While Captain Bainbridge was eating his heart out in the Pasha's prison
at Tripoli, his thoughts reverting constantly to his lost frigate, he
reminded Commodore Preble, with whom he was allowed to correspond,
that "the greater part of our crew consists of English subjects not
naturalized in America." This incidental remark comes with all the
force of a revelation to those who have fondly imagined that the sturdy
jack-tars who manned the first frigates were genuine American sea-dogs.
Still more disconcerting is the information contained in a letter from
the Secretary of the Treasury to President Jefferson, some years later,
to the effect that after 1803 American tonnage increased at the rate of
seventy thousand a year, but that of the four thousand seamen required
to man this growing mercantile marine, fully one-half were British
subjects, presumably deserters. How are these uncomfortable facts to
be explained? Let a third piece of information be added. In a report of
Admiral Nelson, dated 1803, in which he broaches a plan for manning
the British navy, it is soberly stated that forty-two thousand British
seamen deserted "in the late war." Whenever a large convoy assembled at
Portsmouth, added the Admiral, not less than a thousand seamen usually
deserted from the navy.
The slightest acquaintance with the British navy when Nelson was winning
immortal glory by his victory at Trafalgar must convince the most
sceptical that his seamen for the most part were little better than
galley slaves. Life on board these frigates was well-nigh unbearable.
The average life of a seaman, Nelson reckoned, was forty-five years. In
this age before processes of refrigeration had been invented, food could
not be kept edible on long voyages, even in merchantmen. Still worse
was the fare on men-of-war. The health of a crew was left to Providence.
Little or no forethought was exercised to prevent disease; the commonest
matters of personal hygiene were neglected; and when disease came
the remedies applied were scarcely to be preferred to the disease.
Discipline, always brutal, was symbolized by the cat-o'-nine-tails.
Small wonder that the navy was avoided like the plague by every man and
seaman.
Yet a navy had to be maintained: it was the cornerstone of the Empire.
And in all the history of that Empire the need of a navy was never
stronger than in these opening years of the nineteenth century. The
practice of impressing able men for the royal navy was as old as the
reign of Elizabeth. The press gang was an odious institution of
long standing--a terror not only to rogue and vagabond but to every
able-bodied seafaring man and waterman on rivers, who was not exempted
by some special act. It ransacked the prisons, and carried to the navy
not only its victims but the germs of fever which infested public places
of detention. But the press gang harvested its greatest crop of seamen
on the seas. Merchantmen were stopped at sea, robbed of their able
sailors, and left to limp short-handed into port. A British East
Indiaman homeward bound in 1802 was stripped of so many of her crew in
the Bay of Biscay that she was unable to offer resistance to a French
privateer and fell a rich victim into the hands of the enemy. The
necessity of the royal navy knew no law and often defeated its own
purpose.
Death or desertion offered the only way of escape to the victim of the
press gang. And the commander of a British frigate dreaded making port
almost as much as an epidemic of typhus. The deserter always found
American merchantmen ready to harbor him. Fair wages, relatively
comfortable quarters, and decent treatment made him quite ready to take
any measures to forswear his allegiance to Britannia. Naturalization
papers were easily procured by a few months' residence in any State
of the Union; and in default of legitimate papers, certificates of
citizenship could be bought for a song in any American seaport, where
shysters drove a thrifty traffic in bogus documents. Provided the
English navy took the precaution to have the description in his
certificate tally with his personal appearance, and did not let his
tongue betray him, he was reasonably safe from capture.
