Personal Narrative of Events, From 1799 to 1815

by William Stanhope Lovell

This was done with the hope of making England declare war, and thereby putting the onus upon her, and making the war in America more popular; but that failing, and they having an army ready to invade Canada, urged on by Bonaparte in 1812, threw down the gauntlet, and commenced hostilities, uniting with France against the liberties of Europe.

Their few frigates being beautifully manned, and immensely superior to ours in size, guns, and number of men, took three of our 48-gun frigates after a severe action. But I do maintain the British navy lost no honour. The enemy’s ships mounted 58 guns, 24 and 42-pounders, with a complement of 487 picked seamen and marines; whereas our ships carried only 48 guns, 18 and 32-pounders, all badly manned, and one, the Guerrière, with only 187 men at quarters, the other two, the Java and Macedonian, had nearly their complement of 300 men such as they were. The strength, size, and number of guns of the American ships were too great for ours.

Persons not conversant with nautical affairs, imagine that one frigate is as good as another; but that is not the case, for it is very clear that a man of five feet four inches, weak in proportion, cannot stand against a man of six feet, with nearly double his strength, although both are called men.

Another circumstance must be mentioned, which is this. A ship capable of carrying 58 or 60 heavy guns, 30 of which are long 24-pounders on her main deck, must be a much stronger and larger ship, both in hull, masts, and yards, and her masts several inches in diameter bigger than the smaller ship, carrying only 28 18-pounders on the main deck; therefore three, indeed two, if in a fresh breeze of wind, 24-lb. shot striking the main-mast in the same place or nearly so, of the smaller vessel, would knock it away, whereas it would require double the number of the 18-pound shot to cut away that of the larger ship, giving so many more advantages to the bigger ship against the smaller, by the latter being so much sooner crippled.

The ridiculous, silly, and mischievous hue and cry that was raised in this country, in consequence of the above action, by a malicious, envious party, to pluck from the navy some of her laurels, needs no comment. It gave a lustre to the above frigate actions of our enemy all over the world which they did not deserve, and made them think themselves much more superior than they were, until the fight between the English frigate, Shannon (48), Captain Philip Broke, and the Chesapeake (49), Captain Laurence, off Boston. The latter had fifty more men than the former, but was taken in fifteen minutes by the gallant Captain Broke, and the ship’s company of the Shannon. This brilliant affair, followed a short time afterwards by the action of the Endymion (50), Captain Henry Hope, that mounted 24-pounders on her main deck, and 32-pounders on the quarter-deck, against the President (60), 24-pounders and 42-pounders, which she also captured, proved to them that, when we were more evenly matched, the navy of England was still mistress of the seas.

It was long seen by those who chose to make use of their senses that the disputes between the two countries must end in a rupture; and that the American Government were determined to side with France, and pick a quarrel with us, and that a war was inevitable. They knew that the whole attention of the British Government was taken up by the great struggle in Europe, and therefore few, if any, troops could be spared from the great theatre of war on the Peninsula; they considered this the time therefore to demand new maritime law.

The right of search (which for ages had been the acknowledged or assumed law of all European belligerent nations), for enemies’ merchandize carried in neutral vessels, America was determined to oppose. Instigated by intrigues, and offers of all kinds, made by French emissaries sent for that purpose, Bonaparte found his Milan decrees, declaring the whole coasts of Great Britain and her extensive colonies in the four quarters of the world in a state of blockade, to be of no use without a navy to support it, and not having one that dared show its face upon the ocean, had no means to carry his decrees into execution. His eagle eye at once saw that by making a tool of the United States, and embroiling them with England, he might make a great diversion in his favour. He, therefore, induced their cabinets to enter into his plans, backed, it was said, “by good, weighty, golden reasons, and insisted upon a new maritime law,” which would strike a death blow at our dominion of the sea, and at once evade all blockade. The law I allude to was, that the neutral flag or vessel should permit the ship wearing it to carry the cargo of an enemy free of capture from the other belligerent, who met it on the sea or elsewhere.

It was very extraordinary that America found little fault with France, who first commenced the general blockade by the issue of her Milan decrees, and who confiscated all the United States’ vessels that were captured by her men-of-war or privateers with British colonial or other produce on board, coming directly or indirectly from any port of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and her colonies. Had they merely touched or been driven by stress of weather into an English port, or even boarded by a British cruiser, it was sufficient to condemn them as lawful prizes in a French Court of Admiralty, when met at sea by French armed vessels, and detained. England waited with great patience, thinking that all the neutral powers, but above all America, would protest against the measure, and join her who was fighting for the liberties of all the world against the iron grasp of Bonaparte, and his intended universal dominion. The United States, on the contrary, put up with the seizure of their vessels by France, and when Great Britain was obliged, after the greatest forbearance, to declare the whole coast of France and her allies in a state of blockade—which she had the means of doing, having more than one thousand men-of-war of different sizes at sea or in commission, ready effectually to carry this measure into operation—they grew outrageous because she would not permit them to be our secret enemy, and carry the trade of France in their ships, under the new maritime law they proposed, viz., that a neutral ship and flag were to make an enemy’s cargo neutral also. The above was one of the causes that led to the war.

Impressment of seamen or sailors out of their vessels is another source of complaint against this country. To this latter act England was driven by the conduct of citizens of the United States, decoying men to desert whenever any of our ships, whether men-of-war or merchant vessels, put into their harbours. The enticing our seamen away to man their vessels naturally made us search for British subjects whenever British men-of-war boarded any of our ships, whether at sea or in foreign parts, particularly when we knew the easy method by which English subjects were naturalised and gained American protections.