“I remember,” wrote Richard Rush in later life,—“what American does not!—the first rumor of it. I remember the startling sensation. I remember at first the universal incredulity. I remember how the post-offices were thronged for successive days by anxious thousands; how collections of citizens rode out for miles on the highway, accosting the mail to catch something by anticipation. At last, when the certainty was known, I remember the public gloom; funeral orations and badges of mourning bespoke it. ‘Don’t give up the ship!’—the dying words of Lawrence—were on every tongue.”
Six weeks afterward another American naval captain lost another American vessel-of-war by reason of the same over-confidence which caused Lawrence’s mistakes, and in a manner equally discreditable to the crew. The “Argus” was a small brig, built in 1803, rating sixteen guns. In the summer of 1813 she was commanded by Captain W. H. Allen, of Rhode Island, who had been third officer to Barron when he was attacked in the “Chesapeake” by the “Leopard.” Allen was the officer who snatched a coal from the galley and discharged the only gun that was fired that day. On leaving the “Chesapeake,” Allen was promoted to be first officer in the “United States.” To his exertions in training the men to the guns, Decatur attributed his superiority in gunnery over the “Macedonian.” To him fell one of the most distinguished honors that ever came to the share of an American naval officer,—that of successfully bringing the “Macedonian” to port. Promoted to the rank of captain, he was put in command of the “Argus,” and ordered to take William Henry Crawford to his post as Minister to France.
On that errand the “Argus” sailed, June 18, and after safely landing Crawford, July 11, at Lorient in Brittany, Captain Allen put to sea again, three days afterward, and in pursuance of his instructions cruised off the mouth of the British Channel. During an entire month he remained between the coast of Brittany and the coast of Ireland, destroying a score of vessels and creating a panic among the ship-owners and underwriters of London. Allen performed his task with as much forbearance as the duty permitted, making no attempt to save his prizes for the sake of prize-money, and permitting all passengers to take what they claimed as their own without inspection or restraint. The English whose property he destroyed spoke of him without personal ill-feeling.
The anxiety and labor of such a service falling on a brig of three hundred tons and a crew of a hundred men, and the impunity with which he defied danger, seemed to make Allen reckless. On the night of August 13 he captured a brig laden with wine from Oporto. Within sight of the Welsh coast and within easy reach of Milford Haven, he burned his prize, not before part of his crew got drunk on the wine. The British brig “Pelican,” then cruising in search of the “Argus,” guided by the light of the burning prize, at five o’clock on the morning of August 14 came down on the American brig; and Captain Allen, who had often declared that he would run from no two-masted vessel, waited for his enemy.
According to British measurements, the “Argus” was ninety-five and one-half feet long; the “Pelican,” one hundred. The “Argus” was twenty-seven feet, seven and five-eighths inches in extreme breadth; the “Pelican” was thirty feet, nine inches. The “Argus” carried eighteen twenty-four-pound carronades, and two long twelve-pounders; the “Pelican” carried sixteen thirty-two-pound carronades, four long six-pounders, and a twelve-pound carronade. The number of the “Argus’s” crew was disputed. According to British authority, it was one hundred and twenty-seven,[421] while the “Pelican” carried one hundred and sixteen men and boys.[422]
At six o’clock in the morning, according to American reckoning,[423]—at half-past five according to the British report,—the “Argus” wore, and fired a broadside within grape-distance, which was returned with cannon and musketry. Within five minutes Captain Allen was struck by a shot which carried away his left leg, mortally wounding him; and five minutes afterward the first lieutenant was wounded on the head by a grape-shot. Although the second lieutenant fought the brig well, the guns were surprisingly inefficient. During the first fifteen minutes the “Argus” had the advantage of position, and at eighteen minutes after six raked the “Pelican” at close range, but inflicted no great injury on the enemy’s hull or rigging, and killed at the utmost but one man, wounding only five. According to an English account,[424] “the ‘Argus’ fought well while the cannonading continued, but her guns were not levelled with precision, and many shots passed through the ‘Pelican’s’ royals.” The “Pelican,” at the end of twenty-five minutes, succeeded in cutting up her opponent’s rigging so that the “Argus” lay helpless under her guns. The “Pelican” then took a position on her enemy’s starboard quarter, and raked her with eight thirty-two-pound carronades for nearly twenty minutes at close range, without receiving a shot in return except from musketry. According to the report of the British captain, the action “was kept up with great spirit on both sides forty-three minutes, when we lay her alongside, and were in the act of boarding when she struck her colors.”[425]
The “Argus” repeated the story of the “Chesapeake,” except that the action lasted three quarters of an hour instead of fifteen minutes. During that time, the “Pelican” should have fired all her broadside eight or ten times into the “Argus” at a range so close that no shot should have missed. Sixty thirty-two-pound shot fired into a small brig less than one hundred feet long should have shivered it to atoms. Nine thirty-two-pound shot from the “Hornet” seemed to reduce the “Peacock” to a sinking condition in fifteen minutes; yet the “Argus” was neither sunk nor dismasted. The British account of her condition after the battle showed no more injury than was suffered by the “Peacock,” even in killed and wounded, by one or at the utmost two broadsides of the “Hornet.”
“The ‘Argus’ was tolerably cut up in her hull. Both her lower masts were wounded, although not badly, and her fore-shrouds on one side nearly all destroyed; but like the ‘Chesapeake,’ the ‘Argus’ had no spar shot away. Of her carronades several were disabled. She lost in the action six seamen killed; her commander, two midshipmen, the carpenter, and three seamen mortally, her first lieutenant and five seamen severely, and eight others slightly wounded,—total twenty-four; chiefly, if not wholly by the cannon-shot of the ‘Pelican.’”[426]
The “Pelican” lost seven men killed or wounded, chiefly by musketry. On both sides the battle showed little skill with the guns; but perhaps the “Pelican,” considering her undisputed superiority during half the combat, showed even less than the “Argus.” As in the “Chesapeake’s” battle, the discredit of the defeated ship lay in surrender to boarders.
Two such defeats were calculated to shake confidence in the American navy. That Allen should have been beaten in gunnery was the more strange, because his training with the guns gave him his chief credit with Decatur. Watson, the second lieutenant of the “Argus,” attributed the defeat to the fatigue of his crew. Whatever was the immediate cause, no one could doubt that both the “Chesapeake” and “Argus” were sacrificed to the over-confidence of their commanders.