Facing the palpable fact that British seamen were deserting just when
they were most needed and were making American merchantmen and frigates
their asylum, the British naval commanders, with no very nice regard for
legal distinctions, extended their search for deserters to the decks of
American vessels, whether in British waters or on the high seas. If in
time of war, they reasoned, they could stop a neutral ship on the high
seas, search her for contraband of war, and condemn ship and cargo in a
prize court if carrying contraband, why might they not by the same token
search a vessel for British deserters and impress them into service
again? Two considerations seem to justify this reasoning: the trickiness
of the smart Yankees who forged citizenship papers, and the indelible
character of British allegiance. Once an Englishman always an
Englishman, by Jove! Your hound of a sea-dog might try to talk through
his nose like a Yankee, you know, and he might shove a dirty bit of
paper at you, but he couldn't shake off his British citizenship if he
wanted to! This was good English law, and if it wasn't recognized by
other nations so much the worse for them. As one of these redoubtable
British captains put it, years later: "'Might makes right' is the
guiding, practical maxim among nations and ever will be, so long as
powder and shot exist, with money to back them, and energy to wield
them." Of course, there were hair-splitting fellows, plenty of them, in
England and the States, who told you that it was one thing to seize a
vessel carrying contraband and have her condemned by judicial process in
a court of admiralty, and quite another thing to carry British subjects
off the decks of a merchantman flying a neutral flag; but if you knew
the blasted rascals were deserters what difference did it make? Besides,
what would become of the British navy, if you listened to all the
fine-spun arguments of landsmen? And if these stalwart blue-water
Britishers could have read what Thomas Jefferson was writing at this
very time, they would have classed him with the armchair critics who
had no proper conception of a sailor's duty. "I hold the right of
expatriation," wrote the President, "to be inherent in every man by the
laws of nature, and incapable of being rightfully taken away from him
even by the united will of every other person in the nation."
In the year 1805, while President Jefferson was still the victim of
his overmastering passion, and disposed to cultivate the good will of
England, if thereby he might obtain the Floridas, unforeseen commercial
complications arose which not only blocked the way to a better
understanding in Spanish affairs but strained diplomatic relations
to the breaking point. News reached Atlantic seaports that American
merchantmen, which had hitherto engaged with impunity in the carrying
trade between Europe and the West Indies, had been seized and condemned
in British admiralty courts. Every American shipmaster and owner at once
lifted up his voice in indignant protest; and all the latent hostility
to their old enemy revived. Here were new orders-in-council, said they:
the leopard cannot change his spots. England is still England--the
implacable enemy of neutral shipping. "Never will neutrals be perfectly
safe till free goods make free ships or till England loses two or three
great naval battles," declared the Salem Register.
The recent seizures were not made by orders-in-council, however, but in
accordance with a decision recently handed down by the court of appeals
in the case of the ship Essex. Following a practice which had become
common in recent years, the Essex had sailed with a cargo from Barcelona
to Salem and thence to Havana. On the high seas she had been captured,
and then taken to a British port, where ship and cargo were condemned
because the voyage from Spain to her colony had been virtually
continuous, and by the so-called Rule of 1756, direct trade between a
European state and its colony was forbidden to neutrals in time of war
when such trade had not been permitted in time of peace. Hitherto, the
British courts had inclined to the view that when goods had been landed
in a neutral country and duties paid, the voyage had been broken.
Tacitly a trade that was virtually direct had been countenanced, because
the payment of duties seemed evidence enough that the cargo became a
part of the stock of the neutral country and, if reshipped, was then a
bona fide neutral cargo. Suddenly English merchants and shippers woke
to the fact that they were often victims of deception. Cargoes would
be landed in the United States, duties ostensibly paid, and the goods
ostensibly imported, only to be reshipped in the same bottoms, with the
connivance of port officials, either without paying any real duties
or with drawbacks. In the case of the Essex the court of appeals cut
directly athwart these practices by going behind the prima facie payment
and inquiring into the intent of the voyage. The mere touching at a
port without actually importing the cargo into the common stock of the
country did not alter the nature of the voyage. The crucial point
was the intent, which the court was now and hereafter determined to
ascertain by examination of facts. The court reached the indubitable
conclusion that the cargo of the Essex had never been intended for
American markets. The open-minded historian must admit that this was
a fair application of the Rule of 1756, but he may still challenge the
validity of the rule, as all neutral countries did, and the wisdom of
the monopolistic impulse which moved the commercial classes and the
courts of England to this decision.*
* Professor William E. Lingelbach in a notable article on
"England and Neutral Trade" in "The Military Historian and
Economist" (April, 1917) has pointed out the error committed
by almost every historian from Henry Adams down, that the
Essex decision reversed previous rulings of the court and
was not in accord with British law.
