_Overwhelming naval supremacy of England when America declared war
against her--Race identity of the combatants--The American navy at
the beginning of the war--Officers well trained--Causes tending to
make our seamen especially efficient--Close similarity between the
British and American sailors--Our ships manned chiefly by native
Americans, many of whom had formerly been impressed into the British
navy--Quotas of seamen contributed by the different
States--Navy-yards--Lists of officers and men--List of
vessels--Tonnage--Different ways of estimating it in Britain and
America--Ratings--American ships properly rated--Armaments of the
frigates and corvettes--Three styles of guns used--Difference
between long guns and carronades--Short weight of American
shot--Comparison of British frigates rating 38, and American
frigates rating 44 guns--Compared with a 74._
During the early years of this century England's naval power stood
at a height never reached before or since by that of any other
nation. On every sea her navies rode, not only triumphant, but
with none to dispute their sway. The island folk had long claimed
the mastery of the ocean, and they had certainly succeeded in
making their claim completely good during the time of bloody
warfare that followed the breaking out of the French Revolution.
Since the year 1792 each European nation, in turn, had learned to
feel bitter dread of the weight of England's hand. In the Baltic,
Sir Samuel Hood had taught the Russians that they must needs keep
in port when the English cruisers were in the offing. The descendants
of the Vikings had seen their whole navy destroyed at Copenhagen.
No Dutch fleet ever put out after the day when, off Camperdown, Lord
Duncan took possession of De Winter's shattered ships. But a few
years before 1812, the greatest sea-fighter of all time had died
in Trafalgar Bay, and in dying had crumbled to pieces the navies
of France and of Spain.
From that day England's task was but to keep in port such of her
foes' vessels as she had not destroyed. France alone still possessed
fleets that could be rendered formidable, and so, from the Scheldt
to Toulon, her harbors were watched and her coasts harried by the
blockading squadrons of the English. Elsewhere the latter had no
fear of their power being seriously assailed; but their vast commerce
and numerous colonies needed ceaseless protection. Accordingly in
every sea their cruisers could be found, of all sizes, from the
stately ship-of-the-line, with her tiers of heavy cannon and her
many hundreds of men, down to the little cutter carrying but a
score of souls and a couple of light guns. All these cruisers, but
especially those of the lesser rates, were continually brought into
contact with such of the hostile vessels as had run through the
blockade, or were too small to be affected by it. French and Italian
frigates were often fought and captured when they were skirting
their own coasts, or had started off on a plundering cruise through
the Atlantic, or to the Indian Ocean; and though the Danes had lost
their larger ships they kept up a spirited warfare with brigs and
gun-boats. So the English marine was in constant exercise, attended
with almost invariable success.
Such was Great Britain's naval power when the Congress of the United
States declared war upon her. While she could number her thousand
sail, the American navy included but half a dozen frigates, and six
or eight sloops and brigs; and it is small matter for surprise that
the British officers should have regarded their new foe with
contemptuous indifference. Hitherto the American seamen had never
been heard of except in connection with two or three engagements
with French frigates, and some obscure skirmishes against the Moors
of Tripoli; none of which could possibly attract attention in the
years that saw Aboukir, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar. And yet these
same petty wars were the school which raised our marine to the
highest standard of excellence. A continuous course of victory, won
mainly by seamanship, had made the English sailor overweeningly
self-confident, and caused him to pay but little regard to manoeuvring
or even to gunnery. Meanwhile the American learned, by receiving
hard knocks, how to give them, and belonged to a service too young
to feel an over-confidence in itself. One side had let its training
relax, while the other had carried it to the highest possible point.
Hence our ships proved, on the whole, victorious in the apparently
unequal struggle, and the men who had conquered the best seamen of
Europe were now in turn obliged to succumb. Compared with the great
naval battles of the preceding few years, out bloodiest conflicts
were mere skirmishes, but they were skirmishes between the hitherto
acknowledged kings of the ocean, and new men who yet proved to be
more than their equals. For over a hundred years, or since the time
when they had contended on equal terms with the great Dutch admirals,
the British had shown a decided superiority to their various foes,
and during the latter quarter of the time this superiority, as
already said, was very marked, indeed; in consequence, the victories
of the new enemy attracted an amount of attention altogether
disproportionate to their material effects. And it is a curious fact
that our little navy, in which the art of handling and fighting the
old broadside, sailing frigate in single conflict was brought to
the highest point of perfection ever reached, that this same navy
should have contained the first representative of the modern war
steamer, and also the torpedo--the two terrible engines which were
to drive from the ocean the very whitewinged craft that had first
won honor for the starry flag. The tactical skill of Hull or Decatur
is now of merely archaic interest, and has but little more bearing
on the manoeuvring of a modern fleet than have the tactics of the
Athenian gallies. But the war still conveys some most practical
lessons as to the value of efficient ships and, above all, of
efficient men in them. Had we only possessed the miserable gun-boats,
our men could have done nothing; had we not possessed good men, the
heavy frigates would have availed as little. Poor ships and impotent
artillery had lost the Dutch almost their entire navy; fine ships
and heavy cannon had not saved the French and Spanish from the like
fate. We owed our success to putting sailors even better than the
Dutch on ships even finer than those built by the two Latin seaboard
powers.
The first point to be remembered in order to write a fair account
of this war is that the difference in fighting skill, which certainly
existed between the two parties, was due mainly to training, and
not to the nature of the men. It seems certain that the American
had in the beginning somewhat the advantage, because his surroundings,
partly physical and partly social and political, had forced him into
habits of greater self-reliance. Therefore, on the average, he
offered rather the best material to start with; but the difference
was very slight, and totally disappeared under good training. The
combatants were men of the same race, differing but little from one
another. On the New England coast the English blood was as pure as
in any part of Britain; in New York and New Jersey it was mixed with
that of the Dutch settlers--and the Dutch are by race nearer to the
true old English of Alfred and Harold than are, for example, the
thoroughly anglicized Welsh of Cornwall. Otherwise, the infusion
of new blood into the English race on this side of the Atlantic has
been chiefly from three sources--German, Irish, and Norse; and these
three sources represent the elemental parts of the composite English
stock in about the same proportions in which they were originally
combined,--mainly Teutonic, largely Celtic, and with a Scandinavian
admixture. The descendant of the German becomes as much an
Anglo-American as the descendant of the Strathclyde Celt has already
become an Anglo-Briton. Looking through names of the combatants it
would be difficult to find any of one navy that could not be matched
in the other--Hull or Lawrence, Allen, Perry, or Stewart. And among
all the English names on both sides will be found many Scotch, Irish,
or Welsh--Macdonough, O'Brien, or Jones. Still stranger ones appear:
the Huguenot Tattnall is one among the American defenders of the
_Constellation_, and another Huguenot Tattnall is among the British
assailants at Lake Borgne. It must always be kept in mind that the
Americans and the British are two substantially similar branches of
the great English race, which both before and after their separation
have assimilated, and made Englishmen of many other peoples. [Footnote:
The inhabitants of Great Britain are best designated as
"British"--English being either too narrow or too broad a term, in
one case meaning the inhabitants of but a part of Britain, and in
the other the whole Anglo-Saxon people.] The lessons taught by the
war can hardly be learned unless this identity is kept in mind.
[Footnote: It was practically a civil war, and was waged with much
harshness and bitterness on both sides. I have already spoken of
the numerous grievances of the Americans; the British, in turn,
looked upon our blockade-runners which entered the French ports
exactly as we regarded, at a later date, the British steamers that
ran into Wilmington and Charleston. It is curious to see how illogical
writers are. The careers of the _Argus_ and _Alabama_ for example,
were strikingly similar in many ways, yet the same writer who speaks
of one as an "heroic little brig," will call the other a "black
pirate." Of course there can be no possible comparison as to the
causes for which the two vessels were fighting; but the cruises
themselves were very much alike, both in character and history.]
To understand aright the efficiency of our navy, it is necessary to
take a brief look at the character and antecedents of the officers
and men who served in it.
When war broke out the United States Navy was but a few years old,
yet it already had a far from dishonorable history. The captains
and lieutenants of 1812 had been taught their duties in a very
practical school, and the flag under which they fought was endeared
to them already by not a few glorious traditions--though these,
perhaps, like others of their kind, had lost none of their glory
in the telling. A few of the older men had served in the war of the
Revolution, and all still kept fresh in mind the doughty deeds of
the old-time privateering war craft. Men still talked of Biddle's
daring cruises and Barney's stubborn fights, or told of Scotch Paul
and the grim work they had who followed his fortunes. Besides
these memories of an older generation, most of the officers had
themselves taken part, when younger in years and rank, in deeds
not a whit less glorious. Almost every man had had a share in some
gallant feat, to which he, in part at least, owed his present
position. The captain had perhaps been a midshipman under Truxtun
when he took the _Vengeance_, and had been sent aboard the captured
French frigate with the prize-master; the lieutenant had borne a
part in the various attacks on Tripoli, and had led his men in the
desperate hand-to-hand fights in which the Yankee cutlass proved
an overmatch for the Turkish and Moorish scimitars. Nearly every
senior officer had extricated himself by his own prowess or skill
from the dangers of battle or storm; he owed his rank to the fact
that he had proved worthy of it. Thrown upon his own resources, he
had learned self-reliance; he was a first-rate practical seaman,
and prided himself on the way his vessel was handled. Having reached
his rank by hard work, and knowing what real fighting meant, he was
careful to see that his men were trained in the _essentials_ of
discipline, and that they knew how to handle the guns in battle as
well as polish them in peace. Beyond almost any of his countrymen,
he worshipped the "Gridiron Flag," and, having been brought up in
the Navy, regarded its honor as his own. It was, perhaps, the Navy
alone that thought itself a match, ship against ship, for Great
Britain. The remainder of the nation pinned its faith to the army,
or rather to that weakest of weak reeds, the militia. The officers
of the navy, with their strong _esprit de corps,_ their jealousy
of their own name and record, and the knowledge, by actual experience,
that the British ships sailed no faster and were no better handled
than their own, had no desire to shirk a conflict with any foe, and
having tried their bravery in actual service, they made it doubly
formidable by cool, wary skill. Even the younger men, who had never
been in action, had been so well trained by the tried veterans over
them that the lack of experience was not sensibly felt.
