Twelve Naval Captains / Being a Record of Certain Americans Who Made Themselves Immortal

by Molly Elliot Seawell

In the preparation of the ketch, and in working out the details of his plan, Decatur was ably seconded by his first lieutenant. The expedition for the destruction of the Philadelphia was exactly suited to a man of Lawrence's vigorous and imaginative temperament.

If a precise record remained of that immortal expedition,—the six days of storm and tempest, in which the ketch, ill ventilated and crowded with men who were wet to the skin most of the time and half starved because their provisions were spoiled by salt water, was blown about the African coast,—how surpassingly interesting it would be! It is known, however, that both officers and men not only kept up their determination, but their gayety. On that February evening when the ketch stole in and made fast to the Philadelphia to destroy her, Lawrence, next to Decatur, bore the most active part. It was he who commanded the boat that put out from the ketch and coolly fastened a hawser to the forechains of the doomed frigate; and it was he who intercepted the frigate's boat and took the fast from it and passed another line from the Philadelphia's stern into the ketch. When Decatur shouted, "Board!" Lawrence was among the first to land on the quarterdeck, and as soon as that was cleared, he dashed below, accompanied by two midshipmen, as intrepid as himself,—Mr. Laws and the indomitable Macdonough,—with ten men, and fired the berth-deck and all the forward storerooms. Nothing is more extraordinary than the quickness and precision with which every order was carried out on that night of glory. Lawrence and his party were in the ship less than twenty-five minutes, yet they were the last to drop into the ketch.[20] On their return after this celebrated adventure, Lawrence received his due share of praise.

There was much hard work to be done by every officer in the squadron before it was ready to attack Tripoli in August, 1804, and Lawrence, as first lieutenant, did his part. Once before Tripoli, there was severe fighting as well as hard work. The fact that Decatur was taken out of his ship so often to lead a division of the boats, left the command of the Enterprise much to Lawrence, and he handled the little schooner in the most seamanlike manner.

In the winter of 1804-5 the government determined to build a number of small gunboats, to renew the attacks on Tripoli in the summer. Some of the lieutenants who had returned to the United States in the changes necessary in the squadron, were selected to take them out to the Mediterranean. Lawrence, who had come back to the United States after spending two years in the Mediterranean, was given the command of one of these little vessels, Number Six,—for they were thought to be too insignificant to name and consequently were merely numbered. They carried a large spread of canvas, but their gunwales were so near the water that they looked rather like rafts than boats. On the way over, Lawrence was sighted by the British frigate Lapwing, which sent a boat to rescue them, supposing them to be on a raft after a shipwreck. Lawrence thanked the officer in charge of the boat, but proceeded on his way.

Commodore Rodgers was then in command of the American force which again appeared before Tripoli in May, 1805; and without firing a gun a treaty of peace and the release of the Philadelphia's officers and men were secured. The squadron then sailed for Tunis, where it intimidated the Tunisians into good behavior and negotiated a treaty of peace under the threat of a bombardment.

Soon after most of the vessels returned home. Lawrence recrossed the ocean again in his gunboat, and commanded her for some time after.

On the 22d of June, 1807, occurred the painful and mortifying rencounter of the Chesapeake, frigate, with the British frigate Leopard, one of the most far-reaching events in the American navy. As the name of Lawrence will ever be connected with the unfortunate Chesapeake, the story of that unhappy event can be told here.

The Chesapeake was a comparatively new ship, carrying thirty-eight guns, and was put in commission to relieve the Constitution in the Mediterranean. She seems to have been an unpopular ship from the first, as she was thought to be weak for her size, and was a very ordinary sailer. She was to wear the broad pennant of Commodore James Barron, who had Captain Gordon as his flag captain. Both of these men were esteemed excellent officers.

The Chesapeake was fitted partly at the Washington Navy Yard and partly at the Norfolk Navy Yard. There had been a charge that she had among her crew three deserters from the British frigate Melampus. The charge had been investigated, however, and found to be a mistake. It was known that the Leopard, of fifty guns, was hanging about outside the capes of Virginia, but it was not suspected that she would attempt to stop the Chesapeake. The British government, arrogant in its dominion over the sea, had claimed and exercised the right of searching merchant vessels; and the United States, a young nation, with a central government which was still an experiment as well as an object of jealousy to the State governments, had submitted from not knowing exactly how to resist. But with a ship of war it was different, and neither the authorities nor the people of the United States dreamed that any attempt would be made to violate the deck of a national vessel.

There seems to have been great negligence in preparing the Chesapeake for sea, and when she sailed she was in a state of confusion, her decks littered up, and none of the apparatus used in those days for firing great guns was available. Neither was her crew drilled, having been at quarters only three times. Her officers were men of spirit, but there seems to have been a fatal laxness in getting her ready for sea.