PERRY RECEIVING THE SURRENDER OF THE BRITISH COMMANDERS ABOARD THE "LAWRENCE"
From the painting by W.J. Aylward
Courtesy, Harper's Magazine
Copyright, Harper & Brothers
For a hundred years experts have been trying to find out just why the United States was so successful in the naval war. The British newspapers of the day tried to prove that it was because they called a vessel a frigate when it was really bigger and stronger than the British frigate. That did not affect the captain of the Guerriere when he accepted battle with the Constitution: he evidently thought that he had size and power enough to capture his adversary. The Americans appear to have had heavier guns, better training in handling the guns, better marksmanship, to have been quicker and smarter.
It was the privateers that were in the long run most effective. The London Times complained toward the end of 1814 that "there are privateers off this harbor which plunder every vessel coming in or going out, notwithstanding we have three line of battle, six frigates, and four sloops here." The Morning Chronicle complained that a great part of the coast of Ireland had "been for above a month under the unresisted dominion of a few petty 'fly-by-nights' from the blockaded ports of the United States—a grievance equally intolerable and disgraceful." The Annual Register thought it a mortifying reflection that, notwithstanding a navy of a thousand ships, "it was not safe for a vessel to sail without convoy from one part of the English or Irish Channel to another."
THE NIAGARA BREAKS THE ENGLISH LINE
When Perry's flagship, the "Lawrence," was riddled by the enemy, he transferred himself in a small boat to the "Niagara." This ship broke the British line, and then the battle was won. From a painting by Carlton T. Chapman
From "Naval Actions of The War of 1812," by James Barnes.
Copyright 1896, by Harper & Brothers
In March, 1915, a British squadron captured the German frigate Dresden in the neutral Chilean waters of the Island of Juan Fernandez. A similar episode occurred in 1814, when the United States ship Essex was cornered and destroyed by two British vessels in the harbor of Valparaiso. The American privateer General Armstrong was also cut out and destroyed by the British under the guns of the Portuguese fort at Fayal in the Azores.
EFFECT ON THE AMERICANS
On the face of it there was not much cause for congratulation in a war in which the United States trebled its national debt and lost 30,000 men and 1,500 merchant ships, without gaining any territory and without securing any promise at the end of the war that the disturbance of neutral trade and the impressment of American seamen would not begin again.
