No towers along the steep;
Her march is o’er the mountain waves,
Her home is on the deep.
The last privateer’s encounter of the year 1812 to be described occurred on December 10th. The schooner Saratoga, Captain Charles W. Wooster, after a voyage of twenty-four days, in which nothing was seen, reached La Guayra, Venezuela, on December 9th. When she entered port the Spanish commandante threatened to open the batteries on her and she was obliged to leave. However, on beating up to windward she met a British schooner with $20,000 worth of dry-goods on board, which compensated for her ill-treatment ashore, and during the rest of the day she lay-to in plain sight of the town. The next morning there was a heavy fog on the water, but when at 9 o’clock this cleared off, the Saratoga was seen still in the offing, but preparing for battle with a brig. The entire population of the town mounted to the house-tops to watch the contest, and shortly before noon had the satisfaction of seeing the Saratoga open fire with her starboard bow gun. The brig replied with vigor, and in a very short time both vessels were buried out of sight in a thunderous cloud of smoke that was constantly illuminated by flashes of flame—a cloud like that in which the Constitution and Java fought.
For a few minutes this cloud swelled up in cumulous folds, and then the flames and thunder ceased and the cloud drifted away down the breeze leaving the two vessels in plain sight and the “gridiron flag” still flying from the trucks of the Saratoga.
This was on the 10th. For three days the people waited and wondered, and then a ship’s long boat came ashore. She brought the second mate and twenty-five seamen of the brig—the Rachel, from Greenock, mounting twelve long nines, manned by a crew of sixty, and carrying a cargo invoiced at £15,000—$75,000 in gold.
CHAPTER XII
EARLY WORK ON THE GREAT LAKES
IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL REGION UNMARKED BY THE HAND OF MAN IN THOSE DAYS—THE LONG TRAIL TO OSWEGO—THE FIRST YANKEE WAR-SHIP ON FRESH WATER—THE BRITISH GET AHEAD OF US ON LAKE ONTARIO—GOOD WORK OF “THE OLD SOW” AT SACKETT’S HARBOR—A DASH INTO KINGSTON HARBOR—THE STORY OF THE BRILLIANT WORK BY WHICH JESSE D. ELLIOTT WON A SWORD AND THE ADMIRATION OF THE NATION.
The student of American naval history who with weary toil reads through the proceedings of the Congress for the year 1813, finds two paragraphs marked “approved January 29,” that, because of the matters to which they refer, stir him as not many other paragraphs of all the printed proceedings of that legislative body from its first gathering down to the present day are able to do. They are brief—the first contains sixteen printed lines, and the last only seven. But in the first, gold medals are awarded to Hull, of the Constitution, Decatur, of the United States, and Jones, of the Wasp, for the astounding results they achieved in their combats with the Guerrière, the Macedonian, and the Frolic. And in the second the President of the United States “is requested to present to Lieutenant Elliott, of the Navy of the United States, an elegant sword, with suitable emblems and devices, in testimony of the just sense entertained by Congress of his gallantry and good conduct in boarding and capturing the British brigs Detroit and Caledonia, while anchored under the protection of Fort Erie.”
