%267. The Sea Fights.%—While our army on the frontier was accomplishing little, our war ships were winning victory after victory on the sea. At the opening of the war, our navy was the subject of English ridicule and contempt. We had sixteen ships; she had 1200. She laughed at ours as "fir-built things with a bit of striped bunting at their mastheads." But before 1813 came, these "fir-built things" had destroyed her naval supremacy.[1] With the details of all these victories on the sea we will not concern ourselves. Yet a few must be mentioned because the fame of them still endures, and because they are examples of naval warfare in the days when the ships fought lashed together, and when the boarders, cutlass and pistol in hand, climbed over the bulwarks and met the enemy on his own deck, man to man. During 1812 the frigate Constitution, whose many victories won her the name of "Old Ironsides," sank the Guerrière; the United States captured and brought to port the Macedonian; and the Wasp, a little sloop of eighteen guns, after the most desperate engagement of the whole war, captured the British sloop Frolic.
[Footnote 1: One reason for the success of the American navy was the experience it had gained in the clash with France, and also in a war with Tripoli in 1801-1805. At that time the Christian nations whose ships sailed the Mediterranean Sea were accustomed to pay annual tribute to Tripoli and other piratical states on the north coast of Africa, under pain of having their ships seized and their sailors reduced to slavery. A dispute with the United States led to a war which gained for our ships the freedom of the Mediterranean.]
When these sloops were some two hundred feet apart, the Wasp opened with musketry and cannon. The sea, lashed into fury by a two days' cyclone, was running mountain high. The vessels rolled till the muzzles of their guns dipped in the water. But the crews cheered lustily and the fight went on. When at last the crew of the Wasp boarded the Frolic, they were amazed to find that, save the man at the wheel and three officers who threw down their swords, not a living soul was visible. The crew had gone below to avoid the terrible fire of the Wasp. Scarcely was the battle over when the British frigate Poictiers bore down under a press of sail, recaptured what was left of the Frolic, and took the Wasp in addition.
During 1813 the Constitution took the Java; the Hornet sank the Peacock; the Enterprise captured the Boxer off Portland, Maine. These and many more made up the list of American victories. But there were British victories also. The Argus, after destroying twenty-seven vessels in the English Channel, was taken by the Pelican; the Essex, after a marvelous cruise around South America, was captured by two frigates. The Chesapeake was forced to strike to the Shannon.
The Chesapeake was at anchor in Boston harbor, in command of James Lawrence, when the British frigate Shannon ran in and challenged her. Lawrence went out at once, and after a short, fierce fight was defeated and killed. As his men were carrying him below, mortally wounded, he cried, "Don't give up the ship!" words which Perry, as we have seen, afterwards put on his flag, and which his countrymen have never since forgotten.[1]
[Footnote 1: On the naval war read Maclay's History of the Navy, Part
Third; Roosevelt's Naval War of 1812; McMaster, Vol. IV., pp. 70-108.]
%268. The British blockade the Coast.%—Never, in the course of her existence, had England suffered such a series of defeats as we inflicted on her navy in 1812 and 1813. The record of those years caused a tremendous excitement in Great Britain, all the vessels she could spare were sent over, and with the opening of 1814, the whole coast of the United States was declared to be in a state of blockade.[1] In New England, Eastport (Moose Island) and Nantucket Island quickly fell. A British force went up the Penobscot to Hampden, and burned the Adams. The eastern half of Maine was seized, and Stonington, in Connecticut, was bombarded.
[Footnote 1: All except New England had been blockaded since 1812; and in 1813 the coast of Chesapeake Bay had been ravaged.]
%269. Burning of Washington.%—Further down the coast a great fleet and army from Bermuda, under General Ross and Admiral Cockburn, came up the Chesapeake Bay, landed in Maryland, and marched to Washington. At Bladensburg, a little hamlet near the capital, the Americans made a feeble show of resistance, but soon fled; and about dark on an August night, 1814, a detachment of the British reached Washington, marched to the Capitol, fired a volley through the windows, entered, and set fire to the building. When the fire began to burn brightly, Ross and Cockburn led the troops to the President's house, which was sacked and burned. Next morning the torch was applied to the Treasury building and to the Departments of State and War. Several private houses and a printing office were also destroyed before the British began a hasty retreat to the Chesapeake.[1]
[Footnote 1: Adams's History, Vol. VIII., Chaps. 5, 6; McMaster's History, Vol. IV., pp. 135-148; Memoirs of Dolly Madison, Chap. 8.]