Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 2

by A. T. Mahan

The movement of coasting vessels, technically called "enrolled," is not so clearly indicated by the returns, because all the trips of each were covered by one license annually renewed. A licensed coaster might make several voyages, or she might make none. In 1813 the figures show that, of 471,109 enrolled tonnage, 252,440 obtained licenses. In 1814 there is, as in the registered shipping, a diminution of the total to 466,159, of which a still smaller proportion, 189,662, took out the annual license. In 1816 the enrolment was 522,165, the licensing 414,594. In the fishing craft, a class by themselves, the employment rose from 16,453 in 1814 to 48,147 in 1816;[214] the difference doubtless being attributable chiefly to the reopening of the cod fishing on the banks of Newfoundland, necessarily closed to the American flag by the maritime hostilities.

The influence of the peace upon prices is likewise a matter too interesting to a correct appreciation of effects to be wholly passed over. In considering it, the quotations before the receipt of the news doubtless represent conditions more correctly than do the immediate changes. The official tidings of peace reached New York, February 11, 1815. The Evening Post, in its number of February 14, says, "We give to-day one of the effects of the prospect of peace, even before ratification. Our markets of every kind experienced a sudden, and to many a shocking, change. Sugar, for instance, fell from $26 per hundredweight to $12.50. Tea, which sold on Saturday at $2.25, on Monday was purchased at a $1.00. Specie, which had got up to the enormous rate of 22 per cent premium, dropped down to 2. The article of tin, in particular, fell from the height of $80 the box to $25. Six per cents rose from 76 to 88; ten per cents and Treasury notes from 92 to 98. Bank stock generally rose from five to ten per cent." In Philadelphia, flour which sold at $7.50 the barrel on Saturday had risen to $10 on Monday; a testimony that not only foreign export but home supply to the eastward was to be renewed. The fall in foreign products, due to freedom of import, was naturally accompanied by a rise in domestic produce, to which an open outlet with proportionate increase of demand was now afforded. In Philadelphia the exchange on Boston reflected these conditions; falling from twenty-five per cent to thirteen.

It may then be concluded that there is little exaggeration in the words used by "a distinguished naval officer" of the day, in a letter contributed to Niles' Register, in its issue of June 17, 1815. "No sooner had the enemy blockaded our harbors, and extended his line of cruisers from Maine to Georgia, than both foreign and domestic commerce came at once to be reduced to a deplorable state of stagnation; producing in its consequences the utter ruin of many respectable merchants, as well as of a great multitude besides, connected with them in their mercantile pursuits. But these were not the only consequences. The regular supply of foreign commodities being thereby cut off, many articles, now become necessaries of life, were raised to an exorbitant price, and bore much upon the finances of the citizen, whose family could not comfortably exist without them. Add to this, as most of the money loaned to the Government for the purposes of the war came from the pockets of merchants, they were rendered incapable of continuing these disbursements in consequence of this interruption to their trade; whence the cause of that impending bankruptcy with which the Government was at one time threatened.... At a critical period of the war [April, 1814] Congress found it necessary to remove all restrictions upon commerce, both foreign and domestic. It is a lamentable fact, however, that the adventurous merchant found no alleviation from these indulgences, his vessels being uniformly prevented by a strong blockading force, not only from going out, but from coming into port, at the most imminent risk of capture. The risk did not stop here; for the islands and ports most frequented by American vessels being known to the enemy, he was enabled from his abundance of means to intercept them there also. The coasting trade, that most valuable appendage to an extensive mercantile establishment in the United States, was entirely annihilated. The southern and northern sections of the Union were unable to exchange their commodities, except upon a contracted scale through the medium of land carriage, and then only at a great loss; so that, upon the whole, nothing in a national point of view appeared to be more loudly called for by men of all parties than a naval force adequate to the protection of our commerce, and the raising of the blockade of our coast."

