SERVICE IN THE WAR OF 1812.
IN these days of submarine cables, the European armies in South Africa
or Cochin China receive orders from London or Paris on the day of their
issue. To us, the tardiness of transmission in Perry’s youth, seems
incredible. Although war was declared on the 12th of June, official
information did not reach the army officers until June 20th, and the
naval commanders until the 21st. In Perry’s diary of June 20th 1812,
this entry is made: “At 10 A. M. news arrived that war would be declared
the following day against G. B. Made the signal for all officers and
boats. Unmoored ship and fired a salute.”
At 3.30 P. M. next day, within sixty minutes of the arrival of the news,
the squadron, consisting of the _President_, _United States_,
_Congress_, _Argus_, and _Hornet_, about one-third of the whole
sea-worthy naval force of the nation, moved out into the ocean.
The British man-of-war, _Belvidera_, was cruising off Nantucket shore
awaiting the French privateer, _Marengo_, hourly expected from New
London. Captain Byron had heard of the likelihood of war from a New York
pilot, and his crew was ready for emergencies. At eight o’clock next
morning, the look-out on the _President_ when off Nantucket Shoal,
caught sight of a strange frigate. Every stitch of canvas was put on the
masts and stays, and a race, which was kept up all day, was begun. The
_President_, being just out, was heavily loaded, and, until afternoon,
the _Belvidera_ by lightening ship kept well ahead. When it became
evident to Captain Byron, the British commander, that he must fight, he
ordered the deck cleared, ran out four stern guns, two of which were
eighteen pounders and on the main deck. He hoisted his colors at half
past twelve. His cartridges were picked, but his fusing was not laid on.
This was to avoid a _President_ and _Little Belt_ experience. By half
past four, the _President’s_ bow-chaser, or “Long Tom,” was within six
hundred yards distance, and the time for firing the first gun of the war
had come. The long years of patient waiting and self-control, under
insults, were over. The question of the freedom of the seas was to be
settled by artillery.
Commodore Rodgers desiring the personal honor of firing the first
hostile shot afloat, took his station at the starboard forecastle gun.
Perry, a boy of seventeen, stood beside ready, eager, and cool. Waiting
till the right moment, the commodore applied the match. The ball struck
the _Belvidera_ in the stern coat and passed through, lodging in the
ward-room. The corresponding gun on the main deck was then discharged,
and the ball was seen to strike the muzzle of one of the enemy’s
stern-chasers. The third shot killed two men and wounded five on the
_Belvidera_. With such superb gunnery, the war of 1812 opened. A few
more such shots, and the prize would have been in hand.
It was not so to be. Nothing is more certain than the unexpected. A slip
came between sight and taste, changing the whole situation.
Commodore Rodgers with his younger officers stood on the forecastle deck
with glasses leveled to see the effect of the shot from the next gun on
the deck beneath them. It was in charge of Lieutenant Gamble. On the
match being applied, it burst. The Commodore was thrown into the air and
his leg broken by the fall. Matthew Perry was wounded, several of the
sailors were killed, and the forecastle deck was damaged badly. Sixteen
men were injured by this accident. The firing on the American ship
ceased for some minutes, until the ruins were cleared away, and the dead
and wounded were removed. Meanwhile the stern guns of the _Belvidera_
were playing vigorously, and, during the whole action, this busy end of
the British vessel was alive with smoke and flame. No fewer than three
hundred shot were fired, killing or wounding six of the _President’s_
crew though hurting the ship but slightly, notwithstanding that, for two
and a half hours, she lay in a position favorable for raking. Having no
pivot guns, but hoping to cripple his enemy by a full broadside,
Commodore Rodgers, when the _President_ had forged ahead, veered ship
and gave the enemy his full starboard fire. Failing of this purpose, he
delivered another broadside at five o’clock, which was as useless as the
other. He then ordered the sails set and continued the chase. To offset
this advantage in his enemy, the British captain, equal to the
situation, ordered the pumps to be manned, stores, anchors and boats to
be heaved overboard to rid the ship of every superfluous pound of
matter. Fourteen tons of water were started and, lightened of much metal
and wood, the British ship gained visibly on her opponent. This
continued until six, when the wind, being very light, Rodgers, in the
hope of disabling his antagonist, “yawed” again and fired two
broadsides. These, to the chagrin of the gallant commodore, fell short
or took slight effect. At seven o’clock, the _Belvidera_ was beyond
range and, near midnight, the chase was given up.
The escaping vessel got safely to Halifax carrying thither the news that
war had been declared and the Yankee cruisers were loose on the main.
Instead of the electric cable which flashes the news in seconds, the
schooner _Mackerel_ took dispatches, arriving at Portsmouth July 25th.
Following the trail left in the “pathless ocean” by the crumbs that fell
from the British table,—fruit rinds, orange skins and cocoa-nut shells,
the American frigate followed the game until within twenty-four hours of
the British channel. It was now time to be off. The West India prize was
lost.
Turning prow to Maderia, Funchal was passed July 27th. Sail was then
made for the Azores. Few ships were seen, but fogs were frequent.
