Gentlemen Rovers

by E. Alexander Powell

While cruising off Antigua, on February 9, 1799, the Constellation's lookout reported a French war-ship, which, upon being overhauled, proved to be l'Insurgente, forty guns, which had the reputation of being one of the fastest ships in the world, and was commanded by Captain Barreault, an officer celebrated in the French Navy as a desperate fighter and a resourceful sailor. As the Constellation, with her crew at quarters and her decks cleared for action, came booming down upon him, Captain Barreault broke out the French tricolor at his masthead and fired a gun to windward, which signified, in the language of the seas, that he was ready for a yard-arm to yard-arm combat. Truxtun's reply was to range alongside his adversary, a flag of stripes and stars at every masthead, and pour in a broadside which raked l'Insurgente's decks from stem to stern. The first great naval action in which the American Navy ever bore a part had begun.

Waiting until the Constellation was well abreast of her, at a distance of perhaps thirty feet (modern war-ships seldom fight at a range of less than three miles), l'Insurgente replied, firing high in an attempt to disable the American by bringing down her rigging. Midshipman David Porter, a youngster barely in his teens, was stationed in the foretop. Seeing that the top-mast, which had been seriously damaged by the French fire, was tottering and about to fall, but being unable to make himself heard on deck above the din of battle, he himself assumed the responsibility of lowering the foretopsail yard, thus relieving the strain on the mast and preventing a mishap which would probably have changed the result of the battle. That midshipman rose, in after years, to be an admiral and the commander-in-chief of the American Navy.

Barreault, who had a much larger crew than his adversary, soon saw that his vessel was in danger of being pounded to pieces by the American gunners who were making every shot tell, and that his only hope of victory lay in getting alongside and boarding, depending upon his superior numbers to take the American vessel with the cutlass. With this in view, he ordered the boarding parties to their stations, sent men into the rigging with grappling-irons with which to hold the ships together when they touched, directed the guns to be loaded with small shot that they might cause greater execution at close quarters, and then, putting his helm hard down, attempted to run alongside the Constellation. But Truxtun had anticipated this very manœuvre, and was prepared for it. Seizing his opportunity—and in sea-battles opportunities do not last long or come often—he whirled his ship about as a polo player whirls his pony, and ran squarely across the enemy's bows, pouring in a rain of lead as he passed, which all but annihilated the boarding parties drawn up on the deck of l'Insurgente.

Foiled in his attempt to get to hand-grips with his enemy, the Frenchman sheered off and the duel at short range continued, the Constellation, magnificently handled, sailing first along l'Insurgente's port side, firing as she went, and then, crossing her bows, repeating the manœuvre on her starboard quarter. Nothing is more typical of the iron discipline enforced by the American naval commanders in those early days than an incident that occurred when this duel between the two frigates was at its height. As a storm of shot from the Frenchman's batteries came crashing and smashing into the Constellation, a gunner, seeing his mate decapitated by a solid shot, became so demoralized that he retreated from his gun, whereupon an officer drew his pistol and shot the man dead.

Time after time Truxtun repeated his evolution of literally sailing around l'Insurgente, until every gun in her main batteries had been dismounted, her crew being left only the small guns with which to continue the action. It speaks volumes for Barreault's bravery that, with half his crew dead or wounded, and with a terribly battered and almost defenceless ship, he did continue the action, his weary, blood-stained, powder-blackened men loading and firing their few remaining guns dauntlessly. Seeing the weakened condition of his enemy, Truxtun now prepared to end the battle. Before the French had time to grasp the full significance of his manœuvre, he had put his helm hard down, and the Constellation, suddenly looming out of the battle smoke, bore down upon l'Insurgente with the evident intention of crossing her stern and raking her with a broadside to which she would be unable to reply. Though no braver man than Barreault ever fought a ship, he instantly appreciated that this would mean an unnecessary slaughter of his men; so, with the tears streaming down his cheeks, he ordered his colors to be struck, and in token of surrender the flag of France slipped slowly and mournfully down. The young republic of the West had avenged the insult of Talleyrand.

It is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding the desperate fighting which characterized this battle, the Constellation had only two of her crew killed and three wounded, while the French loss was nearly twenty times that number. Lieutenant Rodgers and Midshipman Porter were immediately sent aboard the captured vessel with a prize crew of only eleven men. After the dead had been buried at sea, the wounded cared for by the American surgeons, and about half of the prisoners transferred to the Constellation, Rodgers set such sails on l'Insurgente as the wrecked rigging would permit, and laid his course for St. Christopher, it being understood that Truxtun would keep within hail in case his assistance was needed. During the night a heavy gale set in, however, and when day broke upon the heaving ocean the Constellation was nowhere to be seen. It was a ticklish situation in which the thirteen Americans found themselves, for they had their work cut out for them to navigate a leaking, shattered, and dismasted ship, while below decks, awaiting the first opportunity which offered to rise and overpower their captors, were nearly two hundred desperate and determined prisoners. There were neither shackles nor handcuffs on board, and the hatchcovers had been destroyed in the action, so that the prisoners were perfectly aware that, could they once force their way on deck by a sudden rush, the ship would again be theirs. But they reckoned without Rodgers, for the first men who put their heads above the hatchway found themselves looking into the muzzles of a pair of pistols held by the American lieutenant, whose fingers were twitching on the triggers. During the three days and two nights which the voyage to St. Christopher lasted, a guard of American bluejackets stood constantly around the open hatchway, a pile of loaded small arms close at hand, and a cannon loaded with grape-shot trained menacingly into the prisoner-filled hold. On the evening of the third day, after Truxtun had given her up for lost, l'Insurgente limped into port with the flag of the United States flaunting victoriously above that of France.

