone the same fate as the Endymion. At least it was well worth trying, and though De- catur could not be said to be disgraced, yet it is excusable to wish that Porter or Perry had been in his place. It is not very pleasant to criticise the actions of an American whose name is better known than that of almost any other single-ship captain of his time: but if a man is as much to be praised for doing fairly, or even badly, as for doing excellently, then there is no use in bestowing praise at all. This is perhaps as good a place as any other to notice one or two of James's most common misstate- ments ; they really would not need refutation were it not that they had been re-echoed, as usual, by al- most every British historian of the war for the last 60 years. In the first place, James puts the number of the President's men at 475 ; she had 450. An exactly parallel reduction must often be made when he speaks of the force of an American ship. Then he says there were many British among them, which is denied under oath by the American officers ; this holds good also for the other American frigates. He says there were but 4 boys ; there were nearly 30; and on p. 120 he says the youngest was 14, whereas we incidentally learn from the "Life of Decatur" that several were under 12. A favorite accusation is that the American midshipmen were chiefly mas- ters and mates of merchantmen ; but this was hardly 154 Naval War of 1812 ever the case. Many of the midshipmen of the war afterward became celebrated commanders, and most of these (a notable instance being Farragut, the greatest admiral since Nelson) were entirely too young in 1812 to have had vessels under them, and, moreover, came largely from the so-called "best families." Again, in the first two frigate actions of 1812, the proportion of killed to wounded happened to be unusually large on board the American frigates ; accordingly James states (p. 146) that the returns of the wounded had been garbled, underestimated, and made "subservient to the views of the command- ers and their government." To support his posi- tion that Capt. Hull, who reported 7 killed and 7 wounded, had not given the list of the latter in full, he says that "an equal number of killed and wound- ed, as given in the American account, hardly ever occurs, except in cases of explosion" ; and yet, on p. 519, he gives the loss of the British Hermes as 25 killed and 24 wounded, disregarding the incongru- ity involved. On p. 169, in noticing the loss of the United States, 5 killed and 7 wounded, he says that "the slightly wounded, as in all other American cases, are omitted." This is untrue, and the pro- portion on the United States, 5 to 7, is just about the same as that given by James himself on the Endymion, 11 to 14, and Nautilus, 6 to 8. In sup- Concluding Operations 155 porting his theory, James brings up all the instances where the American wounded bore a larger propor- tion to their dead than on board the British ships, but passes over the actions with the Reindeer, Eper- vier, Penguin, Endymion, and Boxer, where the re- verse was the case. One of James's most common methods of attempting to throw discredit on the much vilified "Yankees" is by quoting newspaper accounts of their wounded. Thus he says (p. 562) of the Hornet, that several of her men told some of the Penguin's sailors that she lost 10 men killed, 16 wounded, etc. Utterly false rumors of this kind were as often indulged in by the Americans as the British. After the capture of the President articles occasionally appeared in the papers to the effect that some American sailor had counted "23 dead" on board the Endymion, that "more than 50" of her men were wounded, etc. Such statements were as commonly made and with as little foundation by one side as by the other, and it is absurd for a historian to take any notice of them. James does no worse than many of our own writers of the same date; but while their writings have passed into oblivion, his work is still often accepted as a standard. This must be my apology for devoting so much time to it. The severest criticism to which it can possibly be subjected is to compare it with the truth. When- ever dealing with purely American affairs, James's 156 Naval War of 1812 history is as utterly untrustworthy as its contempo- rary, Niles's "Register," is in matters purely Brit- ish, while both are invaluable in dealing with things relating strictly to their own nation; they supple- ment each other. On Jan. 8th General Pakenham was defeated and killed by General Jackson at New Orleans, the Louisiana and the seamen of the Carolina having their full share in the glory of the day, and Cap- tain Henly being among the very few American wounded. On the same day Sailing-master John- son, with 28 men in two boats, cut out the British- armed transport brig Cyprus, containing provisions and munitions of war, and manned by ten men.^^ On the 1 8th the British abandoned the enterprise and retreated to their ships; and Mr. Thomas Shields, a purser, formerly a sea-officer, set off to harass them while embarking. At sunset on the 20th he left with five boats and a gig, manned in all with 53 men, and having under him Sailing-master Daily and Master's Mate Boyd.^^ At ten o'clock P.M. a large barge, containing 14 seamen and 40 officers and men of the 14th Light Dragoons, was surprised and carried by boarding after a slight strug- gle. The prisoners outnumbering their captors, the '•> Letter of Sailing-master Johnson, January g, 1815. 5' Letter of Tliomas Shields to Com. Patterson, January 25 1815. Concluding Operations 157 latter returned to shore, left them in a place of safe- ty, and again started at 2 a.m. on the morning of the 22d. Numerous transports and barges of the enemy could be seen, observing very little order and apparently taking no precautions against attack, which they probably did not apprehend. One of the American boats captured a transport and five men; another, containing Mr. Shields himself and eight men, carried by boarding, after a short resist- ance, a schooner carrying ten men. The flotilla then reunited and captured in succession, with no resistance, five barges containing 70 men. By this time the alarm had spread and they were attacked by six boats, but these were repelled with some loss. Seven of the prisoners (who were now half as many again as their captors) succeeded in escaping in the smallest prize. Mr. Shields returned with the oth- ers, 78 in number. During the entire expedition he had lost but three men, wounded; he had taken 132 prisoners, and destroyed eight craft whose aggre- gate tonnage about equalled that of the five gun- vessels taken on Lake Borgne. On Jan. 30, 181 5, information was received by Captain Dent, commanding at North Edisto, Ga., that a party of British officers and men, in four boats belonging to H. M. S. Hehrus, Capt. Palmer, were watering at one of the adjacent islands.^^ *^ Letter of Lawrence Kearney of January 30, 18 15 (see in the Archives at Washington," Captains' Letters," vol. 42, No. 100). 158 Naval War of 1812 Lieut. Lawrence Kearney, with three barges con- taining about 75 men, at once proceeded outside to cut them off, when the miHtia drove them away. The frigate was at anchor out of gunshot, but as soon as she perceived the barges began firing guns as signals. The British on shore left in such a hurry that they deserted their launch, which, con- taining a 12-pound boat carronade and six swivels, was taken by the Americans. The other boats — two cutters, and a large tender mounting one long nine and carrying 30 men — made for the frigate; but Lieut. Kearney laid the tender aboard and cap- tured her after a sharp brush. The cutters were only saved by the fire of the Hehrus, which was very well directed — one of her shot taking off the head of a man close by Lieut. Kearney. The frigate got under way and intercepted Kearney's return, but the Lieutenant then made for South Edisto, whither he carried his prize in triumph. This was one of the most daring exploits of the war, and was achieved at very small cost. On Feb. 14th a similar feat was performed. Lieutenant Kearney had manned the captured launch with 25 men and the 12-pound carronade. News was received of another harrying expedition undertaken by the Brit- ish, and Captain Dent, with seven boats, put out to attack them, but was unable to cross the reef. Mean- while Kearney's barge had gotten outside, and at- Concluding Operations 159 tacked the schooner Brant, a tender to H. M. S. Severn, mounting an i8-pounder, and with a crew of two midshipmen, and twenty-one marines and seamen. A running fight began, the Brant evi- dently fearing that the other boats might get across the reef and join in the attack; suddenly she ran aground on a sand-bank, which accident totally de- moralized her crew. Eight of them escaped in her boat, to the frigate; the remaining fifteen, after fir- ing a few shot, surrendered and were taken posses- sion of.^^ I have had occasion from time to time to speak of cutting-out expeditions, successful and otherwise, undertaken by British boats against American pri- vateers; and twice a small British national cutter was captured by an overwhelmingly superior Ameri- can opponent of this class. We now, for the only time, come across an engagement between a priva- teer and a regular cruiser of approximately equal force. These privateers came from many different ports and varied greatly in size. Baltimore pro- duced the largest number; but New York, Phila- 53 Letter of Captain Dent, February i6 (in "Captains' Let- ters," vol. 42, No. 130). Most American authors, headed by Cooper, give this exploit a more vivid coloring by increasing the crew of the Brant to forty men, omitting to mention that she was hard and fast aground, and making no allusion to the presence of the five other American boats which un- doubtedly caused the Brant's flight in the first place. i6o Naval War of 1812 delphia, Boston, and Salem were not far behind; and Charleston, Bristol, and Plymouth supplied some that were very famous. Many were merely small pilot-boats with a crew of 20 to 40 men, in- tended only to harry the West Indian trade. Oth- ers were large, powerful craft, unequalled for speed by any vessels of their size, which penetrated to the remotest corners of the ocean, from Man to the Spice Islands. When a privateer started she was overloaded with men, to enable her to man her prizes ; a successful cruise would reduce her crew to a fifth of its original size. The favorite rig was that of a schooner, but there were many brigs and brigantines. Each was generally armed with a long 24 or 32 on a pivot, and a number of light guns in broadside, either long 9's or short i8's or 12's. Some had no pivot gun, others had nothing else. The largest of them carried 17 guns (a pivotal 32 and 16 long 12's in broadside) with a crew of 150. Such a vessel ought to have been a match, at her own distance, for a British brig-sloop, but we never hear of any such engagements, and there were sev- eral instances where privateers gave up, without firing a shot, to a force superior, it is true, but not enough so to justify the absolute tameness of the surrender.^* One explanation of this was that they ** As when the Epervier, some little time before her own capture, took without resistance the Alfred, of Salem, mounting i6 long nines and having ro8 men aboard. Concluding Operations i6i were cruising as private ventures, and their object was purely to capture merchantmen with as little risk as possible to themselves. Another reason was that they formed a kind of sea-militia, and, like their compeers on land, some could fight as well as any regulars, while most would not fight at all, espe- cially if there was need of concerted action between two or three. The American papers of the day are full of "glorious victories" gained by privateers over packets and Indiamen ; the British papers are al- most as full of instances where the packets and In- diamen "heroically repulsed" the privateers. As neither side ever chronicles a defeat, and as the narration is apt to be decidedly figurative in char- acter, there is very little hope of getting at the truth of such meetings; so I have confined myself to the mention of those cases where privateers, of either side, came into armed collision with regular cruisers. We are then sure to find some authentic account. The privateer brig Chasseur, of Baltimore, Cap- tain Thomas Boyle, carried i6 long 12's, and had, when she left port, 115 men aboard. She made 18 prizes on her last voyage, and her crew was thus reduced to less than 80 men; she was then chased by the Barossa frigate, and threw overboard 10 of her long 12's. Afterward eight 9-pound carron- ades were taken from a prize, to partially supply the places of the lost guns; but as she had no shot i62 Naval War of 1812 of the calibre of these carronades each of the latter was loaded with one 4-pound and one 6-pound ball, giving her a broadside of 76 lbs. On the 26th of February, two leagues from Havana, the Chasseur fell in with the British schooner St. Laivrence, Lieut. H. C. Gordon, mounting twelve 12-pound carron- ades, and one long 9; her broadside was thus 81 lbs., and she had between 60 and 80 men aboard.^^ The Chasseur mistook the 5"^. Lawrence for a merchant- man and closed with her. The mistake was discov- ered too late to escape, even had such been Captain Boyle's intention, and a brief but bloody action en- sued. At 1 .26 P.M., the St. Lawrence fired the first broadside, within pistol shot, to which the Chasseur replied with her great guns and musketry. The brig then tried to close, so as to board ; but having too much way on, shot ahead under the lee of the schooner, which put her helm up to wear under the Chasseur's stern. Boyle, however, followed his an- tagonist's manoeuvre, and the two vessels ran along " Letter of Captain Thomas Boyle, of March 2, 1815 (see Niles and Coggeshall); he says the schooner had two more carronades; I have taken the number given by James (p. 539). Captain Boyle says the Si. Lawrence had on board 89 men and several more, including a number of soldiers and marines and gentlemen of the navy, as passengers; James says her crew amounted to 51 "exclusive of some passengers," which I suppose must mean at least nine men. So the forces were pretty equal ; the Chasseur may have had 20 men more or 10 men less than her antagonist, and she threw from 5 to 21 pounds less weight of shot. Concluding Operations 163 side by side, the St. Lazvrence drawing ahead, while the firing was very heavy. Then Captain Boyle put his helm a-starboard and ran his foe aboard, when in the act of boarding her colors were struck at I 41 P.M., 15 minutes after the first shot. Of the Chasseu/s crew 5 were killed and 8 wounded, including Captain Boyle slightly. Of the St. Law- rence's crew 6 were killed and 17 (according to James 18) wounded. This was a very creditable action. The St. Lawrence had herself been an American privateer, called the Atlas, and was of 241 tons, or just 36 less than the Chasseur. The latter could thus fairly claim that her victory was gained over a regular cruiser of about her own force. Captain Southcombe of the Lottery, Cap- tain Reid of the General Armstrong, Captain Or- dronaux of the Neufchatel, and Captain Boyle of the Chasseur, deserve as much credit as any regu- larly commissioned sea-officers. But it is a mistake to consider these cases as representing the average; an ordinary privateer was, naturally enough, no match for a British regular cruiser of equal force. The privateers were of incalculable benefit to us, and inflicted enormous damage on the foe; but in fighting they suffered under the same disadvantages as other irregular forces; they were utterly unreli- able. A really brilliant victory would be followed by a most extraordinary defeat. 164 Naval War of 1812 After the Constitution had escaped from Boston, as I have described, she ran to the Bermudas, cruised in their vicinity a short v^hile, thence to Madeira, to the Bay of Biscay, and finally off Portugal, cruis- ing for some time in sight of the Rock of Lisbon. Captain Stew^art then ran off southwest, and on Feb. 20th, Madeira bearing W.S.W. 60 leagues,^® the day being cloudy, M^ith a light easterly breeze,^'^ at I P.M. a sail was made two points on the port bow; and at 2 p.m., Captain Stewart, hauling up in chase, discovered another sail. The first of these was the frigate-built ship corvette Cyane, Captain Gordon Thomas Falcon, and the second was the ship-sloop Levant, Captain the Honorable George Douglas.^^ Both were standing close hauled on the starboard tack, the sloop about 10 miles to leeward of the corvette. At 4 p.m. the latter began making sig- nals to her consort that the strange sail was an ene- my, and then made all sail before the wind to join the sloop. The Constitution bore up in chase, set- ting her topmast, topgallant, and royal studding- sails. In half an hour she carried away her main royal mast, but immediately got another prepared, and at 5 o'clock began firing at the corvette with the two port-bow guns ; as the shot fell short the firing ^« Letter of Captain Stewart to the Secretary of the Navy, May 20, 1815. *' Log of Co7istitution, February 20, 181 5. 68 "Naval Chronicle," xxxiii, 466. Concluding Operations 165 soon ceased. At 5 .30 the Cyane got within hail of the Levant, and the latter's gallant commander ex- pressed to Captain Gordon his intention of engaging the American frigate. The two ships accordingly hauled up their courses and stood on the starboard tack; but immediately afterward their respective captains concluded to try to delay the action till dark, so as to get the advantage of manceuvring.