“In hardly another action of the war do the accounts of the respective forces differ so widely; the official British letter makes their total of men at the beginning of the action 377, of whom Commodore Bainbridge officially reports that he paroled 378! The British state their loss in killed and mortally wounded at 24; Commodore Bainbridge reports that the dead alone amounted to nearly sixty! Usually I have taken each commander’s account of his own force and loss, and I should do so now if it were not that the British accounts differ among themselves, and wherever they relate to the Americans are flatly contradicted by the affidavits of the latter’s officers. The British first handicap themselves by the statement that the surgeon of the Constitution was an Irishman and lately an assistant surgeon in the British Navy (“Naval Chronicle,” xxix, 452); which draws from Surgeon Amos A. Evans a solemn statement in the Boston Gazette that he was born in Maryland and was never in the British Navy in his life. Then Surgeon Jones, of the Java, in his official report, after giving his own killed and mortally wounded at twenty-four, says that the Americans lost in all about sixty, and that four of their amputations perished under his own eyes; whereupon Surgeon Evans makes the statement (“Niles’s Register,” vi., p. 35), backed up by affidavits of his brother officers, that in all he had but five amputations, of whom only one died, and that one a month after Surgeon Jones had left the ship. To meet the assertions of Lieutenant Chads that he began the action with but 377 men, the Constitution’s officers produced the Java’s muster-roll, dated November 17th, or five days after she had sailed, which showed 446 persons, of whom 20 had been put on board a prize. The presence of this large number of supernumeraries on board is explained by the fact that the Java was carrying out Lieutenant-General Hislop, the newly appointed Governor of Bombay, and his suite, together with part of the crews of the Cornwallis 74, and gun sloops Chameleon and Icarus, she also contained stores for those two ships.
“Besides conflicting with the American reports, the British statements contradict one another. The official published report gives but two midshipmen as killed, while one of the volumes of the “Naval Chronicle” (vol. xxix., p. 452), contains a letter from one of the Java’s lieutenants, in which he states that there were five. Finally, Commodore Bainbridge found on board the Constitution, after the prisoners had left, a letter from Lieutenant H. D. Cornick, dated January 1, 1813, and addressed to Lieutenant Peter V. Wood, Twenty-second Regiment, foot, in which he states that sixty-five of their men were killed. James (“Naval Occurrences”) gets around this by stating that it was probably a forgery; but, aside from the improbability of Commodore Bainbridge being a forger, this could not be so, for nothing would have been easier than for the British lieutenant to have denied having written it, which he never did.
“Taking all these facts into consideration, we find 446 men on board the Java by her own muster-list; 378 of these were paroled by Commodore Bainbridge at San Salvador; 24 men were acknowledged by the enemy to be killed or mortally wounded; 20 were absent in a prize, leaving 24 unaccounted for, who were undoubtedly slain.
“The British loss was thus 48 men killed and mortally wounded, and 102 wounded severely and slightly.”
Maclay, who was entirely familiar with Roosevelt’s account, gives good reasons for believing that Bainbridge’s estimate of the enemy’s loss was accurate—60 killed and 101 wounded.
In a footnote, Mr. Roosevelt refers to Lord Dundonald’s “Autobiography of a Seaman” for “an account of the shameless corruption then existing in the Naval Administration of Great Britain.” Losses, according to this British writer, were often “much greater than were ever acknowledged.” Brenton, the British naval historian, also tells how the letters of the commanders were garbled.
The charge that an American commodore committed forgery is but a mild exhibit of the British temper of the early part of the century.
To complete the story of the Constitution and Java fight, it must be told that all but two of the small boats in the two ships had been destroyed—one on each ship remained. Little account is made in the histories of the work of removing the wounded in these two small boats from the Java to the Constitution, and this is very likely the proper way to treat the matter. There is enough sorrow in the world at all times without recalling the sorrows long past. But one story of the brave wounded must not be omitted. Among them was Edward Keele, a British midshipman, mortally hurt. He was but thirteen years old, and the Java was his first ship. “He had suffered amputation of a leg, and after the action was over inquired anxiously if the ship had struck. Seeing one of the flags spread over him, he became very uneasy, but being assured that it was English, he was satisfied;” and so he died.
Among the mortally hurt on the Constitution was Lieutenant John C. Alwyn, already mentioned. He had been wounded in the shoulder in the Constitution’s fight with the Guerrière, and had not fully recovered, although able to attend to his duties. As the Java bore down to board the Constitution, Alwyn led the men who were called aft on the Constitution, and the moment the Java’s jib-boom struck the Constitution’s mizzen-rigging he jumped up on the Constitution’s quarter-deck hammock-netting to repel the enemy. Drawing a pistol, he aimed it at the crowd on the enemy’s forecastle, when a musket ball pierced the same shoulder that had been hurt in the other fight. The shock knocked him back to the deck. Seeing him fall, a marine in the Constitution’s mizzen-top glanced over the crew of the Java until he distinguished an officer. His eyes fell upon Captain Lambert, and, raising his musket, he shot the captain through the left breast.
Then the ships drifted apart, but Alwyn refused to leave the deck, and continued at his post as his captain was doing. A few days later, when a strange sail, plainly a man-o’-war, was seen and the ship was cleared for action, Alwyn left his bed and took his post. The ship proved to be the Constitution’s consort, the Hornet, but the exertion which Alwyn made at this time brought on an inflammation that ended his life.