The 1st of February of the following year found the Constellation, still under the command of Commodore Truxtun, cruising off Guadaloupe in the hope of picking up some of the French privateers which were using that colony as a base from which to prey on our West Indian commerce. While loitering off the port of Basse Terre, and praying that something would turn up to pay him for his patience, Truxtun sighted a vessel coming up from the southeast, which from her size and build was evidently a French frigate of the first class. As she approached, the keen-eyed American naval officers, scanning her through their glasses, recognized her as the fifty-two-gun frigate La Vengeance, one of the most formidable vessels in the French Navy. It was evident from the first, however, that she would much rather run than fight, this anxiety to avoid an encounter being due to the fact that she had on board a large number of officials, high in the colonial service, whom she was bringing out to the colonies from the mother country. No sooner did she perceive the character of the Constellation, therefore, than she piled on every yard of canvas and headed for Basse Terre and the protecting guns of its forts. Never had the Constellation a better opportunity to display her remarkable sailing qualities, and never did she display them to better advantage. It was well after nightfall, however, before she was able to overhaul the flying Frenchman, so that it was by the light of a full moon, which illumined the scene almost as well as though it were day, that the preparations were completed for the combat. The sea, which was glasslike in its smoothness, as is so often the case in Caribbean waters, seemed to be covered with a veil of shimmering silver, while the battle-lanterns which had been lighted on both vessels swung like giant fireflies across the purple sky.

Seeing that escape was hopeless, the French commander hove to and prepared for a desperate resistance. Now, Truxtun had made up his mind that this was to be no long-range duel, in which the Frenchman's heavier metal could not fail to give him an advantage, but a fight at close quarters, in which the smashing broadsides which the Constellation was specially designed to deliver could not fail to tell. Just before the beginning of the battle the stout commodore, red-faced, white-wigged, cock-hatted, clad in the blue tail-coat and buff breeches of the American Navy, descended to the gun-deck and walked slowly through the batteries, acknowledging the cheers of the gunners, but emphatically warning them against firing a shot until he gave the word. No one knew better than Truxtun the demoralizing effect of a smashing broadside suddenly delivered at close quarters, and it was this demoralization which he intended to create aboard the enemy. "Load with solid shot," he ordered, and added, speaking to his officers so that the men could hear: "If a man fires a gun before I give the order, shoot him on the spot." Then with boarding-nettings triced up, decks sanded, magazines opened, and the tops filled with marines whose duty it was to pick off the French gunners, the Constellation, stripped to her fighting canvas, swept grandly into action. As she came within range the French commander opened with his stern-chasers, and in an instant the ordered decks of the American were turned into a shambles. The wounded were carried groaning to the cockpit, where the white-aproned surgeons, their arms bared to the elbow, awaited their grim work, while the dead were hastily ranged along the unengaged side—rows of stark and staring figures beneath the placid moon. Again and again the guns of La Vengeance belched smoke and flame, and redder and redder grew the sand with which the Constellation's decks were spread, but she still kept coming on. Not until she was squarely abreast of the Frenchman did Truxtun, leaping into the shrouds, bellow through his speaking-trumpet: "Now, boys, give 'em hell!" The American gunners answered with a broadside which made La Vengeance reel. The effect was terrible. On the decks of the Frenchman the dead and dying lay in quivering, bleeding heaps. But not for an instant did the French sailors flinch from their guns. Broadside answered broadside, cheer answered cheer, while the men, French and American alike, toiled and sweated at their work of carnage. So rapidly were the American guns fired that the men actually had to crawl out of the ports, in the face of a withering fire, for buckets of water with which to cool them off.

The different tactics adopted by the two commanders soon began to show results, for, whereas Truxtun had given orders that his men were to disregard the upper works and to concentrate their fire on the main-deck batteries and the hull, the French commander had from the first directed his fire upon the American's rigging in the hope of crippling her. Shortly after midnight the French fire, which had grown weaker and weaker under the terrible punishment of the Constellation's successive broadsides, ceased altogether, and an officer was seen waving a white flag in token of surrender. Twice before, in fact, La Vengeance had struck her colors, but owing to the smoke and darkness the Americans had not perceived it. And there was good reason for her surrender, for she had lost one hundred and sixty men out of her crew of three hundred and thirty, while the Constellation had but thirty-nine casualties out of a crew of three hundred and ten. Though the French fire had done small damage to the Constellation's hull, and had killed a comparatively small number of her crew, it had worked terrible havoc in her rigging, it being discovered, just as she was preparing to run alongside her capture and take possession, that every shroud and stay supporting her mainmast had been shot away, and that the mast was tottering and about to fall. The men in the top were under the command of a little midshipman named James Jarvis, who was only thirteen years old. He had been warned by one of his men that the mast was likely to fall at any moment, and had been implored to leave the top while there was still time, which he would have been entirely justified in doing, particularly as the battle was over. But that thirteen-year-old midshipman had in him the stuff of which heroes are made, and resolutely refused to leave his post without orders. The orders never came, for before the crew had time to secure it the great mast crashed over the side, carrying with it to instant death little Jarvis and all of his men save one. Though his name and deed have long since been forgotten by the nation for which he died, he was no whit less a hero than that other boy-sailor, Casabianca, whose self-sacrifice at the battle of the Nile has been made familiar by song and story.

The falling of the Constellation's mast reversed conditions in an instant, for the surrendered frigate, taking prompt advantage of the victor's temporary helplessness, crowded on all sail and slowly disappeared into the night. By the time the wreck had been chopped away any pursuit of her was hopeless. A few days later she put into the Dutch port of Curaçao in a sinking condition.