^^ Accordingly they again set all sail and hauled close to the wind to endeavor to weather their opponent; but finding the latter coming down too fast for them to succeed, they again stripped to fighting canvas and formed on the starboard tack in head and stern line, the Levant about a cable's length in front of her consort. The American now had them com- pletely under her guns and showed her ensign, to which challenge the British ships replied by setting their colors. At 6.10 the Constitution ranged up to windward of the Cyane and Levant, the former on her port quarter, the latter on her port bow, both being distant about 250 yards from her^° — so close 69 "Naval Chronicle," xxxiii, 466. «" Testimony sworn to by Lieutenant W. B. Shubrick and Lieutenant of Marines Archibald Henderson before Thomas Welsh, Jr., Justice of the Peace, Suffolk St., Boston, July 20, 181 5. The depositions were taken in consequence of a report started by some of the British journals that the action began at a distance of three-quarters of a mile. All the American depositions were that all three ships began firing at once, when equidistant from each other about 250 yards, the marines being engaged almost the whole time. i66 Naval War of 1812 that the American marines were constantly engaged almost from the beginning of the action. The fight began at once, and continued with great spirit for a quarter of an hour, the vessels all firing broadsides. It was now moonlight, and an immense column of smoke formed under the lee of the Constitution, shrouding from sight her foes; and, as the fire of the latter had almost ceased. Captain Stewart also ordered his men to stop, so as to find out the posi- tions of the ships. In about three minutes the smoke cleared, disclosing to the Americans the Levant dead to leeward on the port beam, and the Cyane luffing up for their port quarter. Giving a broad- side to the sloop, Stewart braced aback his main and mizzen topsails, with topgallant sails set, shook all forward, and backed rapidly astern, under cover of the smoke, abreast the corvette, forcing the latter to fill again to avoid being raked. The firing was spirited for a few minutes, when the Cyane^s almost died away. The Levant bore up to wear round and assist her consort, but the Constitution filled her topsails, and, shooting ahead, gave her two stern rakes, when she at once made all sail to get out of the combat. The Cyane was now discovered wear- ing, when the Constitution herself at once wore and gave her in turn a stern rake, the former luffing to and firing her port broadside into the starboard bow of the frigate. Then, as the latter ranged up Concluding Operations 167 on her port quarter, she struck, at 6.50, just forty minutes after the beginning of the action. She was at once taken possession of, and Lieut. Hoffman, second of the Constitution, was put in command. Having manned the prize. Captain Stewart, at 8 o'clock, filled away after her consort The latter, however, had only gone out of the combat to refit. Captain Douglas had no idea of retreat, and no sooner had he rove new braces than he hauled up to the wind, and came very gallantly back to find out his friend's condition. At 8.50 he met the Constitu- tion, and, failing to weather her, the frigate and sloop passed each other on opposite tacks, exchang- ing broadsides. Finding her antagonist too heavy, the Levant then crowded all sail to escape, but was soon overtaken by the Constitution, and at about 9 .30 the latter opened with her starboard bow-chas- ers, and soon afterward the British captain hauled down his colors. Mr. Ballard, first of the Consti- tution, was afterward put in command of the prize. By one o'clock the ships were all in order again. The Constitution had been hulled eleven times, more often than in either of her previous actions, but her loss was mainly due to the grape and mus- ketry of the foe in the beginning of the fight.^^ The British certainly fired better than usual, especially considering the fact that there was much manoeu- ^' Deposition of her officers as before cited. 1 68 Naval War of 1812 vring, and that it was a night action. The Americans lost 3 men killed, 3 mortally, and 9 severely and slightly, wounded. The corvette, out of her crew of 180, had 12 men killed and 26 wounded, several mortally; the sloop, out of 140, had 7 killed and 16 wounded. The Constitution had started on her cruise very full-handed, with over 470 men, but sev- eral being absent on a prize, she went into battle with about 450.^^ fhe prizes had suffered a good deal in their hulls and rigging, and had received some severe wounds in their masts and principal spars. The Cyane carried on her main deck twenty- two 32-pound carronades, and on her spar deck two long 12's and ten 18-pound carronades. The Levant carried, all on one deck, eighteen 32-pound carronades and two long 9's, together with a shift- ing i2-pounder. Thus, their broadside weight of metal was 763 pounds, with a total of 320 men, of whom 61 fell, against the Constitution's 704 pounds and 450 men, of whom 15 were lost; or, nominally, the relative force was 100 to 91, and the relative loss 100 to 24. But the British guns were almost ex- clusively carronades, which, as already pointed out in the case of the Essex and in the battle off Platts- burg, are no match for long guns. Moreover, the «2 410 officers and seamen, and 41 marines, by her muster- roll of February 19. (The muster-rolls are preserved in the Treasury Department at Washington.) Concluding Operations 169 scantling of the smaller ships was, of course, by no means as stout as that of the frigate, so that the disparity of force was much greater than the figures would indicate, although not enough to account for the difference in loss. Both the British ships were ably handled, their fire was well directed, and the Levant in especial was very gallantly fought. As regards the Constitution, "her manoeuvring was as brilliant as any recorded in naval annals," and it would have been simply impossible to surpass the consummate skill with which she was handled in the smoke, always keeping her antagonists to leeward, and, while raking both of them, not being once raked herself. The firing was excellent, con- sidering the short time the ships were actually en- gaged, and the fact that it was at night. Altogether the fight reflected the greatest credit on her, and also on her adversaries.^^ «3 There is no British official account of the action. James states that the entire British force was only 302 men of whom 12 were killed and 29 wounded. This is probably not based on any authority. Captain Stewart received on board 301 prisoners, of whom 42 were wounded, several mortally. Curiously enough, James also underestimates the American loss, making it only 12. He also says that many attempts were made by the Americans to induce the captured British to desert, while the Constitution'' s officers deny this under oath, before Justice Welsh, as already quoted, and state that, on the contrary, many of the prisoners offered to enlist on the frigate, but were all refused permission — as "the loss of the Chesapeake had taught us the danger of having rene- gades aboard." This denial, by the way, holds good for all Vol. X.— H lyo Naval War of 1812 The merits of this action can perhaps be better appreciated by comparing it with a similar one that took place a few years before between a British sloop and corvette on the one side, and a French frigate on the other, and which is given in full by both James and Troude. Although these authors differ somewhat in the account of it, both agree that the 1! ' 6.0s pj» ^6.20 e.os C£MMT Frenchman, the Nereide, of 44 guns, on Feb. 14, 1 8 10, fought a long and indecisive battle with the Rainbow of 26 and Avon of 18 guns, the British the similar statements made by James as regards the Guer- rihre, Macedonian, etc. He also states that a British court- martial found various counts against the Americans for harsh treatment, but ail of these were specifically denied by the American officers, under oath, as already quoted. I have relied chiefly on Captain Stewart's narrative; but partly (as to time, etc.) on the British account in the "Naval Chronicle." Concluding Operations 171 sloops being fought separately, in succession. The relative force was almost exactly as in the Constitu- tion's fight. Each side claimed that the other fled. But this much is sure: the Constitution engaging the Cyane and Levant together, captured both ; while the Nereide, engaging the Rainbow and Avon sep- arately, captured neither. The three ships now proceeded to the Cape de Verds, and on March loth anchored in the harbor of Porto Praya, Island of San Jago. Here a mer- chant-brig was taken as a cartel, and a hundred of the prisoners were landed to help fit her for sea. The next day the weather was thick and foggy, with fresh breezes.^* The first and second lieuten- ants, with a good part of the people, were aboard the two prizes. At five minutes past twelve, while Mr. Shubrick, the senior remaining lieutenant, was on the quarter-deck, the canvas of a large vessel suddenly loomed up through the haze, her hull be- ing completely hidden by the fog-bank. Her char- acter could not be made out; but she was sailing close-hauled, and evidently making for the roads. Mr. Shubrick at once went down and reported the stranger to Captain Stewart, when that officer coolly remarked that it was probably a British frigate or an Indiaman, and directed the lieutenant to return on deck, call all hands, and get ready to go out and ** Log of Constitution, March ii, 1815. 172 Naval War of 1812 attack her.^^ At that moment the canvas of two other ships was discovered rising out of the fog astern of the vessel first seen. It was now evident that all three were heavy frigates.^^ In fact they were the Nezvcastle, 50, Captain Lord George Stew- art; Leander, 50, Captain Sir Ralph Collier, K.C.B., and Acasta, 40, Captain Robert Kerr, standing into Porto Praya, close-hauled on the starboard tack, the wind being light northeast by north.^^ Capt. Stew- art at once saw that his opponents were far too heavy for a fair fight, and, knowing that the neu- trality of the port would not be the slightest protec- tion to him, he at once signaled to the prizes to follow, cut his cable, and, in less than ten minutes from the time the first frigate was seen, was stand- ing out of the roads, followed by Hoffman and Bal- lard. Certainly a more satisfactory proof of the excellent training of both officers and men could hardly be given than the rapidity, skill, and perfect order with which everything was done. Any inde- cision on the part of the officers or bungling on the part of the men would have lost everything. The prisoners on shore had manned a battery and deliv- ered a furious but ill-directed fire at their retreating conquerors. The frigate, sloop, and corvette stood *^ Cooper, ii, 459. " Letter of Lieutenant Hoffman, April 10, 1815. «' Marshall's "Naval Biography," ii, 535- Concluding Operations 173 out of the harbor in the order indicated, on the port tack, passing close under the east point, and a gun- shot to windward of the British squadron, according to the American, or about a league, according to the British, accounts. The Americans made out the force of the strangers correctly, and their own force was equally clearly discerned by the Acasta; but both the Nezvcastle and Leander mistook the Cyane and Levant for frigates, a mistake similar to that once made by Commodore Rodgers. The Consti- tution now crossed her topgallant yards and set the foresail, mainsail, spanker, flying jib, and topgallant sails; and the British ships, tacking, made all sail in pursuit. The Nezvcastle was on the Constitu- tion's lee quarter and directly ahead of the Leander, while the 'Acasta was on the weather-quarter of the Newcastle. All six ships were on the port tack. The Constitution cut adrift the boats towing astern, and her log notes that at 12 .50 she found she was sailing about as fast as the ships on her lee quarter, but that the Acasta was luffing into her wake and dropping astern. The log of the Acasta says : "We had gained on the sloops, but the frigate had gained on us." At 1 .10 the Cyane had fallen so far astern and to leeward that Captain Stewart signaled to Lieutenant Hoffman to tack, lest he should be cut off if he did not. Accordingly the lieutenant put about and ran off toward the northwest, no notice 174 Naval War of 1812 being taken of him by the enemy beyond an ineffect- ual broadside from the sternmost frigate. At 2 .35 he was out of sight of all the ships and shaped his course for America, which he reached on April loth.^^ At 1 .45 the Nezvcastle opened on the Con- stitution, firing by divisions, but the shot all fell short, according to the American statements, about 200 yards, while the British accounts (as given in Marshall's "Naval Biography") make the distance much greater; at any rate, the vessels were so near that from the Constitution the officers of the New- castle could be seen standing on the hammock net- tings. But, very strangely, both the 50-gun ships apparently still mistook the Levant, though a low, flush-decked sloop like the Hornet, for the "Presi- dent, Congress, or Macedonian" Captain Collier be- lieving that the Constitution had sailed with two other frigates in company.®^ By three o'clock the Levant had lagged so as to be in the same position from which the Cyane had just been rescued; ac- cordingly Captain Stewart signaled to her to tack, which she did, and immediately afterward all three British ships tacked in pursuit. Before they did so, it must be remembered the Acasta had weathered on the Constitution, though left considerably astern, while the Newcastle and Leander had about kept ^8 Letter of Lieutenant Hoffman, April lo, 1815. ^* Marshall, ii, 533. Concluding Operations i75 their positions on her lee or starboard quarter; so that if any ship had been detached after the Levant it should have been the Leander, which had least chance of overtaking the American frigate. The latter was by no means as heavily armed as either of the two 50's, and little heavier than the Acasta; moreover, she was shorthanded, having manned her two prizes. The Acasta, at any rate, had made out the force of the Levant, and, even had she been a frigate, it was certainly carrying prudence to an extreme to make more than one ship tack after her. Had the Nezvcastle and Acasta kept on after the Constitution there was a fair chance of overtaking her, for the Acasta had weathered on her, and the chase could not bear up for fear of being cut off by the Newcastle. At any rate, the pursuit should not have been given up so early. Marshall says there was a mistake in the signaling. The British captains certainly bungled the affair; even James says (p. 558) : "It is the most blundering piece of business recorded in these six volumes." As for Stewart and his men, they deserve the highest credit for the cool judgment and prompt, skilful seaman- ship they had displayed. The Constitution, having shaken off her pursuers, sailed to Maranham, where she landed her prisoners. At Porto Rico she learned of the peace, and forthwith made sail for New York, reaching it about the middle of May. 176 Naval War of 1812 As soon as he saw Captain Stewart's signal, Lieu- tenant Ballard had tacked, and at once made for the anchorage at Porto Prayo, which he reached, though pursued by all his foes, and anchored within 150 yards of a heavy battery.'^^ The wisdom of Cap- tain Stewart's course in not trusting to the neutral- ity of the port, now became evident. The Acasta opened upon the sloop as soon as the latter had an- chored, at 4.30.'^ The Newcastle, as soon as she arrived, also opened, and so did the Leander, while the British prisoners on shore fired the guns of the battery. Having borne this combined cannonade for 15 minutes,'^ the colors of the Levant were hauled down. The unskilful firing of the British ships certainly did not redeem the blunders pre- viously made by Sir George Collier, for the three heavy frigates during 15 minutes' broadside prac- tice in smooth water against a stationary and un- resisting foe, did her but little damage, and did not kill a man. The chief effect of the fire was to dam- age the houses of the Portuguese town.*^^ After the capture of the President, the Peacock, Captain Warrington, the Hornet, Captain Biddle, and Tom Bowline, brig, still remained in New York harbor. On the 22d of January a strong north- ■"o Letter of Lieutenant Ballard, May 2, 1815. ■" Newcastle's log, as given by Marshall and James. " Ballard's letter. " James, vi, 551. Concluding Operations 177 westerly gale began to blow, and the American ves- sels, according to their custom, at once prepared to take advantage of the heavy weather and run by the blockaders. They passed the bar by daylight, under storm canvas, the British frigates lying to in the southeast being plainly visible. They were ig- norant of the fate of the President, and proceeded toward Tristan d'Acunha, which was the appointed rendezvous. A few days out the Hornet parted company from the two others; these last reached Tristan d'Acunha about March i8th, but were driven off again by a gale. The Hornet reached the island on the 23d, and at half-past ten in the morning, the wind being fresh S.S.W., when about to anchor off the north point, a sail was made in the southeast, steering west."^^ This was the British brig-sloop Penguin, Captain James Dickenson. She was a new vessel, having left port for the first time in September, 18 14. While at the Cape of Good Hope she had received from Vice- Admiral Tyler 12 ma- rines from the Medzvay, 74, increasing her comple- ment to 132; and was then despatched on special service against a heavy American privateer, the Young Wasp, which had been causing great havoc among the homeward-bound Indiamen. When the strange sail was first seen Captain Bid- " Letter from Captain Biddle to Commodore Decatur, March 25, 1815. 