English Vessel of One Hundred Cannons
Lord Castlereagh admitted in a speech before Parliament on February 18, 1811, that “out of 145,000 seamen employed in the British service the whole number of American subjects amounts to more than 3,300.” And when the papers of the State Department at Washington were searched it was found that the friends of the enormous number of 6,257 different American citizens, impressed into the British service, had filed protests there.
That more than two men would be so impressed without having a protest filed, to every one for whom such a protest was filed, is a matter of course. And what is the moderate conclusion drawn from these facts? It is that more than twenty thousand free American men were forced into the service of the British navy by the press-gangs. Their fate, save in a few cases, is unrecorded, but we know that some met the perils of the deep and were lost. Many were sent to the fever coasts of Africa and there died. Some were flogged to death at the order of officers who laughed at their tortures. And of the rest—the few—we shall read farther on. For their cries to righteous heaven for help, and the wails of mothers and wives and children left helpless by these aggressions, were to be heard at last.
A Frigate with her Sails Loose to Dry.
From a wood-cut in the “Kedge Anchor.”
A body of Massachusetts Tory merchants strove wickedly and falsely to make the world believe that Massachusetts homes had not been invaded by the press-gangs; a member of Congress stood in his place to say that in spite of restrictions the nation had “profitably exported” goods worth forty-five millions of dollars during one year, and asked if all that trade was to be sacrificed in order to strike a blow for mere sentiment; the faint-hearted pointed to the exhausted condition of the national treasury, to the utter lack of trained soldiers, and to the feebleness of the navy when it was compared with that of the nation whose “naval supremacy was become a part of the law of nations.” But all these were at last brushed aside by the indignant host that arose to strike another blow for liberty—they were brushed aside so rudely, that, in one place, at least, a mob violently assaulted the toady element as represented by a Tory newspaper.
It happened that actual fighting occurred before war was declared, and most significant was one feature of the first battle of the war of 1812. The British frigate Guerrière, of thirty-eight guns, commanded then by Captain Samuel John Pechell, was one of the great host of war-ships that hovered about the American coast in 1811, picking able-bodied sailors from American ships, and in other ways annoying American commerce. Captain Pechell’s contempt for the young republic and his personal vanity were so great that he caused the name of his ship to be painted in huge letters across his foretopsail. Like a mine-camp bad man, he wanted every one to know who it was that tore open the water and split the air off the American coast. He was looking for trouble and his ship found enough of it, later on, although under another commander. Pechell himself found it, also, but he did not stay long to face it. In fact he fled from a very inferior force the moment he smelled the burning powder.
On May 1, 1811, the American merchant brig, Spitfire, while en route from Portland (formerly Falmouth), Maine, to New York, passed the Guerrière, that was lying-to at Sandy Hook, and but eighteen miles from New York City. The Guerrière, finding the brig bound in, deliberately stopped her there within the waters of New York and took off John Deguyo, an American citizen, who was a passenger.
At the time of this outrage the United States frigate President, of forty-four guns, commanded by Captain John Rodgers, was lying off Fort Severn, at Annapolis, Maryland. Captain Rodgers was at Havre de Grace, her chaplain and purser were at Washington, and her sailing-master was at Baltimore. That was in the days of stage coaches, as the reader will recall, but in spite of the slowness with which mails travelled—especially official mails—the President tripped her anchor at dawn on the morning of May 12th, and headed away for the ocean, with her name painted on each of her three topsails. As a poker-player might say, Captain Rodgers was holding three of a kind to Captain Pechell’s ace high. That he had been sent to sea to look for the Guerrière and get John Deguyo from her does not admit of a doubt, although he had not been specifically ordered to do so. He had been ordered to cruise up and down the coast to “protect American commerce,” and the facts of the Guerrière’s assault upon the liberty of John Deguyo had been communicated to him. The proper proceedings in the matter should he fall in with the Guerrière were left to his discretion. That he assumed the responsibility gladly may be inferred from what he said before sailing. He said that if he fell in with the Guerrière “he hoped he might prevail upon her commander to release the impressed young man.”