THE people of the Atlantic coast felt the loss of the “Chesapeake” none
too keenly. Other nations had a history to support them in moments of
mortification, or had learned by centuries of experience to accept
turns of fortune as the fate of war. The American of the sea-coast
was not only sensitive and anxious, but he also saw with singular
clearness the bearing of every disaster, and did not see with equal
distinctness the general drift of success. The loss of the “Chesapeake”
was a terrible disaster, not merely because it announced the quick
recovery of England’s pride and power from a momentary shock, but
also because it threatened to take away the single object of American
enthusiasm which redeemed shortcomings elsewhere. After the loss of
the “Chesapeake,” no American frigate was allowed the opportunity to
fight with an equal enemy. The British frigates, ordered to cruise in
company, gave the Americans no chance to renew their triumphs of 1812.
Indeed, the experience of 1813 tended to show that the frigate was no
longer the class of vessel best suited to American wants. Excessively
expensive compared with their efficiency, the “Constitution,”
“President,” and “United States” could only with difficulty obtain
crews; and when after much delay they were ready for sea, they could
not easily evade a blockading squadron. The original cost of a frigate
varied from two hundred thousand dollars to three hundred thousand;
that of a sloop-of-war, like the “Hornet,” “Wasp,” or “Argus,” varied
between forty and fifty thousand dollars. The frigate required a crew
of about four hundred men; the sloop carried about one hundred and
fifty. The annual expense of a frigate in active service was about
one hundred and thirty-four thousand dollars; that of the brig was
sixty thousand. The frigate required much time and heavy timber in
her construction; the sloop could be built quickly and of ordinary
material. The loss of a frigate was a severe national disaster; the
loss of a sloop was not a serious event.
For defensive purposes neither the frigate nor the brig counted
heavily against a nation which employed ships-of-the-line by dozens;
but even for offensive objects the frigate was hardly so useful as
the sloop-of-war. The record of the frigates for 1813 showed no
results equivalent to their cost. Their cruises were soon told. The
“President,” leaving Boston April 30, ran across to the Azores,
thence to the North Sea, and during June and July haunted the shores
of Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, returning to Newport September 27,
having taken thirteen prizes. The “Congress,” which left Boston with
the “President,” cruised nearly eight months in the Atlantic, and
returned to Boston December 14, having captured but four merchantmen.
The “Chesapeake,” which sailed from Boston Dec. 13, 1812, cruised
four months in the track of British commerce, past Madeira and Cape
de Verde, across the equator, and round through the West Indies,
returning to Boston April 9, having taken six prizes; at the beginning
of her next cruise, June 1, the “Chesapeake” was herself captured.
The adventures of the “Essex” in the Pacific were such as might have
been equally well performed by a sloop-of-war, and belonged rather to
the comparative freedom with which the frigates moved in 1812 than to
the difficult situation that followed. No other frigates succeeded in
getting to sea till December 4, when the “President” sailed again.
The injury inflicted by the frigates on the Atlantic was therefore
the capture of twenty-three merchantmen in a year. At the close of
1813, the “President” and the “Essex” were the only frigates at
sea; the “Constitution” sailed from Boston only Jan. 1, 1814; the
“United States” and “Macedonian” were blockaded at New London; the
“Constellation” was still at Norfolk; the “Adams” was at Washington,
and the “Congress” at Boston.
When this record was compared with that of the sloops-of-war the
frigates were seen to be luxuries. The sloop-of-war was a single-decked
vessel, rigged sometimes as a ship, sometimes as a brig, but never as
a sloop, measuring about one hundred and ten feet in length by thirty
in breadth, and carrying usually eighteen thirty-two-pound carronades
and two long twelve-pounders. Of this class the American navy possessed
in 1812 only four examples,--the “Hornet,” the “Wasp,” the “Argus,”
and the “Syren.” The “Wasp” was lost Oct. 18, 1812, after capturing
the “Frolic.” The “Syren” remained at New Orleans during the first
year of the war, and then came to Boston, but saw no ocean service of
importance during 1813. The “Hornet” made three prizes, including the
sloop-of-war “Peacock,” and was then blockaded with the “United States”
and “Macedonian;” but the smaller vessel could do what the frigates
could not, and in November the “Hornet” slipped out of New London and
made her way to New York, where she waited an opportunity to escape to
sea. The story will show her success. Finally, the “Argus” cruised for
a month in the British Channel, and made twenty-one prizes before she
was captured by the “Pelican.”