178 Naval War of 181 2 die was just letting go his topsail sheets ; he at once sheeted them home, and, the stranger being almost instantly shut out by the land, made all sail to the west, and again caught sight of her. Captain Dick- enson now, for the first time, saw the American sloop, and at once bore up for her. The position of the two vessels was exactly the reverse of the Wasp and Frolic, the Englishman being to windward. The Hornet hove to, to let her antagonist close ; then she filled her maintopsail and continued to yaw, wearing occasionally to prevent herself from being raked. At forty minutes past one the Penguin, be- ing within musket-shot, hauled to the wind on the starboard tack, hoisted a St. George's ensign, and fired a gun. The Hornet luffed up on the same tack, hoisting American colors, and the action began with heavy broadsides. The vessels ran along thus for 15 minutes, gradually coming closer together, and Captain Dickenson put his helm aweather, to run his adversary aboard. At this moment the brave young officer received a mortal wound, and the command devolved on the first lieutenant, Mr. McDonald, who endeavored very gallantly to carry out his comman- der's intention, and at 1.56 the Penguin's bowsprit came in between the Hornet's main and mizzen-rig- ging on the starboard side. The American seamen had been called away, and were at their posts to re- pel boarders, but as the British made no attempt to Concluding Operations 179 come on, the cutlass men began to clamber into the rigging to go aboard the brig. Captain Biddle very coolly stopped them, "it being evident from the be- ginning that our fire was greatly superior both in quickness and effect." There was a heavy sea run- ning, and as the Hornet forged ahead, the Penguin's bowsprit carried away her mizzen shrouds, stern davits, and spanker boom; and the brig then hung on her starboard quarter, where only small arms could be used on either side. An English officer now called out something which Biddle understood, whether correctly or not is disputed, to be the word of surrender; accordingly he directed his marines to cease firing, and jumped on the taffrail. At that minute two of the marines on the Penguin's fore- castle, not 30 feet distant, fired at him, one of the balls inflicting a rather severe wound in his neck. A discharge of musketry from the Hornet at once killed both the marines, and at that moment the ship drew ahead. As the vessels separated the Penguin's foremast went overboard, the bowsprit breaking short off. The Hornet at once wore, to present a fresh broadside, while the Penguin's disabled condi- tion prevented her following suit, and having lost a third of her men killed and wounded (14 of the former and 28 of the latter), her hull being riddled through and through, her foremast gone, mainmast tottering, and most of the guns on the engaged side t8o Naval War of 1812 dismounted, she struck her colors at two minutes past two, twenty-two minutes after the first gun was fired. Of the Hornet's 150 men, 8 were absent in a prize. By actual measurement she was two feet longer and sHghtly narrower than her antago- nist. Her loss was chiefly caused by musketry, amounting to i marine killed, i seaman mortally, Lieutenant Conner very severely, and Captain Bid- die and 7 seamen slightly, wounded. Not a round PENGniM HDRHET shot struck the hull, nor was a mast or spar mate- rially injured, but the rigging and sails were a good deal cut, especially about the fore and main top- gallant masts. The Hornet's crew had been suffer- ing much from sickness, and 9 of the men were un- able to be at quarters, thus reducing the vessels to an exact equality. Counting in these men, and excluding the 8 absent in a prize, we get as Concluding Operations i8i COMPARATIVE FORCE Tonnage No. Guns Weight Metal Crews Loss Hornet 480 10 279 i42''5 n Penguin 477 10 274 132 42 Or, the force being practically equal, the Hornet inflicted fourfold the loss and tenfold the damage she suffered. Hardly any action of the war re- flected greater credit on the United States marine than this : for the cool, skilful seamanship and excel- lent gunnery that enabled the Americans to destroy an antagonist of equal force in such an exceedingly short time. The British displayed equal bravery, '5 This number of men is probably too great ; I have not personally examined the Hornefs muster-roll for that period. Lieutenant Emmons, in his "History," gives her 132 men; but perhaps he did not include the nine sick, which would make his statement about the same as mine. In response to my inquiries, I received a very kind letter from the Treasury Department (Fourth Auditor's office), which stated that the muster-roll of 'Ca.t. Hornet on this voyage showed " loi offi- cers and crew (marines excepted)." Adding the 20 marines would make but 121 in all. I think there must be some mis- take in this, and so have considered the Hornet' s crew as consisting originally of 150 men, the same as on her cruises in 1812. The Penguin was in reality slightly larger than the Hor- net, judging from the comparisons made in Biddle's letter (for the original of which see in the Naval Archives, "Cap- tains' Letters," xlii. No. 112). He says that the Penguin, though two feet shorter on deck than the Hornet, had a greater length of keel, a slightly greater breadth of beam, stouter sides, and higher bulwarks, with swivels on the cap- stan and tops, and that she fought both her "long 12's" on the same side. I have followed James, however, as regards this; he says her long guns were 6-pounders, and that but one was fought on a side. i82 Naval War of 1812 but were certainly very much behind their antago- nists in the other quaHties which go to make up a first-rate man-of-war's-man. Even James says he "can not offer the trifling disparity of force in this action as an excuse for the Penguin's capture. The chief cause is . . . the immense disparity between the two vessels in . . . the effectiveness of their crews." '^® " After the action but one official account, that of Captain Biddle, was published; none of the letters of the defeated British commanders was published after 1813. As regards this action, every British writer has followed James, who begins his account thus: "Had the vessel in sight to wind- ward been rigged with three masts instead of two, and had she proved to be a British cruiser, Captain Biddle would have marked her down in his log as a "frigate," and have made off with all the canvas he could possibly spread. Had the ship overtaken the Hornet and been in reality a trifle superior in force, Captain Biddle, we have no doubt, would have ex- hausted his eloquence in lauding the blessings of peace be- fore he tried a struggle for the honors of war." After this preface (which should be read in connection with the Hor- nefs unaccepted challenge to the Bonne Cttoyefine, a ship "a trifle superior in force") it can be considered certain that James will both extenuate and also set down a good deal in malice. One instance of this has already been given in speak- ing of the President's capture. Again, he says, "the Hornet received several round shot in her hull," which she did— a month after this action, from the Cortiwallis, 74; James knew perfectly well that not one of the Penguin s shot hit the Hornet's hull. The quotations I have given are quite enough to prove that nothing he says about the action is worth attending to. The funniest part of his account is where he makes Captain Biddle get drunk, lose his "native cunning," and corroborate his (James'), statements. He does not even hint at the authority for this. Concluding Operations 183 The Penguin was so cut up by shot that she had to be destroyed. After the stores, etc., had been taken out of her, she was thoroughly examined (Captain Biddle, from curiosity, taking her meas- urements in comparison with those of the Hornet.) Her destruction was hastened on account of a strange sail heaving in sight; but the latter proved to be the Peacock, with the Tom Bowline in com- pany. The latter was now turned to account by being sent in to Rio de Janeiro as a cartel with the prisoners. The Peacock and Hornet remained about the Island till April 13th, and then, giving up all hopes of seeing the President, and rightly sup- posing she had been captured, started out for the East Indies. On the 27th of the month, in lat. 38° 30' S. and long. 33° E.,'^ the Peacock signaled a stranger in the S.E., and both sloops crowded sail in chase. The next morning they came down with the wind aft from the northwest, the studding-sails set on both sides. The new 22-gun sloops were not only better war-vessels, but faster ones, too, than any other ships of their rate ; and the Peacock by afternoon was two leagues ahead of the Hornet. At 2 P.M. the former was observed to manifest some hesitation about approaching the stranger, which in- stead of avoiding had rather hauled up toward them. " Letter of Captain Biddle, June loth, and extracts from her log. 184 Naval War of 1812 All on board the Hornet thought her an Indiaman, and "the men began to wonder what they would do with the silks," when, a few minutes before four, the Peacock signaled that it was a line-of-battle ship, which reversed the parts with a vengeance. Warrington's swift ship was soon out of danger, while Biddle hauled close to the wind on the port tack, with the Corwwallis, 74, bearing the flag of Admiral Sir George Burleton, K.C.B.,'^^ in hot pur- suit, two leagues on his lee quarter. The 74 gained rapidly on the Hornet, although she stopped to pick lip a marine who had fallen overboard. Finding he had to deal with a most weatherly craft, as well as a swift sailer. Captain Biddle, at 9 p.m., began to lighten the Hornet of the mass of stores taken from the Penguin. The Cornzvallis gained still, however, and at 2 a.m. on the 29th was ahead of the Hornet's lee or starboard beam, when the sloop put about and ran off toward the west. Daylight showed the 74 still astern and to leeward, but hav- ing gained so much as to be within gunshot, and shortly afterward she opened fire, her shot passing over the Hornet. The latter had recourse anew to the lightening process. She had already hove over- board the sheet-anchor, several heavy spare spars, and a large quantity of shot and ballast; the re- maining anchors and cables, more shot, six guns, " James, vi, 564. Concluding Operations 185 and the launch now followed suit, and, thus relieved, the Hornet passed temporarily out of danger; but the breeze shifted gradually round to the east, and the liner came looming up till at noon she was with- in a mile, a shorter range than that at which the United States crippled and cut up the Macedonian; and had the Cornwallis' fire been half as well aimed as that of the States, it would have been the last of the Hornet. But the 74's guns were very unskil- fully served, and the shot passed for the most part away over the chase, but three getting home. Cap- tain Biddle and his crew had no hope of ultimate escape, but no one thought of giving up. All the remaining spare spars and boats, all the guns but one, the shot, and in fact everything that could be got at, below or on deck, was thrown overboard. This increased the way of the Hornet, while the Cornivallis lost ground by hauling off to give broad- sides, which were as ineffectual as the fire from the chase-guns had been. The Hornet now had gained a little, and managed to hold her own, and shortly afterward the pluck and skill of her crew ^^ were rewarded. The shift in the wind had been very much against them, but now it veered back again " It is perhaps worth noting that the accounts incidentally mention the fact that almost the entire crew consisted of native Americans, of whom quite a number had served as impressed seamen on board British warships. James mul- tiplies these threefold and sets them down as British. i86 Naval War of 1812 so as to bring them to windward ; and every minute, as it blew fresher and fresher, their chances in- creased. By dark the Cormvallis was well astern, and during the night the wind kept freshening, blowing in squalls, which just suited the Hornet, and when day broke the liner was hull down astern. Then, on the morning of the 30th, after nearly 48 hours' chase, she abandoned the pursuit. The Hor- net was now of no use as a cruiser, and made sail for New York, which she reached on June 9th. This chase requires almost the same comments as the last chase of the Constitution. In both cases the American captains and their crews deserve the very highest praise for plucky, skilful seaman- ship ; but exactly as Stewart's coolness and prompti- tude might not have saved the Constitution had it not been for the blunders made by his antagonists, so the Hornet would have assuredly been taken, in spite of Biddle's stubbornness and resource, if the Cormvallis had not shown such unskilful gunnery, which was all the more discreditable since she car- ried an admiral's flag. The Peacock was thus the only one left of the squadron originally prepared for the East Indies; however, she kept on, went round the Cape of Good Hope, and cruised across the Indian Ocean, cap- turing 4 great Indiamen, very valuable prizes, manned by 291 men. Then she entered the Straits Concluding Operations 187 of Sunda, and on the 30th of June, off the fort of Anjier fell in with the East India Company's cruiser Nautilus, Lieut. Boyce, a brig of 180 (American measurement over 200) tons, with a crew of 80 men, and 14 guns, 4 long 9's and 10 18-pound carronades.^*^ Captain Warrington did not know of the peace; one of the boats of the Nautilus, how- ever, with her purser, Mr. Bartlett, boarded him. Captain Warrington declares the latter made no mention of the peace, while Mr. Bartlett swears that he did before he was sent below. As the Peacock approached, Lieut. Boyce hailed to ask if she knew peace had been declared. Captain Warrington, ac- cording to his letter, regarded this as a ruse to en- able the brig to escape under the guns of the fort, and commanded the lieutenant to haul down his colors, which the latter refused to do, and very gal- lantly prepared for a struggle with a foe of more than twice his strength. According to Captain Warrington, one, or, by the deposition of Mr. Bart- lett,^^ two broadsides were then interchanged, and the brig surrendered, having lost 7 men, including her first lieutenant, killed and mortally wounded, and 8 severely or slightly wounded. Two of her guns and the sheet-anchor were disabled, the bends 80 "History of the Indian Navy," by Charles Rathbone Low (late lieutenant of the Indian Navy), London, 1877, p. 285. 8^ As quoted by Low. i88 Naval War of 1812 on the starboard side completely shivered from aft to the forechains, the bulwarks from the chess-tree aft much torn, and the rigging cut to pieces.^^ The Peacock did not suffer the slightest loss or damage. Regarding the affair purely as a conflict between vessels of nations at war with each other, the criti- cism made by Lord Douglas on the action between the President and Little Belt applies here perfectly. "If a vessel meet an enemy of even greatly superior force, it is due to the honor of her flag to try the effect of a few rounds; but unless in this gallant attempt she leave marks of her skill upon the larger body, while she, the smaller body, is hit at every discharge, she does but salute her enemy's triumph and discredit her own gunnery." ^^ There could not have been a more satisfactory exhibition of skill than that given by Captain Warrington; but I re- gret to say that it is difficult to believe he acted with proper humanity. It seems impossible that Mr. Bartlett did not mention that peace had been signed; and when the opposing force was so much less than his own it would have been safe at least to defer the order "haul down your flag" for a short time, while he could have kept the brig within half pistol-shot, until he could have inquired into the ^* Letter of Lieut. Boyce to Company's Marine Board as quoted by Low. 83 "Naval Gunnery," p. 3. Concluding Operations 189 truth of the report. Throughout this work I have wherever possible avoided all references to the vari- ous accusations and recriminations of some of the captains about "unfairness," "cruelty," etc., as in most cases it is impossible to get at the truth, the accounts flatly contradicting one another. In this case, however, there certainly seems some ground for the rather fervent denunciations of Captain Warrington indulged in by Lieut. Low. But it is well to remember that a very similar affair, with the parties reversed, had taken place but a few months before on the coast of America. This was on Feb. 22d, after the boats of the Erebus, 20, and Primrose, 18, under Captains Bartholomew and Phillot, had been beaten off with a loss of 30 men (including both captains wounded), in an expedition up St. Mary's River, Ga. The two captains and their vessels then joined Admiral Cockburn at Cumber- land Island, and on the 25th of February were in- formed officially of the existence of peace. Three weeks afterward the American gunboat. No. 168, Mr. Hurlburt, sailed from Tybee Bar, Ga., bearing despatches for the British admiral.^^ On the same day in the afternoon she fell in with the Erebus, Captain Bartholomew. Peace having been declared, ^* Letter from Com. Campbell to Sec. of Navy. March 29, 1815, including one from Sailing-master John H. Hurlburt of March 18. 