From the “Kedge Anchor.”
* A Razee is a line-of-battle ship from which the upper deck has been cut, leaving her with two decks of guns.
A most remarkable ship was the Adams, for, when let to a contractor to build, he sublet one side of her to another man who had the instincts of a thief and of a traitor. The sub-contractor, to increase his profits, scamped his timbers and his work. The Adams was a creditable ship on one side and a fraud on the other. It is a pity that the name of the scoundrel has not been perpetuated in the accounts of naval matters that have hitherto appeared. When altered at Washington it was necessary, of course, to follow the old lines and she was still lopsided, although lengthened until she could carry twenty-eight guns on the one deck. Her armament in her new fashion included a long twelve for a bow-chaser and thirteen medium-length eighteen-pounders (called Columbiads, sometimes) on each side. It was a pretty good armament for that day, in fact much superior to the ordinary sloop-of-war armament that was made up of two long twelves and twenty of the wretched short thirty-twos.
Charles Morris.
From a photograph owned by Mr. C. B. Hall.
Captain Charles Morris, who, as the first lieutenant of the Constitution, had first gained fame in her race with the British fleet, was placed in command of the rebuilt Adams, and Lieutenant Wadsworth, who was second on the Constitution in her great race, was made first on the Adams. There was a strong blockading squadron in the Chesapeake, but on the night of January 18, 1812, “which came on cloudy, boisterous, and with frequent snow squalls,” he headed away for sea. There was a strong northwest wind blowing, and there was not a beacon-light in the bay. Worse still, while the ship was driving along at twelve knots an hour, the two men who were engaged as pilots became confused, and at 11 o’clock at night a light was seen dead ahead which showed that she was flying straight at the land. Instantly her helm was shoved down and she came about on the other tack, but a few minutes later she was thumping over a bar, no one knew where, the heavy swells lifting her clear only to drop her again on the sand. However, over she went, and when it was found she did not leak, Morris decided to send her on her way once more, and at 1 o’clock passed two British ships at Lynnhaven and got out to sea.
Running across to the coast of Africa the Adams cruised from Cape Mount to Cape Palmas, then visited the vicinity of the Canaries and the Cape de Verde Islands. “A few small prizes, laden with palm oil and ivory” were taken. On March 25th the Woodbridge, a large Indiaman, was overhauled. It was thick weather at the time, and while Captain Morris was taking possession the weather suddenly cleared, when it was seen that a fleet of vessels were jogging along to windward under convoy of two big men-of-war. It took Morris a full day to get clear of the men-of-war.
Returning across the Atlantic the Adams ran into Savannah on May 1st—the day on which the British Epervier, prize to the Yankee Peacock, got in—and remained there till the 8th, when she sailed for the Gulf Stream in search of the Jamaica fleet. He found it with a ship-of-the-line, two frigates, and three brigs in charge. At the sight of the Adams the fleet closed in like a flock of ducks, and although the Yankee dogged them for two days he got nothing—not even a chase from the war-ships. So he sailed to the banks of Newfoundland, where he found only ice and fogs, and so went on to the coast of Ireland, in sight of which he arrived on July 3d. A few prizes were made here, but on July 15th “she stumbled across the eighteen-pounder thirty-six-gun frigate Tigris” The Tigris was no mean sailer, and in the chase that followed the Adams threw overboard all the guns taken from the ships she had captured, her heaviest anchors, and finally some of her own guns. Then the wind died out entirely, and that was good-luck for the Adams, for her captain repeated the tactics employed on the Constitution off the Jersey beach by towing his ship so far away from the Tigris that a lucky slant of wind carried her clear out of sight.
A still more remarkable chase followed this one. It began on July 19th, when two frigates found the Adams. The one was fat and slow, the other as lean and eager as a hound. A half a gale of wind was blowing. Every thread of canvas was spread, and for forty hours the frigate and the sloop stretched away across the stormy sea with every sail as round and firm as the breast of a giant runner; with the weather rigging singing taut; with every man on deck alert, and with each captain pacing to and fro without rest, looking at every turn from the sea to the clouds and from them to his sails and then away to the enemy; with the cutwater sawing through the solid blue as she rose to the swell, and burying itself in smother and foam that tumbled and roared away for half her length ahead as she boiled in the trough of the sea, and the sissing foam swept aft to mingle with the swirling wake. And that for forty hours with the frigate just out of gunshot! They covered four hundred miles with never a loss or a gain on either side, and then under the shades of night the gale hardened into a squall that hid the Adams out of sight, when she up helm and swung away so far on another course that when light came the hound had wholly lost the scent.