EARLY MARINE “WIRELESS.”
BY EDGAR STANTON MACLAY.
Not the least valuable of the many practical lessons taught by the cruise of the Atlantic battleship fleet around the world was the demonstration of the possibility of following from Washington almost every day’s move of the great white ships from their departure from Hampton Roads to their return, by means of wireless telegraphy and other methods of transmitting information. It is a cardinal point in the strategy of naval warfare to be thoroughly advised, first, of the location, disposition and conditions of your own ships and, second, the same of your adversary’s.
Some idea of the stupendous advances made in this most important detail may be gained by a comparison with the “wireless” marine telegraphy of a century ago when, although electricity had not been harnessed to the news bureau, ingenious methods of maintaining a “marine telegraph” were operative which, in some instances, were most surprising in their results.
At the outbreak of the War of 1812 our government planned a crushing blow at British commerce. A fleet of 100 English merchantmen from Jamaica was expected to pass close to the North American coast and the most formidable squadron we could then assemble, consisting of the frigates President, United States and Congress, with the sloop and brig Hornet and Argus, under the command of Captain John Rodgers, was held in New York ready to sail. As soon as war was declared, June 18, 1812, a courier set out from Washington and in three days arrived in New York—quick work for those days, but the information now could be flashed in a few seconds.
One hour after receiving the news Rodgers got under way and on the morning of the second day out spoke an American vessel and learned from her master that he had seen the Jamaica fleet only two days before. Rodgers made sail in the direction indicated, but he was drawn away in a futile chase after the British frigate Belvidera. Afterward, however, he resumed his pursuit of the merchant fleet and on July 1 he detected “quantities of cocoanut shells and orange peels” in the water, which showed that he was in the wake of the fleet. He followed this sea-trail several days and was rapidly overtaking the chase, when he lost it in the fogs on the Newfoundland Banks.
Floating bottles, pieces of wreckage, cask-heads and other ship debris were the “clicks” of the first “marine wireless” that assisted our early mariners in discovering the whereabouts of friend or foe on the high seas. And even a marine “postoffice” was a service recognized early in the 19th century—many years before it came into general use on land. When our 32-gun frigate Essex was making her memorable cruise in the Pacific Ocean, 1813–1814, Captain David Porter records that he stopped at Charles Island of the Galapagos in the southern Pacific Ocean to examine the “postoffice”—a box nailed to a tree in which whalers and other craft deposited records of their cruises and intended movements.
That these ocean “postoffices” were sometimes used for “misinformation” is shown in the case of this same Captain Porter. One of these “postal stations” in the Atlantic was the penal island of Fernando de Noronha, off the extreme eastern limit of Brazil. This was a point usually touched by vessels bound for the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. While Porter was cruising in the south Atlantic under orders to join the Constitution and Hornet, he hove-to off this port on December 14, 1812, and sending a boat ashore learned that there was a letter there addressed to “Sir James Yeo, of the British 32-gun frigate Southampton.” He also learned that only the week before the English 44-gun frigate “Acasta and the 20-gun sloop of war Morgiana” had stopped at that port and had sailed for Rio de Janeiro, leaving a letter addressed to “Sir James Yeo.”
Before sailing from the United States Porter had been instructed to pose as Sir James Yeo and was to join the Constitution and Hornet, which two vessels were to pass as the Acasta and Morgiana, off Cape Frio, Brazil. This was done to deceive the enemy. When Porter learned that there was a letter at Fernando de Noronha addressed to “Sir James Yeo,” he at once sent a present of porter and cheese to the governor of the island and received the coveted letter. It was found to contain the usual references of a voyage by a British commander, but some “key words” induced Porter to hold the letter to the flame of a candle, when the following instructions, written in sympathetic ink, became legible: “I am bound off Bahia, thence off Cape Frio, where I intend to cruise until the 1st of January. Go off Cape Frio, to the northward of Rio de Janeiro, and keep a lookout for me. Your friend.”
Captain Porter did as ordered, but on December 29 the Constitution captured, after a hard fight, the British frigate Java, and soon afterward the Hornet sank the English sloop of war Peacock. This left the Essex free to choose her own course and the result was her memorable cruise of two years in the Pacific.
But the most remarkable instance of early marine wireless was that of the chase after the Constitution from Boston, across the Atlantic, by a powerful British squadron, which, on March 10, 1815, cornered Old Ironsides in Port Praya, near the extreme western coast of Africa, on the very day she entered that harbor and just seventy-six days after the hostile vessels had sailed from the blockade of the New England port.
