The American Navy

by French Ensor Chadwick

Our population at this time, excluding negroes, was about 7,500,000; that of Great Britain was about 15,000,000. We had a navy of three large and one small frigate, one sloop-of-war, and seven smaller vessels, with 500 officers, of whom twelve were captains. There were 5,230 men in the enlisted force, of whom 2,436 were destined for the cruising ships, “the remainder being for service at the forts and navy yards, in the gunboats, and on the lakes.” In the British navy were over a thousand ships.

There can of course be no comparison between such forces; nor could there in the long run be any doubt as to the result, but the American navy was to achieve, in the unequal struggle, a series of victories which brought results psychically the equal of victories of great fleets. It is not that we were continuously victorious, but in the main our success was so great and of a character to which the British navy and public were so unaccustomed that our victories were a staggering blow to Britain’s self-sufficiency. It must be remembered that the French navy of Louis XVI’s time had been, so far as officers and morale were concerned, swept out of existence by the French Revolution. The French fleet of the Consular and Napoleonic period was now not only ill-officered, but through the constant blockades of the British had but little of the sea habit by which only a navy can be efficient. The Spanish navy had no real organization or other qualities of success under circumstances of even much worse neglect. The British ships, well officered, well manned, and with constant sea practice, had no real antagonists, for it is absurd to compare in efficiency such organizations as that which fought under Nelson at Trafalgar and those under Villeneuve and Gravina in the same battle. The American navy was to show a different standard.

CHAPTER XV

There were three important and epoch-making events in the war: the victory of the Constitution over the Guerrière, the battle of Lake Erie, and the battle of Lake Champlain. Each of these was of such immense importance that they overshadow all others, picturesque and striking as others were.

The administration had at first only considered the laying up of our ships, but the indignant protests of our naval officers caused another course. The first ships to get to sea were those at New York: the President, 44, Commodore Rodgers; the Essex, 32, Captain David Porter; and the Hornet, 18, Master Commandant Lawrence. These were joined down the bay on June 21st by the United States, 44, Commodore Decatur; and the Congress, 36, Lieutenant Commandant Sinclair from Norfolk. All except the Essex, which was overhauling her rigging, got to sea on the 21st, immediately after the reception of the declaration of war, and stood southeast to intercept a reported fleet of West Indiamen. On June 23d, however, a frigate, later known to be the Belvidera, was sighted and chased. On nearing her, Rodgers himself went forward to direct the firing, and at 4:30 he fired the starboard forecastle gun, the first shot of the war. The next gun was fired from the main deck by the officer of the division, and a third was fired by Rodgers. The three shots had all struck the chase, killing and wounding seven men. A fourth was now fired from the main deck. This gun burst, lifting the forecastle deck, killing and wounding sixteen men. Among the latter was Rodgers, who was thrown into the air and in falling broke his leg. The forward guns being thrown out of action, the President was obliged to yaw from time to time to bring her broadside guns to bear. This gave the chase an advantage which was added to by her throwing overboard boats and anchors and fourteen tons of water. By midnight she was out of danger. The President does not seem to have been handled as well as she might have been, but account must be taken of the very serious accident aboard and of the injury to the commodore. The Belvidera’s fire killed and wounded six of the President’s crew. She was well handled and her captain, Richard Byron, deserves marked credit for his escape. Rodgers continued his cruise in pursuit of the West Indiaman as far as the entrance to the English Channel, but by August 31st was in Boston, having made but seven prizes and one recapture.

The Essex did not leave New York until June 23d. The ship carried, mostly, only carronades which were totally inefficient except at close quarters. This fact placed her at a great disadvantage when in meeting a convoy of troops she was unable to bring to action the convoying frigate. She cut out, however, one ship with 197 soldiers aboard. But on August 13th she captured the sloop-of-war, Alert, of twenty 18-pounder carronades, the first man-of-war prize of the war. The Essex returned to New York on September 7th, having taken ten prizes and 423 prisoners.

