Captain John Crane, 1800-1815

by Thomas Wallace Knox

"Dead loads of news!" he answers. "Two prizes from you are safe in port, but the owners didn't look for you and the Marguerite as soon as this. You've got another prize or two, I suppose, and find yourself short-handed."

"That's it exactly," I replied; and then I told him about the cartel and the last prize, and how I sent her to the Sound to avoid the risk of falling into British hands again. "By the way, what is that British ship which gave me such a run last night?" I asked.

"That is the Shannon, thirty-eight guns," he answered; "she's been cruising off New York for the past week, and has already made several prizes. One of them was the Nautilus, fourteen guns, which went out with the intention of getting in the track of the East Indiamen, and making some rich captures. But she ran into the Shannon, and so we lost her."

I was sorry to hear this, partly because of the reduction of our naval strength to that extent, and partly because of the connection of the Nautilus with the fleet before Tripoli, when she did some excellent work. I may remark, parenthetically, that the Nautilus was the first vessel of war taken on either side, and her capture elated the British in the same proportion that it depressed us.

"There was a fleet here almost ready to sail when I left," said I. "How soon did they get to sea, and what have they done?"

"They got away within an hour after receiving the official proclamation of war. There were the President, forty-four guns, Essex, thirty-two, and Hornet, eighteen guns, under Commodore Rodgers; and they were joined in the lower bay by the United States, forty-four, Congress, thirty-eight, and Argus, sixteen, under Commodore Decatur. They went to pick up some prizes out of the fleet of Jamaica-men that sailed under convoy about that time, and ought to give some rich plunder."

The tide was unfavorable, and the wind became light; so I anchored in the lower bay, or rather the pilot did, as he was now the man of authority, and I was only a passenger. Towards noon the tide served, and the wind became more kindly; so that we went up the bay in fine style, and came to anchor off the Battery. My vanity was humbled a little by the absence of the prize which I had sent round through the Sound for safety; it would have added to my pride had I been able to bring her in with me, with the Stars and Stripes floating above the British ensign to tell exactly what she was. But I consoled myself with the reflection that she was probably safe from recapture, while she would have run great risk, and probably would have been lost, had I kept her with me.

Soon as the anchor was down and the sails furled, I sent a messenger to tell the owners of my arrival, and of the prize that had gone into the Sound. I explained that I did not consider it judicious to go to the office in person, as all my officers were absent in prizes, and I had no one I could safely leave in charge of the Marguerite.

But my messenger had not reached the landing-place before one of the owners arrived alongside, and immediately came on board. They had already learned of our arrival by means of the semaphore, which had been established quite recently for sending communications from the lower bay to the city. It is a wonderful invention, and as simple as it is wonderful. On the tops of towers four or five miles apart, there are frames containing shutters, and the shutters are so arranged that the combinations of their positions represent the letters of the alphabet. In this way the name of a ship, or a message of any kind, can be spelled out, and it is repeated from one tower to another along the line. Of course, it can only work when the weather is clear, so that the signals can be seen. A fog cuts it off completely; and it sometimes happens that a fog comes up just in the middle of a very interesting message.