For more than eight months British cruisers had been holding the dreaded Constitution—then commanded by Captain Charles Stewart—in the Hub, but, late in December, 1814, she gave them the slip and once again was in blue water. Running down to Bermuda, where he captured the merchant ship Lord Nelson, Stewart stood across the Atlantic to the Madeiras and then cruised for several days within sight of the Rock of Lisbon. Shaping her course southward again the Constitution, on February 20, 1815, after a brilliant fight, captured the British cruisers Cyane and Levant and with his two prizes entered Port Praya on the morning of March 10.
Soon after the Constitution made her escape from Boston, a terrific snow storm, lasting several days, compelled the English blockading squadron to take refuge in Cape Cod Bay. On December 22, while the British officers were making themselves as comfortable as they could in the bitter cold, the English 18-gun brig sloop Arab, Captain Henry Jane, arrived with the startling information that the Constitution had escaped. At once there was a hurrying and scurrying for immediate pursuit. Provisions, bought at an exorbitant price from the canny landfolk, were hurried aboard and every preparation was made for a chase of indefinite length.
But in what direction were they to pursue? Absolutely nothing is recorded in the log of the British flagship as to what course the Constitution had taken. Here nautical sagacity, aided by the “wireless telegraphy” then so remarkably in use on the high seas, came to the aid of the British senior officer of the blockading force—Sir George Collier, of the 50-gun frigate Leander. Sir George sagely conjectured that the Flying Yankee would most likely take a southern course so as to escape the bitterly cold winter of New England. In those days there were no means for heating the cabins, wardroom, steerage or berth decks of ships, so a prolonged stay in the higher latitudes was a problem to be seriously considered. Selecting the 50-gun frigate Newcastle, Captain Lord George Stuart, and the 40-gun frigate Acasta, Captain Kerr, to accompany him, Sir George, on December 24th, made sail in a blind chase southward.
It seems that on the night of December 21st the famous American privateer, Prince de Neuchâtel, also escaped from Boston and made the same course the Constitution had taken. When only a day or so out she ran into the same storm that drove the English blockading ships into Cape Cod Bay.
On the morning of December 28, just as the gale was abating and only four days after the British squadron sailed, Sir George overtook the Prince de Neuchâtel and captured her; and from some of the Englishmen who were aboard the privateer learned somewhat of the proposed itinerary of the Constitution. With this first direct trace of his game, the British commander shaped his course across the Atlantic for the coast of Spain.
How eager the English were to capture the Constitution, above all other American frigates, may be seen in the record of a sailor who was in the Prince de Neuchâtel at the time. He says that after being taken aboard the Leander as a prisoner he noticed a large placard nailed to her mainmast, which read as follows:
REWARD.
“A reward of One Hundred pounds sterling to the man who shall first descry the American frigate Constitution, provided she can be brought to, and a smaller reward should they not be enabled to come up with her.”
This same sailor writes: “Every one [in the Leander] was eager in his inquiries about this far-famed frigate and most of the men appeared anxious to fall in with her, she being a constant theme of conversation, speculation and curiosity. There were, however, two seamen and a marine—one of whom had had his shin sadly shattered from one of her grape-shot—who were in the frigate Java when she was captured. These I have often heard say, in return to their shipmates’ boastings: ‘If you had seen as much of the Constitution as we have, you would give her a wide berth, for she throws her shot almighty careless, fires quick, aims low and is, altogether, an ugly customer.’”
Continuing on his trail of the much-coveted Yankee frigate, Sir George, on January 4, 1815,—seven days after sailing—while off the Western Isles, received another “wireless click” when he picked up a prize brig belonging to the American privateer Perry and from her master learned that the Perry had spoken the Constitution only a few days before, on a course that would indicate that she was making for the coast of Spain. As a matter of fact, this powerful British squadron was at that moment only a few hours’ sail from the Constitution.
Touching at the port of Fayal, January 13th, 1815, Sir George’s chase after Old Ironsides nearly terminated in disaster. A record left by one of the American prisoners in the Leander says: “We ran in with a southwest wind that had freshened to a stiff breeze till coming under the lee of the Peak of Pico, opposite to Fayal. This aided a little in breaking the wind and the heavy swell which came rolling in from the open sea beyond. Immediately to leeward was a rocky, perpendicular bluff of three hundred feet in height, which the sea was breaking against with the greatest fury.