1815, Naval Archives, xliii, No. 125, of "Captains' Letters." See also Niles' "Register," viii, 104, 118, etc. I90 Naval War of 1812 and having been known to exist for over three weeks, no effort was made to avoid the British ves- sel; but when the gunboat neared the latter she was suddenly hailed and told to heave to. Mr. Hurlburt answered that he had despatches for Ad- miral Cockburn, to which Captain Bartholomew responded, with many oaths, that he did not care, he would sink her if she did not send a boat aboard. When Mr. Hurlburt attempted to answer some muskets were discharged at him, and he was told to strike. He refused, and the Erebus immediately opened fire from her great guns; the gunboat had gotten so far round that her pivot-gun would not bear properly, but it was discharged across the bows of the Erebus, and then Mr. Hurlburt struck his colors. Although he had lain right under the foe's broadside, he suffered no loss or damage except a few ropes cut, and some shot holes in the sails. Afterward Captain Bartholomew apologized, and let the gunboat proceed. This attack was quite as wanton and unprovoked as Warrington's, and Bartholomew's foe was rela- tively to himself even less powerful; moreover, while the Peacock's crew showed great skill in handling their guns, the crew of the Erebus most emphatically did not. The intent in both cases was equally bad, only the British captain lacked the abil- ity to carry his out. Concluding Operations 191 SUMMARY The concluding- operations of the war call for much the same comments as those of the preceding- years. The balance of praise certainly inclines tow- ard the Americans. Captain John Hayes' squad- ron showed g-reat hardihood, perseverance and judgment, which was rewarded by the capture of the President; and Decatur's surrender seems de- cidedly tame. But as regards the action between the President and Endymion (taking into account the fact that the former fought almost under the guns of an overwhelming force, and was therefore obliged to expose herself far more than she other- wise would have), it showed nearly as great supe- riority on the side of the Americans as the frigate actions of 18 12 did — in fact, probably quite as much as in the case of the Java. Similarly, while the Cyane and Levant did well, the Constitution did better; and Sir George Collier's ships certainly did not distinguish themselves when in chase of Old Ironsides. So with the Hornet in her two encoun- ters ; no one can question the pluck with which the Penguin was fought, but her gunnery was as bad as that of the CornwalUs subsequently proved. And though the skirmish between the Peacock and Nau- tilus is not one to which an American cares to look back, yet, regarding it purely from a fighting stand- 192 Naval War of 1812 point, there is no question which crew was the best trained and most skilful. LIST OF SHIPS BUILT IN 1815. Name. Rate. Where Built. Cost Washington 74 Portsmouth $235,861.00 Independence 74 Boston 42 1.8 10.41 franklin 74 Philadelphia 438,149.40 Guerriire 44 " 306,158.56 /ava 44 Baltimore 232,767.38 fiillon 30 New York 320,000.00 Torpedo These ships first put to sea in this year. For the first time in her history the United States pos- sessed line-of-battle ships; and for the first time in all history, the steam frigate appeared on the navy list of a nation. The Fulton, with her clumsy cen- tral wheel, concealed from shot by the double hull, with such thick scantling that none but heavy guns could harm her, and relying for offensive weapons not on a broadside of thirty guns of small calibre but on two pivotal lOO-pounder columbiads, or, per- haps, if necessary, on blows from her hog snout, — the Fulton was the true prototype of the modern steam ironclad, with its few heavy guns and ram. Almost as significant is the presence of the Torpedo. I have not chronicled the several efforts made by the Americans to destroy British vessels with tor- pedoes; some very nearly succeeded, and although they failed it must not be supposed that they did no good. On the contrary, they made the British in Concluding Operations 193 many cases very cautious about venturing into good anchorage (especially in Long Island Sound and the Chesapeake), and by the mere terror of their name prevented more than one harrying expedition. The Fulton was not got into condition to be fought until just as the war ended; had it continued a few months, it is more than probable that the deeds of the Merrimac and the havoc wrought by the Con- federate torpedoes would have been forestalled by nearly half a century. As it was, neither of these engines of war attracted much attention. For ten or fifteen years the Fulton was the only war-vessel of her kind in existence, and then her name dis- appears from our lists. The torpedoes had been tried in the Revolutionary War, but their failure prevented much notice from being taken of them, and besides, at that time there was a strong feeling that it was dishonorable to blow a ship up with a powder-can concealed under the water, though highly laudable to bum her by means of a fire-raft floating on the water — a nice distinction in naval ethics that has since disappeared.^^ AMERICAN VESSELS DESTROYED, ETC. By Ocean Cruisers. Najne. Guns. Tonnage. Remarks. President 52 '.576 captured by squadron. 52 guns. 1,576 tons. 8' James fairly foams at the mouth at the mere mention of torpedoes. Vol. X.— I 194 Naval War of 1812 BRITISH VESSELS DESTROYED, ETC. a.— By Privateers. Name. Guns. Toooage. Remarks. Chasseur 12 240 by privateer 5"A ^awr/ffO", *. — By Ocean Cruisers. Cyane 34 659 by Constitution. Levant 20 500 retaken. Penguin 19 477 ^X hornet. 85guns> 1,876 tons. 20 500 (substracting Levant). 65 guns, 1,376 tons. In summing up the results of the struggle on the ocean it is to be noticed that very little was at- tempted, and nothing done, by the American Navy that could materially affect the result of the war. Commodore Rodgers' expedition after the Jamaica Plate fleet failed; both the efforts to get a small squadron into the East Indian waters also miscar- ried ; and otherwise the whole history of the strug- gle on the ocean is, as regards the Americans, only the record of individual cruises and fights. The material results were not very great, at least in their effect on Great Britain, whose enormous navy did not feel in the slightest degree the loss of a few frigates and sloops. But morally the result was of inestimable benefit to the United States. The victories kept up the spirits of the people, cast down by the defeats on land ; practically decided in favor of the Americans the chief question in dispute — Concluding Operations 195 Great Britain's right of search and impressment — and gave the navy, and thereby the country, a world- wide reputation. I doubt if ever before a nation gained so much honor by a few single-ship duels. For there can be no question which side came out of the war with the greatest credit. The damage in- flicted by each on the other was not very unequal in amount, but the balance was certainly in favor of the United States, as can be seen by the following tables, for the details of which reference can be made to the various years : AMERICAN LOSS. BRITISH LOSS. Caused:— Tonnage. Guns. Tonnage. Guns. By Ocean Cruisers 5,984 278 8,451 351 On the Lakes 727 37 4.159 212 By the Army 3,007 1 16 S°° ^2 By Privateers 402 20 Total, 9,718 43 » '3-5>-* 605 In addition we lost 4 revenue-cutters, mounting 24 gvms, and, in the aggregate, of 387 tons, and also 25 gunboats, with 71 gims, and, in the aggre- gate, of nearly 2,000 tons. This would swell our loss to 12,105 tons, and 526 guns;^^ but the loss 8« The tonnage can only be given approximately, as that of the vessels on Lake Champlain is not exactly known, al- though we know about what the two fleets tonned relatively to one another. «'' This differs greatly from the figures given by James in his "Naval Occurrences" (App. ccxv). He makes the Ameri- can loss 14,844 tons and 660 guns. His list includes, for ex- 196 Naval War of 1812 of the revenue-cutters and gunboats can fairly be considered to be counterbalanced by the capture or destruction of the various British Royal Packets (all armed with from 2 to 10 guns), tenders, barges, etc., which would be in the aggregate of at least as great tonnage and gun force, and with more numerous crews. But the comparative material loss gives no idea of the comparative honor gained. The British navy, ample, the "Grow/er and Hamilton, upset in carrying sail to avoid Sir James's fleet"; it would be quite as reasonable to put down the loss of the Royal George to the credit of the French. Then he mentions the Julia and Growler, which were recaptured: the Asp, which was also recaptured; the ''New York, 46, destroyed at Washington," which was not destroyed or harmed in any way, and which, moreover, was a condemned hulk; the ''Boston 42 (in reality 32), de- stroyed at Washington," which had been a condemned hulk for ten years, and had no guns or anything else in her, and was as much a loss to our navy as the fishing up and burning of an old wreck would have been; and 8 gunboats whose de- struction was either mythical, or else which were not na- tional vessels. By deducting all these we reduce James' total by 120 guns, and 2,600 tons; and a few more alterations (such as excluding the swivels in the President's tops, which he counts, etc.) brings his number down to that given above — and also affords a good idea of the value to be attached to his figures and tables. The British loss he gives at but 530 guns and 10,273 tons. He omits the 24-gun ship burnt by Chauncy at York, although including the frigate and cor- vette burnt by Ross at Washington; if the former is ex- cluded the two latter should be, which would make the bal- ance still more in favor of the Americans. He omits the guns of the Gloucester, because they had been taken out of her and placed in battery on the shore, but he includes those Concluding Operations 19? numbering at the outset a thousand cruisers, had accomplished less than the American, which num- bered but a dozen. Moreover, most of the loss suf- fered by the former was in single fight, while this had been but twice the case with the Americans, who had generally been overwhelmed by numbers. The President and Essex were both captured by more than double their force simply because they were disabled before the fight began, otherwise they of the Adams, which had been served in precisely the same way. He omits all reference to the British 14-gun schooner burnt on Ontario, and to all 3 and 4-gun sloops and schooners captured there, although including the corresponding Ameri- can vessels. The reason that he so much underestimates the tonnage, especially on the lakes, I have elsewhere discussed. His tables of the relative loss in men are even more erroneous, exaggerating that of the American, and greatly underestimat- ing that of the British; but I have not tabulated this on ac- count of the impossibility of getting fair estimates of the killed and wounded in the cutting-out expeditions, and the difficulty of enumerating the prisoners taken in descents, etc. Roughly about 2,700 Americans and 3,800 British were captured ; the comparative loss in killed and wounded stood much more in our favor. I have excluded from the British loss the brigs Detroit and Caledonia, and schooner Nancy (aggregating 10 guns and about 500 tons), destroyed on the upper lakes, because I hardly know whether they could be considered national ves- sels; the schooner Highflyer, of 8 guns, 40 men, and 209 tons, taken by Rodgers, because she seems to have been merely a tender; and the Dominica, 15, of 77 men, and 270 tons, because her captor, the privateer Decatur, though nominally an American, was really a French vessel. Of course both tables are only approximately exact ; but at any rate the balance of damage and loss was over 4 to 3 in our favor. 198 Naval War of 1812 would certainly have escaped. With the exceptions of the Chesapeake and Argus (both of which were taken fairly, because their antagonists, though of only equal force, were better fighters), the remain- ing loss of the Americans was due to the small cruisers stumbling from time to time across the path of some one of the innumerable British heavy vessels. Had Congressional forethought been suf- ficiently great to have allowed a few line-of-battle ships to have been in readiness some time previous to the war, results of weight might have been ac- complished. But the only activity ever exhibited by Congress in materially increasing the navy pre- vious to the war, had been in partially carrying out President Jefferson's ideas of having an enor- mous force of very worthless gunboats — a scheme whose wisdom was about on a par with some of that statesman's political and military theories. Of the twelve ^^ single-ship actions, two (those of the Argus and Chesapeake) undoubtedly redounded most to the credit of the Briti«h, in two (that of the ^ Not counting the last action of the Constztuttan, the President's action, or the capture of the Essex, on account of the difficulty of fairly estimating the amount of credit due to each side. In both the first actions, however, the Ameri- can ships seem to have been rather more ably fought than their antagonists', and, taking into account the overwhelm- ing disadvantages under which the Essex labored, her de- fence displayed more desperate bravery than did that of any other ship during the war. Concluding Operations 199 Wasp with the Reindeer, and that of the Enterprise with the Boxer), the honors were nearly even, and in the other eight the superiority of the Americans was very manifest. In three actions (those with the Penguin, Frolic, and Shannon) the combatants were about equal in strength, the Americans having slightly the advantage ; in all the others but two, the victors combined superiority of force with superior- ity of skill. In but two cases, those of the Argus and Epervier, could any lack of courage be im- puted to the vanquished. The second year alone showed to the advantage of the British ; the various encounters otherwise were as creditable to the Americans at the end as at the beginning of the war. This is worth attending to, because many authors speak as if the successes of the Americans were con- fined to the first year. It is true that no frigate was taken after the first year, but this was partly be- cause the strictness of the blockade kept the Ameri- can frigates more in port, while the sloops put out to sea at pleasure, and partly because after that year the British i8-pounder frigates , either cruised in couples, or, when single, invariably refused, by order of the Board of Admiralty, an encounter with a 24-pounder; and though much of the American success was unquestionably to be attributed to more men and heavier guns, yet much of it was not. The war itself gives us two instances in which de- aoo Naval War of 1812 feat was owing solely, it may be said, to inferiority of force, courage and skill being equal. The Wasp was far heavier than the Reindeer, and, there being nothing to choose between them in anything else, the damage done was about proportionate to this difference. It follows, as a matter of course, that the very much greater disproportion in loss in the cases of the Avon, Epervier, etc., where the disproportion in force was much less (they mounting 32's instead of 24's, and the victors being all of the same class), is only to be explained by the inferiority in sl^ill on the part of the vanquished. These remarks apply just as much to the Argus. The Reindeer, with her 24's, would have been almost exactly on a par with her, and yet would have taken her with even greater ease than the Peacock did with her 32's. In other words, the only effect of our superiority in metal, men, and tonnage was to increase somewhat the dis- parity in loss. Had the Congress and Constellation, instead of the United States and Constitution, en- countered the Macedonian and Java, the difference in execution would have been less than it was, but the result would have been unchanged, and would have been precisely such as ensued when the Wasp met the Frolic, or the Hornet the Penguin. On the other hand, had the Shannon met the Constitution there would have been a repetition of the fight be- tween the Wasp and Reindeer; for it is but fair to Concluding Operations 201 remember that great as is the honor that Broke de- serves, it is no more than that due to Manners. The Repubhc of the United States owed a great deal to the excellent make and armament of its ships, but it owed still more to the men who were in them. The massive timbers and heavy guns of Old Ironsides would have availed but little had it not been for her able commanders and crews. Of all the excellent single-ship captains, British or American, produced by the war, the palm should be awarded to Hull.®* The deed of no other man (ex- cept Macdonough) equaled his escape from Broke's five ships, or surpassed his half-hour's conflict with the Guerriere. After him, almost all the American captains deserve high praise — Decatur, Jones, Blakely, Biddle, Bainbridge, Lawrence, Burrows, Allen, Warrington, Stewart, Porter. It is no small glory to a country to have had such men upholding the honor of its flag. On a par with the best of them are Broke, Manners, and also Byron and Blythe. It must be but a poor-spirited American whose veins do not tingle with pride when he reads of the cruises and fights of the sea-captains, and their grim prow- ess, which kept the old Yankee flag floating over the waters of the Atlantic for three years, in the teeth of the mightiest naval power the world has «» See "Naval Tactics," by Commander J. H. Ward, and "Life of Commodore Tatnall," by Charles C. Jones, Jr. 202 Naval War of 1812 ever seen ; but it is equally impossible not to admire Broke's chivalric challenge and successful fight, or the heroic death of the captain of the Reindeer. Nor can the war ever be fairly understood by any one who does not bear in mind that the com- batants were men of the same stock, who far more nearly resembled each other than either resembled any other nation. I honestly believe that the Ameri- can sailor offered rather better material for a man- of-war's-man than the British, because the freer in- stitutions of his country (as compared with the Brit- ain of the drunken Prince Regent and his dotard father — a very different land from the present free England) and the peculiar exigencies of his life tended to make him more intelligent and self-re- liant; but the difference, when there was any, was very small, and disappeared entirely when his op- ponents had been drilled for any length of time by men like Broke or Manners. The advantage con- sisted in the fact that our average commander was equal to the best, and higher than the average, of the opposing captains ; and this held good through- out the various grades of the officers. The Ameri- can officers knew they had redoubtable foes to con- tend with, and made every preparation accordingly. Owing their rank to their own exertions, trained by practical experience and with large liberty of ac- tion, they made every effort to have their crews in Concluding Operations 203 the most perfect state of skill and discipline. In Commodore Tatnall's biography (p. 15) it is men- tioned that the blockaded Cotistellation had her men well trained at the guns and at target practice, though still lying in the river, so as to be at once able to meet a foe when she put out to sea. The British captain, often owing his command to his social standing or to favoritism, hampered by red tape,^*^ and accustomed by 20 years' almost unin- terrupted success to regard the British arms as in- vincible, was apt to laugh at all manoeuvring,^^ and scorned to prepare too carefully for a fight, trust- ing to the old British "pluck and luck" to carry him through. So, gradually he forgot how to manoeuvre or to prepare. The Java had been at sea six weeks before she was captured, yet during that time the entire exercise of her crew at the guns had been con- fined to the discharge of six broadsides of blank cartridges (James, vi, 184) ; the Constitution, like the Java, had shipped an entirely new and raw crew previous to her first cruise, and was at sea but five weeks before she met the Giierrihe, and yet her men had been trained to perfection. This is a sufficient comment on the comparative merits of Captain Hull '" For instance, James mentions that they were forbidden to use more than so many shot in practice, and that Capt. Broke utterly disregarded this command. '• Lord Howard Douglas, "Naval Gunnery," states this in various places. — "Accustomed to contemn all manoeuvring." 