Great Britain, though humiliated, had not been seriously hurt by the loss of two or three ships out of her six hundred, and she still tried to enforce against the rising naval power on the west side of the Atlantic the subservience which she received along its eastern shores. It took the form of asserting her right to stop and board any American vessel, governmental or private, and seize and impress into her own service any British subject found serving in the crew. This always met with protest and resistance, and at last became so galling that in 1812 the United States declared war against Great Britain’s might rather than continue to submit to it.
Drawn from Life by S. DeKoster Decʳ.8 1800,
Engraved by Jd. Stow.
BARON NELSON OF THE NILE.
This might gradually overcame us, and British fleets sailed up and down our coasts unhindered, but not until the enemy had been surprised by many harder knocks than they anticipated, and had learned one thing for certain,—that while man for man the Yankees were equally good seamen and fighters, they were better ship-builders, and could teach lessons in that art which their enemies were not above learning: and finally we won by sheer force of victories at sea.
I have already spoken of the six frigates which were used in that war, as admittedly the best of their kind in the world. Except the unlucky Chesapeake, which was rashly carried unprepared into the fatal action against the Shannon, where Lawrence lost his life, but won undying fame in the memory of his countrymen by his “Don’t give up the ship,” all did glorious work. Thus, the United States under Decatur reduced to a wreck off Madeira, and brought as a prize to New York, the British 44-gun frigate Macedonian in October, 1812, itself remaining almost uninjured,—a victory due to superior seamanship and gunnery.
The same skill, using a ship of superior sailing power, accounted largely for the splendid victory of the United States sloop-of-war Wasp (18 guns), a week earlier, near Bermuda, in an encounter with the British sloop Frolic (19 guns), where in three quarters of an hour the Frolic was totally dismasted and reduced to a rolling wreck, with ninety killed or wounded out of a crew of one hundred and ten, while the Wasp’s loss was only ten. A British seventy-four then came up and captured both the victor and her prize; but eighteen months later a second Wasp, by reason of her better gunnery, cut to pieces at different times two other ships with comparatively small injury to herself. Nor could the President have given so good an account of herself in her unfortunate encounter with the Belvidera, and again when chased and finally captured by the squadron led by the Endymion, had not her sailing qualities and gunnery been of so high an order—qualities which also distinguished the American fleets on Lake Erie and Lake Champlain.
THE “FROLIC” REDUCED TO A WRECK BY THE FIRST “WASP” (1812).
But the honors of that brilliant naval war belonged chiefly, after all, to the Constitution—“Old Ironsides,” as the people loved to call her,—which is enshrined in the history and hearts of the United States as Nelson’s Victory is in those of Great Britain.