The three frigates, “President,” “Congress,” and “Chesapeake,”
captured twenty-three prizes in the course of the year, and lost the
“Chesapeake.” The two sloops, the “Hornet” and “Argus,” captured
twenty-four prizes, including the sloop-of-war “Peacock,” and lost the
“Argus.”
The government at the beginning of the war owned four smaller
vessels,--the “Nautilus” and “Vixen” of fourteen guns, and the
“Enterprise” and “Viper” of twelve. Another brig, the “Rattlesnake,”
sixteen, was bought. Experience seemed to prove that these were of
little use. The “Nautilus” fell into the hands of Broke’s squadron July
16, 1812, within a month after the declaration of war. The “Vixen” was
captured Nov. 22, 1812, by Sir James Yeo. The “Viper,” Jan. 17, 1813,
became prize to Captain Lumley in the British frigate “Narcissus.” The
“Enterprise” distinguished itself by capturing the “Boxer,” and was
regarded as a lucky vessel, but was never a good or fast one.[427] The
“Rattlesnake,” though fast, was at last caught on a lee shore by the
frigate “Leander,” July 11, 1814, and carried into Halifax.[428]
In the enthusiasm over the frigates in 1812, Congress voted that six
forty-fours should be built, besides four ships-of-the-line. The Act
was approved Jan. 2, 1813. Not until March 3 did Congress pass an Act
for building six new sloops-of-war. The loss of two months was not
the only misfortune in this legislation. Had the sloops been begun in
January, they might have gone to sea by the close of the year. The
six sloops were all launched within eleven months from the passage of
the bill, and the first of them, the “Frolic,” got to sea within that
time, while none of the frigates or line-of-battle ships could get
to sea within two years of the passage of the law. A more remarkable
oversight was the building of only six sloops, when an equal number of
forty-fours and four seventy-fours were ordered. Had Congress voted
twenty-four sloops, the proportion would not have been improper; but
perhaps the best policy would have been to build fifty such sloops, and
to prohibit privateering. The reasons for such a course were best seen
in the experiences of the privateers.
The history of the privateers was never satisfactorily written. Neither
their number, their measurements, their force, their captures, nor
their losses were accurately known. Little ground could be given for
an opinion in regard to their economy. Only with grave doubt could
any judgment be reached even in regard to their relative efficiency
compared with government vessels of the same class. Yet their
experience was valuable, and their services were very great.
In the summer of 1812 any craft that could keep the sea in fine weather
set out as a privateer to intercept vessels approaching the coast.
The typical privateer of the first few months was the pilot-boat,
armed with one or two long-nine or twelve-pound guns. Of twenty-six
privateers sent from New York in the first four months of war, fifteen
carried crews of eighty men or less. These small vessels especially
infested the West Indies, where fine weather and light breezes suited
their qualities. After the seas had been cleared of such prey as these
petty marauders could manage, they were found to be unprofitable,--too
small to fight and too light to escape. The typical privateer of 1813
was a larger vessel,--a brig or schooner of two or three hundred
tons, armed with one long pivot-gun, and six or eight lighter guns in
broadside; carrying crews which varied in number from one hundred and
twenty to one hundred and sixty men; swift enough to escape under most
circumstances even a frigate, and strong enough to capture any armed
merchantman.
After the war was fairly begun, the British mercantile shipping always
sailed either under convoy or as armed “running ships” that did not
wait for the slow and comparatively rare opportunities of convoy, but
trusted to their guns for defence. The new American privateer was
adapted to meet both chances. Two or three such craft hanging about a
convoy could commonly cut off some merchantman, no matter how careful
the convoying man-of-war might be. By night they could run directly
into the fleet and cut out vessels without even giving an alarm, and
by day they could pick up any craft that lagged behind or happened to
stray too far away. Yet the “running ships” were the chief objects of
their search, for these were the richest prizes; and the capture of a
single such vessel, if it reached an American port in safety, insured
success to the cruise. The loss of these vessels caused peculiar
annoyance to the British, for they sometimes carried considerable
amounts of specie, and usually were charged with a mail which was
always sunk and lost in case of capture.
As the war continued, experience taught the owners of privateers the
same lesson that was taught to the government. The most efficient
vessel of war corresponded in size with the “Hornet” or the new
sloops-of-war building in 1813. Tonnage was so arbitrary a mode of
measurement that little could be learned from the dimensions of five
hundred tons commonly given for these vessels; but in a general way
they might be regarded as about one hundred and fifteen or one hundred
and twenty feet long on the spar-deck and thirty-one feet in extreme
breadth. Unless such vessels were swift sailers, particularly handy in
working to windward, they were worse than useless; and for that reason
the utmost effort was made both by the public and private constructors
to obtain speed. At the close of the war the most efficient vessel
afloat was probably the American sloop-of-war, or privateer, of four
or five hundred tons, rigged as a ship or brig, and carrying one
hundred and fifty or sixty men, with a battery varying according to the
ideas of the captain and owners, but in the case of privateers almost
invariably including one “long Tom,” or pivot-gun.