The sailors comprising the crews of our ships were well worthy of
their leaders. There was no better seaman in the world than American
Jack; he had been bred to his work from infancy, and had been off
in a fishing dory almost as soon as he could walk. When he grew
older, he shipped on a merchant-man or whaler, and in those warlike
times, when our large merchant-marine was compelled to rely pretty
much on itself for protection, each craft _had_ to be well handled;
all who were not were soon weeded out by a process of natural
selection, of which the agents were French picaroons, Spanish
buccaneers, and Malay pirates. It was a rough school, but it
taught Jack to be both skilful and self-reliant; and he was all the
better fitted to become a man-of-war's man, because he knew more
about fire-arms than most of his kind in foreign lands. At home he
had used his ponderous ducking gun with good effect on the flocks
of canvasbacks in the reedy flats of the Chesapeake, or among the
sea-coots in the rough water off the New England cliffs; and when
he went on a sailing voyage the chances were even that there would
be some use for the long guns before he returned, for the American
merchant sailor could trust to no armed escort.
The wonderful effectiveness of our seamen at the date of which I
am writing as well as long subsequently to it was largely due to
the curious condition of things in Europe. For thirty years all
the European nations had been in a state of continuous and very
complicated warfare, during the course of which each nation in turn
fought almost every other, England being usually at loggerheads
with all. One effect of this was to force an enormous proportion
of the carrying trade of the world into American bottoms. The old
Massachusetts town of Salem was then one of the main depots of
the East India trade; the Baltimore clippers carried goods into the
French and German ports with small regard to the blockade; New
Bedford and Sag Harbor fitted out whalers for the Arctic seas as
well as for the South Pacific; the rich merchants of Philadelphia
and New York sent their ships to all parts of the world; and every
small port had some craft in the coasting trade. On the New England
seaboard but few of the boys would reach manhood without having
made at least one voyage to the Newfoundland Banks after codfish;
and in the whaling towns of Long Island it used to be an old saying
that no man could marry till he struck his whale. The wealthy merchants
of the large cities would often send their sons on a voyage or two
before they let them enter their counting-houses. Thus it came about
that a large portion of our population was engaged in seafaring
pursuits of a nature strongly tending to develop a resolute and
hardy character in the men that followed them. The British
merchant-men sailed in huge convoys, guarded by men-of-war, while,
as said before, our vessels went alone, and relied for protection
on themselves. If a fishing smack went to the Banks it knew that it
ran a chance of falling in with some not over-scrupulous Nova
Scotian privateer. The barques that sailed from Salem to the Spice
Islands kept their men well trained both at great guns and musketry,
so as to be able to beat off either Malay proas, or Chinese junks.
The New York ships, loaded for the West Indies, were prepared to
do battle with the picaroons that swarmed in the Spanish main;
while the fast craft from Baltimore could fight as well as they
could run. Wherever an American seaman went, he not only had to
contend with all the legitimate perils of the sea, but he had also
to regard almost every stranger as a foe. Whether this foe called
himself pirate or privateer mattered but little. French, Spaniards,
Algerines, Malays, from all alike our commerce suffered, and against
all, our merchants were forced to defend themselves. The effect of
such a state of things, which made commerce so remunerative that
the bolder spirits could hardly keep out of it, and so hazardous
that only the most skilful and daring could succeed in it, was to
raise up as fine a set of seamen as ever manned a navy. The stern
school in which the American was brought up, forced him into habits
of independent thought and action which it was impossible that the
more protected Briton could possess. He worked more intelligently
and less from routine, and while perfectly obedient and amenable
to discipline, was yet able to judge for himself in an emergency.
He was more easily managed than most of his kind--being shrewd,
quiet, and, in fact, comparatively speaking, rather moral than
otherwise; if he was a New Englander, when he retired from a sea
life he was not unapt to end his days as a deacon. Altogether there
could not have been better material for a fighting crew than cool,
gritty American Jack. Moreover, there was a good nucleus of veterans
to begin with, who were well fitted to fill the more responsible
positions, such as captains of guns, etc. These were men who had
cruised in the little _Enterprise_ after French privateers, who had
been in the _Constellation_ in her two victorious fights, or who,
perhaps, had followed Decatur when with only eighty men he cut out
the _Philadelphia_, manned by fivefold his force and surrounded by
hostile batteries and war vessels,--one of the boldest expeditions
of the kind on record.
It is to be noted, furthermore, in this connection, that by a
singular turn of fortune, Great Britain, whose system of impressing
American sailors had been one of the chief causes of the war, herself
became, in consequence of that very system, in some sort, a nursery
for the seamen of the young Republican navy. The American sailor
feared nothing more than being impressed on a British ship--dreading
beyond measure the hard life and cruel discipline aboard of her;
but once there, he usually did well enough, and in course of time
often rose to be of some little consequence. For years before 1812,
the number of these impressed sailors was in reality greater than
the entire number serving in the American navy, from which it will
readily be seen that they formed a good stock to draw upon. Very
much to their credit, they never lost their devotion to the home
of their birth, more than two thousand of them being imprisoned at
the beginning of the war because they refused to serve against their
country. When Commodore Decatur captured the _Macedonian_, that
officer, as we learn from Marshall's "Naval Biography" (ii. 1019),
stated that most of the seamen of his own frigate, the _United
States_, had served in British war vessels, and that some had been
with Lord Nelson in the _Victory_, and had even been bargemen to
the great Admiral,--a pretty sure proof that the American sailors
did not show a disadvantage when compared with others. [Footnote:
With perfect gravity, James and his followers assume Decatur's
statement to be equivalent to saying that he had chiefly British
seamen on board; whereas, even as quoted by Marshall, Decatur
merely said that "his seamen had served on board a British
man-of-war," and that some "had served under Lord Nelson." Like
the _Constitution_, the _United States_ had rid herself of most of
the British subjects on board, before sailing. Decatur's remark
simply referred to the number of his American seamen who had been
impressed on board British ships. Whenever James says that an
American ship had a large proportion of British sailors aboard,
the explanation is that a large number of the crew were Americans
who had been impressed on British ships. It would be no more absurd
to claim Trafalgar as an American victory because there was a
certain number of Americans in Nelson's fleet, than it is to assert
that the Americans were victorious in 1812, because there were a
few renegade British on board their ships.]
Good seaman as the impressed American proved to be, yet he seldom
missed an opportunity to escape from the British service, by
desertion or otherwise. In the first place, the life was very hard,
and, in the second, the American seaman was very patriotic. He had
an honest and deep affection for his own flag; while, on the contrary,
he felt a curiously strong hatred for England, as distinguished from
Englishmen. This hatred was partly an abstract feeling, cherished
through a vague traditional respect for Bunker Hill, and partly
something very real and vivid, owing to the injuries he, and others
like him, had received. Whether he lived in Maryland or Massachusetts,
he certainly knew men whose ships had been seized by British cruisers,
their goods confiscated, and the vessels condemned. Some of his
friends had fallen victims to the odious right of search, and had
never been heard of afterward. He had suffered many an injury to
friend, fortune, or person, and some day he hoped to repay them
all; and when the war did come, he fought all the better because
he knew it was in his own quarrel. But, as I have said, this hatred
was against England, not against Englishmen. Then, as now, sailors
were scattered about over the world without any great regard for
nationality; and the resulting intermingling of natives and
foreigners in every mercantile marine was especially great in those
of Britain and America, whose people spoke the same tongue and wore
the same aspect. When chance drifted the American into Liverpool
or London, he was ready enough to ship in an Indiaman or whaler,
caring little for the fact that he served under the British flag;
and the Briton, in turn, who found himself in New York or
Philadelphia, willingly sailed in one of the clipper-built barques,
whether it floated the stars and stripes or not. When Captain Porter
wrought such havoc among the British whalers in the South Seas,
he found that no inconsiderable portion of their crews consisted
of Americans, some of whom enlisted on board his own vessel; and
among the crews of the American whalers were many British. In fact,
though the skipper of each ship might brag loudly of his nationality,
yet in practical life he knew well enough that there was very little
to choose between a Yankee and a Briton. [Footnote: What choice
there was, was in favor of the American. In point of courage there
was no difference whatever. The _Essex_ and the _Lawrence_, as
well as the _Frolic_ and the _Reindeer_, were defended with the
same stubborn, desperate, cool bravery that marks the English race
on both sides of the Atlantic. But the American was a free citizen,
any one's equal, a voter with a personal interest in his country's
welfare, and, above all, without having perpetually before his eyes
the degrading fear of the press-gang. In consequence, he was more
tractable than the Englishman, more self-reliant, and possessed
greater judgment. In the fight between the _Wasp_ and the _Frolic_,
the latter's crew had apparently been well trained at the guns, for
they aimed well; but they fired at the wrong time, and never
corrected the error; while their antagonists, delivering their
broadsides far more slowly, by intelligently waiting until the
proper moment, worked frightful havoc. But though there was a
certain slight difference between the seamen of the two nations,
it must never be forgotten that it was very much less than that
between the various individuals of the same nation; and when the
British had been trained for a few years by such commanders as
Broke and Manners, it was impossible to surpass them, and it needed
our best men to equal them.] Both were bold and hardy, cool and
intelligent, quick with their hands, and showing at their best in
an emergency. They looked alike and spoke alike; when they took
the trouble to think, they thought alike; and when they got drunk,
which was not an infrequent occurrence, they quarrelled alike.