Had the impressment of seamen and the spoliation of neutral commerce
occurred only on the high seas, public resentment would have mounted to
a high pitch in the United States; but when British cruisers ran into
American waters to capture or burn French vessels, and when British
men-of-war blockaded ports, detaining and searching--and at times
capturing--American vessels, indignation rose to fever heat. The
blockade of New York Harbor by two British frigates, the Cambrian and
the Leander, exasperated merchants beyond measure. On board the Leander
was a young midshipman, Basil Hall, who in after years described the
activities of this execrated frigate.
"Every morning at daybreak, we set about arresting the progress of all
the vessels we saw, firing of guns to the right and left to make every
ship that was running in heave to, or wait until we had leisure to send
a boat on board 'to see,¹ in our lingo, 'what she was made of.' I have
frequently known a dozen, and sometimes a couple of dozen, ships lying
a league or two off the port, losing their fair wind, their tide, and
worse than all their market, for many hours, sometimes the whole day,
before our search was completed."*
* "Fragments of Voyages and Travels," quoted by Henry Adams,
in "History of the United States", vol. III, p. 92.
One day in April, 1806, the Leander, trying to halt a merchantman that
she meant to search, fired a shot which killed the helmsman of a passing
sloop. The boat sailed on to New York with the mangled body; and the
captain, brother of the murdered man, lashed the populace into a rage
by his mad words. Supplies for the frigates were intercepted, personal
violence was threatened to any British officers caught on shore, the
captain of the Leander was indicted for murder, and the funeral of the
murdered sailor was turned into a public demonstration. Yet nothing came
of this incident, beyond a proclamation by the President closing the
ports of the United States to the offending frigates and ordering the
arrest of the captain of the Leander wherever found. After all, the
death of a common seaman did not fire the hearts of farmers peacefully
tilling their fields far beyond hearing of the Leander's guns.
A year full of troublesome happenings passed; scores of American vessels
were condemned in British admiralty courts, and American seamen were
impressed with increasing frequency, until in the early summer of 1807
these manifold grievances culminated in an outrage that shook even
Jefferson out of his composure and evoked a passionate outcry for war
from all parts of the country.
While a number of British war vessels were lying in Hampton Roads
watching for certain French frigates which had taken refuge up
Chesapeake Bay, they lost a number of seamen by desertion under
peculiarly annoying circumstances. In one instance a whole boat's crew
made off under cover of night to Norfolk and there publicly defied
their commander. Three deserters from the British frigate Melampus had
enlisted on the American frigate Chesapeake, which had just been fitted
out for service in the Mediterranean; but on inquiry these three were
proven to be native Americans who had been impressed into British
service. Unfortunately inquiry did disclose one British deserter who
had enlisted on the Chesapeake, a loud-mouthed tar by the name of Jenkin
Ratford. These irritating facts stirred Admiral Berkeley at Halifax
to highhanded measures. Without waiting for instructions, he issued an
order to all commanders in the North Atlantic Squadron to search the
Chesapeake for deserters, if she should be encountered on the high seas.
This order of the 1st of June should be shown to the captain of the
Chesapeake as sufficient authority for searching her.
On June 22, 1807, the Chesapeake passed unsuspecting between the capes
on her way to the Mediterranean. She was a stanch frigate carrying
forty guns and a crew of 375 men and boys; but she was at this time in
a distressing state of unreadiness, owing to the dilatoriness and
incompetence of the naval authorities at Washington. The gundeck was
littered with lumber and odds and ends of rigging; the guns, though
loaded, were not all fitted to their carriages; and the crew was
untrained. As the guns had to be fired by slow matches or by loggerheads
heated red-hot, and the ammunition was stored in the magazine, the
frigate was totally unprepared for action. Commodore Barron, who
commanded the Chesapeake, counted on putting her into fighting trim on
the long voyage across the Atlantic.
