In the first six months of the war, the little American navy, for which Congress had done nothing, and from which nothing had been expected, had six encounters with English cruisers, and in every one was victorious. These defeats were a sore trouble to English naval historians, who have ever since been laboring to explain them away. They have invented all sorts of ingenious theories to account for them; but it has never occurred to them to adopt the simple explanation that they were defeats, brought about by superior seamanship and gunnery, backed up by the consciousness of a just cause, on the part of the Americans. The favorite explanation has been, that the American so-called frigates were seventy-four-gun ships in disguise; that the English crews were all green hands, and their numbers were not full at that. A few years later, General Scott met at a dinner in London a young British naval officer, who superciliously inquired, "whether the Americans continued to build line-of-battle ships, and to call them frigates."
"We have borrowed a great many excellent things from the mother country," answered Scott, "and some that discredit both parties. Among the latter is the practice in question. Thus when you took from France the Guerrière, she mounted forty-nine guns, and you instantly rated her on your list a thirty-six-gun frigate; but when we captured her from you, we found on board the same number, forty-nine guns!"
During this same half year, nearly three hundred British merchantmen had been captured and brought into American ports. In this work the little navy had been assisted by a large number of privateers, which had sailed from our ports, under letters of marque, and had not only helped themselves to the rich spoils of British commerce, but had occasionally fought with armed cruisers.
These disasters were no more than had been predicted by Lord Nelson, the greatest of English admirals. After watching the evolutions of an American squadron commanded by Commodore Richard Dale, in the bay of Gibraltar, he is reported to have said to an American gentleman who was on board his flagship that "there was in those transatlantic ships a nucleus of trouble for the maritime power of Great Britain. We have nothing to fear from anything on this side of the Atlantic; but the manner in which those ships are handled makes me think that there may be a time when we shall have trouble from the other."
CHAPTER VI. MINOR BATTLES IN THE WEST.
Winchester's Expedition—Fight at Frenchtown—Massacre at the Raisin—Siege of Fort Meigs.
At the opening of the year 1813, General William Henry Harrison, who had won a high reputation by his victory over the Indians at Tippecanoe in 1811, being now in command of the forces in the West, endeavored to concentrate them for a movement against the British and savages at Detroit and Malden. An expedition composed mainly of Kentucky troops, under General James Winchester, was making its way northward through Ohio to join him; and Leslie Coombs, of Kentucky, accompanied by a single guide, went through the woods more than a hundred miles on foot to inform Harrison of their approach.