Buffalo, N. Y., Burned by the British, December 30, 1813.
From an old wood-cut.
There was also a small fight on Lake Champlain during the summer of 1813. The American naval force there was under Lieutenant Thomas Macdonough, whose name first appears in American history in the story of the Tripolitan war. Macdonough had two small sloops called the Growler and the Eagle. On June 3d he sent them, under Lieutenant Smith, to the north end of the lake after three British gun-boats. The gun-boats fled down the Sorel River, the outlet of the lake. Smith bravely, but foolishly, followed them, and so got into a trap, for a strong British land force came to help the gun-boats, and pelted the American decks with musketry. The Americans had only carronades, while the gun-boats had long twenty-fours. So the British kept out of range of the Yankee short guns and kept up a fire from the long twenty-fours until the Eagle had a plank knocked off under water, when she sank instantly. The Growler had her main boom and forestay shot away, and grounded. The British captured both and obtained for a time the mastery of that lake. The Americans in this fight had one man killed and nineteen wounded, who, with ninety-two unhurt men, fell into the British hands.
On July 31st Colonel J. Murray, with 1,000 British troops, aided by the captured sloops and the three gun-boats, assaulted Plattsburg and marched thence to Saranac. All the public stores at both places were burned and then Murray retreated.
How Lieutenant Thomas Macdonough not only prevented any further incursions of that kind, but retrieved all the losses he had sustained and shifted the account to the other side—how he fought and whipped a superior force of the enemy, while a clarion-voiced rooster flapped its wings and crowed for victory in the shot-frayed rigging—will be told in the next volume.
CHAPTER XVI
LOSS OF THE LITTLE SLOOP ARGUS
SHE WAS CAPTURED BY THE PELICAN, A VESSEL THAT WAS OF SLIGHTLY SUPERIOR FORCE—A CLEAN VICTORY FOR THE BRITISH, BUT ONE THAT IN NO WAY DISHEARTENS THE FIERCEST OF THE AMERICAN PATRIOTS—ILL-LUCK OF “THE WAGGON.”
The story of the American Navy during the first eighteen months of the War of 1812 is by no means completed. There were battles which, in spite of the fact that only small forces were involved, were really no less significant in demonstrating the character of the sea-power of the new American nation than were the great victories already described. There was at least one defeat that was in one way most significant. And there were other events that were matters of consideration then and are now.
For instance there was the act of the Congress on January 2, 1813, when it was ordered that the Navy be increased by four ships-of-the-line (rating at seventy-four guns), six frigates to rate with the Constitution, and six sloops to rate with the Hornet, that eventually thrashed the Peacock so effectually. Tremendous, comparatively speaking, as was this addition to the naval strength of the nation, the real significance of the act was found in the change of spirit in the national administration and legislature. For it was but five months to the day since Captain Hull had sailed from Boston contrary to orders that were en route—had sailed on the cruise that ended with the destruction of the boastful Guerrière. It was on August 2, 1812, that the Constitution sailed, and at that time the Administration at Washington fully believed that to allow an American frigate to go to sea was to insure that she would be captured and added to the British Navy, and so, like the pusillanimous French Government of the day, it preferred seeing the ships rot to taking the chances of battle. But the magnificent courage and skill of the American naval seaman, in spite of the pusillanimity of the politicians in power—in spite of the fact that they received but half-hearted support from the nation as a whole—had, in five months, shot under water the porcupine policy in naval affairs and replaced the eagle on the American coat-of-arms. And there the eagle remains to this day, albeit he lowers his head with a tinge of shame when he looks for the gridiron flag among the merchant fleets of the world.