Captain Nathan Green was a modest man, and his log, if taken alone, would indicate that his escapes from British frigates were most matter of fact incidents. The fact is, however, that these events of his cruise were made notable by rarely brilliant feats of seamanship and calculated daring. The scene of action began off the coast of Pernambuco, in which port Captain Green had learned that eight English merchant vessels were making ready to sail. He took prize after prize in these waters, until the English assembled several cruisers for the express purpose of capturing the bold privateer. The frigates which chased him were part of this squadron, and he not only eluded their combined attempts, but continued to make captures almost in sight of the enemy. His log shows that the pursuit, in which both the Grand Turk and the frigate were towed by their boats, and sweeps manned for a night and a day was as thrilling and arduous a struggle as that famous escape of the Constitution from a powerful British squadron in the same war. The two ships were within firing distance of each other for hours on end, and after a second frigate joined in the hunt, the Grand Turk managed to keep her distance only by the most prodigious pluck and skill.
The records of the Salem Marine Society contain the following compact account of the most spectacular engagement of an illustrious fighting privateersman of Salem:
“Capt. Benjamin Upton commanded the private armed brig Montgomery, one hundred and sixty-five tons, armed with eighteen guns. While on a cruise off Surinam, December 5, 1812, at 3 P. M., made a sail standing northward, which proved to be a large English packet brig with troops. She hauled up her courses and stood toward the Montgomery, which was prepared to receive her at 7 P. M. After exchanging shots and wearing, the Montgomery ordered her to send a boat on board, which she refused to do. Then commenced a terrible conflict. The Montgomery delivered her broadside, which was returned, and continued till 8 o’clock, when her antagonist laid the Montgomery aboard on the starboard waist, his port anchor catching in after gun port, his spritsail yard and jib-boom sweeping over the waist guns. In this situation the Montgomery kept up a fire of musketry and such guns as could be brought to bear, which was returned with musketry by regular platoons of soldiers. In this way the fight continued for fifty minutes. The Montgomery finally filled her foretopsail and parted from the enemy, breaking his anchor, making a hole in the Montgomery’s deck, breaking five stanchions and staving ten feet of bulwark, with standing rigging much cut up. She hauled off for repairs, having four men killed and twelve wounded, among whom were Capt. Upton and Lieut. John Edwards of this society. It was thought prudent to get north into cooler weather, on account of the wounded. The enemy stood to the northward after a parting shot. On the Montgomery’s deck were found three boarding pikes, one musket and two pots of combustible matter, intended to set fire to the Montgomery, and which succeeded, but was finally extinguished. This was one of the hardest contests of the war. The Montgomery was afterwards commanded by Capt. Jos. Strout, and captured by H. M. ship of the line, La Hoge, and taken to Halifax. When Capt. Strout with his son, who was with him, were going alongside of the ship in the launch, another son, a prisoner on board, hailed the father and asked where mother was, which would have comprised the whole family.”
By the end of the year 1813 the prizes captured by Salem privateers had been sold for a total amount of more than six hundred thousand dollars. Many of the finest old mansions of the Salem of to-day, great square-sided homes of noble and generous aspect, were built in the decade following the War of 1812, from prize money won by owners of privateers. While ship owners risked and equipped their vessels for profit in this stirring business of privateering, the spirit of the town is to be sought more in such incidents as that of Doctor Bentley’s ride to Marblehead on a gun carriage. The famous Salem parson was in the middle of a sermon when Captain George Crowninshield appeared at a window at the old East Church, and engaged in an agitated but subdued conversation with Deacon James Brown, whose pew was nearest him. Doctor Bentley’s sermon halted and he asked:
“Mr. Brown, is there any news?”
“The Constitution has put into Marblehead with two British cruisers after her, and is in danger of capture,” was the startling reply.
“This is a time for action,” shouted Doctor Bentley. “Let us go to do what we can to save the Constitution, and may God be with us, Amen.”
At the head of his congregation the parson rushed down the aisle and hurried toward Marblehead. The alarm had spread through the town, and Captain Joseph Ropes had assembled the Sea Fencibles, a volunteer coast guard two hundred strong. Doctor Bentley was their chaplain, and his militant flock hoisted him on board the gun which they were dragging with them, and thus he rode in state to Marblehead. Meantime, however, Captain Joseph Perkins, keeper of the Baker Island Light, had put off to the Constitution in a small boat, and offering his services as pilot, brought the frigate inside the harbor where she was safe from pursuit by the Endymion and the Tenedos.
The ill-fated duel between the Chesapeake and the Shannon was fought off Boston harbor, and was witnessed by thousands of people from Marblehead and Salem who crowded to the nearest headlands. They saw the Chesapeake strike to the British frigate after a most desperate combat in which Captain Lawrence was mortally hurt. The captured American ship was taken to Halifax by the Shannon. Soon the news reached Salem that the commander whose last words, “Don’t give up the Ship,” were to win him immortality in defeat, was dead in a British port, and the bronzed sea-dogs of the Salem Marine Society resolved to fetch his body home in a manner befitting his end. Capt. George Crowninshield obtained permission from the Government to sail with a flag of truce for Halifax, and he equipped the brig Henry for this sad and solemn mission. Her crew was picked from among the shipmasters of Salem, some of them privateering captains, every man of them a proven deep-water commander, and thus manned the brig sailed for Halifax. It was such a crew as never before or since took a vessel out of an American port. They brought back to Salem the body of Capt. James Lawrence and Lieut. Augustus Ludlow of the Chesapeake, and the brave old seaport saw their funeral column pass through its quiet and crowded streets. The pall-bearers bore names, some of which thrill American hearts to-day; Hull, Stuart, Bainbridge, Blakely, Creighton and Parker, all captains of the Navy. A Salem newspaper thus describes the ceremonies:
“The day was unclouded, as if no incident should be wanting to crown the mind with melancholy and woe—the wind blew from the same direction and the sea presented the same unruffled surface as was exhibited to our anxious view when on the memorable first day of July, we saw the immortal Lawrence proudly conducting his ship to action.... The brig Henry, containing the precious relics, clad in sable, lay at anchor in the harbor. At half-past twelve o’clock they were placed in barges, and, preceded by a long procession of boats filled with seamen uniformed in blue jackets and trousers, with a blue ribbon on their hats bearing the motto of “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights,” were rowed by minute-strokes to the end of India Wharf, where the bearers were ready to receive the honored dead. From the time the boats left the brig until the bodies were landed, the United States brig Rattlesnake and the brig Henry alternately fired minute guns.