It was wholly reasonable that the exploit of the Shannon should arouse fervid enthusiasm in the breast of every Briton. The wounds inflicted by Hull, Decatur, and Bainbridge still rankled, but they were now forgotten and the loud British boastings equaled all the tales of Yankee brag. A member of Parliament declared that the "action which Broke fought with the Chesapeake was in every respect unexampled. It was not—and he knew it was a bold assertion which he made—to be surpassed by any other engagement which graced the naval annals of Great Britain." Admiral Warren was still in a peevish humor at the hard knocks inflicted on the Royal Navy when he wrote, in congratulating Captain Broke: "At this critical moment you could not have restored to the British naval service the preeminence it has always preserved, or contradicted in a more forcible manner the foul aspersions and calumnies of a conceited, boasting enemy than by the brilliant act you have performed. The relation of such an event restores the history of ancient times and will do more good to the service than it is possible to conceive."
Captain Broke was made a baronet and received other honors and awards which he handsomely deserved, but the wound he had suffered at the head of his boarding party disabled him for further sea duty. If the influence of the Constitution and the United States was far-reaching in improving the efficiency of the American navy, it can be said also that the victory of the Shannon taught the British service the value of rigorous attention to gunnery and a highly trained and disciplined personnel.
American chagrin was somewhat softened a few weeks later when two very small ships, the Enterprise and the Boxer, met in a spirited combat off the harbor of Portland, Maine, like two bantam cocks, and the Britisher was beaten in short order on September 5, 1813. The Enterprise had been a Yankee schooner in the war with Tripoli but had been subsequently altered to a square rig and had received more guns and men to worry the enemy's privateers. The brig-of-war was a kind of vessel heartily disliked by seamen and now vanished from blue water. The immortal Boatswain Chucks of Marryat proclaimed that "they would certainly damn their inventor to all eternity" and that "their common, low names, 'Pincher,' 'Thrasher,' 'Boxer,' 'Badger,' and all that sort, are quite good enough for them."
Commanding the Enterprise was Captain William Burrows, twenty-eight years old, who had seen only a month of active service in the war. Captain Samuel Blyth of the Boxer had worked his way up to this unimportant post after many years of arduous duty in the British navy. He might have declined a tussel with the Enterprise for his crew numbered only sixty-six men against a hundred and twenty, but he nailed his colors to the mainmast and remarked that they would never come down while there was any life in him.
The day was calm, the breeze fitful, and the little brigs drifted about each other until they lay within pistol shot. Then both loosed their broadsides, while the sailors shouted bravely, and both captains fell, Blyth killed instantly and Burrows mortally hurt but crying out that the flag must never be struck. There was no danger of this, for the Enterprise raked the British brig through and through until resistance was hopeless. Captain Blyth was as good as his word. He did not live to see his ensign torn down. Great hearts in little ships, these two captains were buried side by side in a churchyard which overlooks Casco Bay, and there you may read their epitaphs today.
The grim force of circumstances was beginning to alter the naval policy of the United States. Notwithstanding the dramatic successes, her flag was almost banished from the high seas by the close of the year 1813. The frigates Constellation, United States, and Macedonian were hemmed in port by the British blockade; the Adams and the Constitution were laid up for repairs; and the only formidable ships of war which roamed at large were the President, the Essex, and the Congress. The smaller vessels which had managed to slip seaward and which were of such immense value in destroying British commerce found that the system of convoying merchantmen in fleets of one hundred or two hundred sail had left the ocean almost bare of prizes. It was the habit of these convoys, however, to scatter as they neared their home ports, every skipper cracking on sail and the devil take the hindmost—a failing which has survived unto this day, and many a wrathful officer of an American cruiser or destroyer in the war against Germany could heartily echo the complaint of Nelson when he was a captain, "behaving as all convoys that ever I saw did, shamefully ill, and parting company every day."
This was the reason why American naval vessels and privateers left their own coasts and dared to rove in the English Channel, as Paul Jones had done in the Ranger a generation earlier. It was discovered that enemy merchantmen could be snapped up more easily within sight of their own shores than thousands of miles away. First to emphasize this fact in the War of 1812 was the naval brig Argus, Captain William H. Allen, which made a summer crossing and cruised for a month on end in the Irish Sea and in the chops of the Channel with a gorgeous recompense for her shameless audacity. England scolded herself red in the face while the saucy Argus captured twenty-seven ships and took her pick of their valuable cargoes. Her course could be traced by the blazing hulls that she left in her wake and this was how the British gun brig Pelican finally caught up with her.
Although the advantage of size and armament was with the Pelican, it was to be expected that the Argus would prove more than a match for her. The American commander, Captain Allen, had played a distinguished part in several of the most famous episodes of the navy. As third lieutenant of the Chesapeake, in 1807, he had picked up a live coal in the cook's galley, held it in his fingers, and so fired the only gun discharged against the Leopard in that inglorious surprise and surrender. As first officer of the frigate United States he received credit for the splendid gunnery which had overwhelmed the Macedonian, and he enjoyed the glory of bringing the prize to port. It was as a reward of merit that he was given command of the Argus. Alas, in this fight off the coast of Wales he lost both his ship and his life, and England had scored again. There was no ill-luck this time—nothing to plead in excuse. The American brig threw away a chance of victory because her shooting was amazingly bad, and instead of defending the deck with pistol, pike, and musket, when the boarders came over the bow the crew lowered the flag.
It was an early morning fight, on August 14, 1813, in which Captain Allen had his leg shot off within five minutes after the two brigs had engaged. He refused to be taken below, but loss of blood soon made him incapable of command, and presently his first lieutenant was stunned by a grapeshot which grazed his scalp. The ship was well sailed, however, and gained a position for raking the Pelican in deadly fashion, but the shot went wild and scarcely any harm was done. The British captain chose his own range and methodically made a wreck of the Argus in twenty minutes of smashing fire, working around her at will while not a gun returned his broadsides. Then he sheered close and was prepared to finish it on the deck of the Argus when she surrendered with twenty-three of her crew out of action. The Pelican was so little punished that only two men were killed. The officer left in command of the Argus laid this unhappy conclusion to "the superior size and metal of our opponent, and the fatigue which the crew underwent from a very rapid succession of prizes." There were those on board who blamed it to the casks of Oporto wine which had been taken out of the latest prize and which the sailors had secretly tapped. Honesty is the best policy, even in dealing with an enemy. The affair of the Argus and the Pelican was not calculated to inflate Yankee pride.
To balance this, however, came two brilliant actions by small ships. The new Peacock, named for the captured British brig, under Captain Lewis Warrington, stole past the blockade of New York. Off the Florida coast on the 29th of April she sighted a convoy and attacked the escort brig of eighteen guns, the Epervier. In this instance the behavior of the American vessel and her crew was supremely excellent and not a flaw could be found. They hulled the British brig forty-five times and made a shambles of her deck and did it with the loss of one man.