From a picture drawn and engraved by Baugean.
On a casual glance at the American sea-power in 1812 the lack of confidence in it was merited. For of sea-going craft we had only 17, carrying all told 442 guns and 5,025 men. Even of these ships two were condemned as unfit for service as soon as they were inspected. And as for the gun-boats, they were simply brushed aside the moment actual hostilities began. But Great Britain had 1,048 ships to our 17; these ships carried 27,800 guns to our 442 and 151,572 men to our 5,025. Of course the majority of these ships were employed elsewhere than on the American coast. But by the London Times of December 28, 1812, the British had, “from Halifax to the West Indies, seven times the force of the whole American navy.” By a pennant sheet taken from the British schooner Highflyer in 1813 there were on the American coast on March 13th, 107 British ships rated as carrying 3,055 guns, among which were 12 ships of the line rated as seventy-fours. As a matter of fact these ships actually carried at least ten per cent. more guns than their rating indicated. That this preponderance was increased as time passed, and that there was good reason for increasing it, will appear farther on.
The faint-hearted, indeed, were not without reason when they spoke of the declaration of war as “the dreaded and alarming intelligence.” But if the reader wishes for a correct idea of the quality of the men who in that day stood erect, facing the quarter-deck, and uncovered their heads whenever the brawny quartermaster hoisted the old flag, he will find it in the fact that they—the men of the American navy—were the foremost among those who “passionately wished for” a war with this power—a power that outnumbered them and out-weighed them on their own coast as seven to one.
An English Admiral of 1809.
From an engraving at the Navy Department, Washington.
Nor was the power of the British navy found only in the number and size of her ships and the number and size of the guns. “Since the year 1792 each European nation in turn had learned to feel bitter dread of the weight of England’s hand. In the Baltic Sir Samuel Hood had taught the Russians that they must needs keep in port when the English cruisers were in the offing. The descendants of the Vikings had seen their whole navy destroyed at Copenhagen. No Dutch fleet ever put out after the day when, off Camperdown, Lord Duncan took possession of De Winter’s shattered ships. But a few years before 1812 the greatest sea-fighter of all time had died in Trafalgar Bay, and in dying had crumbled to pieces the navies of France and Spain.” In spite of the infamous system under which the British ships were manned, the personnel of the British navy was—one is tempted to say it was beyond comparison better than that of any other European nation. For the others felt “the lack of habit—may it not even be said without injustice, of aptitude for the sea.” The officers and men who gathered to crush the navy of the young republic came from Aboukir and Copenhagen and Trafalgar Bay. They were veterans in naval warfare—men who preferred short weapons as the Romans did, men who preferred to fight with yard-arm interlocking yard-arm, where short carronades were better than long guns of smaller bore, and where even these might be made more effective through loading with double shot. Luckily for us their long experience had engendered prejudiced conservatism, their many victories had cultivated an overweening confidence, and their bull-dog courage had made them careless of the arts of seamanship.
As to the ability of the American crews who were to meet these tar-stained, smoke-begrimed, cicatrice-marked veterans, enough will be told in the descriptions of their battles, for they astounded the whole world.
Nevertheless, the war at sea began in a fashion to discourage the nation and humiliate the whole navy.
On the day (June 18, 1812) that war was declared, the effective part of the American navy—the only American naval ships ready for a fight—lay in New York Harbor, or else were at sea where they could not hear the news. The ships in New York were the flag-ship President, rated forty-four, Captain Rodgers; the United States, forty-four, Captain Decatur; the Congress, thirty-eight, Captain Smith; the Hornet, eighteen, Captain Lawrence, and the Argus, sixteen, Lieutenant Sinclair. Nothing more discreditable to the administration of President Madison than this fact can be told. He had seen for months that war was inevitable and yet he had done nothing to gather in the ships and prepare them for the fight. And Monroe was Secretary of State. But for the earnest remonstrances of Captains Bainbridge and Stewart, who repeatedly addressed the Department, every American warship would have been kept in port for harbor defence.