204 Naval War of 1812 and Capthin Lambert. Tlie American prepared himself in every possible way; the Briton tried to cope with courage alone against courage united to skill. His bad gunnery had not been felt in con- tending with European foes ^^ as unskilful as him- self. Says Lord Howard Douglas (p. 3) : "We entered with too much confidence into a war with a marine much more expert than any of our Eu- ropean enemies . . . there was inferiority of gunnery as well as of force," etc. Admiral Cod- rington, commenting on the Epervier's loss, says, as before quoted, that, owing to his being chosen purely for merit, the American captain was an over- match for the British, unless "he encountered our best officers on equal terms." The best criticism on the war is that given by Capitaine Jurien de la Graviere.^^ After speaking of the heavier metal and greater number of men of the American ships, he continues: "And yet only an enormous superiority in the precision and rapid- ity of their fire can explain the difference in the losses sustained by the combatants. . . . Nor was the skill of their gunners the only cause to which the Americans owed their success. Their ships were faster; the crews, composed of chosen " Lord Howard Douglas; he seems to think that in 1812 the British had fallen off absolutely, though not relatively, to their European foes. 93 "Guerres Maritimes," ii, pp. 269, 272, 274 (Paris, 1847). Concluding Operations 205 men, manoeuvred with uniformity and precision; their captains had that practical knowledge which is only to be acquired by long experience of the sea; and it is not to be wondered at that the Con- stitution, when chased during three days by a squad- ron of five English frigates, succeeded in escaping, by surpassing them in manoeuvring, and by availing herself of every ingenious resource and skilful ex- pedient that maritime science could suggest. . . . To a marine exalted by success, but rendered negli- gent by the very habit of victory, the Congress only opposed the best of vessels and most formidable of armaments."^* It is interesting to compare the results of this inter-Anglian warfare, waged between the Insular and the Continental English, with the results of the contest that the former were at the same time carry- ing on with their Gallo-Roman neighbors across the Channel. For this purpose I shall rely on Troude's "Batailles Navales," which would certainly not give the English more than their due. His account of the comparative force in each case can be supple- '* The praise should be given to the individual captains and no^ to Congress, however ; and none of the American ships had picked crews. During the war the Shannoti had the only crew which could with any fairness be termed "picked," for her men had been together seven years, and all of her "boys" must have been well-grown young men, much older than the boys on her antagonist. 2o6 Naval War of 1812 mented by the corresponding one given in James. Under drawn battles I include all such as were in- decisive in so far that neither combatant was cap- tured; in almost every case each captain claimed that the other ran away. During the years 18 12 to 181 5 inclusive, there were eight actions between French and English ships of approximately equal force. In three of these the English were victorious. In 181 2 the Victorious, 74, captured the Rivoli, 74. COMPARATIVE FORCE Broadsides, Metal, lbs. Troude James Victorious 1,014 1,060 Rivoli 1, 010 1.085 In 1 8 14 the Tagiis captured the Ceres and the Hebriis captured the Etoile. Broadsides, Metal, lbs. Troude James Tagus 444 467 Ceres 428 463 Hebrus 467 467 Etoile 428 463 The Ceres, when she surrendered, had but one man wounded, although she had suffered a good deal aloft. The fight between the 74's was murder- ous to an almost unexampled degree, 125 English and 400 French falling. The Hebrus lost 40 and the Etoile 120 men. Concluding Operations 207 Five actions were "drawn." In 1812 the Stvallozv fought the Renard and Gar- land. The former threw 262, the latter 290 lbs. of shot at a broadside. In 181 5 the Pilot, throwing 262 lbs., fought a draw with the Egerie, throwing 260. In 1 8 14 two frigates of the force of the Tagus fought a draw with two frigates of the force of the Ceres; and the Eurotas, with 24-pounders, failed to capture the Chlorinde, which had only i8-pounders. In 181 5 the Amelia fought a draw with the Are- thuse, the ships throwing respectively 549 and 463 lbs., according to the English, or 572 and 410 lbs., according to the French accounts. In spite of being superior in force the English ship lost 141 men, and the French but 105. This was a bloodier fight than even that of the Chesapeake with the Shannon; but the gunnery was, nevertheless, much worse than that shown by the two combatants in the famous duel off Boston harbor, one battle lasting four hours and the other 15 minutes. There were a number of other engagements where the British were successful but where it is difficult to compare the forces. Twice a 74 captured or de- stroyed two frigates, and a razee performed a sim- ilar feat. An iS-gun brig, the Weasel, fought two i6-gun brigs till one of them blew up. 2o8 Naval War of 1812 The loss of the two navies at each other's hands during the four years was : English Ships French Ships I i6-gun brig 3 line-of-battle ships I i2-gun brig 11 frigates I lo-gun cutter 2 26-gun flfltes 2 i6-gun brigs I logun brig many gunboats, etc. Or one navy lost three vessels, mounting 38 guns, and the other 19 vessels, mounting 830 guns. During the same time the English lost to Danes one 14-gun brig, and destroyed in return a frigate of 46 guns, a 6-gun schooner, a 4-gun cutter, two galiots and several gun-brigs. In the above lists it is to be noticed how many of the engagements were indecisive, owing chiefly to the poor gunnery of the combatants. The fact that both the Eurotas and the Amelia, though more powerfully armed and manned than the Hehrus, yet failed to capture the sister ships of the frigate taken by the latter, shows that heavy metal and a numer- ous crew are not the only elements necessary for success; indeed the Eurotas and Amelia were as superior in force to their antagonists as the Consti- tution was to the Java. But the chief point to be noticed is the over- whelming difference in the damage the two navies caused each other. This difference was, roughly, as five to one against the Danes, and as fifty to one Concluding Operations 209 against the French; while it was as four to three in favor of the Americans, These figures give some idea of the effectiveness of the various navies. At any rate they show that we had found out what the European nations had for many years in vain striven to discover — a way to do more damage than we received in a naval contest with England. CHAPTER IV 1815 THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS The war on land generally disastrous — British send ex- pedition against New Orleans — Jackson prepares for the defence of the city — Night attack on the British ad- vance guard — Artillery duels — Great battle of January 8, 1815— Slaughtering repulse of the main attack — Rout of the Americans on the right bank of the river — Final retreat of the British — Observations on the character of the troops and commanders engaged WHILE our navy had been successful, the war on land had been for us full of humiliation. The United States then formed but a loosely knit confederacy, the sparse population scattered over a great expanse of land. Ever since the Federalist party had gone out of power in 1800, the nation's ability to maintain order at home and enforce respect abroad had steadily dwindled ; and thp twelve years' nerveless reign of the Doctrinaire Democracy had left us impotent for attack and almost as feeble for defence. Jefferson, though a man whose views and theories had a profound influence upon our national life, was perhaps the most incapable Executive that ever filled the presidential chair ; being almost purely (210) The Battle of New Orleans 211 a visionary, he was utterly unable to grapple with the slightest actual danger, and, not even excepting his successor, Madison, it would be difficult to im- agine a man less fit to guide the state with honor and safety through the stormy times that marked the opening of the present century. Without the prudence to avoid war or the forethought to prepare for it, the Administration drifted helplessly into a conflict in which only the navy prepared by the Federalists twelve years before, and weakened rather than strengthened during the intervening time, saved us from complete and shameful defeat. True to its theories, the House of Virginia made no preparations, and thought the war could be fought by "the nation in arms"; the exponents of this particular idea, the militiamen, a partially armed mob, ran like sheep whenever brought into the field. The regulars were not much better. After two years of warfare, Scott records in his autobiography that there were but two books of tactics (one written in French) in the entire army on the Niagara frontier; and officers and men were on such a dead level of ignorance that he had to spend a month drilling all of the former, divided into squads, in the school of the soldier and school of the company.^ It is small wonder that such troops were utterly unable » "Memoirs of Lieutenant-General Scott," written by him- self (2 vols, New York, 1864), i, p. ii5- 212 Naval War of 1812 to meet the English. Until near the end, the gen- erals were as bad as the armies they commanded, and the administration of the War Department con- tinued to be a triumph of imbecility to the very last.^ With the exception of the brilliant and successful charge of the Kentucky mounted infantry at the battle of the Thames, the only bright spot in the war in the North was the campaign on the Niagara frontier during the summer of 1814; and even here, the chief battle, that of Lundy's Lane, though re- flecting as much honor on the Americans as on the British, was for the former a defeat, and not a vic- tory, as most of our writers seem to suppose. But the war had a dual aspect. It was partly a contest between the two branches of the English race, and partly a last attempt on the part of the Indian tribes to check the advance of the most rap- idly growing one of these same two branches; and this last portion of the struggle, though attracting comparatively little attention, was really much the most far-reaching in its effect upon history. The triumph of the British would have distinctly meant 2 Monroe's biographer (see "James Monroe," by Daniel C. Oilman, Boston, 1883, p. 123) thinks he made a good Secre- tary of War; I think he was as much a failure as his prede- cessors, and a harsher criticism could not be passed on him. Like the other statesmen of his school, he was mighty in word and weak in action; bold to plan but weak to perform. As an instance, contrast his fiery letters to Jackson with the fact that he never gave him a particle of practical help. The Battle of New Orleans 213 the giving a new lease of life to the Indian nation- alities, the hemming in, for a time, of the United States, and the stoppage, perhaps for many years, of the march of English civilization across the con- tinent. The English of Britain were doing all they could to put off the day when tlieir race would reach to a world-wide supremacy. There was much fighting along our Western fron- tier with various Indian tribes ; and it was especially fierce in the campaign that a backwoods general of Tennessee, named Andrew Jackson, carried on against the powerful confederacy of the Creeks, a nation that was thrust in like a wedge between the United States proper and their dependency, the newly acquired French province of Louisiana. After several slaughtering fights the most noted being the battle of the Horse-shoe Bend, the power of the Creeks was broken forever; and afterward, as there was much question over the proper boun- daries of what was then the Latin land of Florida, Jackson marched south, attacked the Spaniards and drove them from Pensacola. Meanwhile the Brit- ish, having made a successful and ravaging summer campaign through Virginia and Maryland, situated in the heart of the country, organized the most formidable expedition of the war for a winter cam- paign against the outlying land of Louisiana, whose defender Jackson of necessity became. Thus, in 214 Naval War of 1812 the course of events, it came about that Louisiana was the theatre on which the final and most dramatic act of the war was played. Amid the gloomy, semi-tropical swamps that cover the quaking delta thrust out into the blue wa- ters of the Mexican Gulf by the strong torrent of the mighty Mississippi, stood the fair, French city of New Orleans. Its lot had been strange and varied. Won and lost once and again, in conflict, with the subjects of the Catholic king, there was a strong Spanish tinge in the French blood that coursed so freely through the veins of its citizens ; joined by purchase to the great Federal Republic, it yet shared no feeling with the latter, save that of hatred to the common foe. And now an hour of sore need had come upon the city; for against it came the red English, lords of fight by sea and land. A great fleet of war vessels — ships of the line, frigates and sloops — under Admiral Cochrane, was on the way to New Orleans, convoying a still larger fleet of troop ships, with aboard them some ten thousand fighting men, chiefly the fierce and hardy veterans of the Peninsula War,^ who had been ' "The British infantry embarked at Bordeaux, some for America, some for England." ("History of the War in the Peninsula," by Major-General Sir W. F. P. Napier, K.C.B. New edition. New York, 1882, v, p. 200.) For dis- cussion of numbers, see further on. The Battle of New Orleans 215 trained for seven years in the stern school of the Iron Duke, and who were now led by one of the bravest and ablest of all Wellington's brave and able lieutenants, Sir Edward Pakenham. On the 8th of December, 1814, the foremost ves- sels, with among their number the great two-decker Tonnanf, carrying the admiral's flag, anchored off the Chandeleur Islands;* and as the current of the Mississippi was too strong to be easily breasted, the English leaders determined to bring their men by boats through the bayous, and disembark them on the bank of the river ten miles below the wealthy city at whose capture they were aiming. There was but one thing to prevent the success of this plan, and that was the presence in the bayous of five American gunboats, manned by a hundred and eighty men, and commanded by Lieutenant-comdg. Catesby Jones, a very shrewd fighter. So against him was sent Captain Nicholas Lockyer with forty-five barges, and nearly a thousand sailors and marines, men who had grown gray during a quarter of a century of unbroken ocean warfare. The gunboats were moored in a head-and-stern line, near the Rigolets, with their boarding-nettings triced up, and every- thing ready to do desperate battle; but the British rowed up with strong, swift strokes, through a mur- derous fire of great guns and musketry ; the vessels * See, ante, p. 73- 2i6 Naval War of 1812 were grappled amid fierce resistance; the boarding- nettings were slashed through and cut away; with furious fighting the decks were gained; and one by one, at push of pike and cutlass stroke, the gun- boats were carried in spite of their stubborn de- fenders; but not till more than one barge had been sunk, while the assailants had lost a hundred men, and the assailed about half as many. There was now nothing to hinder the landing of the troops; and as the scattered transports arrived, the soldiers were disembarked, and ferried through the sluggish water of the bayous on small flat-bot- tomed craft; and finally, Dec. 23d, the advance guard, two thousand strong, under General Keane, emerged at the mouth of the canal Villere, and camped on the bank of the river,^ but nine miles below New Orleans, which now seemed a certain prize, almost within their grasp. Yet, although a mighty and cruel foe was at their very gates, nothing save fierce defiance reigned in the fiery Creole hearts of the Crescent City, For a master-spirit was in their midst. Andrew Jackson having utterly broken and destroyed the most pow- erful Indian confederacy that had ever menaced the southwest, and having driven the haughty Spaniards from Pensacola, was now bending all the energies of his rugged intellect and indomitable will to the 6 Letter of Major-General John Keane, Dec. 26, 1814. The Battle of New Orleans 217 one object of defending New Orleans. No man could have been better fitted for the task. He had hereditary wrongs to avenge on the British, and he hated them with an implacable fury that was ab- solutely devoid of fear. Bom and brought up among the lawless characters of the frontier, and knowing well how to deal with them, he was able to establish and preserve the strictest martial law in the city without in the least quelling the spirit of the citizens. To a restless and untiring energy he united sleepless vigilance and genuine military genius. Prompt to attack whenever the chance offered itself, seizing with ready grasp the slightest vantage-ground, and never giving up a foot of earth that he could keep, he yet had the patience to play a defensive game when it so suited him, and with consummate skill he always followed out the scheme of warfare that was best adapted to his wild soldiery. In after years he did to his country some good and more evil ; but no true American can think of his deeds at New Orleans without profound and unmixed thank- fulness. He had not reached the city till December 2d, and had therefore but three weeks in which to prepare the defence. The Federal Government, throughout the campaign, did absolutely nothing for the defence of Louisiana; neither provisions nor munitions of war of any sort were sent t ^ it, nor were any meas- VOL. X.— J 2i8 Naval War of 1812 ures taken for its aid.^ The inhabitants had been in a state of extreme despondency up to the time that JacI. ^., Prof. W. G. Sumner, in his "Andrew Jack- son as a Public Man," Boston, 1882). The climax of absurd- ity is reached by Major McDougal, who says (as quoted by 256 Naval War of 1812 either side, it was that of the British,^^ and Paken- ham left nothing undone to accomplish his aim, and made no movements that his experience in European war did not justify his making. There is not the slightest reason for supposing that any other British general would have accomplished more or have fared better than he did.