Baffled in his desire to meet an enemy having teeth to bite, Rodgers
would have still kept his course, but for a fire in the rear. An enemy,
feared more than British guns, had captured the ship.
It was the scurvy. It broke out so alarmingly that he was obliged to
hurry home at full speed. Passing Nantasket roads August 31st decks were
cleared for action. A strange ship was in sight. It was the
_Constitution_ which a few days before had met and sunk their old enemy
the _Guerriere_, two of whose prizes the _President_ had recaptured.
In this, his first foreign cruise in a man-of-war, full as it was of
exciting incidents, Perry had taken part in one battle, and the capture
of seven British Merchant vessels. Driven home ingloriously by the
chronic enemy of the naval household, he learned well a new lesson. He
gained an experience, by which not only himself but all his crew down to
the humblest sailor under his command, profited during the half century
of his service. In those ante-canning days, more lives were lost in the
navy by this one disease than by all other causes, sickness, battle,
tempest or shipwreck. “From scurvy” might well have been a prayer of
deliverance in the nautical litany.
Perry was one of the first among American officers to search into the
underlying causes of the malady. He was ever a rigid disciplinarian in
diet, albeit a generous provider. To the ignorant he seemed almost
fanatical in his “anti-scorbutic” notions, though he was rather pleased
than otherwise at the nick-name savoring of the green-grocer’s stall
which Jack Tar with grateful facetiousness lavished on him.
Across sea, the American frigates were described by the English
newspapers as “disguised seventy-fours;” and, forthwith, English writers
on naval warfare began explaining how the incredible thing happened that
British frigates had lowered their flag to apparent equals. These
explanations have been diligently kept up and copied for the past
seventy-five years. As late as the international rifle match of 1877 the
words of the naval writer, James, learned by heart by Britons in their
youth, came to the front in the staple of English editorials written to
clear up the mystery of American excellence with the rifle,—“The young
peasant or back-woodsman carries a rifle barrel from the moment he can
lift one to his shoulder.”
On the eighteenth of October, Rodgers left Boston with the _President_,
_Constitution_, _United States_ and _Argus_. Perry, unable to be idle,
while the ships lay in Boston harbor, had opened a recruiting office in
the city enlisting sailors for the _President_. Each vessel of the
squadron was in perfect order. On the 10th, without knowing it, they
passed near five British men-of-war. They chased a thirty-eight gun ship
but lost her, but, on the 18th off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland
captured the British packet _Swallow_, having on board eighty-one boxes
of gold and silver to the value of $200,000. On the 30th they chased the
_Galatea_ and lost her. During the whole of November, they met with few
vessels.
Nine prizes of little value were taken. They cruised eastward to
Longitude 22 degrees west and southward to 17 degrees north latitude.
They re-entered Boston on the last month of the year, 1812. It is no
fault of Rodgers that he did not meet an armed ship at sea, and win
glory like that gained by Hull, Bainbridge and Decatur. For Perry,
fortune was yet reserving her favor and Providence a noble work.
Leaving Boston, April 30, the _President_ crossed the Atlantic to the
Azores, and thence moved up toward North Cape. In these icy seas,
Rodgers hoped to intercept a fleet of thirty merchant vessels sailing
from Archangel, July 15. Escaping after being chased eighty-four hours
by a British frigate and a seventy-four, Rodgers returned from his
Arctic adventures, and after a five months’ cruise cast anchor at
Newport, September 27. Twelve vessels, with two hundred and seventy-one
prisoners, had been taken; and the ships he disposed of by cartel,
ransom, sinking, or despatch to France or the United States as prizes.
No less than twenty British men-of-war, sailing in couples for safety,
scoured the seas for half a year, searching in vain for the saucy
Yankee.
Three years of service, under his own eye, had so impressed Commodore
Rodgers with his midshipman, that, on the 3d of February, 1813, he wrote
to the Department asking that Perry be promoted. This was granted
February 27, and, at eighteen, Matthew Perry became an acting
lieutenant. “Heroes are made early.”
Four of the Perry brothers served their country in the navy in 1813; two
in the _Lawrence_ on Lake Erie, and two on the _President_ at sea. An
item of news that concerned them all, and brought them to her bedside,
was their mother’s illness. This, fortunately, was not of long duration.
At home, Matthew Perry found his commission as lieutenant, dated July
24. Of the forty-four promotions, made on that date, he ranked number
fourteen. Requesting a change to another ship, he was ordered to the
_United States_, under Commodore Decatur. Chased into the harbor of New
London, by a British squadron, this frigate, with the _Wasp_ and
_Macedonian_, was kept in the Thames until the end of the war. Perry’s
five months’ service on board of her was one of galling inaction. Left
inactive in the affairs of war, the young lieutenant improved his time
in affairs of the heart; and on Christmas eve, 1814, was married to Miss
Jane Slidell, then but seventeen years of age. The Reverend, afterwards
Bishop, Nathaniel Bowen, united the pair according to the ritual of the
Episcopal church, at the house of the bride’s father, a wealthy New York
merchant. Perry’s brothers-in-law, John Slidell, Alexander Slidell
(MacKenzie), and their neighbor and playmate, Charles Wilkes, as well as
himself, were afterwards heard from.
