CHAPTER XVIII
GUN-BOATS NOT WHOLLY WORTHLESS
EVEN IN THE WORST VIEW OF THEM THEY ARE WORTH CONSIDERATION—THE BEST OF THEM DESCRIBED—THE HOPES OF THOSE WHO, LIKE JEFFERSON, BELIEVED IN THEM—REASONS FOR THEIR GENERAL WORTHLESSNESS THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN MANIFEST BEFORE THEY WERE BUILT—PROMOTED DRUNKENNESS AND DEBAUCHERY—THEY PROTECTED YANKEE COMMERCE IN LONG ISLAND SOUND—A FIGHT WITH A SQUADRON IN CHESAPEAKE BAY—WHEN THE BRAGGART CAPTAIN PECHELL MET THE YANKEES—SAILING-MASTER SHEED’S BRAVE DEFENCE OF “NO. 121”—COMMODORE BARNEY IN THE PATUXENT RIVER—WHEN SAILING-MASTER TRAVIS OF THE SURVEYOR MADE A GOOD FIGHT—A WOUNDED YANKEE MIDSHIPMAN MURDERED—MEN WHO MADE FAME IN SHOAL WATER BELOW CHARLESTON.
As has been mentioned incidentally a number of times in the course of this history the Americans had, when war was declared to exist in 1812, a very large number of gun-boats—the quills, so to speak, of the great American heraldic porcupine (Erethizon Dorsatus dormant). Because in the days before the War of 1812 gun-boats—harbor-defence vessels—constituted in the eyes of the majority of American legislators the ideal navy for the American nation, it is worth telling at some length just what these gun-boats were and what they accomplished in the way of compelling the world to respect the American flag. They are farther worth consideration because in these last days of the nineteenth century a very great number of people in the nation believe that if an enemy’s battle-ship should dare to threaten the American metropolis, the courageous tugboat-men of the harbor would arm their little vessels with torpedoes and, swarming down to Sandy Hook, surround the audacious armor-clad, and by sheer force of numbers run in and explode their dynamite where it would fill the enemy with dismay, and his hull with water. Indeed, a noted orator has proposed this kind of a defence before a rapturously applauding audience in the metropolis, and some millions of his fellow-citizens read his words in the next morning’s papers and, in their minds, patted themselves and him approvingly upon the back as they did so.
The gun-boat of 1812, when built on the most approved plans, was fifty feet long, eighteen feet wide, and four feet deep from deck-beams to the top of the keel, but of the two hundred and fifty-seven of these boats found in the harbors of the United States in June, 1812, nearly all were but ten instead of eighteen feet wide. Each boat was provided with two masts and schooner sails, and with from twenty to thirty long oars, called sweeps. The crew of each varied from twenty to fifty, all told, and each (that is of the best) was armed with a long thirty-two pounder, the most efficient cannon of that day, which was mounted on a circle so that it could be pointed to any part of the horizon. The majority of the boats, however, were much smaller and carried smaller guns.
The arguments in favor of these vessels as stated by the friends of the system were as follows:
Frigates draw so much water and need so much sea-room for all manœuvres that they are utterly helpless in the shoal waters of the American harbors, while the gun-boats are moveable batteries, capable of going anywhere in any harbor that has three feet of water in it.
The gun of the gun-boat was as efficient as any of the best guns of the largest ship afloat, so forty gun-boats would have among them a more efficient battery than the Constitution, or any other frigate afloat.
In a contest between forty gun-boats and a frigate, the boats would have the broadside of the ship—say 1,500 to 2,000 square feet of surface—for a target, but the boats would fight her end on, and so each would present to her a target but ten feet wide (at most eighteen feet wide) and but two feet out of water.
The gun-boats would be scattered around the frigate and so the gunners would have to aim at the little targets separately.
The gun on the boat being low down near the water, had a better chance of hitting the frigate (and at the water-line) than a high gun had of hitting a low target.