^'^ Of course Jackson owed Cole in his "Memoirs of British Generals," ii, p. 364): "Sir Edward Pakenham fell, not after an utter and disastrous defeat, but at the very moment when the arms of victory were extended toward him" ; and by James, who says (ii, 388): "The premature fall of a British general saved an American city." These assertions are just on a par with those made by American writers, that only the fall of Law- rence prevented the Chesapeake from capturing the Shannon. British writers have always attributed the defeat largely to the fact that the 44th regiment, which was to have led the attack with fascines and ladders, did not act well. I doubt if this had any effect on the result. Some few of the men with ladders did reach the ditch, but were shot down at once, and their fate would have been shared by any others who had been with them ; the bulk of the column was never able to advance through the fire up to the breastwork, and all the ladders and fascines in Christendom would not have helped it. There will always be innumerable excuses offered for any defeat; but on this occasion the truth is simply that the British regulars found they could not advance in the open against a fire more deadly than they ever before encountered. ^^ E. g.: The unexpected frost made the swamps firm for them to advance through: the river being so low when the levee was cut, the bayous were filled, instead of the British being drowned out ; the Carolina was only blown up because the wind happened to fail her; bad weather delayed the ad- vance of arms and reinforcements, etc., etc. " "He was the next man to look to after Lord Wellington" (Codrington, i, 339). The Battle of New Orleans 257 much to the nature of the ground on which he fought ; but the opportunities it afforded would have been useless in the hands of any general less ready, hardy, and skilful than Old Hickory. A word as to the troops themselves. The Brit- ish infantry was at that time the best in Europe, the French coming next. Pakenham's soldiers had formed part of Wellington's magnificent Penin- sular army, and they lost nothing of their honor at New Orleans. Their conduct throughout was ad- mirable. Their steadiness in the night battle, their patience through the various hardships they had to undergo, their stubborn courage in action, and the undaunted front they showed in time of disaster (for at the very end they were to the full as ready and eager to fight as at the beginning), all showed that their soldierly qualities were of the highest order. As much can not be said of the British artil- lery, which, though very bravely fought was clearly by no means as skilfully handled as was the case with the American gims. The courage of the Brit- ish officers of all arms is mournfully attested by the sadly large proportion they bore to the total on the lists of the killed and wounded. An even greater meed of praise is due to the American soldiers, for it must not be forgotten that they were raw troops opposed to veterans ; and in- deed, nothing but Jackson's tireless care in drilling 258 Naval War of 1812 them could have brought them into shape at all. The regulars were just as good as the British, and no better. The Kentucky militia, who had only been 48 hours with the army and were badly armed and totally undisciplined, proved as useless as their brethren of New York and Virginia, at Queens- town Heights and Bladensburg, had previously shown themselves to be. They would not stand in the open at all, and even behind a breastwork had to be mixed with better men. The Louisiana militia, fighting in defence of their homes, and well trained, behaved excellently, and behind breast- works were as formidable as the regulars. The Tennesseeans, good men to start with, and already well trained in actual warfare under Jackson, were in their own way unsurpassable as soldiers. In the open field the British regulars, owing to their great- er skill in manoeuvring, and to their having bayo- nets, with which the Tennesseeans were unprovid- ed, could in all likelihood have beaten them ; but in rough or broken ground the skill of the Tennes- seeans, both as marksmen and woodsmen, would probably have given them the advantage; while the extreme deadliness of their fire made it far more dangerous to attempt to storm a breastwork guard- ed by these forest riflemen than It would have been to attack the same work guarded by an equal num- ber of the best regular troops of Europe. The The Battle of New Orleans 259 American soldiers deserve great credit for doing so well; but greater credit still belongs to Andrew Jackson, who, with his cool head and quick eye, his stout heart and strong hand, stands out in history as the ablest general the United States produced, from the outbreak of the Revolution down to the beginning of the Great Rebellion. APPENDICES APPENDIX A TONNAGE OF THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN MEN-OF- WAR IN 1812-I5 According to Act of Congress (quoted in "Niles' Register," iv, 64), the way of measuring double- decked or war-vessels was as follows : "Measure from fore-part of main stem to after- part of stern port, above the upper deck; take the breadth thereof at broadest part above the main wales, one-half of which breadth shall be accounted the depth. Deduct from the length three-fifths of such breadth, multiply the remainder by the breadth and the product by the depth; divide by 95; the quotient is tonnage." {i.e., If length >= x, and breadth = y; Tonnage = (x — i y) X y X J y.) 95 Niles states that the British mode, as taken from Steele's "Shipmaster's Assistant," was this: Drop plumb-line over stem of ship and measure distance between such line and the after-part of the stern (261) 262 Naval War of 1812 port at the load water-mark ; then measure from top of said plumb-line in parallel direction with the water to perpendicular point immediately over the load water-mark of the fore-part of main stem; subtract from such admeasurement the above dis- tance; the remainder is ship's extreme length, from which deduct 3 inches for every foot of the load- draught of water for the rake abaft, and also three- fifths of the ship's breadth for the rake forward; remainder is length of keel for tonnage. Breadth shall be taken from outside to outside of the plank in broadest part of the ship either above or below the main wales, exclusive of all manner of sheath- ing or doubling. Depth is to be considered as one- half the length. Tonnage will then be the length into the depth, into breadth, divided by 94. Tonnage was thus estimated in a purely arbitrary manner, with no regard to actual capacity or dis- placement; and, moreover, what is of more impor- tance, the British method differed from the Ameri- can so much that a ship measured in the latter way would be nominally about 15 per cent larger than if measured by British rules. This is the exact reverse of the statement made by the British naval historian, James. His mistake is pardonable, for great confusion existed on the subject at that time, even the officers not knowing the tonnage of their own ships. When the President was captured, her The Battle of New Orleans 263 officers stated that she measured about 1,400 tons; in reality she tonned 1,576, American measure. Still more singular was the testimony of the officers of the Argus, who thought her to be of about 350 tons, while she was of 298, by American, or 244, by British measurement. These errors were the more excusable as they occurred also in higher quarters. The earliest notice we have about the three 45-gun frigates of the Constitution's class, is in the letter of Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Stoddart, on Dec. 24, 1798,^ where they are expressly said to be of 1,576 tons; and this tonnage is given them in every navy list that mentions it for 40 years afterward; yet Secretary Paul Hamilton in one of his letters incidentally alludes to them as of 1,444 tons. Later, I think about the year 1838, the method of measur- ing was changed, and their tonnage was put down as 1,607. James takes the American tonnage from Secretary Hamilton's letter as 1,444, and states (vol. vi, p. 5), that this is equivalent to 1,533 tons, English. But in reality, by American measurement, the tonnage was 1,576; so that even according to James' own figures the British way of measurement made the frigate 43 tons smaller than the American way did; actually the difference was nearer 290 tons. James' statements as to the size of our vari- ous ships would seem to have been largely mere ' "American State Papers," xiv, 57. 264 Naval War of 1812 guess-work, as he sometimes makes them smaller and sometimes larger than they were according to the official navy lists. Thus, the Constitution, Presi- dent, and United States, each of 1,576, he puts down as of 1,533; the Wasp, of 450, as of 434; the Hornet, of 480, as of 460; and the Chesapeake, of 1,244, ^s of 1,135 tons. On the other hand the Enterprise, of 165 tons, he states to be of 245; the Argus, of 298, he considers to be of 316, and the Peacock, Frolic, etc., of 509 each, as of 539. He thus certainly adopts different standards of meas- urement, not only for the American as distin- guished from the British vessels, but even among the various American vessels themselves. And there are other difficulties to be encountered ; not only were there different ways of casting tonnage from given measurements, but also there were dif- ferent ways of getting what purported to be the same measurement. A ship that, according to the British method of measurement was of a certain length, would, according to the American method, be about 5 per cent longer; and so if two vessels were the same size, the American would have the greatest nominal tonnage. For example, James in his "Naval Occurrences" (p. 467), gives the length of the Cyane's main deck as 118 feet 2 inches. This same Cyane was carefully surveyed and measured, under orders from the United States Navy Depart- The Battle of New Orleans 265 ment, by Lieut. B. F. Hoffman, and in his published report^ he gives, among the other dimensions: "Length of spar-deck, 124 feet 9 inches," and "length of gun-deck 123 feet 3 inches." With such a difference in the way of taking measurements, as well as of computing tonnage from the measure- ments when taken, it is not surprising that accord- ing to the American method the Cyane should have ranked as of about 659 tons, instead of 539. As James takes no account of any of these differences I hardly know how to treat of his statements of comparative tonnage. Thus he makes the Hornet 460 tons, and the Peacock and Penguin, which she at different times captured, about 388 each. As it happens both Captain Lawrence and Captain Biddle, who commanded the Hornet in her two successful actions, had their prizes measured. The Peacock sank so rapidly that Lawrence could not get very accurate measurements of her; he states her to be four feet shorter and half a foot broader than the Hornet. The British naval historian, Brenton (vol. v, p. Ill), also states that they were of about the same tonnage. But we have more satisfactory evi- dence from Captain Biddle. He stayed by his prize nearly two days, and had her thoroughly examined in every way ; and his testimony is, of course, final. He reports that the Penguin was by actual meas- « "American State Papers," xiv, p. 417- Vol. X.— L 266 Naval War of 1812 urement two feet shorter, and somewhat broader than the Hornet, and with thicker scantHng. She tonned 477, compared to the Hornet's 480 — a dif- ference of about one-half of one per cent. This testimony is corroborated by that of the naval in- spectors who examined the Eperuier after she was captured by the Peacock. Those two vessels were respectively of 477 and 509 tons, and as such they ranked on the navy lists. The American Peacock and her sister ships were very much longer than the brig sloops of the Epervier's class, but were no broader, the latter being very tubby. All the Eng- lish sloops were broader in proportion than the American ones were; thus the Levant, which was to have mounted the same number of guns as the Peacock, had much more beam, and was of greater tonnage, although of rather less length. The Mace- donian, when captured, ranked on our lists as of 1,325 tons,^ the United States as of 1,576; and they thus continued until, as I have said before, the method of measurement was changed, when the for- mer ranked as of 1,341, and the latter as of 1,607 tons. James, however, makes them respectively 1,081 and 1,533. Now to get the comparative force he ought to have adopted the first set of measure- ments given, or else have made them 1,081 and 3 See the work of Lieutenant Emmons, who had access to all the official records. The Battle of New Orleans 267 1,286. Out of the twelve single-ship actions of the war, four were fought with 38-gun frigates like the Macedonian, and seven with i8-gun brig sloops of the Epervier's class ; and as the Macedonian and Epervier were both regularly rated in our navy, we get a very exact idea of our antagonists in those eleven cases. The twelfth was the fight between the Enterprise and the Boxer, in which the latter was captured ; the Enterprise was apparently a little smaller than her foe, but had two more guns, which she carried in her bridle ports. As my purpose in giving the tonnage is to get it comparatively, and not absolutely, I have given it throughout for both sides as estimated by the American method of that day. The tonnage of the vessels on the lakes has been already noticed. APPENDIX B PREVIOUS HISTORY OF UNITED STATES NAVY Very few students of naval history will deny that in 181 2 the average American ship was superior to the average British ship of the same strength ; and that the latter was in turn superior to the average French ship. The explanation given by the victor is in each case the same ; the American writer ascribes 268 Naval War of 1812 the success of his nation to "the aptitude of the American character for the sea," and the Briton similarly writes that "the English are inherently better suited for the sea than the French." Race characteristics may have had some little effect be- tween the last pair of combatants (although only a little), and it is possible that they somewhat affected the outcome of the Anglo-American struggle, but they did not form the main cause. This can best be proved by examining the combats of two preced- ing periods, in which the English, French, and Americans were at war with one another. During the years 1798- 1800, the United States carried on a desultory conflict with France, then at war with England. Our navy was just built, and was rated in the most extraordinary manner; the Chesapeake, carrying i8-pounders, was called a 44; and the Constellation, which carried 24's, a 36, while the Washington, rating 24, was really much heavier than the Boston, rating 28. On Feb. 9, 1799, after an hour's conflict, the Constellation captured the French frigate VInsurgente; the Americans lost 3, the French 70 men, killed and wounded. The Con- stellation carried but 38 guns ; 28 long 24's, on the maindeck. and 10 long 12's on the quarterdeck, with a crew of 309 men. According to Troude (III, 169), VInsurgente carried 26 long 12's, 10 long 6's, and 4 36-poimd carronades; the Americans report The Battle of New Orleans 16^ her number of men as nearly four hundred. Thus in actual (not nominal) weight of shot the Constel- lation was superior by about 80 pounds, and was inferior in crew by from 50 to 100 men. This would make the vessels apparently nearly equal in force ; but of course the long 24's of the Constella- tion made it impossible that I'lnsurgente, armed only with long 12's, should contend with her. As al- ready said, a superiority in number of men makes very little difference, provided each vessel has ample to handle the guns, repair damages, work the sails, etc. Troude goes more into details than any other French historian; but I think his details are gener- ally wrong. In this case he gives the Constellation 12's, instead of the 24's she really carried; and also supplies her with 10 32-pound carronades — of which species of ordnance there was then not one piece in our navy. The first carronades we ever had were those carried by the same frigate on her next voy- age. She had completely changed her armament, having 28 long i8's on the maindeck, ten 24-pound 1 French shot was really very much heavier than the nom- inally corresponding English shot, as the following table taken from Captain T. L. Simmons' work on "Heavy Ord- nance" (London, 1837, p. 62) will show: Nominal French Weight Actual Weight of Same Shot in of Shot English Pounds 36 lbs. 43 lbs. 4 oz. 24 " 28 " 83{ " 18 " 21 ' 12 " 14 ' 270 Naval War of 1812 carronades on the quarterdeck; and, I believe, 6 long 12's on the forecastle, with a crew of 310 men. Thus armed, she encountered and fought a drawn battle with La Vengeance. Troude (Vol. Ill, pp. 201 and 216) describes the armament of the latter as 26 long i8's, 10 long 8's, and 4 36-pound car- ronades. On board of her was an American pris- oner, James Howe, who swore she had 52 guns and 400 men (see Cooper, I, 306). The French and American accounts thus radically disagree. The point is settled definitely by the report of the British captain Milne, who, in the Seine frigate, captured La Vengeance in the same year, and then reported her armament as being 28 long i6's, 16 long 12's, and 8 36-pound carronades, with 326 men. As the American and British accounts, written entirely in- dependently of one another, tally almost exactly, it is evident that Troude was very greatly mistaken. He blunders very much over the Constellation's armament. Thus in this action the American frigate fought a draw with an antagonist nearly as much superior to herself as an American 44 was to a British 38. In November, 1800, the "28-gun frigate," Boston, of 530 tons, 200 men, carrying 24 long 9's on the maindeck, and on the spardeck 8 long 6's (or possi- bly 12-pound carronades), captured, after two hours' action, the French corvette Berceau, of 24 The Battle of New Orleans 271 guns, long 8's ; the Boston was about the same size as her foe, with the same number of men, and supe- rior in metal about as 10 to 9. She lost 15, and the Berceau 40 men. Troude (III, p. 219) gives the Berceau 30 guns, 22 long 8's and 8 12-pound car- ronades. If this is true she was in reality of equal force with the Boston. But I question if Troude really knew anything about the combatants ; he gives the Boston (of the same size and build as the Cyane) 48 guns — a number impossible for her to