Captain Warrington saved the “Epervier” and brought her into Savannah in spite of two British frigates encountered on the way. He sailed again early in June, and passed the months of July and August in British waters or in the track of British commerce from the Faroe Islands to the Canaries. He burned or sunk twelve prizes, besides making cartels of two more, and brought his ship through the blockade into New York harbor, October 30, without injury, with only one man lost and the crew in fine health.[294]
The third new sloop was named the “Wasp” after the famous victor over the “Hornet.” The new “Wasp” sailed from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, May 1, under command of Johnston Blakeley. Born in Ireland in 1781, Blakeley was from infancy a North Carolinian. He became in 1800 an officer in the navy. Blakeley and the “Wasp” of 1814, like Jones and the “Wasp” of 1813, ran a career in which tragedy gave a deeper tinge than usual to the bloody colors they won; but their success was on the whole greater than that of any other national cruiser from the beginning to the end of the war. Merely as a story of adventure Blakeley’s career was exciting, but romance was its smallest interest. For several reasons the sloop battles and cruises afforded one of the best relative tests of American character and skill among all that were furnished in the early period of the national history; and among the sloops, Blakeley’s “Wasp” was the most distinguished.
Blakeley ran directly across the ocean into soundings at the mouth of the British Channel. There he remained during the month of June, searching every vessel that passed. The number of neutrals constantly diverting his attention kept him actively employed, and led him farther into the Channel than was intended; but although three British frigates and fourteen sloops were at sea for the protection of British waters, the “Wasp” continued to burn and sink such British merchantmen as she met,—the first, June 2, and subsequently June 13, 18, 23, and 26,—until on the morning of June 28 a man-of-war brig appeared to windward, and bore down on the American ship.
The day was warm and overcast. During the whole morning the two vessels approached each other so slowly that each had more than time to study his opponent. Once more the foresight of the American ship-builders secured a decisive advantage. The British brig, the “Reindeer,” was altogether unequal to the contest. In tonnage she resembled the “Epervier,” and her armament was even lighter. Captain Manners, her commander, had substituted twenty-four-pound carronades for the usual thirty-two-pounders, and his broadside of ten guns threw only two hundred and ten pounds of metal,[295] while the “Wasp’s” eleven guns threw three hundred and thirty-eight pounds. The American crew numbered one hundred and seventy-three men; the British numbered one hundred and eighteen. Contest under such conditions was a forlorn hope, but the “Reindeer’s” crew were the pride of Portsmouth, and Manners was the idol of his men. They might cripple the “Wasp” if they could not capture her; and probably the fate of the “Argus,” a year before, encouraged the hope that the “Reindeer” could do at least as well as the “Pelican.”
Each captain manœuvred for the weather-gauge, but the Englishman gained it, and coming up on the “Wasp’s” weather-quarter, repeatedly fired his light twelve-pound bow-carronade, filled with round and grape shot, into the American ship. Blakeley, “finding the enemy did not get sufficiently on the beam to enable us to bring our guns to bear, put the helm a-lee,” and fired as his guns bore. The firing began at 3.26 P. M. and lasted until 3.40, fourteen minutes, at close range. In that space of time each gun in the broadside could be fired at the utmost three times. Apparently Manners felt that he had no chance with his guns, for he brought his vessel’s bow against the “Wasp’s” quarter and repeatedly attempted boarding. Early in the action the calves of his legs were shot away; then a shot passed through both his thighs; yet he still climbed into the rigging to lead his boarders, when two balls at the same moment struck him in the head. His fall ended the battle; and such had been the losses of his company that the highest officer remaining unhurt on the British brig to surrender the vessel was said to be the captain’s clerk. At 3.45 the “Reindeer’s” flag was struck,—the whole action, from the “Wasp’s” first gun, having lasted nineteen minutes.
Had every British vessel fought like the “Reindeer,” Englishmen would have been less sensitive to defeat. In this desperate action the “Wasp” suffered severely. Her foremast was shot through; her rigging and spars were much injured; her hull was struck by six round shot and much grape; eleven men were killed and fifteen wounded, or nearly one man in six, “chiefly in repelling boarders,” reported Blakeley. The “Reindeer” was a wreck, and was blown up as soon as the wounded could be removed. Of her crew, numbering one hundred and eighteen, thirty-three lost their lives; thirty-four were wounded,—in all, sixty-seven, or more than half the brig’s complement.
Ten days afterward Blakeley ran into Lorient, where his ship was well received by the French, whose British antipathies were increased rather than lessened by their enforced submission. After refitting, the “Wasp” sailed again August 27, and four days later cut out a valuable ship from a convoy under the eyes of a seventy-four. The same evening, September 1, at half-past six, Blakeley sighted four vessels, two on either bow, and hauled up for the one most to windward. At 9.26 at night the chase, a brig, was directly under the “Wasp’s” lee-bow, and Blakeley began firing a twelve-pound bow-carronade, which he must have taken from the “Reindeer,” for no such gun made part of his regular armament.
The battle in the dark which followed has been always deeply interesting to students of naval history, the more because the British Admiralty suppressed the official reports, and left an air of mystery over the defeat which rather magnified than diminished its proportions. The British brig was the sloop-of-war “Avon,” commanded by Captain James Arbuthnot, and carrying the usual armament of sixteen thirty-two-pound carronades with two long six-pounders. Her crew was reported as numbering one hundred and four men and thirteen boys. Captain Arbuthnot’s official report[296] said that the “Avon” had been cruising in company with the sloop-of-war “Castilian,” when at daylight, September 1, he “discovered an enemy’s schooner in the rear of the Kangaroo convoy,” and gave chase. The “Castilian” also gave chase, and at seven o’clock the twenty-gun ship “Tartarus” was signalled, also in chase.[297] All day the three British sloops-of-war chased the privateer schooner, until at half-past six o’clock in the evening the “Castilian’s” superiority in sailing free left the “Avon” out of sight, nine miles astern. The position of the “Tartarus” was not mentioned in the reports, but she could hardly have been ahead of the “Castilian.” The three British sloops were then within ten miles of each other, under full sail, with a ten-knot wind. The weather was hazy, and neither the “Castilian” nor the “Tartarus” could see that the “Avon” was signalling the “Castilian” a recall. The “Avon” saw at four o’clock a large sail on her weather-beam standing directly for her, and knowing that the “Wasp” was cruising in these waters, Captain Arbuthnot felt natural anxiety to rejoin his consort.
Captain Arbuthnot’s report continued:—
“The stranger closing with us fast, I kept away and set the weather studding-sails in hopes of nearing the ‘Castilian’ or ‘Tartarus,’ the latter of which I had only lost sight of at 3 P. M. At 7.30 P. M. the stranger had approached within hail, and being unable to get a satisfactory answer I had not a doubt of her being an enemy’s corvette. At 8.30 he fired a shot over us which was instantly returned with a broadside. He then bore up and endeavored to rake us, but was prevented. The action then became general within half pistol-shot, and continued without intermission until 10.30 P. M., when—having seven feet of water in the hold, the magazine drowned; tiller, foreyard, main-boom, and every shroud shot away, and the other standing and the running rigging cut to pieces; the brig quite unmanageable, and the leak gaining fast on the pumps; with forty killed and wounded, and five of the starboard guns dismounted; and conceiving further resistance only would cause a useless sacrifice of lives—I was under the painful necessity of ordering the colors to be struck to the American corvette ‘Wasp,’ the mainmast, almost immediately after, going over the side.”