Soon after his marriage, Lieutenant Perry was invited by Commodore
Decatur to join him on the _President_. In this ship, nearly rebuilt,
with a crew of over four hundred picked sailors, most of them tall and
robust native Americans, the “Bayard of the seas” expected to make a
voyage to the East Indies. Unfortunately, seized with a severe fit of
sickness, Perry was obliged to leave the ship, and in eager anticipation
of speedy departure, Decatur appointed another lieutenant in his place.
The bitter pill of disappointment proved, for Perry, good medicine.
Owing to the vigor of the blockade, the _President_ did not get away
until January 15, 1815, and then only to be captured by superior force.
In answer to an application for service, Matthew Perry was ordered to
Warren, R. I., to recruit for the brig _Chippewa_.
Meanwhile, negotiations for ending the war had begun, starting from
offers of mediation by Russia. With the allies occupying Paris, and
Napoleon exiled to Elba, there was little chance of “peace with honor”
for the United States. The war party in England were even inquiring for
some Elba in which to banish Madison. “The British government was free
to settle accounts with the upstart people whose ships had won more
flags from her navy, in two years, than all her European rivals had done
in a century.” One of the first moves was to dispatch Packenham, with
Wellington’s veterans, to lay siege to New Orleans, with the idea of
gaining nine points of the law. From Patterson and Jackson, they
received what they least expected.
Before Perry’s work at Warren fairly began, the British ship _Favorite_,
bearing the olive branch, arrived at New York, February 11, 1815. It was
too late to save the bloody battle of New Orleans, or the capture of the
_Cyane_ and _Levant_. The treaty of Ghent had been signed December 3,
1813; but neither steam nor electricity were then at hand to forefend
ninety days of war.
The navy, from the year 1815, was kept up on a war footing; and, for
three years, the sum of two millions of dollars was appropriated to this
arm of the service. Commodore Porter, eager to improve and expand our
commerce, conceived the project of a voyage of exploration around the
world. The plan embraced an extended visit to the islands of the
Pacific, the north-west coast of America, Japan and China. The
expedition was to consist of several vessels of war. The project of this
first American expeditionary voyage fell stillborn, and was left to
slumber until Matthew Perry and John Rodgers accomplished more than its
purpose.
The seas now being safe to American commerce, our merchants at once took
advantage of their opportunity. Mr. Slidell offered his son-in-law, then
but twenty years of age, the command of a merchant vessel loaded for
Holland. He applied for furlough. As war with Algiers threatened,
permission was not granted, and Matthew and James Alexander Perry began
service on board the _Chippewa_. This was the finest of three brigs in
the flying squadron, which had been built to ravage British commerce in
the Mediterranean. Serving, inactively, on the brig _Chippewa_, until
December 20, 1815, Perry procured furlough, and in command of a merchant
vessel, owned by his father, made a voyage to Holland. He was engaged in
the commercial marine until 1817, when he re-entered the navy.
The Virginian Horatio, son of the freed slave, who to-day ploughs up the
skull of some Yorick, Confederate or Federal, turns to his paternal
Hamlet, of frosty pow, to ask: “What was dey fightin’ about?” A similar
question asks the British Peterkin and the American lad, of this
generation, concerning a phase of our history early in this century.
Besides being “our second war for national independence,” the struggle
of 1812 was emphatically for “sailors’ rights.” At the beginning of
hostilities there were on record in the State Department, at Washington,
6,527 cases of impressed American seamen. This was, doubtless, but a
small part of the whole number, which probably reached 20,000; or enough
to man our navy five times over. In 1811, 2,548 impressed American
seamen were in British prisons, refusing to serve against their country,
as the British Admirality reported to the House of Commons, February 1,
1815. In January, 1811, according to Lord Castlereagh’s speech of
February 8, 1813, 3,300 men, claiming to be Americans, were serving in
the British navy.[3] The war settled some questions, but left the main
one of the right of search, claimed by Great Britain, still open, and
not to be removed from the field of dispute, until Mr. Seward’s
diplomacy in the _Trent_ affair compelled its relinquishment forever.
Three years struggle with a powerful enemy, had done wonders in
developing the resources of the United States and in consolidating the
Federal union. The American nation, by this war, wholly severed the
leading strings which bound her to the “mother country” and to Europe,
and shook off the colonial spirit for all time.
Among the significant appropriations made by Congress during the war,
was one for $500 to be spent in collecting, transmitting, preserving,
and displaying the flags and standards captured from the enemy.
On the 4th of July, 1818, the flag of the United States of America,
which, during the war of 1812, bore fifteen stripes and fifteen stars in
its cluster, returned to its old form. The number of stripes,
representing the original thirteen states, remained as the standard, not
to be added to or subtracted from. In the blue field the stars could
increase with the growth of the nation. In the American flag are happily
blended the symbols of the old and the new, of history and prophecy, of
conservatism and progress, of the stability of the unchanging past with
the promise and potency of the future.
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[3] Roosevelt’s “Naval History of the War of 1812.”