This is rather a wild story, to which the thoughtful reader will not be disposed to yield full credence. With regard to the breach of neutrality, there is an affidavit, sworn before the British Consul, by Lieutenant Robert Faussett, of the Plantagenet, to the effect that he approached, unarmed, in the pinnace, for the purpose of ascertaining what vessel it was; and that the Americans warned them off when they were so close that the boat was shoved off with a boathook, and then opened fire; that Faussett called for quarter, shouting, "Don't murder us!" and they continued their attack; that he had no means of returning a shot, and could only retire, with two killed and seven wounded. He says nothing about the proximity of other boats, armed or otherwise; and so the Americans would appear to have been technically guilty of the initial breach of neutrality. Captain Lloyd, by way of showing that American privateers were addicted to this kind of thing, encloses a copy of the affidavit of William Wilson, late master of the transport brig Doris, which was captured, in defiance of the law of neutrality, on June 25th preceding, in the anchorage of Flores, another island of the Azores.
Captain Lloyd, however, got no credit out of this affair. The Lords of the Admiralty expressed very strong disapproval of the whole business; told him he ought to have known that the sending of a boat after dark was sure to lead to some such incident; that, if the Americans broke the neutrality of the port, his first business was to make representation to the Governor, and not take the law into his own hands; that the honour of the flag and the prestige of the British Navy, represented by a 74-gun ship, a frigate, and several sloops, was not likely to be endangered by the presence of one privateer—with other home truths and doses of common sense. And really, one cannot help agreeing cordially with their lordships, and heartily deploring the loss of so many brave men in a fiasco due to thorough bad management.
A fortnight later the boats of the British frigate Endymion, Captain Henry Hope, made an attempt to carry the Prince de Neufchatel—a very successful privateer, but why such a clumsy name?—off Nantucket, with very similar results. The fight was even more desperate than in the case of the General Armstrong, the privateer having only nine of her crew untouched, while the British casualties amounted to fully half of the men engaged. The privateer escaped.
Such are some of the incidents of the two American wars; of this type were the men—or many of them—who commanded the privateers. The British records of the period, during the war of 1812, bear full testimony to their success, and the officers of the Royal Navy come in for some rough handling by the Press—as in The Times of February 11th, 1815: "The American cruisers daily enter in among our convoys, seize prizes in sight of those that should afford protection, and, if pursued, 'put on their sea-wings' and laugh at the clumsy English pursuers. To what is this owing? Cannot we build ships? It must indeed be encouraging to Mr. Madison to read the logs of his cruisers. If they fight, they are sure to conquer; if they fly, they are sure to escape."
That the Americans have the knack of building faster sailing-vessels than ours is a fact which we have been compelled to accept. Not that our smartest clippers would be beaten, as a matter of course, by any of theirs; but, taking it all round, an American who wants to turn out a specially swift sailing vessel will almost always eclipse our efforts in the same direction. Are we not still trying in vain to win back the "America" Cup? The long, rakish craft, of comparatively small beam and tapering lines, was no doubt originally an American production.
These swift vessels, sailed by such men as Boyle, Haraden, Barney, Coggleshall, and others, were both hard to catch and bad to beat. The sentence quoted above from The Times sums up the situation pretty accurately; and, this being the case, it is all the more to be regretted that the accounts of their exploits should so constantly be tainted with obvious exaggerations, or embellished with incredible little anecdotes.