The list of privateers that hung about Great Britain and Ireland might be made long if the number were necessary to the story, but the character of the blockade was proved by other evidence than that of numbers. A few details were enough to satisfy even the English. The “Siren,” a schooner of less than two hundred tons, with seven guns and seventy-five men,[301] had an engagement with her Majesty’s cutter “Landrail” of four guns, as the cutter was crossing the British Channel with despatches. The “Landrail” was captured after a somewhat sharp action, and sent to America, but was recaptured on the way. The victory was not remarkable, but the place of capture was very significant; and it happened July 12, only a fortnight after Blakeley captured the “Reindeer” farther westward. The “Siren” was but one of many privateers in those waters. The “Governor Tompkins” burned fourteen vessels successively in the British Channel. The “Young Wasp” of Philadelphia cruised nearly six months about the coasts of England and Spain and in the course of West India commerce. The “Harpy” of Baltimore, another large vessel of some three hundred and fifty tons and fourteen guns, cruised nearly three months off the coast of Ireland, in the British Channel and in the Bay of Biscay, and returned safely to Boston filled with plunder, including, as was said, upward of £100,000 in British Treasury notes and bills of exchange. The “Leo,” a Boston schooner of about two hundred tons, was famous for its exploits in these waters, but was captured at last by the frigate “Tiber” after a chase of eleven hours. The “Mammoth,” a Baltimore schooner of nearly four hundred tons, was seventeen days off Cape Clear, the southernmost point of Ireland. The most mischievous of all was the “Prince of Neufchatel” of New York, which chose the Irish Channel as its favorite haunt, where during the summer it made ordinary coasting traffic impossible. The most impudent was probably the “Chasseur,” commanded by Captain Boyle, who cruised three months, and amused himself, when off the British coast, by sending to be posted at Lloyd’s a “Proclamation of Blockade” of “all the ports, harbors, bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, outlets, islands, and sea-coast of the United Kingdom.” The jest at that moment was too sardonic to amuse the British public.
As the announcement of these annoyances, recurring day after day, became a practice of the press, the public began to grumble in louder and louder tones. “That the whole coast of Ireland, from Wexford round by Cape Clear to Carrickfergus,” said the “Morning Chronicle” of August 31, “should have been for above a month under the unresisted dominion of a few petty ‘fly-by-nights’ from the blockaded ports of the United States, is a grievance equally intolerable and disgraceful.” The Administration mouthpiece, the “Courier,” admitted, August 22, that five brigs had been taken in two days between the Smalls and the Tuskar, and that insurance on vessels trading between Ireland and England had practically ceased. The “Annual Register” for 1814 recorded as “a most mortifying reflection,” that with a navy of nearly a thousand ships of various sizes, and while at peace with all Europe, “it was not safe for a vessel to sail without convoy from one part of the English or Irish Channel to another.” Such insecurity had not been known in the recent wars.
As early as August 12, the London Assurance Corporations urged the government to provide a naval force competent to cope with the privateers. In September the merchants of Glasgow, Liverpool, and Bristol held meetings, and addressed warm remonstrances to government on the want of protection given to British commerce. The situation was serious, and the British merchants did not yet know all. Till that time the East India and China trade had suffered little, but at last the American privateers had penetrated even the Chinese seas; and while they were driving the British flag into port there, they attacked the East India Company’s ships, which were really men-of-war, on their regular voyages. In August the “Countess of Harcourt” of more than five hundred tons, carrying six heavy guns and ninety men, was captured in the British Channel by the privateer “Sabine” of Baltimore, and sent safely to America. The number and value of the prizes stimulated new energy in seeking them, and British commerce must soon yield to that of neutral nations if the war continued.
The merchants showed that a great change had come over their minds since they incited or permitted the Tories to issue the Impressment Proclamation and the Orders in Council seven years before. More than any other class of persons, the ship-owners and West India merchants were responsible for the temper which caused the war, and they were first to admit their punishment. At the Liverpool meeting, where Mr. Gladstone, who took the chair, began by declaring that some ports, particularly Milford, were under actual blockade,[302] a strong address was voted; and at a very numerous meeting of merchants, manufacturers, ship-owners, and underwriters at Glasgow, September 7, the Lord Provost presiding, resolutions were unanimously passed—
“That the number of American privateers with which our channels have been infested, the audacity with which they have approached our coasts, and the success with which their enterprise has been attended, have proved injurious to our commerce, humbling to our pride, and discreditable to the directors of the naval power of the British nation, whose flag till of late waved over every sea and triumphed over every rival.
“That there is reason to believe, in the short space of twenty-four months, above eight hundred vessels have been captured by the Power whose maritime strength we have hitherto impolitically held in contempt.”
The war was nearly at an end, and had effected every possible purpose for the United States, when such language was adopted by the chief commercial interests of Great Britain. Yet the Glasgow meeting expressed only a part of the common feeling. The rates of insurance told the whole story. The press averred that in August and September underwriters at Lloyd’s could scarcely be induced to insure at any rate of premium, and that for the first time in history a rate of thirteen per cent had been paid on risks to cross the Irish Channel. Lloyd’s list then showed eight hundred and twenty-five prizes lost to the Americans, and their value seemed to increase rather than diminish.
Weary as the merchants and ship-owners were of the war, their disgust was not so intense as that of the navy. John Wilson Croker, Secretary of the Admiralty Board, whose feelings toward America were at best unkind, showed a temper that passed the limits of his duties. When the London underwriters made their remonstrance of August 12, Croker assured them, in a letter dated August 19,[303] that at the time referred to “there was a force adequate to the purpose of protecting the trade both in St. George’s Channel and the Northern Sea.” The news that arrived during the next two weeks threw ridicule on this assertion; and Croker was obliged to reply to a memorial from Bristol, September 16, in a different tone.[304] He admitted that the navy had not protected trade, and could not protect it; but he charged that the merchants were to blame for losing their own ships. His letter was a valuable evidence of the change in British sentiment:—
“Their Lordships take this opportunity of stating to you, for the information of the memorialists, that from the accounts which their Lordships have received of the description of vessels which had formed the largest proportion of the captures in the Irish and Bristol channels, it appears that if their masters had availed themselves of the convoys appointed for their protection from foreign ports, or had not in other instances deserted from the convoys under whose protection they had sailed, before the final conclusion of the voyage, many of the captures would not have been made. It is their Lordships’ determination, as far as they may be enabled, to bring the parties to punishment who may have been guilty of such illegal acts, and which are attended with such injurious consequences to the trade of the country.”
Little by little the Americans had repaid every item of the debt of insult they owed, and after Croker’s letter the account could be considered settled. Even the “Times” was not likely to repeat its sneer of 1807, that the Americans could hardly cross to Staten Island without British permission. Croker’s official avowal that no vessel could safely enter or leave one port in the British Islands for another except under guard of a man-of-war, was published on the same page with the memorialists’ assertion that the rate of insurance had gradually risen till it exceeded twofold the usual rates prevailing during the wars on the Continent.