Yet for privateering purposes the smaller craft competed closely with
the larger. For ordinary service no vessel could do more effective work
in a more economical way than was done by Joshua Barney’s “Rossie” of
Baltimore, or Boyle’s “Comet” of the same port, or Champlin’s “General
Armstrong” of New York,--schooners or brigs of two or three hundred
tons, uncomfortable to their officers and crews, but most dangerous
enemies to merchantmen. Vessels of this class came into favor long
before the war, because of their speed, quickness in handling, and
economy during the experience of twenty years in blockade-running and
evasion of cruisers. Such schooners could be built in any Northern
sea-port in six weeks or two months at half the cost of a government
cruiser.
The government sloop-of-war was not built for privateering purposes.
Every government vessel was intended chiefly to fight, and required
strength in every part and solidity throughout. The frame needed to be
heavy to support the heavier structure; the quarters needed to be thick
to protect the men at the guns from grape and musketry; the armament
was as weighty as the frame would bear. So strong were the sides of
American frigates that even thirty-two-pound shot fired at forty or
fifty feet distance sometimes failed to penetrate, and the British
complained as a grievance that the sides of an American forty-four
were thicker than those of a British seventy-four.[429] The American
ship-builders spared no pains to make all their vessels in every
respect--in size, strength, and speed--superior to the vessels with
which they were to compete; but the government ship-carpenter had a
harder task than the private ship-builder, for he was obliged to obtain
greater speed at the same time that he used heavier material than the
British constructors. As far as the navy carpenters succeeded in their
double object, they did so by improving the model and increasing the
proportions of the spars.
The privateer was built for no such object. The last purpose of a
privateer was to fight at close range, and owners much preferred that
their vessels, being built to make money, should not fight at all
unless much money could be made. The private armed vessel was built
rather to fly than to fight, and its value depended far more on its
ability to escape than on its capacity to attack. If the privateer
could sail close to the wind, and wear or tack in the twinkling of an
eye; if she could spread an immense amount of canvas and run off as
fast as a frigate before the wind; if she had sweeps to use in a calm,
and one long-range gun pivoted amidships, with plenty of men in case
boarding became necessary,--she was perfect. To obtain these results
the builders and sailors ran excessive risks. Too lightly built and
too heavily sparred, the privateer was never a comfortable or a safe
vessel. Beautiful beyond anything then known in naval construction,
such vessels roused boundless admiration, but defied imitators. British
constructors could not build them, even when they had the models;
British captains could not sail them; and when British admirals,
fascinated by their beauty and tempted by the marvellous qualities of
their model, ordered such a prize to be taken into the service, the
first act of the carpenters in the British navy-yards was to reduce
to their own standard the long masts, and to strengthen the hull and
sides till the vessel should be safe in a battle or a gale. Perhaps an
American navy-carpenter must have done the same; but though not a line
in the model might be altered, she never sailed again as she sailed
before. She could not bear conventional restraints.
Americans were proud of their privateers, as they well might be; for
this was the first time when in competition with the world, on an
element open to all, they proved their capacity to excel, and produced
a creation as beautiful as it was practical. The British navy took a
new tone in regard to these vessels. Deeply as the American frigates
and sloops-of-war had wounded the pride of the British navy, they
never had reduced that fine service to admitted inferiority. Under one
pretext or another, every defeat was excused. Even the superiority of
American gunnery was met by the proud explanation that the British
navy, since Trafalgar, had enjoyed no opportunity to use their
guns. Nothing could convince a British admiral that Americans were
better fighters than Englishmen; but when he looked at the American
schooner he frankly said that England could show no such models, and
could not sail them if she had them. In truth, the schooner was a
wonderful invention. Not her battles, but her escapes won for her the
open-mouthed admiration of the British captains, who saw their prize
double like a hare and slip through their fingers at the moment when
capture was sure. Under any ordinary condition of wind and weather,
with an open sea, the schooner, if only she could get to windward,
laughed at a frigate.