Such was the experience which sums up the forgotten bitter truth, concerning a war which has left in the United States a prevalent impression of distinguished success, because of a few brilliant naval actions and the closing battle of New Orleans. The lesson to be deduced is not that the country at that time should have sought to maintain a navy approaching equality to the British. In the state of national population and revenue, it was no more possible to attempt this than that it would be expedient to do it now, under the present immense development of resources and available wealth. What had been possible during the decade preceding the war,—had the nation so willed,—was to place the navy on such a footing, in numbers and constitution, as would have made persistence in the course Great Britain was following impolitic to the verge of madness, because it would add to her war embarrassments the activity of an imposing maritime enemy, at the threshold of her most valuable markets,—the West Indies,—three thousand miles away from her own shores and from the seat of her principal and necessary warfare. The United States could not have encountered Great Britain single-handed—true; but there was not then the slightest prospect of her having to do so. The injuries of which she complained were incidental to a state of European war; inconceivable and impossible apart from it. She was therefore assured of the support of most powerful allies, occupying the attention of the British navy and draining the resources of the British empire. This condition of things was notorious, as was the fact that, despite the disappointment of Trafalgar, Napoleon was sedulously restoring the numbers of a navy, to the restraining of which his enemy was barely competent.

The anxiety caused to the British Admiralty by the operations of the small American squadrons in the autumn of 1812 has already been depicted in quotations from its despatches to Warren.[215] Three or four divisions, each containing one to two ships of the line, were kept on the go, following a general round in successive relief, but together amounting to five or six battle ships—to use the modern term—with proportionate cruisers. It was not possible to diminish this total by concentrating them, for the essence of the scheme, and the necessity which dictated it, was to cover a wide sweep of ocean, and to protect several maritime strategic points through which the streams of commerce, controlled by well-known conditions, passed, intersected, or converged. So also the Admiralty signified its wish that one ship of the line should form the backbone of the blockade before each of the American harbors. For this purpose Warren's fleet was raised to a number stated by the Admiralty's letter to him of January 9, 1813, to be "upwards of ten of the line, exclusive of the six sail of the line appropriated to the protection of the West India convoys." These numbers were additional to detachments which, outside of his command, were patrolling the eastern Atlantic, about the equator, and from the Cape Verde Islands to the Azores, as mentioned in another letter of February 10. "In all, therefore, about twenty sail of the line were employed on account of American hostilities; and this, it will be noticed, was after Napoleon's Russian disaster was fully known in England. It has not been without interfering for the moment with other very important services that my Lords have been able to send you this re-enforcement, and they most anxiously hope that the vigorous and successful use you will make of it will enable you shortly to return some of the line of battle ships to England, which, if the heavy American frigates should be taken or destroyed, you will immediately do, retaining four line of battle ships." Attention should fasten upon the importance here attached by the British Admiralty to the bigger ships; for it is well to learn of the enemy, and to appreciate that it was not solely light cruisers and privateers, but chiefly the heavy vessels, that counted in the estimate of experienced British naval officers. The facts are little understood in the United States, and consequently are almost always misrepresented.

The reasons for this abundance of force are evident. As regards commerce Great Britain was on the defensive; and the defensive cannot tell upon which of many exposed points a blow may fall. Dissemination of effort, however modified by strategic ingenuity, is thus to a certain extent imposed. If an American division might strike British trade on the equator between 20° and 30° west longitude, and also in the neighborhood of the Cape Verdes and of the Azores, preparation in some form to protect all those points was necessary, and they are too wide apart for this to be effected by mere concentration. So the blockade of the United States harbors. There might be in New York no American frigates, but if a division escaped from Boston it was possible it might come upon the New York blockade in superior force, if adequate numbers were not constantly kept there. The British commercial blockade, though offensive in essence, had also its defensive side, which compelled a certain dispersion of force, in order to be in local sufficiency in several quarters.

