Some idea of the stupendous advances made in this most important detail may be gained by a comparison with the “wireless” marine telegraphy of a century ago when, although electricity had not been harnessed to the news bureau, ingenious methods of maintaining a “marine telegraph” were operative which, in some instances, were most surprising in their results.
At the outbreak of the War of 1812 our government planned a crushing blow at British commerce. A fleet of 100 English merchantmen from Jamaica was expected to pass close to the North American coast and the most formidable squadron we could then assemble, consisting of the frigates President, United States and Congress, with the sloop and brig Hornet and Argus, under the command of Captain John Rodgers, was held in New York ready to sail. As soon as war was declared, June 18, 1812, a courier set out from Washington and in three days arrived in New York—quick work for those days, but the information now could be flashed in a few seconds.
One hour after receiving the news Rodgers got under way and on the morning of the second day out spoke an American vessel and learned from her master that he had seen the Jamaica fleet only two days before. Rodgers made sail in the direction indicated, but he was drawn away in a futile chase after the British frigate Belvidera. Afterward, however, he resumed his pursuit of the merchant fleet and on July 1 he detected “quantities of cocoanut shells and orange peels” in the water, which showed that he was in the wake of the fleet. He followed this sea-trail several days and was rapidly overtaking the chase, when he lost it in the fogs on the Newfoundland Banks.
Floating bottles, pieces of wreckage, cask-heads and other ship debris were the “clicks” of the first “marine wireless” that assisted our early mariners in discovering the whereabouts of friend or foe on the high seas. And even a marine “postoffice” was a service recognized early in the 19th century—many years before it came into general use on land. When our 32-gun frigate Essex was making her memorable cruise in the Pacific Ocean, 1813–1814, Captain David Porter records that he stopped at Charles Island of the Galapagos in the southern Pacific Ocean to examine the “postoffice”—a box nailed to a tree in which whalers and other craft deposited records of their cruises and intended movements.
That these ocean “postoffices” were sometimes used for “misinformation” is shown in the case of this same Captain Porter. One of these “postal stations” in the Atlantic was the penal island of Fernando de Noronha, off the extreme eastern limit of Brazil. This was a point usually touched by vessels bound for the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. While Porter was cruising in the south Atlantic under orders to join the Constitution and Hornet, he hove-to off this port on December 14, 1812, and sending a boat ashore learned that there was a letter there addressed to “Sir James Yeo, of the British 32-gun frigate Southampton.” He also learned that only the week before the English 44-gun frigate “Acasta and the 20-gun sloop of war Morgiana” had stopped at that port and had sailed for Rio de Janeiro, leaving a letter addressed to “Sir James Yeo.”
Before sailing from the United States Porter had been instructed to pose as Sir James Yeo and was to join the Constitution and Hornet, which two vessels were to pass as the Acasta and Morgiana, off Cape Frio, Brazil. This was done to deceive the enemy. When Porter learned that there was a letter at Fernando de Noronha addressed to “Sir James Yeo,” he at once sent a present of porter and cheese to the governor of the island and received the coveted letter. It was found to contain the usual references of a voyage by a British commander, but some “key words” induced Porter to hold the letter to the flame of a candle, when the following instructions, written in sympathetic ink, became legible: “I am bound off Bahia, thence off Cape Frio, where I intend to cruise until the 1st of January. Go off Cape Frio, to the northward of Rio de Janeiro, and keep a lookout for me. Your friend.”
Captain Porter did as ordered, but on December 29 the Constitution captured, after a hard fight, the British frigate Java, and soon afterward the Hornet sank the English sloop of war Peacock. This left the Essex free to choose her own course and the result was her memorable cruise of two years in the Pacific.
But the most remarkable instance of early marine wireless was that of the chase after the Constitution from Boston, across the Atlantic, by a powerful British squadron, which, on March 10, 1815, cornered Old Ironsides in Port Praya, near the extreme western coast of Africa, on the very day she entered that harbor and just seventy-six days after the hostile vessels had sailed from the blockade of the New England port.
For more than eight months British cruisers had been holding the dreaded Constitution—then commanded by Captain Charles Stewart—in the Hub, but, late in December, 1814, she gave them the slip and once again was in blue water. Running down to Bermuda, where he captured the merchant ship Lord Nelson, Stewart stood across the Atlantic to the Madeiras and then cruised for several days within sight of the Rock of Lisbon. Shaping her course southward again the Constitution, on February 20, 1815, after a brilliant fight, captured the British cruisers Cyane and Levant and with his two prizes entered Port Praya on the morning of March 10.
Soon after the Constitution made her escape from Boston, a terrific snow storm, lasting several days, compelled the English blockading squadron to take refuge in Cape Cod Bay. On December 22, while the British officers were making themselves as comfortable as they could in the bitter cold, the English 18-gun brig sloop Arab, Captain Henry Jane, arrived with the startling information that the Constitution had escaped. At once there was a hurrying and scurrying for immediate pursuit. Provisions, bought at an exorbitant price from the canny landfolk, were hurried aboard and every preparation was made for a chase of indefinite length.