A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Naval War of 1812

T >> Theodore Roosevelt >> The Naval War of 1812






Chapter II


_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.

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