The Chesapeake was taken to Halifax. Lawrence and Ludlow were buried there with every honor. The remains of the former were later taken to New York, where in the churchyard of old Trinity they now lie. Lawrence’s dying words: “Don’t give up the ship,” were later blazoned on a flag flown by Perry on Lake Erie, where the dead hero was to have his revenge, for hero he was, however mistaken in judgment. His fatal action was the ignoring of the value of preparation in war. Discipline and training are as necessary as valor, an axiom which our people are only too slow to learn.
The result caused immense rejoicing in England. It is the only naval action of the war which to-day receives recognition there, and I doubt if the British people in general, of the present, know of any other. And while treating of it, there is a persistent unfairness in ignoring conditions of the Chesapeake; even in articles which were written in 1913, the hundredth year later, by historians from whom fairness might be expected, no mention was made of them. It is left to another and fairer foreigner, a Frenchman, Admiral Jurien de la Gravière, the most distinguished writer on naval affairs of his nation, to tell the truth, when he said: “Fortune was not fickle, she was merely logical.”
A little later there was an action which was really discreditable to us: that of the Argus, a brig of 298 tons and 10 guns, against the British Pelican, of 467 tons and 11 guns. The Argus had been cruising in the English Channel “capturing and burning ship after ship and creating the greatest consternation among the London merchants.” On August 13th she had captured a brig laden with wine from Oporto, a success which was to be apparently her undoing. Next day she met the Pelican. The Argus’s captain, Allen, was killed early in the action, as were also two midshipmen; her first lieutenant was wounded. The odds were against her, but not to such degree as to account for the too slight resistance later in the action. It is not unlikely, as has been said by competent historians, that the captured port had much to do with this. The results of such actions had previously been so markedly different that there is reason to suspect this. The capture of the Argus was soon offset by that of the British brig Boxer, of 66 men and 14 guns, by the Enterprise, of 104 men and 16 guns. Captain Blyth of the Boxer was killed early in the action, as was also Lieutenant Burrows of the Enterprise. The few remaining American brigs disappeared by capture by much superior forces, most of them by squadrons from which there was no escape.
There had undoubtedly by this time been a falling off in the character of the American crews. The Atlantic now swarmed with privateers which, as in our Revolution, attracted the best men; the navy thus labored under a severe handicap. The privateers did immense damage to British commerce and caused the British merchant to long for peace, but they damaged our real naval interests. This damage would have been more real had not the British naval power now begun to tell in blockade, which became one of absolute strictness. The United States and the captured Macedonian, which had been repaired and commissioned at New York, got to New London by way of Hell Gate, but were so strictly watched that they remained there for the rest of the war. Naval action was now, perforce, to be confined almost entirely to the lakes, where it was momentous in character. The fights on the ocean were but exhibitions of ability and prowess; those on the lakes were vital to the outcome of the war.
CHAPTER XVII
Our army efforts on the frontier of Canada had been great failures. In the very beginning of the war General William Hull, Governor of Michigan, had been obliged to surrender his small army at Detroit for the simple reason that he was faced by starvation. He was tried and sentenced to death, but was reprieved by President Madison. But the fault was not wholly Hull’s. It was, along with Hull’s age and inefficiency, the ineptitude of our own administrative and legislative authorities in Washington. Our northern defence was thus to fall upon the navy.
There was in 1813 no vessel of war on Lake Erie, and but one, the Oneida, of 116 tons, built four years before the war, on Ontario. The British had long had a force on this lake, and in 1812 there were six vessels, carrying in all about 80 guns; the largest was the Royal George, of 22. Had the British commander been competent he could easily have controlled the lake. He attacked Sackett’s Harbor in July, but Lieutenant Woolsey, commanding the Oneida, landed his guns, and with the batteries thus formed beat him off. Commodore Isaac Chauncey was now, in August, 1812, sent to command both lakes. Guns, officers, shipwrights, and stores were transported from New York, and by November a small fleet was ready. Before this, however, Lieutenant L. D. Elliot, who had been sent to Buffalo to look after Lake Erie, had made a brilliant expedition against the Detroit, which had been surrendered at the time of Hull’s disaster, and another vessel, the Caledonia. Both were captured on the Canada side of the lake at Fort Erie by boarding, a small army detachment assisting. The Detroit was burned.
On November 8th Chauncey made a spirited attack on the harbor of Kingston, and kept up his activities until navigation was closed by ice early in December. The winter was spent in building. A new ship, however, named the Madison, had already (November 24th) been launched at Sackett’s Harbor. Nine weeks before her timber had stood in the forest.
By the opening of navigation in 1813 each combatant had a considerable fleet on Lake Ontario, though nearly all were but mere gunboats. The British, recognizing the immense importance of control of the lakes, had selected an able officer, Sir James L. Yeo, to command. The outcome of the season’s operations, however, for the detail of which one should look to larger books, was that the Americans were left in naval control. In the course of the summer the hostile squadrons were three times engaged. Chauncey’s courage and spirit have received, and deserved, high praise for “the rapidity and decision with which he created a force, as it might be in a wilderness, the professional resources which he discovered in attaining this great end, and the combined gallantry and prudence with which he manœuvred before the enemy ... while the intrepidity with which he carried his own ship into action off York has always been a subject of honest exultation in the service to which he belongs.” This high praise from one so able to judge as Fenimore Cooper, himself in early life a naval officer, holds to this day.
What Chauncey did on Lake Ontario, Perry was to do, and much more, on Erie. He had been reared in Preble’s school at Tripoli, but by 1806 he was at Newport superintending the building of some of Jefferson’s absurd gunboats, and to duty such as this he was kept for six years, an inglorious inaction for such a spirit. No attention was paid by a nerveless Secretary of the Navy for his application for the lakes until it was pressed by Chauncey, on which he was ordered to report at Sackett’s Harbor with his best men. Receiving his orders on February 17th, fifty men were on their way before sunset; a hundred more followed, and Perry himself on the 22d. He reached Sackett’s Harbor on March 3d, and, after two weeks, was ordered to Erie. Sailing-master Dobbins and Noah Brown, master shipwright, already had three gunboats well under way and keels laid for two brigs. The timber for their construction had been but a few days before trees in the forest.[36] But nothing had been provided in the way of armament, cordage, stores, men, or officers. These dribbled in through the appeals and constant personal work of Perry. In five months he had his little fleet fairly ready. On August 10th he went in search of the British. He had the brigs Lawrence and Niagara, of 20 guns each, and eight schooners carrying, one three, the others two and one guns each. The British commodore, Barclay, had the ship Detroit, of 19 guns; the Queen Charlotte, of 17; the Lady Prevost, a schooner of 13, and three small craft of 10, 3, and 1. Perry had in all 416 men fit for duty; Barclay 440. On September 10th they met.