As the sailing rather than the fighting qualities of the privateer
were the chief object of her construction, those were the points best
worth recording; but the newspapers of the time were so much absorbed
in proving that Americans could fight, as to cause almost total neglect
of the more important question whether Americans could sail better than
their rivals. All great nations had fought, and at one time or another
every great nation in Europe had been victorious over every other; but
no people, in the course of a thousand years of rivalry on the ocean,
had invented or had known how to sail a Yankee schooner. Whether ship,
brig, schooner, or sloop, the American vessel was believed to outsail
any other craft on the ocean, and the proof of this superiority was
incumbent on the Americans to furnish. They neglected to do so. No
clear evidence was ever recorded of the precise capacities of their
favorite vessels. Neither the lines of the hull, the dimensions of the
spars, the rates of sailing by the log in different weather, the points
of sailing,--nothing precise was ever set down.
Of the superiority no doubts could be entertained. The best proof of
the American claim was the British admission. Hardly an English writer
on marine affairs--whether in newspapers, histories, or novels--failed
to make some allusion to the beauty and speed of American vessels. The
naval literature of Great Britain from 1812 to 1860 was full of such
material. The praise of the invention was still commonly accompanied
by some expression of dislike for the inventor, but even in that
respect a marked change followed the experiences of 1812–1814. Among
the Englishmen living on the island of Jamaica, and familiar with the
course of events in the West Indies from 1806 to 1817, was one Michael
Scott, born in Glasgow in 1789, and in the prime of his youth at the
time of the American war. In the year 1829, at the age of forty, he
began the publication in “Blackwood’s Magazine” of a series of sketches
which rapidly became popular as “Tom Cringle’s Log.” Scott was the
best narrator and probably the best informed man who wrote on the West
Indies at that period; and his frequent allusions to the United States
and the war threw more light on the social side of history than could
be obtained from all official sources ever printed.
“I don’t like Americans,” Scott said; “I never did and never shall
like them. I have seldom met an American gentleman in the large and
complete sense of the term. I have no wish to eat with them, drink
with them, deal with or consort with them in any way; but let me
tell the whole truth,--_nor fight_ with them, were it not for the
laurels to be acquired by overcoming an enemy so brave, determined,
and alert, and every way so worthy of one’s steel as they have
always proved.”
The Americans did not fight the War of 1812 in order to make themselves
loved. According to Scott’s testimony they gained the object for
which they did fight. “In gunnery and small-arm practice we were
as thoroughly weathered on by the Americans during the war as we
overtopped them in the bull-dog courage with which our boarders handled
those genuine English weapons,--the cutlass and the pike.” Superiority
in the intellectual branches of warfare was conceded to the Americans;
but even in regard to physical qualities, the British were not inclined
to boast.
“In the field,” said Scott, “or grappling in mortal combat on the
blood-slippery quarter-deck of an enemy’s vessel, a British soldier
or sailor is the bravest of the brave. No soldier or sailor of any
other country, saving and excepting those damned Yankees, can stand
against them.”
Had English society known so much of Americans in 1807, war would have
been unnecessary.
Yet neither equality in physical courage nor superiority in the higher
branches of gunnery and small-arms was the chief success of Americans
in the war. Beyond question the schooner was the most conclusive
triumph. Readers of Michael Scott could not forget the best of his
sketches,--the escape of the little American schooner “Wave” from two
British cruisers, by running to windward under the broadside of a
man-of-war. With keen appreciation Scott detailed every motion of the
vessels, and dwelt with peculiar emphasis on the apparent desperation
of the attempt. Again and again the thirty-two-pound shot, as he
described the scene, tore through the slight vessel as the two crafts
raced through the heavy seas within musket-shot of one another, until
at last the firing from the corvette ceased. “The breeze had taken
off, and the ‘Wave,’ resuming her superiority in light winds, had
escaped.” Yet this was not the most significant part of “Tom Cringle’s”
experience. The “Wave,” being afterward captured at anchor, was taken
into the royal service and fitted as a ship-of-war. Cringle was ordered
by the vice-admiral to command her, and as she came to report he took a
look at her:--
“When I had last seen her she was a most beautiful little craft,
both in hull and rigging, as ever delighted the eye of a sailor;
but the dock-yard riggers and carpenters had fairly bedevilled her,
at least so far as appearances went. First they had replaced the
light rail on her gunwale by heavy solid bulwarks four feet high,
surmounted by hammock nettings at least another foot; so that the
symmetrical little vessel that formerly floated on the foam light
as a sea-gull now looked like a clumsy, dish-shaped Dutch dogger.
