Captain Hickey and his crew had been serving together in the same ship for many years before, in the course of which period they had acquired so thorough an acquaintance with one another, that this great trial, instead of loosening the discipline, only augmented its compactness, and thus enabled the commander to bring all his knowledge, and all the resources of his vigorous understanding, to bear at once, with such admirable effect, upon the difficulties by which he was surrounded.
There are some men who actually derive as much credit from their deportment under the severest losses, as others earn by brilliant success; and it may certainly be said that Captain Hickey is one of these: for, although he had the great misfortune to lose his ship, he must enjoy the satisfaction of knowing, that his skill and firmness, rendered effective by the discipline he had been so many years in perfecting, enabled him, in this last extremity, to save the lives of more than a hundred persons, who, but for him, in all human probability, must have perished.
CHAPTER XI.
BLOCKADING A NEUTRAL PORT.
In the summer of 1804, His Majesty’s ships Leander and Cambrian were ordered to proceed off New York, to watch the motions of two French frigates lying in that harbour. On board of one of these, I forget which, Jerome Buonaparte had taken his passage to Europe.
This plan of lying off a neutral port to watch for the departure of an enemy riding at anchor within it, is, I believe, still considered, by some people, a measure of questionable propriety, in a national point of view. It is one of those topics, however, which will probably never be quite settled; as circumstances must arise in every war to render it less inexpedient to risk offending a neutral power, on a doubtful point of international usage, than to suffer an enemy to escape. Be the political aspect of this point, however, what it may, there can be no doubt of the excessive and very reasonable annoyance of such a proceeding to the neutral nation, whose rights of hospitality are thus, more or less, virtually infringed. It is pretty certain, I believe, that our lying so long off the harbour of New York, blockading these two French ships, contributed materially to foster those angry feelings against us, which, some years afterwards, broke out into open war.
The blockading service at any time is a tedious one; but upon this occasion we contrived to enliven it in a manner, which, whether legitimate or not, was certainly highly exciting, and sometimes rather profitable, to us.
New York, every one knows, is the great sea-port of America, into which, and out of which, many dozens of ships sail daily. With the outward-bound vessels we had little or nothing to do; but with those which came from foreign parts, especially from France, then our bitter enemy, we took the liberty—the Americans said, the improper liberty—to interfere. I speak not of French ships, or those which avowed themselves to be such, and hoisted enemy’s colours; for of these we, of course, made prize, without scruple, whenever we could catch them beyond the limits of the American neutrality. But this very rarely happened, and the ships we meddled with, so much to the displeasure of the Americans, were those which, to outward appearance, belonged to citizens of the United States, but on board which we had reason—good or bad—to suspect there was cargo owned by the enemy. Nothing appears to be so easy as to forge a ship’s papers, or to swear false oaths; and accordingly, a great deal of French property was imported into America, in vessels certainly belonging to the United States, but covered, as it was called, by documents implying an American or neutral right in it. In the very same way, I suppose, much Spanish property was, for a long course of years, imported into South America, in English bottoms, when Spain was at war with her Colonies. England, in that case, acted the part of a neutral, and learned, in like manner, for the lucre of gain, to trifle with all the obligations of an oath. During the period of Buonaparte’s continental system, especially, about the year 1810, many persons in England engaged largely in what was called the licensed trade, the very essence of which was false swearing, false papers, and the most unprincipled collusion of every kind. A horrible way of making money, of which the base contamination, in the opinion of some of our best merchants, is not yet quite washed away. So that poor Bony, directly and indirectly, has enough to answer for!
At the time I speak of, 1804, when we were stationed off New York, and the French and English nations were at loggerheads, Jonathan very properly stepped in to profit by the fray, exactly as John Bull afterwards did when Old and New Spain were at war—except, indeed, that in the contraband, or covered carrying trade with the revolted Spanish colonies, we had to share the profits with our transatlantic brethren, while the two belligerents, shutting their eyes to their own true interest, allowed others to run off with the advantages.
All this looks simple enough on paper; and a moment’s reflection shews that such must ever be the consequence of a similar state of things. For when shrewd nations, like the United States, have the art to keep out of the fight in which others are engaged, they will, of course, be able to play into the hands of the different parties whose whole thoughts are occupied in injuring one another, instead of interchanging benefits. The adroit neutral, by watching his time, can always minister to the several necessities of the combatants, sometimes to one, sometimes to the other, according as the payment is good or bad, and in such a manner as to be sure of his own profit, reckless at whose cost. At the same time, he must naturally lay his account with provoking the displeasure of the powers at war, who, in their turn, will, of course, do all they possibly can to prevent the neutral from lending assistance to their opponents respectively.
Conflicting nations, accordingly, have always claimed, and, when they can, will never cease to enforce, this right of searching neutral ships, in order to discover whether or not there be enemy’s property on board. But the practice, it may easily be imagined, is full of many sore heart-burnings, and all kinds of “hard words, jealousies, and fears,” which often, as old Hudibras has it, “set folks together by the ears,” who ought, perhaps, never to have become foes.