Mingled with them were a few seamen of other nationalities. The
Irishman, if he came from the old Dano-Irish towns of Waterford,
Dublin, and Wexford, or from the Ulster coast, was very much like
the two chief combatants; the Celto-Turanian kern of the west did
not often appear on shipboard. The French, Danes, and Dutch were
hemmed in at home; they had enough to do on their own seaboard,
and could not send men into foreign fleets. A few Norse, however,
did come in, and excellent sailors and fighters they made. With
the Portuguese and Italians, of whom some were to be found serving
under the union-jack, and others under the stars and stripes, it
was different; although there were many excellent exceptions they
did not, as a rule, make the best of seamen. They were treacherous,
fond of the knife, less ready with their hands, and likely to lose
either their wits or their courage when in a tight place.
In the American navy, unlike the British, there was no impressment;
the sailor was a volunteer, and he shipped in whatever craft his
fancy selected. Throughout the war there were no "picked crews" on
the American side, [Footnote: James' statements to the contrary
being in every case utterly without foundation. He is also wrong
in his assertion that the American ships had no boys; they had nearly
as many in proportion as the British. The _Constitution_ had 31,
the _Adams_ 15, etc. So, when he states that our midshipmen were
generally masters and mates of merchantmen; they were generally
from eleven to seventeen years old at the beginning of the war,
and besides, had rarely or never been in the merchant marine.]
excepting on the last two cruises of the _Constitution_. In fact
(as seen by the letter of Captains Stewart and Bainbridge to
Secretary Hamilton), there was often much difficulty in getting
enough men. [Footnote: Reading through the volumes of official
letters about this war, which are preserved in the office of the
Secretary of the Navy, one of the most noticeable things is the
continual complaints about the difficulty of getting men. The
_Adams_ at one time had a crew of but nineteen men--"fourteen of
whom are marines," adds the aggrieved commander. A log-book of
one of the gun-boats records the fact that after much difficulty
_two_ men were enlisted--from the jail, with a parenthetical
memorandum to the effect that they were both very drunk. British
ships were much more easily manned, as they could always have
recourse to impressment.
The _Constitution_ on starting out her last cruises had an
extraordinary number of able seamen aboard, viz., 218, with but 92
ordinary seamen, 12 boys, and 44 marines, making, with the officers,
a total of 440 men. (See letter of Captain Bainbridge, Oct. 16,
1814; it is letter No. 51, in the fortieth volume of "Captains'
Letters," in the clerk's office of the Secretary of the Navy.)]
Many sailors preferred to serve in the innumerable privateers, and,
the two above-mentioned officers, in urging the necessity of
building line-of-battle ships, state that it was hard work to
recruit men for vessels of an inferior grade, so long as the enemy
had ships of the line.
One of the standard statements made by the British historians about
this war is that our ships were mainly or largely manned by British
sailors. This, if true, would not interfere with the lessons which
it teaches; and, besides that, it is _not_ true.
In this, as in every thing else, all the modern writers have merely
followed James or Brenton, and I shall accordingly confine myself
to examining their assertions. The former begins (vol. iv, p. 470)
by diffidently stating that there is a "similarity" of language between
the inhabitants of the two countries--an interesting philological
discovery that but few will attempt to controvert. In vol. vi, p.
154, he mentions that a number of blanks occur in the American Navy
List in the column "Where Born"; and in proof of the fact that these
blanks are there because the men were not Americans, he says that
their names "are all English and Irish." [Footnote: For example,
James writes: "Out of the 32 captains one only, Thomas Tingey, had
England marked as his birthplace.... Three blanks occur, and we
consider it rather creditable to Captains John Shaw, Daniel S.
Patterson, and John Ord Creighton, that they were ashamed to tell
where they were born." I have not been able to find out the latter's
birth-place, but Captain Shaw was born in New York, and I have seen
Captain Patterson incidentally alluded to as "born and bred in
America." Generally, whenever I have been able to fill up the
vacancies in the column "Where Born," I have found that it was in
America. From these facts it would appear that James was somewhat
hasty in concluding that the omission of the birth-place proved the
owner of the name to be a native of Great Britain.] They certainly
are; and so are all the other names in the list. It could not well
be otherwise, as the United States Navy was not officered by Indians.
In looking over this same Navy List (of 1816) it will be seen that
but a little over 5 per cent, of the officers were born abroad--a
smaller proportion by far than would exist in the population of the
country at large--and most of these had come to America when under
ten years of age. On p. 155 James adds that the British sailors
composed "one third in number and one half in point of effectiveness"
of the American crews. Brenton in his "Naval History" writes: "It
was said, and I have no reason to doubt the fact, that there were
200 British seamen aboard the _Constitution_." [Footnote: New
edition, London, 1837, vol. ii, p. 456.] These statements are mere
assertions unsupported by proof, and of such a loose character as
to be difficult to refute. As our navy was small, it may be best
to take each ship in turn. The only ones of which the British could
write authoritatively were, of course, those which they captured.
The first one taken was the _Wasp_. James says many British were
discovered among her crew, instancing especially one sailor named
Jack Lang; now Jack Lang was born in the town of Brunswick, New
Jersey, _but had been impressed and forced to serve in the British
Navy_. The same was doubtless true of the rest of the "many British"
seamen of her crew; at any rate, as the only instance James mentions
(Jack Lang) was an American, he can hardly be trusted for those
whom he does not name.
Of the 95 men composing the crew of the _Nautilus_ when she was
captured, "6 were detained and sent to England to await examination
as being suspected of being British subjects." [Footnote: Quoted
from letter of Commodore Rodgers of September 12, 1812 (in Naval
Archives, "Captains' Letters," vol xxv, No. 43), enclosing a "List
of American prisoners of war discharged out of custody of Lieutenant
William Miller, agent at the port of Halifax," in exchange for
some of the British captured by Porter. This list, by the way,
shows the crew of the _Nautilus_ (counting the six men detained
as British) to have been 95 in number, instead of 106, as stated
by James. Commodore Rodgers adds that he has detained 12 men of
the _Guerrière's_ crew as an offset to the 6 men belonging to the
_Nautilus_.] Of the other small brigs, the _Viper_, _Vixen_,
_Rattlesnake_, and _Syren_, James does not mention the composition
of the crew, and I do not know that any were claimed as British.
Of the crew of the _Argus_ "about 10 or 12 were believed to be
British subjects; the American officers swore the crew contained
none" (James, "Naval Occurrences," p. 278). From 0 to 10 per cent
can be allowed. When the _Frolic_ was captured "her crew consisted
of native Americans" (_do_, p. 340). James speaks ("History," p.
418) of "a portion of the British subjects on board the _Essex_,"
but without giving a word of proof or stating his grounds of belief.
One man was claimed as a deserter by the British, but he turned out
to be a New Yorker. There were certainly a certain number of British
aboard, but the number probably did not exceed thirty. Of the
_President's_ crew he says ("Naval Occurrences," p. 448): "In the
opinion of several British officers there were among them many
British seamen" but Commodore Decatur, Lieutenant Gallagher, and
the other officers swore that there were none. Of the crew of the
_Chesapeake_, he says, "about 32" were British subjects, or about
10 per cent. One or two of these were afterward shot, and some 25,
together with a Portuguese boatswain's mate, entered into the
British service. So that of the vessels captured by the British,
the _Chesapeake_ had the largest number of British (about 10 per
cent. of her crew) on board, the others ranging from that number
down to none at all, as in the case of the _Wasp_. As these eleven
ships would probably represent a fair average, this proportion, of
0 to 10 per cent., should be taken as the proper one. James, however,
is of the opinion that those ships manned by Americans were more
apt to be captured than those manned by the braver British; which
calls for an examination of the crews of the remaining vessels.
Of the American sloop _Peacock_, James says ("Naval Occurrences,"
p. 348) that "several of her men were recognized as British seamen";
even if this were true, "several" could not probably mean more
than sixteen, or 10 per cent. Of the second _Wasp_ he says,
"Captain Blakely was a native of Dublin, and, along with some
English and Scotch, did not, it may be certain, neglect to have
in his crew a great many Irish." Now Captain Blakely left Ireland
when he was but 16 months old, and the rest of James' statement is
avowedly mere conjecture. It was asserted positively in the American
newspapers that the _Wasp_, which sailed from Portsmouth, was
manned exclusively by New Englanders, except a small draft of men
from a Baltimore privateer, and that there was not a foreigner in
her crew. Of the _Hornet_ James states that "some of her men were
natives of the United Kingdom"; but he gives no authority, and the
men he refers to were in all probability those spoken of in the
journal of one of the _Hornet's_ officers, which says that "Many
of our men (Americans) had been impressed in the British service."