Her long, slender wands of masts which used to swing about as if
there were neither shrouds nor stays to support them were now as
taut and stiff as church-steeples, with four heavy shrouds of a
side, and stays and back-stays, and the Devil knows what all.”
“If them heave-‘emtaughts at the yard have not taken the speed out of
the little beauty I am a Dutchman” was the natural comment,--as obvious
as it was sound.
The reports of privateer captains to their owners were rarely
published, and the logs were never printed or deposited in any public
office. Occasionally, in the case of a battle or the loss of guns or
spars or cargo in a close pursuit, the privateer captain described the
causes of his loss in a letter which found its way into print; and
from such letters some idea could be drawn of the qualities held in
highest regard, both in their vessels and in themselves. The first and
commonest remark was that privateers of any merit never seemed to feel
anxious for their own safety so long as they could get to windward a
couple of gunshots from their enemy. They would risk a broadside in
the process without very great anxiety. They chiefly feared lest they
might be obliged to run before the wind in heavy weather. The little
craft which could turn on itself like a flash and dart away under a
frigate’s guns into the wind’s eye long before the heavy ship could
come about, had little to fear on that point of sailing; but when she
was obliged to run to leeward, the chances were more nearly equal.
Sometimes, especially in light breezes or in a stronger wind, by
throwing guns and weighty articles overboard privateers could escape;
but in heavy weather the ship-of-war could commonly outcarry them, and
more often could drive them on a coast or into the clutches of some
other man-of-war.
Of being forced to fly to leeward almost every privateer could tell
interesting stories. A fair example of such tales was an adventure
of Captain George Coggeshall, who afterward compiled, chiefly from
newspapers, an account of the privateers, among which he preserved
a few stories that would otherwise have been lost.[430] Coggeshall
commanded a two-hundred-ton schooner, the “David Porter,” in which
he made the run to France with a cargo and a letter-of-marque. The
schooner was at Bordeaux in March, 1814, when Wellington’s army
approached. Afraid of seizure by the British if he remained at
Bordeaux, Coggeshall sailed from Bordeaux for La Rochelle with a light
wind from the eastward, when at daylight March 15, 1814, he found
a large ship about two miles to windward. Coggeshall tried to draw
his enemy down to leeward, but only lost ground until the ship was
not more than two gunshots away. The schooner could then not run to
windward without taking the enemy’s fire within pistol-shot, and dared
not return to Bordeaux. Nothing remained but to run before the wind.
Coggeshall got out his square-sail and studding-sails ready to set,
and when everything was prepared he changed his course and bore off
suddenly, gaining a mile in the six or eight minutes lost by the ship
in spreading her studding-sails. He then started his water-casks, threw
out ballast, and drew away from his pursuer, till in a few hours the
ship became a speck on the horizon.
Apparently a similar but narrower escape was made by Captain Champlin
of the “Warrior,” a famous privateer-brig of four hundred and thirty
tons, mounting twenty-one guns and carrying one hundred and fifty
men.[431] Standing for the harbor of Fayal, Dec. 15, 1814, he was seen
by a British man-of-war lying there at anchor. The enemy slipped her
cables and made sail in chase. The weather was very fresh and squally,
and at eight o’clock in the evening the ship was only three miles
distant. After a run of about sixty miles, the man-of-war came within
grape-shot distance and opened fire from her two bow-guns. Champlin
luffed a little, got his long pivot-gun to bear, and ran out his
starboard guns as though to fight, which caused the ship to shorten
sail for battle. Then Champlin at two o’clock in the morning threw
overboard eleven guns, and escaped. The British ship was in sight the
next morning, but did not pursue farther.