“I had taken my perch upon the booms so as to have a chance of clearly seeing the working of the frigate, as well as the different objects of curiosity within my range.... The anchor was let go and the cable spun out to its entire length with the most fearful swiftness. But when all was out the frigate still went, stern-on, toward the bluff, as though the anchor was yet at the cathead. When she had drifted so as to be without the shelter of the Peak and exposed to the wind and heavy swell, both driving her on to inevitable destruction, unless suddenly checked in her course, none was so blind as not to see the peril, the almost instant annihilation with which the frigate was threatened, and in a twinkling it was known that the anchor had not taken hold, but was dragging.
“What means were adopted for the safety of the ship I know not, for my curiosity had full employment in following the old commodore [Sir George Collier] about the deck in his mad ravings. I have read and heard much of the coolness, intrepidity and readiness of the English naval officers in all sudden cases of emergency and danger; and this commodore was one of the oldest in commission and a staunch veteran in the service. He had seen long service, fought many a fight, been slashed and cut to disfiguration—as his numerous scars plainly told—had had one of his legs broken at three different places, at three separate periods between the hip and knee, each setting worse than the last, making his leg crooked, more crooked, most crooked.
“When he saw that the frigate was gathering sternway toward the bluff, he raved, stormed and swore at the ship, cable, anchor, officers, men, boys, hell and the devil, clinching each oath separately by a whack of his cane at and on everything within his reach. Now he was running toward the wheel at the stern, then furiously driving across the deck to the hawseholes at the bow, tacking first to larboard, then to the starboard side of the ship; yelling at the first lieutenant for not making the anchor hold on, swearing at the anchor for not obeying the lieutenant, damning the cable for not being longer, the water for being so deep, the bottom for lying so low; and, at last, when he had nothing else to crisp with his red-hot blessings, he blasted his own eyes, heart, liver and lights, winding up with a curse upon the prisoners, conveying their souls in a trice to the lower regions without benefit of clergy, for being the cause of all the disasters in store for him and his frigate—henceforth and forever.
“I was as fully sensible of the danger of our situation as any one, but I could not suppress my laughter at the antics which this hero of many wars was cutting about the decks. I have no simile nor comparison for his movements, for, verily, there is none. It was not a hitch-and-go-ahead, nor a half-hitch and side lurch; neither was it a back-and-fill, balance-haul or a bob-and-hop, straddling slide. No more like a cock-and-primed, tip-toe dance than a toe-and-heel, fore-and-after is like a cut-and-thrust, forward-spring, a back-staggering or blinker-wiper. It partook of the whole in about equal parts. In fact, I could liken his run with his crooked leg to nothing but the effort of the crab to walk upright upon a slippery surface, doggedly intent to win the wager of the half-blown terrapin, who, in the same attitude, is being balked in his first trial at the double-shuffle by attempting it in a wig, gown and Wellingtons instead of short-cuts and pumps and going at it with sleeves rolled up as an honest one should.
“At last the second anchor brought her up, and lucky it was that it did, for she had drifted within a few minutes’ distance of the bluff, where the frigate would not have held together five minutes. With the freshened winds and lashing waves throwing the spray mast-high, every soul on board must have been lost, for the water was deep and the first thing the frigate would have struck was the perpendicular cliff—three hundred feet high and of unknown depth below.”
After this narrow escape Sir George transferred his prisoners to the sloop of war Pheasant and, after replenishing his stores, resumed his chase after the Yankee frigate. Just what course was pursued by the commander from this point is not shown in American or British records. It is a fact, however, that the presence of the Constitution in European waters was known in many ocean ports and that several British cruisers were sent out from Lisbon, Gibraltar and other nearby ports to intercept her.
It was, undoubtedly, by means of this “wireless marine telegraphy” that Sir George so shaped his course, after leaving Fayal, that he arrived off Port Praya, March 10, 1815, only a few hours after the Constitution with her two prizes, the Cyane and Levant, had entered that harbor. The miraculous escape of the American frigate from Sir George’s overwhelming force in the offing of Port Praya is a matter of history. It is recorded that he was so chagrined over the extraordinary escape of the Constitution—after he had so successfully followed her, by means of the first “marine wireless,” across the Atlantic—that ten years afterward, on being reminded of the incident, he committed suicide.