CHAPTER XIII.
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.