Often the privateers were obliged to throw everything overboard at the
risk of capsizing, or escaped capture only by means of their sweeps. In
1813 Champlin commanded the “General Armstrong,” a brig of two hundred
and forty-six tons and one hundred and forty men. Off Surinam, March
11, 1813, he fell in with the British sloop-of-war “Coquette,” which
he mistook for a letter-of-marque, and approached with the intention
of boarding. Having come within pistol-shot and fired his broadsides,
he discovered his error. The wind was light, the two vessels had no
headway, and for three quarters of an hour, if Champlin’s account
could be believed, he lay within pistol-shot of the man-of-war. He
was struck by a musket-ball in the left shoulder; six of his crew
were killed and fourteen wounded; his rigging was cut to pieces; his
foremast and bowsprit injured, and several shots entered the brig
between wind and water, causing her to leak; but at last he succeeded
in making sail forward, and with the aid of his sweeps crept out of
range. The sloop-of-war was unable to cripple or follow him.[432]
Sometimes the very perfection of the privateer led to dangers as great
as though perfection were a fault. Captain Shaler of the “Governor
Tompkins,” a schooner, companion to the “General Armstrong,” chased
three sail Dec. 25, 1812, and on near approach found them to be two
ships and a brig. The larger ship had the appearance of a government
transport; she had boarding-nettings almost up to her tops, but her
ports appeared to be painted, and she seemed prepared for running
away as she fought. Shaler drew nearer, and came to the conclusion
that the ship was too heavy for him; but while his first officer went
forward with the glass to take another look, a sudden squall struck
the schooner without reaching the ship, and in a moment, before the
light sails could be taken in, “and almost before I could turn round,
I was under the guns, not of a transport, but of a large frigate,
and not more than a quarter of a mile from her.” With impudence that
warranted punishment, Shaler fired his little broadside of nine
or twelve pounders into the enemy, who replied with a broadside of
twenty-four-pounders, killing three men, wounding five, and causing an
explosion on deck that threw confusion into the crew; but the broadside
did no serious injury to the rigging. The schooner was then just abaft
the ship’s beam, a quarter of a mile away, holding the same course
and to windward. She could not tack without exposing her stern to a
raking fire, and any failure to come about would have been certain
destruction. Shaler stood on, taking the ship’s fire, on the chance of
outsailing his enemy before a shot could disable the schooner. Side by
side the two vessels raced for half an hour, while twenty-four-pound
shot fell in foam about the schooner, but never struck her, and at
last she drew ahead beyond range. Even then her dangers were not at
an end. A calm followed; the ship put out boats; and only by throwing
deck-lumber and shot overboard, and putting all hands at the sweeps,
did Shaler “get clear of one of the most quarrelsome companions that I
ever met with.”[433]
The capacities of the American privateer could to some extent be
inferred from its mishaps. Notwithstanding speed, skill, and caution,
the privateer was frequently and perhaps usually captured in the end.
The modes of capture were numerous. April 3, 1813, Admiral Warren’s
squadron in the Chesapeake captured by boats, after a sharp action,
the privateer “Dolphin” of Baltimore, which had taken refuge in the
Rappahannock River. April 27 the “Tom” of Baltimore, a schooner of
nearly three hundred tons, carrying fourteen guns, was captured by his
Majesty’s ships “Surveillante” and “Lyra” after a smart chase. Captain
Collier of the “Surveillante” reported: “She is a remarkably fine
vessel of her class, and from her superior sailing has already escaped
from eighteen of his Majesty’s cruisers.” May 11, the “Holkar” of New
York was driven ashore off Rhode Island and destroyed by the “Orpheus”
frigate. May 19, Captain Gordon of the British man-of-war “Ratler,”
in company with the schooner “Bream,” drove ashore and captured the
“Alexander” of Salem, off Kennebunk, “considered the fastest sailing
privateer out of the United States,” according to Captain Gordon’s
report.[434] May 21, Captain Hyde Parker of the frigate “Tenedos,” in
company with the brig “Curlew,” captured the “Enterprise” of Salem,
pierced for eighteen guns. May 23, the “Paul Jones,” of sixteen guns
and one hundred and twenty men, fell in with a frigate in a thick fog
off the coast of Ireland, and being crippled by her fire surrendered.
July 13, Admiral Cockburn captured by boats at Ocracoke Inlet the fine
privateer-brig “Anaconda” of New York, with a smaller letter-of-marque.
July 17, at sea, three British men-of-war, after a chase of four hours,
captured the “Yorktown” of twenty guns and one hundred and forty men.
The schooner “Orders in Council” of New York, carrying sixteen guns
and one hundred and twenty men, was captured during the summer, after a
long chase of five days, by three British cutters that drove her under
the guns of a frigate. The “Matilda,” privateer of eleven guns and one
hundred and four men, was captured off San Salvador by attempting to
board the British letter-of-marque “Lyon” under the impression that she
was the weaker ship.
In these ten instances of large privateers captured or destroyed in
1813, the mode of capture happened to be recorded; and in none of them
was the privateer declared to have been outsailed and caught by any
single British vessel on the open seas. Modes of disaster were many,
and doubtless among the rest a privateer might occasionally be fairly
beaten in speed, but few such cases were recorded, although British
naval officers were quick to mention these unusual victories. Unless
the weather gave to the heavier British vessel-of-war the advantage of
carrying more sail in a rough sea, the privateer was rarely outsailed.