As regards the gun-boats, James asserts that they were commanded
by "Commodore Joshua Barney, a native of Ireland." This officer,
however, was born at Baltimore on July 6, 1759. As to the
_Constitution_, Brenton, as already mentioned, supposes the number
of British sailors in her crew to have been 200; James makes it
less, or about 150. Respecting this, the only definite statements
I can find in British works are the following: In the "Naval
Chronicle," vol. xxix, p. 452, an officer of the _Java_ states
that most of the _Constitution's_ men were British, many being
from the _Guerrière_; which should be read in connection with
James' statement (vol. vi, p. 156) that but eight of the _Guerrière's_
crew deserted, and but two shipped on board the _Constitution_.
Moreover, as a matter of fact, these eight men were all impressed
Americans. In the "Naval Chronicle" it is also said that the
_Chesapeake's_ surgeon was an Irishman, formerly of the British
navy; he was born in Baltimore, and was never in the British navy
in his life. The third lieutenant "was supposed to be an Irishman"
(Brenton, ii, 456). The first lieutenant "was a native of Great
Britain, we have been informed" (James, vi, 194); he was Mr. George
Parker, born and bred in Virginia. The remaining three citations,
if true, prove nothing. "One man had served under Mr. Kent" of the
_Guerrière_ (James, vi, p. 153). "One had been in the _Achille_"
and "one in the _Eurydice_" (Brenton, ii, 456). These three men
were most probably American seamen who had been impressed on British
ships. From Cooper (in "Putnam's Magazine," vol. I, p. 593) as well
as from several places in the _Constitution's_ log, [Footnote: See
her log-book (vol. ii, Feb. 1, 1812 to Dec. 13, 1813); especially
on July 12th, when twelve men were discharged. In some of Hull's
letters he alludes to the desire of the British part of the crew
to serve on the gun boats or in the ports; and then writes that
"in accordance with the instructions sent him by the Secretary of
the Navy," he had allowed the British-born portion to leave the
ship. The log-books are in the Bureau of Navigation.] we learn
that several of the crew who were British deserters were discharged
from the _Constitution_ before she left port, as they were afraid
to serve in a war against Great Britain. That this fear was
justifiable may be seen by reading James, vol. iv, p. 483. Of the
four men taken by the _Leopard_ from the _Chesapeake_, as deserters,
one was hung and three scourged. In reality the crew of the
_Constitution_ probably did not contain a dozen British sailors;
in her last cruises she was manned almost exclusively by New
Englanders. The only remainder vessel is the _United States_,
respecting whose crew some remarkable statements have been made.
Marshall (vol. ii, p. 1019) writes that Commodore Decatur "declared
there was not a seaman in his ship who had not served from 5 to 12
years in a British man-of-war," from which he concludes that they
were British themselves. It may be questioned whether Decatur ever
made such an assertion; or if he did, it is safe to assume again
that his men were long-impressed Americans. [Footnote: At the
beginning of the war there were on record in the American State
Department 6,257 cases of impressed American seamen. These could
represent but a small part of the whole, which must have amounted
to 20,000 men, or more than sufficient to man our entire navy five
times over. According to the British Admiralty Report to the House
of Commons, February 1, 1815, 2,548 impressed American seamen, who
refused to serve against their country, were imprisoned in 1812.
According to Lord Castlereagh's speech in the House, February 18,
1813, 3,300 men claiming to be American subjects were serving in
the British navy in January, 1811, and he certainly did not give
any thing like the whole number. In the American service the term
of enlistment extended for two years, and the frigate, _United
States_, referred to, had not had her crew for any very great
length of time as yet. If such a crew were selected at random
from American sailors, among them there would be, owing to the
small number serving in our own navy and the enormous number
impressed into the British navy, probably but one of the former
to two of the latter. As already mentioned the American always
left a British man-of-war as soon as he could, by desertion or
discharge; but he had no unwillingness to serve in the home navy,
where the pay was larger, and the discipline far more humane, not
to speak of motives of patriotism. Even if the ex-British
man-of-war's man kept out of service for some time, he would be
very apt to enlist when a war broke out, which his country
undertook largely to avenge his own wrongs.]
Of the _Carolina's_ crew of 70 men, five were British. This fact
was not found out till three deserted, when an investigation was
made and the two other British discharged. Captain Henly, in
reporting these facts, made no concealment of his surprise that
there should be any British at all in his crew. [Footnote: See
his letter in "Letters of Masters' Commandant," 1814, I. No. 116.]
From these facts and citations we may accordingly conclude that
the proportion of British seamen serving on American ships _after
the war broke out_, varied between none, as on the _Wasp_ and
_Constitution_, to ten per cent., as on the _Chesapeake_ and
_Essex_. On the average, nine tenths of each of our crews were
American seamen, and about one twentieth British, the remainder
being a mixture of various nationalities.
On the other hand, it is to be said that the British frigate
_Guerrière_ had ten Americans among her crew, who were permitted
to go below during action, and the _Macedonian_ eight, who were
not allowed that privilege, three of them being killed. Three of
the British sloop _Peacock's_ men were Americans, who were forced
to fight against the _Hornet_: one of them was killed. Two of the
_Epervier's_ men were Americans, who were also forced to fight.
When the crew of the _Nautilus_ was exchanged, a number of other
American prisoners were sent with them; among these were a number
of American seamen who had been serving in the _Shannon_, _Acasta_,
_Africa_, and various other vessels. So there was also a certain
proportion of Americans among the British crews, although forming
a smaller percentage of them than the British did on board the
American ships. In neither case was the number sufficient to at all
affect the result.
The crews of our ships being thus mainly native Americans, it may
be interesting to try to find out the proportions that were
furnished by the different sections of the country. There is not
much difficulty about the officers. The captains, masters commandant,
lieutenants, marine officers, whose birthplaces are given in the
Navy List of 1816,--240 in all,--came from the various States as
follows:
.- N.H.. 5-.
| Mass.. 20 |
New England -| R.I. 11 |- 42
'- Conn.. 6-'
.- N.Y.. 17-.
| N.J.. 22 |
Middle States-| Penn.. 35 |- 78
'- Del.. 4-'
District of Columbia -[D.C.. 4]- 4
.- Md.. 46-.
| Va.. 42 |
| N.C.. 4 |
Southern States-| S.C.. 16 |-116
| Ga.. 2 |
| La.. 4 |
'- Ky.. 2-'
---------
Total of given birthplaces 240
Thus, Maryland furnished, both absolutely and proportionately, the
greatest number of officers, Virginia, then the most populous of
all the States, coming next; four fifths of the remainder came
from the Northern States.
It is more difficult to get at the birthplaces of the sailors.
Something can be inferred from the number of privateers and letters
of marque fitted out. Here Baltimore again headed the list; following
closely came New York, Philadelphia, and the New England coast
towns, with, alone among the Southern ports, Charleston, S.C. A
more accurate idea of the quotas of sailors furnished by the
different sections can be arrived at by comparing the total amount
of tonnage the country possessed at the outbreak of the war.
Speaking roughly, 44 per cent, of it belonged to New England, 32
per cent, to the Middle States, and 11 per cent, to Maryland. This
makes it _probable_ (but of course not certain) that three fourths
of the common sailors hailed from the Northern States, half the
remainder from Maryland, and the rest chiefly from Virginia and
South Carolina.
Having thus discussed somewhat at length the character of our
officers and crews, it will now be necessary to present some
statistical tables to give a more accurate idea of the composition
of the navy; the tonnage, complements, and armaments of the ships, etc.
At the beginning of the war the Government possessed six navy-yards
(all but the last established in 1801) as follows: [Footnote: Report
of Naval Secretary Jones, Nov. 30. 1814.]
Place Original Cost. Minimum number of
men employed.
1. Portsmouth. N. H., $ 5,500 10
2. Charleston, Mass., 39,214 20
3. New York, 40,000 102
4. Philadelphia, 37,000 13
5. Washington, 4,000 36
6. Gosport, 12,000 16
In 1812 the following was the number of officers in the navy:
[Footnote: "List of Vessels" etc., by Gen. H Preble U.S.N (1874)]
12 captains
10 masters commandant
73 lieutenants
53 masters
310 midshipmen
42 marine officers
-----
500
At the opening of the year, the number of seamen, ordinary seamen,
and boys in service was 4,010, and enough more were recruited to
increase it to 5,230, of whom only 2,346 were destined for the
cruising war vessels, the remainder being detailed for forts,
gun-boats, navy yards, the lakes, etc. [Footnote: Report of Secretary
Paul Hamilton, Feb. 21, 1812.] The marine corps was already ample,
consisting of 1,523 men. [Footnote: _Ibid_.]
No regular navy lists were published till 1816, and I have been
able to get very little information respecting the increase in
officers and men during 1813 and 1814; but we have full returns
for 1815, which may be summarized as follows: [Footnote: Seybert's
"Statistical Annals," p. 676 (Philadelphia, 1818)]
30 captains,
25 masters commandant,
141 lieutenants,
24 commanders,
510 midshipmen,
230 sailing-masters,
50 surgeons,
12 chaplains,
50 pursers,
10 coast pilots,
45 captain's clerks,
80 surgeon's mates,
530 boatswains, gunners, carpenters, and sailmakers,
268 boatswain's mates, gunner's mates, etc.,
1,106 quarter gunners, etc.,
5,000 able seamen,
6,849 ordinary seamen and boys.
Making a total of 14,960, with 2,715 marines.
[Footnote: Report of Secretary B. W. Crowninshield, April 18, 1816.]
Comparing this list with the figures given before, it can be seen
that during the course of the war our navy grew enormously,
increasing to between three and four times its original size.
