The meeting was welcome on both sides. Only three days before, Captain Dacres had entered on the log of a merchantman a challenge to any American frigate to meet him off Sandy Hook. Not only had the “Guerriere” for a long time been extremely offensive to every seafaring American, but the mistake which caused the “Little Belt” to suffer so seriously for the misfortune of being taken for the “Guerriere” had caused a corresponding feeling of anger in the officers of the British frigate. The meeting of August 19 had the character of a preconcerted duel.
The wind was blowing fresh from the northwest, with the sea running high. Dacres backed his main-top-sail and waited. Hull shortened sail and ran down before the wind. For about an hour the two ships wore and wore again, trying to get advantage of position; until at last, a few minutes before six o’clock, they came together side by side, within pistol-shot, the wind almost astern, and running before it they pounded each other with all their strength. As rapidly as the guns could be worked, the “Constitution” poured in broadside after broadside, double-shotted with round and grape,—and, without exaggeration, the echo of these guns startled the world. “In less than thirty minutes from the time we got alongside of the enemy,” reported Hull,[331] “she was left without a spar standing, and the hull cut to pieces in such a manner as to make it difficult to keep her above water.”
That Dacres should have been defeated was not surprising; that he should have expected to win was an example of British arrogance that explained and excused the war. The length of the “Constitution” was 173 feet; that of the “Guerriere” was 156 feet; the extreme breadth of the “Constitution” was 44 feet; that of the “Guerriere” was 40 feet, or within a few inches in both cases. The “Constitution” carried thirty-two long 24-pounders, the “Guerriere” thirty long 18-pounders and two long 12-pounders; the “Constitution” carried twenty 32-pound carronades, the “Guerriere” sixteen. In every respect, and in proportion of ten to seven, the “Constitution” was the better ship; her crew was more numerous in proportion of ten to six. Dacres knew this very nearly as well as it was known to Hull, yet he sought a duel. What he did not know was that in a still greater proportion the American officers and crew were better and more intelligent seamen than the British, and that their passionate wish to repay old scores gave them extraordinary energy. So much greater was the moral superiority than the physical, that while the “Guerriere’s” force counted as seven against ten, her losses counted as though her force were only two against ten.
Dacres’ error cost him dear, for among the “Guerriere’s” crew of two hundred and seventy-two, seventy-nine were killed or wounded; and the ship was injured beyond saving before Dacres realized his mistake, although he needed only thirty minutes of close fighting for the purpose. He never fully understood the causes of his defeat, and never excused it by pleading, as he might have done, the great superiority of his enemy.[332]
Hull took his prisoners on board the “Constitution],” and after blowing up the “Guerriere” sailed for Boston, where he arrived on the morning of August 30. The Sunday silence of the Puritan city broke into excitement as the news passed through the quiet streets that the “Constitution” was below, in the outer harbor, with Dacres and his crew prisoners on board. No experience of history ever went to the heart of New England more directly than this victory, so peculiarly its own; but the delight was not confined to New England, and extreme though it seemed it was still not extravagant, for however small the affair might appear on the general scale of the world’s battles, it raised the United States in one half hour to the rank of a first-class Power in the world.
Hull’s victory was not only dramatic in itself, but was also supremely fortunate in the moment it occurred. The “Boston Patriot” of September 2, which announced the capture of the “Guerriere,” announced in the next column that Rodgers and Decatur, with their squadron, entered Boston harbor within four-and-twenty hours after Hull’s arrival, returning empty-handed after more than two months of futile cruising; while in still another column the same newspaper announced “the melancholy intelligence of the surrender of General Hull and his whole army to the British General Brock.” Isaac Hull was nephew to the unhappy General, and perhaps the shattered hulk of the “Guerriere,” which the nephew left at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, eight hundred miles east of Boston, was worth for the moment the whole province which the uncle had lost, eight hundred miles to the westward; it was at least the only equivalent the people could find, and they made the most of it. With the shock of new life, they awoke to the consciousness that after all the peace teachings of Pennsylvania and Virginia, the sneers of Federalists and foreigners; after the disgrace of the “Chesapeake” and the surrender of Detroit,—Americans could still fight. The public had been taught, and had actually learned, to doubt its own physical courage; and the reaction of delight in satisfying itself that it still possessed the commonest and most brutal of human qualities was the natural result of a system that ignored the possibility of war.
Hull’s famous victory taught the pleasures of war to a new generation, which had hitherto been sedulously educated to think only of its cost. The first taste of blood maddens; and hardly had the “Constitution” reached port and told her story than the public became eager for more. The old Jeffersonian jealousy of the navy vanished in the flash of Hull’s first broadside. Nothing would satisfy the craving of the popular appetite but more battles, more British frigates, and more daring victories. Even the cautious Madison was dragged by public excitement upon the element he most heartily disliked.
The whole navy, was once more, September 1, safe in port, except only the “Essex,” a frigate rated at thirty-two but carrying forty-four guns, commanded by Captain David Porter. She left New York, July 3, with orders,[333] dated June 24, to join Rodgers, or failing this to cruise southwardly as far as St. Augustine. June 11 she met a convoy of seven transports conveying a battalion of the First Regiment, or Royal Scots, from the West Indies to reinforce Prevost and Brock in Canada. Porter cut out one transport. With the aid of another frigate he could have captured the whole, to the great advantage of Dearborn’s military movements; but the British commander managed his convoy so well that the battalion escaped, and enabled Prevost to strengthen the force at Niagara which threatened and defeated Van Rensselaer. August 13 the British 20-gun sloop-of-war “Alert” came in sight, bore down within short pistol-shot, and opened fire on the “Essex.” Absurd as the idea seemed, the British captain behaved as though he hoped to capture the American frigate, and not until Porter nearly sunk him with a broadside did the Englishman strike his colors. After taking a number of other prizes, but without further fighting, September 7 Porter brought his ship back to the Delaware River.
The return of the “Essex” to port, September 7, brought all the national vessels once more under the direct control of the Department. Nearly every ship in the service was then at Boston. The three forty-fours—the “Constitution,” “United States,” and “President”—were all there; two of the thirty-eights—the “Congress” and “Chesapeake”—were there, and the “Constellation” was at Washington. The “Adams,” 28, was also at Washington; but the “Hornet,” 18, and “Argus,” 16, were with Rodgers and Decatur at Boston. The “Syren,” 16, was at New Orleans; the “Essex,” 32, and the “Wasp,” 18, were in the Delaware.
Carried away by Hull’s victory, the Government could no longer hesitate to give its naval officers the liberty of action they asked, and which in spite of orders they had shown the intention to take. A new arrangement was made. The vessels were to be divided into three squadrons, each consisting of one forty-four, one light frigate, and one sloop-of-war. Rodgers in the “President” was to command one squadron, Bainbridge in the “Constitution” was to command another, and Decatur in the “United States” was to take the third.[334] Their sailing orders, dated October 2,[335] simply directed the three commodores to proceed to sea: “You are to do your utmost to annoy the enemy, to afford protection to our commerce, pursuing that course which to your best judgment may under all circumstances appear the best calculated to enable you to accomplish these objects as far as may be in your power, returning into port as speedily as circumstances will permit consistently with the great object in view.”