At the time of the War of 1812 it was a very well-known group to Yankee seamen, and seemingly out of the way as it looked when glancing at a chart of that sea, it was nevertheless but a little to one side of what was counted the best route from New York to the East Indies. Accordingly, when Decatur was ordered to take the President, the Hornet, the new Peacock, and the store-ship Tom Bowline for a voyage against British commerce in the East Indies, he appointed the Tristan d’Acunha group as the rendezvous where all the ships should meet, replenish their water, stretch the legs of the seamen in a chase after wild goats and hogs on shore, and then sail away in search of English men-of-war to conquer.
As has been told, Decatur, when leaving New York, took the natural course along the Long Island coast, instead of the bolder and therefore safer course down the Jersey beach, and “was fairly mobbed” by the British fleet. His consorts, the Hornet, the Peacock, and the Tom Bowline, sailed a few days later (January 22d), without having learned that the President was captured, and having escaped the blockaders, they sailed away to the meeting-point.
When a few days out, the Hornet separated from her consorts and thereafter proceeded without incident worth mention until, on March 23, 1815, she arrived at the group of Tristan d’Acunha. An action which followed on the day she arrived was the next to the last one of the war. Allen, in beginning his description of the two last, says: “Two actions of a disgraceful character to the Americans remain to be recorded.” He then tells that Captain Biddle, commanding the Hornet, spoke to a neutral ship on March 20th, when the neutral captain said he had heard that peace had been declared. “Information coming in this questionable shape was not binding,” says Allen, but “it was Captain Biddle’s duty to have acted cautiously before setting it at defiance.” He did not act as cautiously as Allen thinks he should, and so the action was “of a disgraceful character to the Americans.” As to the facts, there is no dispute, save in the minor matters of the number of each crew and the size of a couple of guns, so the reader is able to decide for himself how far the action disgraced the American flag.
Having reached the anchorage off the tiny settlement on the main island of the group at about 11 o’clock in the morning of March 23, 1815, the sheets of the head-sails on the Hornet were let go preparatory to swinging her up into the wind and dropping her anchor. But no sooner had the sails begun to flap than the lookout announced a sail in sight, and hauling aft the sheets once more the Hornet stood out to sea for a look at the stranger.
As it happened, the strange vessel was the British brig sloop Penguin, Captain James Dickenson, a new vessel on her first cruise. She had sailed from England to the Cape of Good Hope. When there, news arrived that a heavy Yankee privateer called the Young Wasp had been making prizes of British Indiamen, using Tristan d’Acunha as a retreat when water and fresh meat were needed. Accordingly, Admiral Tyler, commanding the squadron, sent the Penguin to the lonely group to capture the venturesome privateer, placing on board of her twelve marines from his own ship, the Medway, to make sure that she had enough men.
The Hornet and Penguin.
From an old wood-cut.
So it happened that when the Penguin reached the island and saw a sail there, Captain Dickenson thought he had had the good luck to alight on the saucy privateer. Being fearful that the supposed privateer would run away, the Penguin was handled very carefully. Captain Dickenson did not want the Yankee to see how many guns the Penguin carried and so kept her end on to the Hornet as he came down wind to capture her—came down wind because he was fortunate enough to come into the fight with the wind in his favor.
The Hornet, as the Penguin approached, kept wearing first one way and then the other to keep from getting raked until 1.40 P.M., when the Penguin had arrived within musket-shot. At that the Penguin hauled to the wind with the breeze coming in over her starboard bow, when she “hoisted her colors and fired a gun; whereupon the Hornet hauled up on the starboard tack and discharged a broadside.” The quotation is from Allen. It is a small matter, but the first gun of this “action of a disgraceful character to the Americans” was fired by the British.