At the beginning of the year 1812, the navy of the United States
on the ocean consisted of the following vessels, which either
were, or could have been, made available during the war. [Footnote:
Letter of Secretary Benjamin Stoddart to Fifth Congress, Dec. 24,
1798; Letter of Secretary Paul Hamilton, Feb. 21, 1812; "American
State Papers," vol. xix, p. 149. See also The "History of the Navy
of the United States," by Lieut. G. E. Emmons, U. S. N. (published
in Washington, MDCCCLIII, under the authority of the Navy Department.)]
Rate When
(Guns). Name. Where Built. Built. Tonnage. Cost.
44 _United States_, Philadelphia, 1797 1576 $299,336
44 _Constitution_, Boston, 1797 1576 302,718
44 _President_, New York, 1800 1576 220,910
38 _Constellation_, Baltimore, 1797 1265 314,212
38 _Congress_, Portsmouth, 1799 1268 197,246
38 _Chesapeake_, Norfolk, 1799 1244 220,677
32 _Essex_, Salem, 1799 860 139,362
28 _Adams_, New York, 1799 560 76,622
18 _Hornet_, Baltimore, 1805 480 52,603
18 _Wasp_, Washington, 1806 450 40,000
16 _Argus_, Boston, 1803 298 37,428
16 _Syren_, Philadelphia, 1803 250 32,521
14 _Nautilus_, Baltimore, 1803 185 18,763
14 _Vixen_, Baltimore, 1803 185 20,872
12 _Enterprise_, Baltimore, 1799 165 16,240
12 _Viper_, Purchased, 1810 148
There also appeared on the lists the _New York_, 36, _Boston_, 28,
and _John Adams_, 28. The two former were condemned hulks; the latter
was entirely rebuilt after the war. The _Hornet_ was originally a
brig of 440 tons, and 18 guns; having been transformed into a ship,
she was pierced for 20 guns, and in size was of an intermediate
grade between the _Wasp_ and the heavy sloops, built somewhat later,
of 509 tons. Her armament consisted of 32-pound carronades, with
the exception of the two bow-guns, which were long 12's. The whole
broadside was in nominal weight just 300 pounds; in actual weight
about 277 pounds. Her complement of men was 140, but during the war
she generally left port with 150. [Footnote: In the _Hornet's_ log
of Oct. 25, 1812, while in port, it is mentioned that she had 158
men; four men who were sick were left behind before she started.
(See, in the Navy Archives, the Log-book, _Hornet_, _Wasp_, and
_Argus_, July 20, 1809, to Oct. 6, 1813.)] The _Wasp_ had been a
ship from the beginning, mounted the number of guns she rated (of
the same calibres as the _Hornet's_) and carried some ten men less.
She was about the same length as the British 18-gun brig-sloop, but,
being narrower, measured nearly 30 tons less. The _Argus_ and _Syren_
were similar and very fine brigs, the former being the longer. Each
carried two more guns than she rated; and the _Argus_, in addition,
had a couple thrust through the bridle-ports. The guns were 24-pound
carronades, with two long 12's for bow-chasers. The proper complement
of men was 100, but each sailed usually with about 125. The four
smaller craft were originally schooners, armed with the same number
of light long guns as they rated, and carrying some 70 men apiece;
but they had been very effectually ruined by being changed into
brigs, with crews increased to a hundred men. Each was armed with
18-pound carronades, carrying two more than she rated. The
_Enterprise_, in fact, mounted 16 guns, having two long nines thrust
through the bridle-ports. These little brigs were slow, not very
seaworthy, and overcrowded with men and guns; they all fell into
the enemy's hands without doing any good whatever, with the single
exception of the _Enterprise_, which escaped capture by sheer good
luck, and in her only battle happened to be pitted against one of
the corresponding and equally bad class of British gun-brigs. The
_Adams_ after several changes of form finally became a flush-decked
corvette. The _Essex_ had originally mounted twenty-six long 12's
on her main-deck, and sixteen 24-pound carronades on her spar-deck;
but official wisdom changed this, giving her 46 guns, twenty-four
32-pound carronades, and two long 12's on the main-deck, and
sixteen 32-pound carronades with four long 12's on the spar-deck.
When Captain Porter had command of her he was deeply sensible of
the disadvantages of an armament which put him at the mercy of any
ordinary antagonist who could choose his distance; accordingly he
petitioned several times, but always without success, to have his
long 12's returned to him.
The American 38's were about the size of the British frigates of
the same rate, and armed almost exactly in the same way, each
having 28 long 18's on the main-deck and 20 32-pound carronades on
the spar-deck. The proper complement was 300 men, but each carried
from 30 to 80 more. [Footnote: The _Chesapeake_, by some curious
mistake, was frequently rated as a 44, and this drew in its train
a number of attendant errors. When she was captured, James says
that in one of her lockers was found a letter, dated in February,
1811, from Robert Smith, the Secretary of War, to Captain Evans,
at Boston, directing him to open houses of rendezvous for manning
the _Chesapeake_, and enumerating her crew at a total of 443.
Naturally this gave British historians the idea that such was the
ordinary complement of our 38-gun frigates. But the ordering so
large a crew was merely a mistake, as may be seen by a letter from
Captain Bainbridge to the Secretary of the Navy, which is given in
full in the "Captains' Letters," vol. xxv. No. 19 (Navy Archives).
In it he mentions the extraordinary number of men ordered for the
_Chesapeake_, saying, "There is a mistake in the crew ordered for
the _Chesapeake_, as it equals in number the crews of our 44-gun
frigates, whereas the _Chesapeake_ is of the class of the _Congress_
and _Constellation_."]
Our three 44-gun ships were the finest frigates then afloat (although
the British possessed some as heavy, such as the _Egyptienne_, 44).
They were beautifully modelled, with very thick scantling, extremely
stout masts, and heavy cannon. Each carried on her main-deck thirty
long 24's, and on her spar-deck two long bow-chasers, and twenty
or twenty-two carronades--42-pounders on the _President_ and _United
States_, 32-pounders on the _Constitution_. Each sailed with a crew
of about 450 men--50 in excess of the regular complement. [Footnote:
The _President_ when in action with the _Endymion_ had 450 men
aboard, as sworn by Decatur; the muster-roll of the _Constitution_,
a few days before her action with the _Guerrière_ contains 464
names (including 51 marines); 8 men were absent in a prize, so she
had aboard in the action 456. Her muster-roll just before the
action with the _Cyane_ and _Levant_ shows 461 names.]
It may be as well to mention here the only other class of vessels
that we employed during the war. This was composed of the ship-sloops
built in 1813, which got to sea in 1814. They were very fine vessels,
measuring 509 tons apiece, [Footnote: The dimensions were 117 feet
11 inches upon the gun-deck, 97 feet 6 inches keel for tonnage,
measuring from one foot before the forward perpendicular and along
the base line to the front of the rabbet of the port, deducting
3/5 of the moulded breadth of the beam, which is 31 feet 6 inches;
making 509 21/95 tons. (See in Navy Archives, "Contracts," vol. ii.
p. 137.)] with very thick scantling and stout masts and spars. Each
carried twenty 32-pound carronades and two long 12's with a crew
nominally of 160 men, but with usually a few supernumeraries.
[Footnote: The _Peacock_ had 166 men, as we learn from her commander
Warrington's letter of June 1st (Letter No. 140 in "Masters'
Commandant Letters," 1814, vol. i). The _Frolic_ took aboard "10
or 12 men beyond her regular complement" (see letter of Joseph
Bainbridge, No. 51, in same vol.). Accordingly when she was
captured by the _Orpheus_, the commander of the latter, Captain
Hugh Pigot, reported the number of men aboard to be 171. The
_Wasp_ left port with 173 men, with which she fought her first
action; she had a much smaller number aboard in her second.]
The British vessels encountered were similar, but generally
inferior, to our own. The only 24-pounder frigate we encountered
was the _Endymion_ of about a fifth less force than the _President_.
Their 38-gun frigates were almost exactly like ours, but with
fewer men in crew as a rule. They were three times matched against
our 44-gun frigates, to which they were inferior about as three is
to four. Their 36-gun frigates were larger than the _Essex_, with
a more numerous crew, but the same number of guns; carrying on
the lower deck, however, long 18's instead of 32-pound carronades,--a
much more effective armament. The 32-gun frigates were smaller,
with long 12's on the main-deck. The largest sloops were also
frigate-built, carrying twenty-two 32-pound carronades on the
main-deck, and twelve lighter guns on the quarter-deck and
forecastle, with a crew of 180. The large flush-decked ship-sloops
carried 21 or 23 guns, with a crew of 140 men. But our vessels
most often came in contact with the British 18-gun brig-sloop;
this was a tubby craft, heavier than any of our brigs, being about
the size of the _Hornet_. The crew consisted of from 110 to 135 men;
ordinarily each was armed with sixteen 32-pound carronades, two
long 6's, and a shifting 12-pound carronade; often with a light
long gun as a stern-chaser, making 20 in all. The _Reindeer_ and
_Peacock_ had only 24-pound carronades; the _Epervier_ had but
eighteen guns, all carronades. [Footnote: The _Epervier_ was taken
into our service under the same name and rate. Both Preble and
Emmons describe her as of 477 tons. Warrington, her captor, however,
says: "The surveyor of the port has just measured the _Epervier_
and reports her 467 tons." (In the Navy Archives, "Masters'
Commandant Letters," 1814, i. No. 125.) For a full discussion of
tonnage, see Appendix, A.]
Among the stock accusations against our navy of 1812, were, and
are, statements that our vessels were rated at less than their
real force, and in particular that our large frigates were "disguised
line-of-battle ships." As regards the ratings, most vessels of
that time carried more guns than they rated; the disparity was
less in the French than in either the British or American navies.