These several dispersed assemblages of British ships of war constituted the totality of naval effort imposed upon Great Britain by "the fourteen sail of vessels of all descriptions"[216] which composed the United States navy. It would not in the least have been necessary had these been sloops of war—were they fourteen or forty. The weight of the burden was the heavy frigates, two of which together were more than a match for three of the same nominal class—the 38-gun frigate—which was the most numerous and efficient element in the British cruising force. The American forty-four was unknown to British experience, and could be met only by ships of the line. Add to this consideration the remoteness of the American shore, and its dangerous proximity to very vital British interests, and there are found the elements of the difficult problem presented to the Admiralty by the combination of American force—such as it was—with American advantage of position for dealing a severe blow to British welfare at the period, 1805-1812, when the empire was in the height of its unsupported and almost desperate struggle with Napoleon; when Prussia was chained, Austria paralyzed, and Russia in strict bonds of alliance—personal and political—with France.

If conditions were thus menacing, as we know them to to have been in 1812, when war was declared, and the invasion of Russia just beginning, when the United States navy was "fourteen pendants," what would they not have been in 1807, had the nation possessed even one half of the twenty ships of the line which Gouverneur Morris, a shrewd financier, estimated fifteen years before were within her competency? While entirely convinced of the illegality of the British measures, and feeling keenly—as what American even now cannot but feel?—the humiliation and outrage to which his country was at that period subjected, the writer has always recognized the stringent compulsion under which Great Britain lay, and the military wisdom, in his opinion, of the belligerent measures adopted by her to sustain her strength through that unparalleled struggle; while in the matter of impressment, it is impossible to deny—as was urged by Representative Gaston of North Carolina and Gouverneur Morris—that her claim to the service of her native seamen was consonant to the ideas of the time, as well as of utmost importance to her in that hour of dire need. Nevertheless, submission by America should have been impossible; and would have been avoidable if for the fourteen pendants there had been a dozen sail of the line, and frigates to match. To an adequate weighing of conditions there will be indeed resentment for impressment and the other mortifications; but it is drowned in wrath over the humiliating impotence of an administration which, owing to preconceived notions as to peace, made such endurance necessary. It is not always ignominious to suffer ignominy; but it always is so to deserve it.

President Washington, in his last annual message, December 7, 1796, defined the situation then confronting the United States, and indicated its appropriate remedy, in the calm and forcible terms which characterized all his perceptions. "It is in our own experience, that the most sincere neutrality is not a sufficient guard against the depredations of nations at war. To secure respect for a neutral flag requires a naval force, organized and ready, to vindicate it from insult or aggression. This may even prevent the necessity of going to war, by discouraging belligerent powers from committing such violations of the rights of the neutral party as may, first or last, leave no other option" [than war]. The last sentence is that of the statesman and soldier, who accurately appreciates the true office and sphere of arms in international relations. His successor, John Adams, yearly renewed his recommendation for the development of the navy; although, not being a military man, he seems to have looked rather exclusively on the defensive aspect, and not to have realized that possible enemies are more deterred by the fear of offensive action against themselves than by recognition of a defensive force which awaits attack at an enemy's pleasure. Moreover, in his administration, it was not Great Britain, but France, that was most actively engaged in violating the neutral rights of American shipping, and French commercial interests then presented nothing upon which retaliation could take effect. The American problem then was purely defensive,—to destroy the armed ships engaged in molesting the national commerce.

President Jefferson, whose influence was paramount with the dominant party which remained in power from his inauguration in 1801 to the war, based his policy upon the conviction, expressed in his inaugural, that this "was the only government where every man would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern;" and that "a well-disciplined militia is our best reliance for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them." In pursuance of these fundamental principles, it was doubtless logical to recommend in his first annual message that, "beyond the small force which will probably be wanted for actual service in the Mediterranean [against the Barbary pirates], whatever annual sum you may think proper to appropriate to naval preparations would perhaps be better employed in providing those articles which may be kept without waste or consumption, and be in readiness when any exigence calls them into use. Progress has been made in providing materials for seventy-four gun ships;" but this commended readiness issued in not laying their keels till after the war began.