The number of privateers at sea in 1813 was not recorded. The list
of all private armed vessels during the entire war included somewhat
more than five hundred names.[435] Most of these were small craft,
withdrawn after a single cruise. Not two hundred were so large as to
carry crews of fifty men. Nearly two hundred and fifty, or nearly half
the whole number of privateers, fell into British hands. Probably at
no single moment were more than fifty seagoing vessels on the ocean
as privateers, and the number was usually very much less; while the
large privateer-brigs or ships that rivalled sloops-of-war in size were
hardly more numerous than the sloops themselves.
The total number of prizes captured from the British in 1813
exceeded four hundred, four fifths of which were probably captured
by privateers, national cruisers taking only seventy-nine. If the
privateers succeeded in taking three hundred and fifty prizes, the
whole number of privateers could scarcely have exceeded one hundred.
The government cruisers “President,” “Congress,” “Chesapeake,”
“Hornet,” and “Argus” averaged nearly ten prizes apiece. Privateers
averaged much less; but they were ten times as numerous as the
government cruisers, and inflicted four times as much injury.
Such an addition to the naval force of the United States was very
important. Doubtless the privateers contributed more than the regular
navy to bring about a disposition for peace in the British classes most
responsible for the war. The colonial and shipping interests, whose
influence produced the Orders in Council, suffered the chief penalty.
The West India colonies were kept in constant discomfort and starvation
by swarms of semi-piratical craft darting in and out of every channel
among their islands; but the people of England could have borne with
patience the punishment of the West Indies had not the American
cruisers inflicted equally severe retribution nearer home.
Great Britain was blockaded. No one could deny that manifest danger
existed to any merchant-vessel that entered or left British waters.
During the summer the blockade was continuous. Toward the close of
1812 an American named Preble, living in Paris, bought a small vessel,
said to have belonged in turn to the British and French navy, which
he fitted as a privateer-brig, carrying sixteen guns and one hundred
and sixty men. The “True-Blooded Yankee,” commanded by Captain Hailey,
sailed from Brest March 1, 1813, and cruised thirty-seven days on
the coasts of Ireland and Scotland, capturing twenty-seven valuable
vessels; sinking coasters in the very bay of Dublin; landing and taking
possession of an island off the coast of Ireland, and of a town in
Scotland, where she burned seven vessels in the harbor. She returned
safely to Brest, and soon made another cruise. At the same time the
schooner “Fox” of Portsmouth burned or sunk vessel after vessel in
the Irish Sea, as they plied between Liverpool and Cork. In May, the
schooner “Paul Jones” of New York, carrying sixteen guns and one
hundred and twenty men, took or destroyed a dozen vessels off the Irish
coast, until she was herself caught in a fog by the frigate “Leonidas,”
and captured May 23 after a chase in which five of her crew were
wounded.
While these vessels were thus engaged, the brig “Rattlesnake” of
Philadelphia, carrying sixteen guns and one hundred and twenty men, and
the brig “Scourge” of New York, carrying nine guns and one hundred and
ten men, crossed the ocean and cruised all the year in the northern
seas off the coasts of Scotland and Norway, capturing some forty
British vessels, and costing the British merchants and ship-owners
losses to the amount of at least two million dollars. In July the
“Scourge” fell in with Commodore Rodgers in the “President,” and the
two vessels remained several days in company off the North Cape, while
the British admiralty sent three or four squadrons in search of them
without success. July 19, after Rodgers had been nearly a month in
British waters, one of these squadrons drove him away, and he then made
a circuit round Ireland before he turned homeward. At the same time,
from July 14 to August 14, the “Argus” was destroying vessels in the
British Channel at the rate of nearly one a day. After the capture of
the “Argus,” August 14, the “Grand Turk” of Salem, a brig carrying
sixteen guns and one hundred and five men, cruised for twenty days
in the mouth of the British Channel without being disturbed. Besides
these vessels, others dashed into British waters from time to time as
they sailed forward and back across the ocean in the track of British
commerce.
No one disputed that the privateers were a very important branch of
the American navy; but they suffered under serious drawbacks, which
left doubtful the balance of merits and defects. Perhaps their chief
advantage compared with government vessels was their lightness,--a
quality which no government would have carried to the same extent. The
long-range pivot-gun was another invention of the privateer, peculiarly
successful and easily adapted for government vessels. In other
respects, the same number or even half the number of sloops-of-war
would have probably inflicted greater injury at less cost. The “Argus”
showed how this result could have been attained. The privateer’s first
object was to save prizes; and in the effort to send captured vessels
into port the privateer lost a large proportion by recapture. Down to
the moment when Admiral Warren established his blockade of the American
coast from New York southward, most of the prizes got to port. After
that time the New England ports alone offered reasonable chance of
safety, and privateering received a check.[436] During the war about
twenty-five hundred vessels all told were captured from the British.