Our 38-gun frigates carried 48 guns, the exact number the British
38's possessed. The worst case of underrating in our navy was the
_Essex_, which rated 32, and carried 46 guns, so that her real was
44 per cent, in excess of her nominal force; but this was not as
bad as the British sloop _Cyane_, which was rated a 20 or 22, and
carried 34 guns, so that she had either 55 or 70 per cent, greater
real than nominal force. At the beginning of the war we owned two
18-gun ship-sloops, one mounting 18 and the other 20 guns; the
18-gun brig-sloops they captured mounted each 19 guns, so the
average was the same. Later we built sloops that rated 18 and
mounted 22 guns, but when one was captured it was also put down in
the British navy list as an 18-gun ship-sloop. During all the
combats of the war there were but four vessels that carried as
few guns as they rated. Two were British, the _Epervier_ and
_Levant_, and two American, the _Wasp_ and _Adams_. One navy was
certainly as deceptive as another, as far as underrating went.
The force of the statement that our large frigates were disguised
line-of-battle ships, of course depends entirely upon what the
words "frigate" and "line-of-battle ship" mean. When on the 10th
of August, 1653, De Ruyter saved a great convoy by beating off Sir
George Ayscough's fleet of 38 sail, the largest of the Dutch admiral's
"33 sail of the line" carried but 30 guns and 150 men, and his own
flag-ship but 28 guns and 134 men. [Footnote: La Vie et les Actions
Memorables du Sr. Michel de Ruyter, à Amsterdam, Chez Henry et
Theodore Boom. MDCLXXVII. The work is by Barthelemy Pielat, a
surgeon in de Ruyter's fleet, and personally present during many
of his battles. It is written in French, but is in tone more
strongly anti-French than anti-English.] The Dutch book from which
this statement is taken speaks indifferently of frigates of 18, 40,
and 58 guns. Toward the end of the eighteenth century the terms had
crystallized. Frigate then meant a so-called single-decked ship;
it in reality possessed two decks, the main- or gun-deck, and the
upper one, which had no name at all, until our sailors christened
it spar-deck. The gun-deck possessed a complete battery, and the
spar-deck an interrupted one, mounting guns on the forecastle and
quarter-deck. At that time all "two-decked" or "three-decked" (in
reality three- and four-decked) ships were liners. But in 1812
this had changed somewhat; as the various nations built more and
more powerful vessels, the lower rates of the different divisions
were dropped. Thus the British ship _Cyane_, captured by the
_Constitution_, was in reality a small frigate, with a main-deck
battery of 22 guns, and 12 guns on the spar-deck; a few years
before she would have been called a 24-gun frigate, but she then
ranked merely as a 22-gun sloop. Similarly the 50- and 64-gun ships
that had fought in the line at the Doggerbank, Camperdown, and
even at Aboukir, were now no longer deemed fit for the purpose,
and the 74 was the lowest line-of-battle ship.
The _Constitution_, _President_, and _States_ must then be compared
with the existing European vessels that were classed as frigates.
The French in 1812 had no 24-pounder frigates, for the very good
reason that they had all fallen victims to the English 18-pounder's;
but in July of that year a Danish frigate, the _Nayaden_, which
carried long 24's, was destroyed by the English ship _Dictator_, 64.
The British frigates were of several rates. The lowest rated 32,
carrying in all 40 guns, 26 long 12's on the main-deck and 14
24-pound carronades on the spar-deck--a broadside of 324 pounds.
[Footnote: In all these vessels there were generally two long 6's
or 9's substituted for the bow-chase carronades.] The 36-gun
frigates, like the _Phoebe_, carried 46 guns, 26 long 18's on the
gun-deck and 32-pound carronades above. The 38-gun frigates, like
the _Macedonian_, carried 48 or 49 guns, long 18's below and
32-pound carronades above. The 32-gun frigates, then, presented in
broadside 13 long 12's below and 7 24-pound carronades above; the
38-gun frigates, 14 long 18's below and 10 32-pound carronades
above; so that a 44-gun frigate would naturally present 15 long
24's and 12 42-pound carronades above, as the _United States_ did
at first. The rate was perfectly proper, for French, British, and
Danes already possessed 24-pounder frigates; and there was really
less disparity between the force and rate of a 44 that carried 54
guns than there was in a 38 that carried 49, or, like the
_Shannon_, 52. Nor was this all. Two of our three victories were
won by the _Constitution_, which only carried 32-pound carronades,
and once 54 and once 52 guns; and as two thirds of the work was
thus done by this vessel, I shall now compare her with the largest
British frigates. Her broadside force consisted of 15 long 24's on
the main-deck, and on the spar-deck one long 24, and in one case
10, in the other 11 32-pound carronades--a broadside of 704 or 736
pounds. [Footnote: Nominally; in reality about 7 per cent, less on
account of the short weight in the metal.] There was then in the
British navy the _Acasta_, 40, carrying in broadside 15 long 18's
and 11 32-pound carronades; when the spar-deck batteries are equal,
the addition of 90 pounds to the main-deck broadside (which is all
the superiority of the _Constitution_ over the _Acasta_) is
certainly not enough to make the distinction between a frigate and
a disguised 74. But not considering the _Acasta_, there were in the
British navy three 24-pounder frigates, the _Cornwallis_,
_Indefatigable_, and _Endymion_. We only came in contact with the
latter in 1815, when the _Constitution_ had but 52 guns. The
_Endymion_ then had an armament of 28 long 24's, 2 long 18's, and
20 32-pound carronades, making a broadside of 674 pounds, [Footnote:
According to James 664 pounds; he omits the chase guns for no
reason.] or including a shifting 24-pound carronade, of 698
pounds--just _six pounds_, or 1 per cent, less than the force of
that "disguised line-of-battle ship" the _Constitution_! As the
_Endymion_ only rated as a 40, and the _Constitution_ as a 44, it
was in reality the former and not the latter which was underrated.
I have taken the _Constitution_, because the British had more to
do with her than they did with our other two 44's taken together.
The latter were both of heavier metal than the _Constitution_,
carrying 42-pound carronades. In 1812 the _United States_ carried
her full 54 guns, throwing a broadside of 846 pounds; when captured,
the _President_ carried 53, having substituted a 24-pound carronade
for two of her 42's, and her broadside amounted to 828 pounds, or
16 per cent _nominal_, and, on account of the short weight of her
shot, 9 per cent, _real_ excess over the _Endymion_. If this
difference made her a line-of-battle ship, then the _Endymion_ was
doubly a line-of-battle ship compared to the _Congress_ or
_Constellation_. Moreover, the American commanders found their
42-pound carronades too heavy; as I have said the _Constitution_
only mounted 32's, and the _United States_ landed 6 of her guns.
When, in 1813, she attempted to break the blockade, she carried
but 48 guns, throwing a broadside of 720 pounds--just 3 per cent
more than the _Endymion_. [Footnote: It was on account of this
difference of 3 per cent that Captain Hardy refused to allow the
_Endymion_ to meet the _States_ (James, vi. p. 470). This was
during the course of some challenges and counter-challenges which
ended in nothing, Decatur in his turn being unwilling to have the
_Macedonian_ meet the _Statira_, unless the latter should agree
not to take on a picked crew. He was perfectly right in this; but
he ought never to have sent the challenge at all, as two ships but
an hour or two out of port would be at a frightful disadvantage
in a fight.] If our frigates were line-of-battle ships the disguise
was certainly marvellously complete, and they had a number of
companions equally disguised in the British ranks.
The 44's were thus _true frigates_, with one complete battery of
long guns and one interrupted one of carronades. That they were
better than any other frigates was highly creditable to our
ingenuity and national skill. We cannot, perhaps, lay claim to
the invention and first use of the heavy frigate, for 24-pounder
frigates were already in the service of at least three nations,
and the French 36-pound carronnade, in use on their spar-decks,
threw a heavier ball than our 42-pounder. But we had enlarged and
perfected the heavy frigate, and were the first nation that ever
used it effectively. The French _Forte_ and the Danish _Nayaden_
shared the fate of ships carrying guns of lighter calibre; and
the British 24-pounders, like the _Endymion_, had never accomplished
any thing. Hitherto there had been a strong feeling, especially
in England, that an 18-pound gun was as effective as a 24- in
arming a frigate; we made a complete revolution in this respect.
England had been building only 18-pounder vessels when she ought
to have been building 24-pounders. It was greatly to our credit
that our average frigate was superior to the average British frigate;
exactly as it was to our discredit that the _Essex_ was so
ineffectively armed. Captain Porter owed his defeat chiefly to his
ineffective guns, but also to having lost his topmast, to the
weather being unfavorable, and, still more, to the admirable
skill with which Hilyar used his superior armament. The _Java_,
_Macedonian_, and _Guerrière_ owed their defeat partly to their
lighter guns, but much more to the fact that their captains and
seamen did not display either as good seamanship or as good gunnery
as their foes. Inferiority in armament was a factor to be taken
into account in all the four cases, but it was more marked in that
of the _Essex_ than in the other three; it would have been fairer
for Porter to say that he had been captured by a line-of-battle
ship, than for the captain of the _Java_ to make that assertion.
In this last case the forces of the two ships compared almost
exactly as their rates. A 44 was matched against a 38; it was not
surprising that she should win, but it _was_ surprising that she
should win with ease and impunity. The long 24's on the
_Constitution's_ gun-deck no more made her a line-of-battle ship
than the 32-pound carronades mounted on an English frigate's
quarter-deck and forecastle made _her_ a line-of-battle ship when
opposed to a Frenchman with only 8's and 6's on his spar-deck.