carry. He continually makes the grossest errors; in this same (the third) volume, for example, he arms a British 50-gun ship with y2 cannon, giving her a broad- side fifty per cent heavier than it should be (p. 141) ; and, still worse, states the ordinary comple- ment of a British 32-gun frigate to be 384 men, instead of about 220 (p. 417). He is by no means as trustworthy as James, though less rancorous. The United States schooner Experiment, of 12 guns, long 6's, and 70 men, captured the French man-of-war three-masted schooner La Diane, of 14 guns (either 4- or 6-pounders), with a crew of 60 men, and 30 passengers ; and the Enterprise, the sis- ter vessel of the Experiment, captured numerous strong privateers. One of them, a much heavier vessel than her captor, made a most obstinate fight. She was the Flambeau brig of fourteen 8-pounders and 100 men, of whom about half 1'ji Naval War of 1812 were killed or wounded. The Enterprise had 3 killed and 7 wounded. Comparing these different actions, it is evident that the Americans were superior to the French in fighting capacity during the years 1799 and 1800. During the same two years there had been numer- ous single contests between vessels of Britain and France, ending almost invariably in favor of the former, which I mention first in each couple. The i2-pounder frigate Doedalus captured the 12-pound- er frigate Prudente, of equal force. The British i8-pounder frigate Syhille captured the frigate Forte, armed with 52 guns, 30 of them long 24's on the maindeck ; she was formidably armed and as heavy as the Constitution. The Syhille lost 22 and the Forte 145 men killed and wounded. The 18- pounder frigate Clyde, with the loss of 5 men, cap- tured the i2-pounder frigate V estate, which lost 32. The cutter Courser, of twelve 4-pounders and 40 men, captured the privateer Guerriere, of fourteen 4-pounders and 44 men. The cutter Viper, of four- teen 4-pounders and 48 men, captured the privateer Suret, of fourteen 4-pounders and 57 men. The i6-gun ship-sloop Peterel, with 89 men, engaged the Cerf, 14, Lejoille, 6, and Ligurienne, 16, with in all 240 men, and captured the Ligurienne. The 30- gun corvette Dart captured by- surprise the 38-gun frigate Desiree. The Gypsey, of ten 4-pounders The Battle of New Orleans 273 and 82 men, captured the Quidproquo, of 8 guns, 4- and 8-pounders, and 98 men. The schooner Mil- hrook, of sixteen i8-pounder carronades and 47 men, fought a draw with the privateer Bellone, of 24 long 8's and six 36-pound carronades. Finally, six months after the Vengeance had escaped from the Constellation (or beaten her off, as the French say), she was captured by the British frigate Seine, which threw a broadside about 30 pounds more than the American did in her action, and had some 29 men less aboard. So that her commander. Cap- tain Milne, with the same force as Commodore Truxton, of the Constellation, accomplished what the latter failed to do. Reviewing all these actions, it seems pretty clear that, while the Americans were then undoubtedly much superior to the French, they were still, at least slightly, inferior to the British. From 1777 to 1782 the state of things was very different. The single combats were too numerous for me to mention them here ; and besides it would be impossible to get at the truth without going to a great deal of trouble — the accounts given by Cooper, Schomberg, and Troude differing so widely that they can often hardly be recognized as treating of the same events. But it is certain that the British were very much superior to the Americans. Some of the American ships behaved most disgracefully, 274 Naval War of 1812 deserting their consorts and fleeing from much smaller foes. Generally the American ship was captured when opposed by an equal force — although there were some brilliant exceptions to this. With the French things were more equal; their frigates were sunk or captured time and again, but nearly as often they sunk or captured their antagonists. Some of the most gallant fights on record are re- counted of French frigates of this period; in 1781 the Minerve, 32, resisted the Courageous, 74, till she had lost 73 men and had actually inflicted a loss of 17 men on her gigantic antagonist, and the pre- vious year the Bellepoule, 32, had performed a simi- lar feat with the Nonsuch, 64, while the Capricieuse, 32, had fought for five hours before surrendering to the Prudent e and Licorne, each of force equal to herself. She lost 100 men, inflicting a loss of 55 upon her two antagonists. Such instances make us feel rather ashamed when we compare them with the fight in which the British ship Glasgow, 20, beat off an American squadron of 5 ships, including two of equal force to herself, or with the time when the Ariadne, 20, and Ceres, 14, attacked and cap- tured without resistance the Alfred, 20, the latter ship being deserted in the most outrageously cow- ardly manner by her consort the Raleigh, 32. At that period the average American ship was certainly by no means equal to the average French ship of the The Battle of New Orleans 275 same force, and the latter in turn was a little, but only a little, inferior to the average British ship of equal strength. Thus in 1782 the British stood first in nautical prowess, separated but by a very narrow interval from the French, while the Americans made a bad third. In 1789, the British still stood first, while the Americans had made a great stride forward, com- ing close on their heels, and the French had fallen far behind into the third place. In 1812, the rela- tive positions of the British and French were un- changed, but the Americans had taken another very decided step in advance, and stood nearly as far ahead of the British as the latter were ahead of the French. The explanation of these changes is not difficult. In 1782, the American war vessels were in reality privateers; the crews were unpracticed, the officers untrained, and they had none of the traditions and discipline of a regular service. At the same time the French marine was at its highest point; it was commanded by officers of ability and experience, promoted largely for merit, and with crews thor- oughly trained, especially in gunnery, by a long course of service on the sea. In courage and in skill in the management of guns, musketry, etc., they were the full equals of their English antago- nists; their slight average inferiority in seamanship 276 Naval War of 1812 may, it is possible, be fairly put down to the differ- ence in race. (It seems certain that, when serving in a neutral vessel, for example, the Englishmen aboard are apt to make better sailors than the Frenchmen.) In 1799 the Revolution had deprived the French of all their best officers, had let the char- acter of the marine run down, and the discipline of the service become utterly disorganized ; this ex- posed them to frightful reverses, and these in turn prevented the character of the service from recover- ing its former tone. Meanwhile the Americans had established for the first time a regular navy, and, as there was excellent material to work with, it at once came up close to the English; constant and arduous service, fine discipline, promotion for merit, and the most unflagging attention to practical sea- manship and gunnery had in 18 12 raised it far above even the high English standard. During all these three periods the English marine, it must be remembered, did not fall off, but at least kept its position; the French, on the contrary, did fall off, while the American navy advanced by great strides to the first place. The Battle of New Orleans 277 APPENDIX C After my work was in press I for the first time came across Prof. J. Russell Soley's "Naval Cam- paign of 1812," in the "Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute," for October 20, 1881. It is apparently the precursor of a more extended his- tory. Had I known that such a writer as Professor Soley was engaged on a work of this kind I certainly should not have attempted it myself. In several points our accounts differ. In the ac- tion with the Guerriere his diagram differs from mine chiefly in his making the Constitution steer in a more direct line, while I have represented her as shifting her course several times in order to avoid being raked, bringing the wind first on her port and then on her starboard quarter. My account of the number of the crew of the Guerriere is taken from the Constitution's muster-book (in the Treas- ury Department at Washington), which contains the names of all the British prisoners received aboard the Constitution after the fight. The various writers used "larboard" and "starboard" with such perfect indifference, in speaking of the closing and the loss of the Guerriere's mizzenmast, that I hardly knew which account to adopt ; it finally seemed to me that the only way to reconcile the conflicting statements 278 Naval War of 18 12 was by making the mast act as a rudder, first to keep the ship off the wind until it was dead aft and then to bring her up into it. If this was the case, it deadened her speed, and prevented Dacres from keeping his ship yardarm and yardarm with the foe, though he tried to steady his course with the helm ; but, in this view, it rather delayed Hull's raking than helped him. If Professor Soley's account is right, I hardly know what to make of the statement in one of the American accounts that the Constitution "luffed across the enemy's bow," and of Cooper's statement (in "Putnam's Magazine") that the Giier- riere's bowsprit pressed against the Constitution's "lee or port quarter." In the action of the Wasp with the Frolic, I have adopted James' statement of the latter's force ; Pro- fessor Soley follows Captain Jones' letter, which gives the brig three additional guns and 18 pounds more metal in broadside. My reason for following James was that his account of the Frolic's force agrees with the regular armament of her class. Cap- tain Jones give her two carronades on the topgallant forecastle, which must certainly be a mistake; he makes her chase-guns long 12's, but all the other British brigs carried 6's; he also gives her another gun in broadside, which he calls a 12-pounder, and Lieutenant Biddle (in a letter to his father), a 32- pound carronade. His last gun should perhaps be The Battle of New Orleans 279 counted in; I excluded it because the two Ameri- can officials differed in their account of it, because I did not know through what port it could be fought, and because James asserted that it was dismounted and lashed to the forecastle. The Wasp left port with 138 men; subtracting the pilot and two men who were drowned, makes 135, the number on board during the action. As the battle was fought, I doubt if the loss of the brig's mainyard had much effect on the result; had it been her object to keep on the wind, or had the loss of her after-sails en- abled her antagonist to cross her stem (as in the case of the Argus and Pelican), the accident could fairly be said to have had a decided effect upon the con- test. But as a short time after the fight began the vessels were running nearly free, and as the Wasp herself was greatly injured aloft at the time, and made no effort to cross her foe's stern, it is difficult to see that it made much difference. The brig's head-sails were all right, and, as she was not close- hauled, the cause of her not being kept more under command was probably purely due to the slaughter on her decks. Professor Soley represents the combat of the States and Macedonian as a plain yardarm and yard- arm action after the first forty minutes. I have fol- lowed the English authorities and make it a running fight throughout. If Professor Soley is right, the 28o Naval War of 1812 enormous disparity in loss was due mainly to the in- finitely greater accuracy of the American fire; ac- cording to my diagram the chief cause was the incompetency of the Macedonian's commander. In one event the difference was mainly in the gunnery of the crews, in the other, it was mainly in the tac- tical skill of the captains. The question is merely as to how soon Garden, in his headlong, foolishly rash approach, was enabled to close with Decatur. I have represented the closing as taking place later than Professor Soley has done; very possibly I am wrong. Could my work now be rewritten I think I should adopt his diagram of the action of the Mace- donian. But in the action with the Java it seems to me that he is mistaken. He has here followed the Brit- ish accounts ; but they are contradicted by the Amer- ican authorities, and besides have a very improbable look. When the Constitution came round for the second time, on the port tack, James declares the Java passed directly across her stern, almost touch- ing, but that the British crew, overcome by aston- ishment or awe, did not fire a shot ; and that shortly afterward the manoeuvre was repeated. When this incident is said to have occurred the Java's crew had been hard at work fighting the guns for half an hour, and they continued for an hour and a half afterward ; it is impossible to believe that they would The Battle of New Orleans 281 have forborne to fire more than one gun when in such a superb position for inflicting damage. Even had the men been struck with temporary lunacy the offi- cers alone would have fired some of the guns. More- over, if the courses of the vessels were such as in- dicated on Professor Soley's diagram the Java would herself have been previously exposed to a terrible raking fire, which was not the case. So the alleged manoeuvres have, per se, a decidedly apocryphal look ; and besides they are flatly contradicted by the American accounts, which state distinctly that the Java remained to windward in every portion of the fight. On this same tack Professor Soley repre- sents the Java as forereaching on the Constitution; I have reversed this. At this time the Java had been much cut up in her rigging and aloft generally, while the Constitution had set much additional sail, and in consequence the latter forged ahead and wore in the smoke unperceived. When the ships came foul Professor Soley has drawn the Constitution in a position in which she would receive a most destruc- tive stern rake from her antagonist's whole broad- side. The positions could not have been as there represented. The Java's bowsprit came foul in the Constitution's mizzen rigging and as the lat- ter forged ahead she pulled the former gradually round till when they separated the ships were in a head and stern line. Commodore Bainbridge, as he 282 Naval War of 1812 particularly says, at once "kept away to avoid being raked," while the loss of the headsails aboard the Java would cause the latter to come up in the wind, and the two ships would again be running parallel, with the American to leeward. I have already dis- cussed fully the reasons for rejecting in this instance the British report of their own force and loss. This was the last defeat that the British officially re- ported; the admiralty were smarting with the sting of successive disasters and anxious at all costs to put the best possible face on affairs (as witness Mr. Croker's response to Lord Dundonald's speech in the House). There is every reason for believing that in this case the reports were garbled; exactly as at a later date the official correspondence preceding the terrible disasters at Cabul was tampered with before being put before the public (see McCarthy's "His- tory of Our Own Times"). It is difficult to draw a diagram of the action be- tween the Hornet and Peacock, although it was so short, the accounts contradicting one another as to which ship was to windward and which on the "lar- board tack" ; and I do not know if I have correctly represented the position of the combatants at the close of the engagement. Lieutenant Conner re- ported the number of men aboard the Hornet fit for duty as 135; Lawrence says she had 8 absent in a prize and 7 too sick to be at quarters. This would The Battle of New Orleans 283 make an original complement of 150, and tallies ex- actly with the number of men left on the Hornet after the action was over, as mentioned by Lawrence in his account of the total number of souls aboard. The logbook of the Hornet just before starting on her cruise states her entire complement as 158; but 4 of these were sick and left behind. There is still a discrepancy of 4 men, but during the course of the cruise nothing would be more likely than that four men should be gotten rid of, either by sickness, desertion, or dismissal. At any rate the discrepancy is very trivial. In her last cruise, as I have elsewhere said, I have probably overestimated the number of the Hornet's crew ; this seems especially likely when it is remembered that toward the close of the war our vessels left port with fewer supernumeraries aboard than earlier in the contest. If such is the case, the Hornet and Penguin were of almost exactly equal force. My own comments upon the causes of our suc- cess, upon the various historians of the war, etc., are so similar to those of Professor Soley, that I almost feel as if I had been guilty of plagiarism; yet I never saw his writings till half an hour ago. But in commenting on the actions of 18 12, I think the Professor has laid too much stress on the dif- ference in "dash" between the combatants. The Wasp bore down with perfect confidence to engage 284 Naval War of 1812 an equal foe; and the Hornet could not tell till the Peacock opened fire that the latter was inferior in force, and moreover fought in sight of another hostile vessel. In the action with the Guerriere it was Hull and not Dacres who acted boldly, the Englishman delaying the combat and trying to keep it at long range for some time. In this fight it must be remembered that neither foe knew the exact force of the other until the close work began ; then, it is true, Dacres fought most bravely. So with the Macedonian; James particularly says that she did not know the force of her foe, and was confident of victory. The Java, however, must have known that she was to engage a superior force. In neither of the first two frigate actions did the Americans have a chance to display any courage in the actual fighting, the victory was won with such ease. But in each case they entered as bravely, although by no means as rashly or foolishly, into the fight as their antagonists did. It must always be remem- bered that until this time it was by no means proved that 24-pounders were better gims than i8's to put on frigates; exactly as at a