Just ahead of the Chesapeake as she passed out to sea, was the Leopard,
a British frigate of fifty-two guns, which was apparently on the lookout
for suspicious merchantmen. It was not until both vessels were eight
miles or more southeast of Cape Henry that the movements of the Leopard
began to attract attention. At about half-past three in the afternoon
she came within hailing distance and hove to, announcing that she had
dispatches for the commander. The Chesapeake also hove to and answered
the hail, a risky move considering that she was unprepared for action
and that the Leopard lay to the windward. But why should the commander
of the American frigate have entertained suspicions?
A boat put out from the Leopard, bearing a petty officer, who delivered
a note enclosing Admiral Berkeley's order and expressing the hope that
"every circumstance... may be adjusted in a manner that the harmony
subsisting between the two countries may remain undisturbed." Commodore
Barron replied that he knew of no British deserters on his vessel and
declined in courteous terms to permit his crew to be mustered by any
other officers but their own. The messenger departed, and then, for the
first time entertaining serious misgivings, Commodore Barron ordered his
decks cleared for action. But before the crew could bestir themselves,
the Leopard drew near, her men at quarters. The British commander
shouted a warning, but Barron, now thoroughly alarmed, replied, "I don't
hear what you say." The warning was repeated, but again Barron to gain
time shouted that he could not hear. The Leopard then fired two shots
across the bow of the Chesapeake, and almost immediately without
parleying further--she was now within two hundred feet of her
victim--poured a broadside into the American vessel.
Confusion reigned on the Chesapeake. The crew for the most part showed
courage, but they were helpless, for they could not fire a gun for
want of slow matches or loggerheads. They crowded about the magazine
clamoring in vain for a chance to defend the vessel; they yelled with
rage at their predicament. Only one gun was discharged and that was by
means of a live coal brought up from the galley after the Chesapeake had
received a third broadside and Commodore Barron had ordered the flag to
be hauled down to spare further slaughter. Three of his crew had already
been killed and eighteen wounded, himself among the number. The whole
action lasted only fifteen minutes.
Boarding crews now approached and several British officers climbed
to the deck of the Chesapeake and mustered her crew. Among the ship's
company they found the alleged deserters and, hiding in the coal-hole,
the notorious Jenkin Ratford. These four men they took with them,
and the Leopard, having fulfilled her instructions, now suffered the
Chesapeake to limp back to Hampton Roads. "For the first time in their
history," writes Henry Adams, * "the people of the United States learned,
in June, 1807, the feeling of a true national emotion. Hitherto every
public passion had been more or less partial and one-sided;... but the
outrage committed on the Chesapeake stung through hidebound prejudices,
and made democrat and aristocrat writhe alike."
* History of the United States, vol. IV, p. 27.
Had President Jefferson chosen to go to war at this moment, he would
have had a united people behind him, and he was well aware that he
possessed the power of choice. "The affair of the Chesapeake put war
into my hand," he wrote some years later. "I had only to open it and
let havoc loose." But Thomas Jefferson was not a martial character. The
State Governors, to be sure, were requested to have their militia
in readiness, and the Governor of Virginia was desired to call such
companies into service as were needed for the defense of Norfolk.
The President referred in indignant terms to the abuse of the laws of
hospitality and the "outrage" committed by the British commander; but
his proclamation only ordered all British armed vessels out of American
waters and forbade all intercourse with them if they remained. The
tone of the proclamation was so moderate as to seem pusillanimous. John
Randolph called it an apology. Thomas Jefferson did not mean to have
war. With that extraordinary confidence in his own powers, which in
smaller men would be called smug conceit, he believed that he could
secure disavowal and honorable reparation for the wrong committed; but
he chose a frail intermediary when he committed this delicate mission to
James Monroe.