When, a few years before, the English _Phoebe_ had captured the
French _Nereide_, their broadsides were respectively 407 and 258
pounds, a greater disparity than in any of our successful fights;
yet no author thought of claiming that the _Phoebe_ was any thing
but a frigate. So with the _Clyde_, throwing 425 lbs., which took
the _Vestale_, throwing but 246. The facts were that 18-pounder
frigates had captured 12-pounders, exactly as our 24-pounders in
turn captured the 18-pounders.
Shortly before Great Britain declared war on us, one of her
18-pounder frigates, the _San Florenzo_, throwing 476 lbs. in a
broadside, captured the 12-pounder French frigate _Psyché_, whose
broadside was only 246 lbs. The force of the former was thus
almost double that of the latter, yet the battle was long and
desperate, the English losing 48 and the French 124 men. This
conflict, then, reflected as much credit on the skill and seamanship
of the defeated as of the victorious side; the difference in loss
could fairly be ascribed to the difference in weight of metal.
But where, as in the famous ship-duels of 1812, the difference in
force is only a fifth, instead of a half and yet the slaughter,
instead of being as five is to two, is as six to one, then the
victory is certainly to be ascribed as much to superiority in skill
as to superiority in force. But, on the other hand, it should always
be remembered that there was a very decided superiority in force.
It is a very discreditable feature of many of our naval histories
that they utterly ignore this superiority, seeming ashamed to
confess that it existed. In reality it was something to be proud
of. It was highly to the credit of the United States that her
frigates were of better make and armament than any others; it
always speaks well for a nation's energy and capacity that any of
her implements of warfare are of superior kind. This is a perfectly
legitimate reason for pride.
It spoke well for the Prussians in 1866 that they opposed
breech-loaders to the muzzle-loaders of the Austrians; but it would
be folly to give all the credit of the victory to the breech-loaders
and none to Moltke and his lieutenants. Thus, it must remembered
that two things contributed to our victories. One was the excellent
make and armament of our ships; the other was the skilful seamanship,
excellent discipline, and superb gunnery of the men who were in
them. British writers are apt only to speak of the first, and Americans
only of the last, whereas both should be taken into consideration.
To sum up: the American 44-gun frigate was a true frigate, in build
and armament, properly rated, stronger than a 38-gun frigate just
about in the proportion of 44 to 38, and not exceeding in strength
an 18-pounder frigate as much as the latter exceeded one carrying
12-pounders. They were in no way whatever line-of-battle ships;
but they were superior to any other frigates afloat, and, what is
still more important, they were better manned and commanded than
the _average_ frigate of any other navy. Lord Codrington says
("Memoirs," i, p. 310): "But I well know the system of favoritism
and borough corruption prevails so very much that many people are
promoted and kept in command that should be dismissed the service,
and while such is the case the few Americans chosen for their merit
may be expected to follow up their successes except where they meet
with our best officers on even terms." [Footnote: To show that I am
not quoting an authority biassed in our favor I will give Sir
Edward Codrington's opinion of our rural better class (i, 318).
"It is curious to observe the animosity which prevails here among
what is called the better order of people, which I think is more
a misnomer here than in any other country I have ever been. Their
_whig_ and _tory_ are democrat and federalist, and it would seem
for the sake of giving vent to that bitterness of hatred which
marks the Yankee character, every gentleman (God save the term)
who takes possession of a property adopts the opposite political
creed to that of his nearest neighbor."] The small size of our
navy was probably to a certain extent effective in keeping it up
to a high standard; but this is not the only explanation, as can
be seen by Portugal's small and poor navy. On the other hand, the
champions or pick of a large navy _ought_ to be better than the
champions of a small one. [Footnote: In speaking of tonnage I wish
I could have got better authority than James for the British side
of the question. He is so bitter that it involuntarily gives one
a distrust of his judgment. Thus, in speaking of the _Penguin's_
capture, he, in endeavoring to show that the _Hornet's_ loss was
greater than she acknowledged, says, "several of the dangerously
wounded were thrown overboard because the surgeon was afraid to
amputate, owing to his want of experience" ("Naval Occurrences,"
492). Now what could persuade a writer to make such a foolish
accusation? No matter how utterly depraved and brutal Captain
Biddle might be, he would certainly not throw his wounded over
alive because he feared they might die. Again, in vol. vi, p. 546,
he says: "Captain Stewart had caused the _Cyane_ to be painted to
resemble a 36-gun frigate. The object of this was to aggrandize his
exploit in the eyes of the gaping citizens of Boston." No matter
how skilful an artist Captain Stewart was, and no matter how great
the gaping capacities of the Bostonians, the _Cyane_ (which by the
way went to New York and not Boston) could no more be painted to
look like a 36-gun frigate than a schooner could be painted to look
like a brig. Instances of rancor like these two occur constantly
in his work, and make it very difficult to separate what is matter
of fact from what is matter of opinion. I always rely on the British
official accounts when they can be reached, except in the case of
the _Java_, which seem garbled. That such was sometimes the case
with British officials is testified to by both James (vol. iv,
p. 17) and Brenton (vol. ii, p. 454, note). From the "Memoir of
Admiral Broke" we learn that his public letter was wrong in a number
of particulars. See also any one of the numerous biographies of
Lord Dundonald, the hero of the little _Speedy's_ fight. It is
very unfortunate that the British stopped publishing official
accounts of their defeats; it could not well help giving rise to
unpleasant suspicions.
It may be as well to mention here, again, that James' accusations do not
really detract from the interest attaching to the war, and its value for
purposes of study. If, as he says, the American commanders were cowards,
and their crews renegades, it is well worth while to learn the lesson that
good training will make such men able to beat brave officers with loyal
crews. And why did the British have such bad average crews as he makes
out? He says, for instance, that the Java's was unusually bad; yet
Brenton says (vol. ii, p. 461) it was like "the generality of our crews."
It is worth while explaining the reason that such a crew was generally
better than a French and worse than an American one.]
Again, the armaments of the American as well as of the British
ships were composed of three very different styles of guns. The
first, or long gun, was enormously long and thick-barrelled in
comparison to its bore, and in consequence very heavy; it possessed
a very long range, and varied in calibre from two to forty-two
pounds. The ordinary calibres in our navy were 6, 9, 12, 18, and
24. The second style was the carronade, a short, light gun of
large bore; compared to a long gun of the same weight it carried
a much heavier ball for a much shorter distance. The chief calibres
were 9, 12, 18, 24, 32, 42, and 68-pounders, the first and the
last being hardly in use in our navy. The third style was the
columbiad, of an intermediate grade between the first two. Thus
it is seen that a gun of one style by no means corresponds to a
gun of another style of the same calibre. As a rough example, a
long 12, a columbiad 18, and a 32-pound carronade would be about
equivalent to one another. These guns were mounted on two different
types of vessel. The first was flush-decked; that is, it had a
single straight open deck on which all the guns were mounted.
This class included one heavy corvette, (the _Adams_), the
ship-sloops, and the brig-sloops. Through the bow-chase port, on
each side, each of these mounted a long gun; the rest of their guns
were carronades, except in the case of the _Adams_, which had all
long guns. Above these came the frigates, whose gun-deck was
covered above by another deck; on the fore and aft parts (forecastle
and quarter-deck) of this upper, open deck were also mounted guns.
The main-deck guns were all long, except on the _Essex_, which
had carronades; on the quarter-deck were mounted carronades, and
on the forecastle also carronades, with two long bow-chasers.
Where two ships of similar armament fought one another, it is easy
to get the comparative force by simply comparing the weight in
broadsides, each side presenting very nearly the same proportion
of long guns to carronades. For such a broadside we take half the
guns mounted in the ordinary way; and all guns mounted on pivots
or shifting. Thus Perry's force in guns was 54 to Barclay's 63;
yet each presented 34 in broadside. Again, each of the British
brig-sloops mounted 19 guns, presenting 10 in broadside. Besides
these, some ships mounted bow-chasers run through the bridle-ports,
or stern-chasers, neither of which could be used in broadsides.
Nevertheless, I include them, both because it works in about an
equal number of cases against each navy, and because they were
sometimes terribly effective. James excludes the _Guerrière's_
bow-chaser; in reality he ought to have included both it and its
fellow, as they worked more damage than all the broadside guns
put together. Again, he excludes the _Endymion's_ bow-chasers,
though in her action they proved invaluable. Yet he includes those
of the _Enterprise_ and _Argus_, though the former's were probably
not fired. So I shall take the half of the fixed, plus all the
movable guns aboard, in comparing broadside force.
But the chief difficulty appears when guns of one style are
matched against those of another. If a ship armed with long 12's,
meets one armed with 32-pound carronades, which is superior in
force? At long range the first, and at short range the second; and
of course each captain is pretty sure to insist that "circumstances"
forced him to fight at a disadvantage. The result would depend
largely on the skill or luck of each commander in choosing position.