The Constitution, Captain Hull, had returned, just before the outbreak of the war, from Europe where she had been sent to pay the interest on our Dutch loan. She shipped a new crew, and on July 12th sailed from Annapolis. On the 17th when off the Virginia coast, and barely out of sight of land, six vessels were discovered, one of which, as it turned out, and much the nearest, being the Guerrière. The next morning, the weather almost calm, there were four frigates, a ship-of-the-line, and a brig and a schooner just out of gunshot; the two last were prizes. There then ensued a chase famous in American naval annals for the admirable way in which the Constitution was handled, and for her success. She hoisted out her boats in the calm and towed; the enemy put the boats of two ships to tow the headmost. Their advantage was overcome by Hull’s using all the cordage of the ship available for such a purpose in running a kedge ahead nearly half a mile and hauling in upon the hawser. The kedges thus employed caused the Constitution to gain largely until the enemy discovered the method and himself applied it. For two days this most exciting and exhausting chase continued. On the evening of the 20th there was a heavy squall, which was utilized by Hull with the utmost judgment and during which a large gain in distance was made. On its clearing away all apprehension ended; all but two of the frigates were far distant and most of the fleet hull down. At 8:15 next morning the English gave up the chase, thus ending as exciting three days and nights as any of the war. The admirable manner in which the Constitution was handled has ever been the admiration of seamen.

The Constitution went into Boston, but Hull, fearing orders for detachment, which in fact were on the way from Washington, hurried to sea again on August 2d. On the 19th, at a point some 400 miles southeast of Halifax, he met the British frigate, Guerrière, Captain Dacres. The latter on the Constitution’s near approach lay-to with her maintopsail to the mast, showing her willingness to engage. The battle began a little after 6:00 P.M., and before seven the Guerrière was dismasted and in a sinking condition. Her crew was taken off; she was set afire, and in a quarter of an hour blew up. The Constitution was practically uninjured and in a few hours could have gone into action again. She was, it is true, the heavier ship, with thirty 24-pounders against the Guerrière’s thirty 18’s, and twenty-four 32-pounder carronades against the Guerrière’s sixteen; and a total of 55 guns and 468 men against the Guerrière’s 49 guns and 272 men, but the injury was entirely disproportionate. The Guerrière had seventy-nine men killed and wounded. The Constitution had seven killed and seven wounded. The Guerrière lost every mast and her hull was so riddled that she could not be carried into port. So little was the Constitution injured that in the same evening all damage was repaired and another ship, supposedly an enemy, which appeared at 2:00 A.M., sheered off.

The ships were not markedly different in size, the Constitution being 1,576 tons American measurement, the Guerrière 1,338 British. But by the latter the Constitution would have been but 1,426. The difference in size and force, however, was a small matter considering the fact that before the outbreak of the war it was confidently affirmed that British sloops-of-war would lie alongside American frigates with impunity.

The capture of the Guerrière by the Constitution is a great landmark in our history—a second “shot heard round the world.” It was not simply the taking of a British frigate; it was a second declaration of American independence. We had so long been called spaniels and curs in the British press; we had so long submitted basely (the word is none too strong to describe our administration of the Jeffersonian period); there had become so strongly entrenched in the British and French mind that we would submit to any insult so long as our ships might sail, even at the cost of the immense toll they took of them, that our going to war was considered impossible. New England, the chief sufferer, was in a dangerous spirit which threatened secession. All this changed instantly when the news spread from town to town, from farm to farm. The Americans became another people. It revived the dormant spirit of nationality and gave a deathblow to the disunionist spirit of the period. How it permeated the soul of the country was shown in a remarkable way at the death of a lady of the Adams family in 1903. Born in 1808, she was but four years old at the time of the battle, but so vividly had the exultation of her elders been impressed upon the child’s mind, that on the day of her death, more than ninety years after, her mind reverted to but one thought, the most deeply impressed of her childhood. In tremulous tones, though otherwise apparently unconscious, she kept repeating through this last day of her life the expression of her elders in 1812: “Thank God for Hull’s victory.”[30] Nothing could show more strongly the immensity of exultation and relief. The Constitution was to have other victories, was to come unscathed through the war, and was for many years to carry our flag in honor in many seas; but this victory alone should enshrine the ship in the hearts of all true Americans as an instrument which went far to preserve this Union and its government. Fortunately, through Oliver Wendell Holmes’s noble poem, she still remains, honored in her old age, a glorious memory of victory in a noble cause.