little later date it was vigorously contended that 42-pounders were no more effective guns for two-deckers than 32-pound- ers were. Till 18 12 there had been no experience to justify the theory that the 24-pounder was the better gun. So that in the first five actions it can- The Battle of New Orleans 285 not be said that the British showed any especial courage in beginning the fight; it was more prop- erly to be called ignorance. After the fight was once begun they certainly acted very bravely, and, in particular, the desperate nature of the Frolic's de- fence has never been surpassed. But admitting this is a very different thing from admitting that the British fought more bravely than their foes; the combatants were about on a par in this respect. The Americans, it seems to me, were always to the full as ready to engage as their an- tagonists were; on each side there were few over- cautious men, such as Commodore Rodgers and Sir George Collier, the opposing captains on Lake On- tario, the commander of the Bonne Citoyenne, and perhaps Commodore Decatur, but as a rule either side jumped at the chance of a fight. The differ- ence in tactics was one of skill and common sense, not one of timidity. The United States did not "avoid close action" from over-caution, but simply to take advantage of her opponent's rashness. Hull's approach was as bold as it was skilful; had the opponent to leeward been the Endymion instead of the Guerriere, her 24-pounders would not have saved her from the fate that overtook the latter. Throughout the war I think that the Americans were as bold in beginning action, and as stubborn in continuing it, as were their foes — although no 286 Naval War of 1812 more so. Neither side can claim any superiority on the average, though each can in individual cases, as regards courage. Foolhardiness does not imply bravery. A prize-fighter who refused to use his guard would be looked upon as exceptionally brain- less, not as exceptionally brave; yet such a case is almost exactly parallel to that of the captain of the Macedonian. The Battle of New Orleans 287 APPENDIX D In the ''Historical Register of the United States" (Edited by T. H. Palmer, Philadelphia, 1814), Vol. I, p. 105 (State Papers), is a letter from Lieut. L. H. Babbitt to Master-commandant Wm. U. Crane, both of the Nautilus, dated Sept. 13, 1812, in which he says that of the six men imprisoned by the British on suspicion of being of English birth, four were native-born Americans, and two naturalized citizens. He also gives a list of six men who deserted and entered on the Shannon, of whom two were American born — the birthplaces of the four others not being given. Adding these last, we still have but six men as the number of British aboard the Nautilus. It is thus seen that the crack frigate Shannon had American deserters aboard her — although these probably formed a merely trifling fraction of her crew, as did the British deserters aboard the crack frigate Constitution. On p. 108 is a letter of Dec. 17, 1812, from Geo. S. Wise, purser of the Wasp, stating that twelve of that ship's crew had been detained "under the pretence of their being British subjects"; so that nine per cent of her crew may have been British 288 Naval War of 1812 — or the proportion may have been very much smaller. On p. 117 is a letter of Jan. 14, 1813, from Commodore J. Rodgers, in which he states that he incloses the muster-rolls of H. B. M. ships Moselle and Sappho, taken out of the captured packet Swal- low; and that these muster-rolls show that in Au- gust, 181 2, one-eighth of the crews of the Moselle and Sappho was composed of Americans. These various letters thus support strongly the conclusions reached on a former page as to the pro- portion of British deserters on American vessels. In "A Biographical Memoir of the late Com- modore Joshua Barney, from Autographical Notes and Journals" (Edited by Mary Barney, Boston, 1832), on pages 26^ and 315, are descriptions of the flotilla destroyed in the Patuxent. It consisted of one gunboat, carrying a long 24; one cutter, carrying a long 18, a columbiad 18, and four 9- pound carronades, and thirteen row barges, each carrying a long 18 or 12 in the bow, with a 32- pound or 18-pound carronade in the stern. On p. 256, Barney's force in St. Leonard's creek is de- scribed as consisting of one sloop, two gunboats, and thirteen barges, with in all somewhat over 500 men; and it is claimed that the flotilla drove away the blockading frigates, entirely unaided; the in- fantry force on shore rendering no assistance. The The Battle of New Orleans 289 work is of some value, as showing that James had more than doubled the size, and almost doubled the strength, of Barney's various gunboats. It may be mentioned that on p. 108, Commodore Barney describes the Dutch- American frigate South Carolina, which carried a crew of 550 men, and was armed with 28 long 42's on the maindeck, and 12 long 12's on the spardeck. She was far heavier than any of our, 44-gun frigates of 181 2, and an overmatch for anything under the rank of a 74. This gives further emphasis to what I have already stated— that the distinguishing feature of the war of 1 8 12, is not the introduction of the heavy frigate, for heavy frigates had been in use among various nations for thirty years previously, but the fact that for the first time the heavy frigate was used to the best possible advantage. Vol. X.— M 290 Naval War of 1812 APPENDIX E In the last edition of James' "Naval History of Great Britain," published in London, in 1886, by Richard Bentley & Son, there is an appendix by Mr. H. T. Powell, devoted to the w^ar of 181 2. mainly to my account thereof. Mr. Powell begins by stating with naif solemnity that "most British readers will be surprised to learn that, notwithstanding the infinite pains taken by William James to render his history a monument of accuracy, and notwithstanding the exposure he brought upon contemporary misstatements, yet to this day the Americans still dispute his facts." It is difficult to discuss seriously any question with a man capable of writing down in good faith such a sentence as the above. James (unlike Brenton and Cooper) knew perfectly well how to be accurate; but if Mr. Powell will read the comments on his accounts which I have appended to the description of almost every battle, he will see that James stands convicted beyond possibility of doubt, not merely of occasional inaccuracies or errors, but of the sys- tematic, malicious, and continuous practice of every The Battle of New Orleans 291 known form of wilful misstatement, from the sup- pression of the truth and the suggestion of the false to the lie direct. To a man of his character the temptation was irresistible; for when he came to our naval war, he had to appear as the champion of the beaten side, and to explain away defeat in- stead of chronicling victory. The contemporary American writers were quite as boastful and un- truthful. No honorable American should at this day endorse their statements ; and similarly, no rep- utable Englishman should permit his name to be associated in any way with James' book without explicitly disclaiming all share in, or sympathy with, its scurrilous mendacity. Mr. Powell's efforts to controvert my statements can be disposed of in short order. He first en- deavors to prove that James was right about the tonnage of the ships ; but all that he does is to show that his author gave for English frigates and sloops the correct tonnage by English and French rules. This I never for a moment disputed. What I said was that the comparative tonnage of the various pairs of combatants as given by James was all wrong; and this Mr. Powell does not even discuss. James applied one system correctly to the English vessels ; but he applied quite another to the American (especially on the lakes). Mr. Powell actually quotes Admiral Chads as a witness, because he 292 Naval War of 1812 says that his father considered James' account of the Java's fight accurate; if he wishes such testi- mony, I can produce many relatives of the Perrys, Porters, and Rodgerses of 1812 who insist that I have done much less than justice to the American side. He says I passed over silently James' sched- ule of dimensions of the frigates and sloops. This is a mistake ; I showed by the testimony of Captains Biddle and Warrington and Lieutenant Hoffman that his comparative measurements (the absolute measurements being of no consequence) for the American and British sloops are all wrong; and the same holds true of the frigates. Mr. Powell deals with the weight of shot exactly as he does with the tonnage — that is, he seeks to show what the absolute weight of the British shot was ; but he does not touch upon the point at issue, the comparative weight of the British and American shot. When he comes to the lake actions, Mr. Powell is driven to conclude that what I aver must be ac- curate, because he thinks the Confiance was the size of the General Pike (instead of half as large again; she mounted 30 guns in battery on her main deck, as against the Pike's 26, and stood to the latter as the Constellation did to the Essex), and because an American writer (very properly) expresses dissat- isfaction with Commodore Chauncy! What Mr. The Battle of New Orleans 293 Powell thinks this last statement tends to prove would be difficult to say. In the body of my work I go into the minute details of the strength of the combatants in the lake action; I clearly show that James was guilty of gross and wilful falsification of the truth ; and no material statement I make can be successfully controverted. So much for Mr. Powell. But a much higher authority, Mr. Frank Chiswell, has recently pub- lished some articles which tend to show that my con- clusions as to the tonnage of the sea vessels (not as to the lake vessels, which are taken from different sources) are open to question. In the appendix to my first edition I myself showed that it was quite impossible to reconcile all the different statements; that the most that could be done was to take one method and apply it all through, admitting that even in this way it would be impossible to make all the cases square with one another. Mr. Chiswell states that "the American tonnage measurements, properly taken, never could give re- sults for frigates varying largely from the English tonnage." But a statement like this is idle; for the answer to the "never could" is that they did. If Mr. Chiswell will turn to James' "Naval Occur- rences," he will find the Chesapeake set down as 1,135 tons, and the Macedonian as of 1,081; but in the American Navy lists, which are those I fol- 294 Naval War of 1812 lowed, the Chesapeake is put down as of 1,244 tons. A simple application of the rule of three shows that even if I accepted James' figures, I would be obliged to consider the Macedofiian as of about 1,185 tons, to make her correspond with the system I had adopted for the American ships. But this is not all. James gives the length of the Macedonian as 154 ft. 6 in. In the Navy De- partment at Washington are two plans of the Mace- donian. One is dated 181 7, and gives her length as 157 ft. 3 in. This difference in measurement would make a difference of 20 odd tons; so that by the American mode she must certainly have been over 1,200 tons, instead of under 1,100, as by the British rules. The second plan in the Navy Department, much more elaborate than the first, is dated 1829, and gives the length as 164 ft. ; it is probably this that Emmons and the United States Navy Lists have followed — as I did myself in call- ing the tonnage of the Macedonian 1,325. Since finding the plan of 181 7, however, I think it ix)s- sible that the other refers to the second vessel of the name, which was built in 1832. If this is true, then the Macedonian (as well as the Guerriere and Java) should be put down as about 120 tons less than the measurements given by Emmons and adopted by me; but even if this is so, she must be considered as tonning over 1,200, using the The Battle of New Orleans 295 method I have appHed to the Chesapeake. There- fore, adopting the same system that I apply to the American 38-gun frigates, the British 38-gun frigates were of over 1,200, not under 1,100, tons. As for the Cyane, James makes her but 118 ft. and 2 in. long, while the American Peacock he puts at 119 ft. 5 in. But Lieut. Hoffman's official re- port makes the former 123 ft. 3 in,, and the plans in the State Department at Washington make the latter 117 ft. 11 in. in length. I care nothing for the different methods of measuring different vessels ; what I wish to get at is the comparative measure- ment, and this stands as above. The comparative tonnage is thus the very reverse of that indicated by James' figures. Finally, as to the brigs, James makes them some ten feet shorter than the American ship-sloops. In the Washington Archives I can find no plan on rec- ord of the measurements of the captured Epervier; but in the Navy Department, volume 10, of the "Let- ters of Masters-Commandant, 1814," under date of May 1 2th, is the statement of the Surveyor of the Port of Charleston that she measured 467 tons (in another place it is given as 477). James makes her 388; but as he makes the American Wasp 434. whereas she stands on our list as of 450, the appli- cation of the same rule as with the frigates gives us, even taking his own figures, 400 as her ton- 296 Naval War of 1812 nage, when measured as our ships were. But the measurements of the Surveyor of the Port who ex- amined the Epervier are corroborated by the state- ments of Captain Biddle, who captured her sister brig-, the Penguin. Biddle reported that the latter was two feet shorter and a little broader than his own ship, the Hornet, which was of 480 tons. This would correspond almost exactly with the Surveyor's estimate. It still seems impossible to reconcile all these con- flicting statements ; but I am inclined to think that, on the whole, in the sea (not the lake) vessels I have put the British tonnage too high. On the scale I have adopted for the American 44-gun and 38- gun frigates and i8-gun sloops like the Hornet and Wasp, the British 38-gun frigates ought to be put down as of a little over 1,200, and the British 18- gun sloops as of between 400 and 450, tons. In other words, of the twelve single-ship actions of the war five, those of the Chesapeake and Shannon, En- terprise and Boxer, Wasp and Frolic, Hornet and Peacock, Hornet and Penguin, were between vessels of nearly equal size; in six the American was the superior about in the proportion of five to four (rather more in the case of the frigates, rather less in the case of the brigs) ; and in one, that of the Argus and Pelican, the British sloop was the big- ger, in a somewhat similar ratio. The Battle of New Orleans 297 This correction would be in favor of the British. But in a more important particular I think I have done injustice to the Americans. I should have allowed for the short weight of American metal on the lakes, taking off seven per cent from the nominal broadsides of Perry and Macdonough ; for the Amer- ican ordnance was of exactly the same quality as that on the ocean vessels, while the British was brought over from England, and must have shown the same superiority that obtained on the sea-going ships. Moreover, I am now inclined to believe that both the Guerriere and the Java, which were originally French ships, still carried French i8's on their maindeck, and that, therefore, about 20 pounds should be added to the broadside weight of metal of each. The American accounts stated this to be the case in both instances; but I paid no heed to them until my attention was called to the fact that the English had captured enormous quantities of French cannon and shot and certainly used the captured ordnance on some of their ships. In writing my history I have had to deal with a mass of confused and contradictory testimony, which it has sometimes been quite impossible to reconcile, the difficulty being greatly enhanced by the calculated mendacity of James and some others of the earlier writers, both American and British. 298 Naval War of 1812 Often I have had simply to balance probabilities, and choose between two sets of figures, aware that, whichever I chose, much could be said against the choice. It has, therefore, been quite impossible to avoid errors; but I am confident they have been as much in favor of the British as the Americans; and in all important points my statements are sub- stantially accurate. I do not believe that my final conclusions on the different fights can be disputed. James asserts that the American ships were officered by cunning cow- ards, and manned to the extent of half their force in point of effectiveness by renegade British. I show that the percentage of non-American seamen aboard the American ships was probably but little greater than the percentage of non-British seamen aboard the British ships; and as for the charges of cowardice, there were but two instances in which it could be fairly urged against a beaten crew — that of the British Epervier and that of the American Argus (for the cases of Sir George Collier, Commo- dore Rodgers, Chauncy, Yeo, the commander of the Bonne Citoyenne, etc., etc., can not be considered as coming under this head). James states that there was usually a great superiority of force on the side of the Americans; this is true; but I show that it was not nearly as great as he makes it, and that in dealing with the lake flotillas his figures are abso- RD-94 The Battle of New Orleans 299 lately false, to the extent of even reversing the relative strength of the combatants on Lake Cham- plain, where the Americans won, although with an inferior force. In the one noteworthy British vic- tory, that of the Shannon, all British authors fail to make any allowance for the vital fact that the Shannons crew had been drilled for seven years, whereas the Chesapeake had an absolutely new crew, and had been out of port just eight hours; yet such a difference in length of drill is more important than disparity in weight of metal. As a whole, it must be said that both sides showed equal courage and resolution; that the Americans usually possessed the advantage in material force; and that they also showed a decided superiority in fighting skill, notably in marksmanship. END OF VOLUME TEN )V ^^Bm^) ^yi7 V A* ^^'^ \ ^^^'^^^ ^ '* <<* ,^% CL^ ^cf. ^^-n^. ^^^rV p^ '^ ^^ '-^^ .c,'^'^' ,^'.^M/', ^. ^'Jv^ o " o ■• -- "' ■■ 0* .-'■•- *o. O-r ^^ Hq. V