One thing is certain; long guns are more formidable than carronades
of the same calibre. There are exemplifications of this rule on
both sides; of course, American writers, as a rule, only pay
attention to one set of cases, and British to the others. The _Cyane_
and _Levant_ threw a heavier broadside than the _Constitution_ but
were certainly less formidably armed; and the _Essex_ threw a heavier
broadside than the _Phoebe_, yet was also less formidable. On Lake
Ontario the American ship _General Pike_ threw less metal at a
broadside than either of her two chief antagonists, but neither
could be called her equal; while on Lake Champlain a parallel case
is afforded by the British ship _Confiance_. Supposing that two
ships throw the same broadside weight of metal, one from long guns,
the other from carronades, at short range they are equal; at long,
one has it all her own way. Her captain thus certainly has a great
superiority of force, and if he does not take advantage of it it
is owing to his adversary's skill or his own mismanagement. As a
mere approximation, it may be assumed, in comparing the broadsides
of two vessels or squadrons, that long guns count for at least
twice as much as carronades of the same calibre. Thus on Lake
Champlain Captain Downie possessed an immense advantage in his
long guns, which Commodore Macdonough's exceedingly good arrangements
nullified. Sometimes part of the advantage may be willingly foregone,
so as to acquire some other. Had the _Constitution_ kept at long
bowls with the _Cyane_ and _Levant_ she could have probably captured
one without any loss to herself, while the other would have escaped;
she preferred to run down close so as to insure the capture of both,
knowing that even at close quarters long guns are somewhat better
than short ones (not to mention her other advantages in thick
scantling, speed, etc.). The British carronades often upset in
action; this was either owing to their having been insufficiently
secured, and to this remaining undiscovered because the men were
not exercised at the guns, or else it was because the unpractised
sailors would greatly overcharge them. Our better-trained sailors
on the ocean rarely committed these blunders, but the less-skilled
crews on the lakes did so as often as their antagonists.
But while the Americans thus, as a rule, had heavier and better-fitted
guns, they labored under one or two disadvantages. Our foundries
were generally not as good as those of the British, and our guns,
in consequence, more likely to burst; it was an accident of this
nature which saved the British _Belvidera_; and the _General Pike_,
under Commodore Chauncy, and the new American frigate _Guerrière_
suffered in the same way; while often the muzzles of the guns would
crack. A more universal disadvantage was in the short weight of
our shot. When Captain Blakely sunk the _Avon_ he officially
reported that her four shot which came aboard weighed just 32
pounds apiece, a pound and three quarters more than his _heaviest_;
this would make his average shot about 2 1/2 pounds less, or
rather over 7 per cent. Exactly similar statements were made by
the officers of the _Constitution_ in her three engagements.
Thus when she fought the _Java_, she threw at a broadside, as
already stated, 704 pounds; the _Java_ mounted 28 long 18's, 18
32-pound carronades, 2 long 12's, and one shifting 24-pound
carronade, a broadside of 576 pounds. Yet by the actual weighing
of all the different shot on both sides it was found that the
difference in broadside force was only about 77 pounds, or the
_Constitution's_ shot were about 7 per cent, short weight. The
long 24's of the _United States_ each threw a shot but 4 1/4 pounds
heavier than the long 18's of the _Macedonian_; here again the
difference was about 7 per cent. The same difference existed in
favor of the _Penguin_ and _Epervier_ compared with the _Wasp_
and _Hornet_. Mr. Fenimore Cooper [Footnote: See "Naval History,"
i, p. 380.] weighed a great number of shot some time after the war.
The later castings, even weighed nearly 5 per cent, less than the
British shot, and some of the older ones, about 9 per cent. The
average is safe to take at 7 per cent. less, and I shall throughout
make this allowance for ocean cruisers. The deficit was sometimes
owing to windage, but more often the shot was of full size but
defective in density. The effect of this can be gathered from the
following quotation from the work of a British artillerist: "The
greater the density of shot of like calibres, projected with equal
velocity and elevation, the greater the range, accuracy, and
penetration." [Footnote: "Heavy Ordnance," Captain T. F. Simmons,
R. A., London, 1837. James supposes that the "Yankee captains"
have in each case hunted round till they could get particularly
small American shot to weigh; and also denies that short weight
is a disadvantage. The last proposition carried out logically
would lead to some rather astonishing results.] This defectiveness
in density might be a serious injury in a contest at a long
distance, but would make but little difference at close quarters
(although it may have been partly owing to their short weight
that so many of the Chesapeake's shot failed to penetrate the
_Shannon's_ hull). Thus in the actions with the _Macedonian_ and
_Java_ the American frigates showed excellent practice when the
contest was carried on within fair distance, while their first
broadsides at long range went very wild; but in the case of the
_Guerrière_, the _Constitution_ reserved her fire for close
quarters, and was probably not at all affected by the short
weight of her shot.
As to the officers and crew of a 44-gun frigate, the following was
the regular complement established by law: [Footnote: See State
Papers, vol. xiv, 159 (Washington, 1834).]
1 captain,
4 lieutenants,
2 lieutenants of marines,
2 sailing-masters,
2 master's mates,
7 midshipmen,
1 purser,
1 surgeon,
2 surgeon's mates,
1 clerk,
1 carpenter,
2 carpenter's mates,
1 boatswain,
2 boatswain's mates,
1 yeoman of gun-room,
1 gunner,
11 quarter gunners,
1 coxswain,
1 sailmaker,
1 cooper,
1 steward,
1 armorer,
1 master of arms,
1 cook,
1 chaplain.
__
50
120 able seamen,
150 ordinary seamen,
30 boys,
50 marines.
___
400 in all.
An 18-gun ship had 32 officers and petty officers, 30 able seamen,
46 ordinary seamen, 12 boys, and 20 marines--140 in all. Sometimes
ships put to sea without their full complements (as in the case of
the first _Wasp_), but more often with supernumeraries aboard.
The weapons for close quarters were pikes, cutlasses, and a few
axes; while the marines and some of the topmen had muskets, and
occasionally rifles.
In comparing the forces of the contestants I have always given
the number of men in crew; but this in most cases was unnecessary.
When there were plenty of men to handle the guns, trim the sails,
make repairs, act as marines, etc., any additional number simply
served to increase the slaughter on board. The _Guerrière_
undoubtedly suffered from being short-handed, but neither the
_Macedonian_ nor _Java_ would have been benefited by the presence
of a hundred additional men. Barclay possessed about as many men
as Perry, but this did not give him an equality of force. The
_Penguin_ and _Frolic_ would have been taken just as surely had
the _Hornet_ and _Wasp_ had a dozen men less apiece than they did.
The principal case where numbers would help would be in a
hand-to-hand fight. Thus the _Chesapeake_ having fifty more men
than the _Shannon_ ought to have been successful; but she was not,
because the superiority of her crew in numbers was more than
counterbalanced by the superiority of the _Shannon's_ crew in
other respects. The result of the battle of Lake Champlain, which
was fought at anchor, with the fleets too far apart for musketry
to reach, was not in the slightest degree affected by the number
of men on either side, as both combatants had amply enough to
manage the guns and perform every other service.
In all these conflicts the courage of both parties is taken for
granted: it was not so much a factor in gaining the victory, as
one which if lacking was fatal to all chances of success. In the
engagements between regular cruisers, not a single one was gained
by superiority in courage. The crews of both the _Argus_ and
_Epervier_ certainly flinched; but had they fought never so
bravely they were too unskilful to win. The _Chesapeake's_ crew
could hardly be said to lack courage; it was more that they were
inferior to their opponents in discipline as well as in skill.
There was but one conflict during the war where the victory could
be said to be owing to superiority in pluck. This was when the
_Neufchatel_ privateer beat off the boats of the _Endymion_. The
privateersmen suffered a heavier proportional loss than their
assailants, and they gained the victory by sheer ability to stand
punishment.
For convenience in comparing them I give in tabulated form the
force of the three British 38's taken by American 44's (allowing
for short weight of metal of latter).
CONSTITUTION. GUERRIÈRE.
30 long 24's, 30 long 18's,
2 long 24's, 2 long 12's,
22 short 32's. 16 short 32's,
___________________________ 1 short 18.
Broadside, nominal, 736 lbs. __________________
real. 684 lbs. Broadside, 556 lbs.
UNITED STATES MACEDONIAN
30 long 24's, 28 long 18's,
2 long 24's, 2 long 12's,
22 short 42's. 2 long 9's,
___________________________ 16 short 32's,
Broadside, nominal, 846 lbs. 1 short 18.
real, 786 lbs. ___________________
Broadside, 547 lbs.
CONSTITUTION JAVA
30 long 24's, 28 long 18's,
2 long 24's, 2 long 12's,
20 short 32's. 18 short 32's,
____________________________ 1 short 24.
Broadside, nominal, 704 lbs. ___________________
real. 654 lbs. Broadside. 576 lbs.
The smallest line-of-battle ship, the 74, with only long 18's on
the second deck, was armed as follows:
28 long 32's,
28 " 18's,
6 " 12's.
14 short 32's
7 " 18's
or a broadside of 1,032 lbs., 736 from long guns, 296 from
carronades; while the _Constitution_ threw (in reality) 684 lbs.,
356 from long guns, and 328 from her carronades, and the _United
States_ 102 lbs. more from her carronades. Remembering the difference
between long guns and carronades, and considering sixteen of the
74's long 18's as being replaced by 42-pound carronades [Footnote:
That this change would leave the force about as it was, can be
gathered from the fact that the _Adams_ and _John Adams_ both of
which had been armed with 42 pound carronades (which were sent to
Sackett's Harbor), had them replaced by long and medium 18 pounders,
these being considered to be formidable: so that the substitution
of 42-pound carronades would, if any thing, reduce the force of
the 74] (so as to get the metal on the ships distributed in similar
proportions between the two styles of cannon), we get as the 74's
broadside 592 lbs from long guns, and 632 from carronades. The
_United States_ threw nominally 360 and 486, and the _Constitution_
nominally 360 and 352; so the 74 was superior even to the former
nominally about as three is to two; while the _Constitution_, if
"a line-of-battle ship," was disguised to such a degree that she
was in reality of but little more than _one half_ the force of one
of the smallest _true_ liners England possessed!