Many were destroyed; many released as cartels; and of the remainder not
less than seven hundred and fifty, probably one half the number sent
to port, were recaptured by the British navy. Most of these were the
prizes of privateers, and would have been destroyed had they been taken
by government vessels. They were usually the most valuable prizes, so
that the injury that might have been inflicted on British commerce was
diminished nearly one half by the system which encouraged private war
as a money-making speculation.
Another objection was equally serious. Like all gambling ventures,
privateering was not profitable. In the list of five hundred privateers
furnished by the Navy Department,[437] three hundred were recorded as
having never made a prize. Of the remainder, few made their expenses.
One of the most successful cruises of the war was that of Joshua Barney
on the Baltimore schooner “Rossie” at the outbreak of hostilities, when
every prize reached port. Barney sent in prizes supposed to be worth
fifteen hundred thousand dollars; but after paying charges and duties
and selling the goods, he found that the profits were not sufficient
to counterbalance the discomforts, and he refused to repeat the
experiment. His experience was common. As early as November, 1812, the
owners of twenty-four New York privateers sent to Congress a memorial
declaring that the profits of private naval war were by no means equal
to the hazards, and that the spirit of privateering stood in danger of
extinction unless the government would consent in some manner to grant
a bounty for the capture or destruction of the enemy’s property.
If private enterprise was to fail at the critical moment, and if the
government must supply the deficiency, the government would have done
better to undertake the whole task. In effect, the government in the
end did so. The merchants asked chiefly for a reduction of duties
on prize-goods. Gallatin pointed out the serious objections to such
legislation, and the little probability that the measure would increase
the profits of privateering or the number of privateers. The actual
privateers, he said, were more than enough for the food offered by the
enemy’s trade, and privateering, like every other form of gambling,
would always continue to attract more adventurers than it could
support.[438]
Congress for the time followed Gallatin’s advice, and did nothing; but
in the summer session of 1813, after Gallatin’s departure for Europe,
the privateer owners renewed their appeal, and the acting Secretary of
the Treasury, Jones, wrote to the chairman of the Naval Committee July
21, 1813,[439]--
“The fact is that ... privateering is nearly at an end; and from
the best observation I have been enabled to make, it is more from
the deficiency of remuneration in the net proceeds of their prizes
than from the vigilance and success of the enemy in recapturing.”
In deference to Jones’s opinion, Congress passed an Act, approved Aug.
2, 1813, reducing one third the duties on prize-goods. Another Act,
approved August 3, granted a bounty of twenty-five dollars for every
prisoner captured and delivered to a United States agent by a private
armed vessel. A third Act, approved August 2, authorized the Secretary
of the Navy to place on the pension list any privateersman who should
be wounded or disabled in the line of his duty.
These complaints and palliations tended to show that the privateer cost
the public more than the equivalent government vessel would have cost.
If instead of five hundred privateers of all sizes and efficiency, the
government had kept twenty sloops-of-war constantly at sea destroying
the enemy’s commerce, the result would have been about the same as
far as concerned injury to the enemy, while in another respect the
government would have escaped one of its chief difficulties. Nothing
injured the navy so much as privateering. Seamen commonly preferred
the harder but more profitable and shorter cruise in a privateer,
where fighting was not expected or wished, to the strict discipline
and murderous battles of government ships, where wages were low and
prize-money scarce. Of all towns in the United States, Marblehead was
probably the most devoted to the sea; but of nine hundred men from
Marblehead who took part in the war, fifty-seven served as soldiers,
one hundred and twenty entered the navy, while seven hundred and
twenty-six went as privateersmen.[440] Only after much delay and
difficulty could the frigates obtain crews. The “Constitution” was
nearly lost by this cause at the beginning of the war; and the loss of
the “Chesapeake” was supposed to be chiefly due to the determination
of the old crew to quit the government service for that of the
privateers.
Such drawbacks raised reasonable doubts as to the balance of advantages
and disadvantages offered by the privateer system. Perhaps more
careful inquiry might show that, valuable as the privateers were, the
government would have done better to retain all military and naval
functions in its own hands, and to cover the seas with small cruisers
capable of pursuing a system of thorough destruction against the
shipping and colonial interests of England.