On returning westward the crew of the Adams were attacked by the scurvy. Several died and a considerable number were made unfit for duty, so Captain Morris headed for Portland, Maine. Off the Maine coast, while driving along at ten knots an hour through a fog at 4 o’clock on the morning of August 17th, the Adams found land—rock, to speak accurately. She ran up on a ledge until her bow was six feet out of water, and when the sun came to clear the fog the crew found themselves only one hundred yards from a cliff near Mount Desert. The next tide floated the ship and she continued her course. A little later the British brig Rifleman was seen and chased, but the strain of the press of canvas made the Adams leak at the rate of nine feet of water into her hold per hour, so Captain Morris gave it up and ran into the Penobscot.
As it happened, the Rifleman was able to carry the news of the arrival of the Adams to a British fleet, “consisting of two line-of-battle ships, three frigates, three sloops, and ten troop transports” which were lying in wait to descend on Machias. Captain Morris moored his ship at Hampden, twenty-seven miles up the river, where he intended to heave her down and repair the leaking bottom. When the British fleet came after him he made such preparations as were possible to fight. Of his original crew of two hundred and twenty, seventy had died or had been disabled by the scurvy. The others, including one hundred and thirty seamen and officers and twenty marines, many of them sick, were mustered on shore for the fight. Nine of the lighter guns of the Adams were set up as a battery on the bluff overlooking the wharf, and these were put in charge of Lieutenant Wadsworth. Morris himself took charge of the wharf. The crew were joined by thirty (some say forty) experienced soldiers, and by a force of militia variously estimated at from three hundred to six hundred men. Whatever their number, they proved utterly worthless, for they had never been under fire. Anyway, they were but half armed, and the guns they had were the inferior fowling-pieces of that day.
On September 3d came the enemy. There was a land force of six hundred experienced troops, eighty marines, and eighty seamen. There was a force afloat in boats and barges well-armed that raised the whole command to 1,500 men. The crew of the Adams, stationed on the wharf, checked the flotilla, in spite of overwhelming numbers, but the American militia fled without firing a gun when the British land forces approached them. Captain Morris was left with only his crew and the thirty regulars to face a force eight times as great. Yet he burned the ship and made a successful retreat without losing a man save those too ill with scurvy to march away. The conduct of the Yankee militia was disgraceful, as it usually was throughout that war; but what shall be said of the failure of the 1,500 experienced men in the British force who were unable to hinder the retreat of the Yankee crew?
United States Ship-of-war Columbus at Anchor.
From the “Kedge Anchor.”
As has been noted, when the War of 1812 began, the authorities at Washington were determined to keep their ships in port. That a Yankee ship could meet a British ship of equal force or even of somewhat inferior force and keep her flag afloat seemed impossible. The idea of building anything except for harbor defence was too ridiculous for any consideration. But after the first six months of the war had demonstrated that the capacity and courage of the American personnel was unsurpassed, the ring of broadaxe and hammer, the rasp of saws, and the easy crunch of augers began to make melody for patriotic ears in the yards of the Yankee builders. The frames of ships-of-the-line, and of frigates and of corvettes, as the big sloops were called, rose steadily above the keel-blocks. The names that were given to these new ships showed that the naval authorities of the nation were disposed to flaunt red flags in the face of Johnnie Bull; they were determined to keep alive the memory of American victories by perpetuating the names of the defeated British ships. One frigate was named Guerrière and another Java, while the new sloops were named Peacock, Frolic, etc. Not many of the new ships were destined to see service against the British, for the reason that the war ended before they were fully ready. Still, three of the sloops got away to sea, and this chapter shall tell of the fate of one of them and give a part of the brilliant record made by another.
The first that got to sea was the Frolic. She was built at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, famous for its fine ships in the days of wood. Under Master-Commandant Joseph Bainbridge she sailed from the home port in February and some time later fell in with a Carthagenian privateer that was cruising for Yankee merchantmen off the southern coast. The privateer refused to surrender, when called on to do so, and Bainbridge fired one broadside at her, and that one blast sank her so quickly that nearly one hundred of her crew were drowned. As the Frolic carried only ten short thirty-twos in a broadside, it is certain that every shot struck the privateer below the water-line as she rolled to the swell. The fact is especially worth mentioning for the reason that it shows the great advantage of training the crew of a war-ship to shoot accurately.
The career of the Frolic, however, was brief. On April 20, 1814, when off the extreme south point of Florida, she fell in with the British thirty-six-gun frigate Orpheus, Captain Pigot, and the twelve-gun schooner Shelburne, Lieutenant Hope. The enemy were to leeward, but both of them were swifter than the Frolic. For more than twelve hours she struggled to windward, cutting away her anchors and throwing over her guns, but all in vain, for the Orpheus closed on her. The Frolic had carried twenty short thirty-twos and two long twelves, while the Orpheus carried sixteen short thirty-twos and twenty-eight long eighteens. Nevertheless, James, in commenting on the surrender of the Frolic, says:
“We should not have hesitated to call a French, or even a British, captain, who had acted as Master-Commandant Joseph Bainbridge, of the United States Navy, did in this instance, a ——.”