A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy

by Thomas J. Cutler

  As the shadows lengthened signaling the approaching end of the short October day, Inflexible at last entered the main battle, suffering the gauntlet of American fire to move up into position where the huge vessel could bring her heavy firepower to bear. She began pounding away at the American vessels and gradually turned the tide. Hit after hit took its toll. Washington suffered the most, but all of the American vessels were in danger of succumbing to the overwhelming firepower of this most powerful ship. Had darkness not intervened, the battle might well have ended there, with the American vessels shattered into so much driftwood. With barely enough light for safe navigation, the British vessels retired from the bay, delaying just long enough to set fire to the grounded Royal Savage.

  Gathered in a council of war illuminated by the flickering firelight of the burning Royal Savage, the Americans assessed their situation: sixty men dead, many others seriously wounded, three-quarters of their gunpowder expended, every vessel severely damaged, Philadelphia settling into the mud at the bottom of the bay even as they conferred. Yet surrender was not an option to these determined men.

  A blanket of fog enhanced the darkness, and soon a plan took shape. Muffling their oars by tying pieces of clothing around them and hanging horn-shaped lanterns over their sterns that emitted no more than a tiny beam of light directly aft, the vessels got under way in single file, hugging the shore as closely as they dared. Trumbull led the way, followed by Enterprise, and then the remaining vessels. They could see Indian campfires along the shore and hear voices aboard General Carleton’s flagship as they stole past the unsuspecting British fleet.

  By the time dawn broke, the Americans were seven miles to the south. After much initial confusion, in which Carleton first sailed north after stranding a number of his men on Valcour Island, the British eventually gave chase. But the wind had by this time shifted to the south, making progress difficult. It took another full day for the British to catch up to the Americans. When they did, another battle ensued in which the Americans miraculously held their own for five hours. Only Washington surrendered under a merciless barrage from Inflexible. At one point, Congress was surrounded by seven British vessels chewing away at her. More than a third of her crew was dead, her ammunition was exhausted, and she had twelve holes below her waterline. Yet she and several other remaining vessels managed to escape into the shallows of Buttonmould Bay where the British could not reach them. Deliberately running their vessels aground, the Americans removed what they could, jettisoned their guns, and set the vessels on fire. They then disappeared into the wilderness, found their way to the bastion at Crown Point, burned it to prevent it from falling into British hands, and moved on to Fort Ticonderoga where they were reunited with Enterprise and four other vessels that had managed to escape the British.

  What may have seemed a decisive British victory was not. Carleton arrived at the smoking remains of Crown Point as heavy snow began falling; convinced that further advance was not possible, he decided to retreat back to Canada for the winter. This bought the Americans another year, priceless time that permitted them to prepare for the next British attempt to strike from the north. The resulting American victory in the Battle of Saratoga the following summer was one of the most decisive of the entire Revolution; it prevented the British from severing the colonies, dealt them a terrible blow to their morale, and brought the French into the war as an American ally.

  Famed naval historian Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan would later write of the Battle of Valcour Island: “Save for Arnold’s flotilla, the British would have settled the business. The little American Navy was wiped out, but never had any force, big or small, lived to better purpose.”

  As the British came south in the days just prior to Saratoga, Enterprise was there again, taking part in the evacuation of Fort Ticonderoga before she was overwhelmed by a fresh British fleet, forced aground on 7 July 1777, and burned by her crew to prevent her capture. Reminiscent of Viking funeral pyres of ancient times, it was an honorable death for a ship that had served honorably and well.

  Three “Wars”

  After the Battle of Valcour Island, the American Revolution would go on for seven more years before ending with the Treaty of Paris in September 1783. During that time, a second American naval vessel was named Enterprise—a twenty-five-ton schooner fitted out with eight guns. She served in the Continental Navy for a brief time, convoying transports, performing reconnaissance missions, and guarding against British foraging raids in the Chesapeake Bay. Most of the records of her service were lost, so little is known about her.

  In the years following the Revolution, the euphoria of victory and independence had been accompanied by the challenges of building a new nation virtually from scratch. There was a sizable war debt to be paid off, a national economy to be built, and governmental structures to be put in place. Of necessity, the nation’s leaders needed to prioritize their time and resources, and with no immediate threat on the horizon, both the Army and Navy were seriously neglected, the latter virtually disappearing for a time.

  But the rest of the world did not wait patiently for the United States to get around to all it had to do. To begin with, much had changed since France had been an American ally during the Revolution. In the aftermath of a revolution of their own, the French were now fighting much of Europe, and the relationship between the two former allies had seriously deteriorated. French vessels began taking advantage of the naval weakness of the United States and were plundering American shipping. To make matters worse, the North African states of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli had long taken advantage of their geographic location to demand tribute from vessels using Mediterranean waters. Without a navy, American shipping was particularly vulnerable. As if this were not enough, relations with Great Britain were gradually worsening as well.

  It became clear that a navy was going to be needed, so the U.S. Congress at last began allocating money for that purpose. One of the ships authorized was the third Enterprise. Built in 1799 as an eighty-four-foot schooner similar in design to the famed Baltimore Clippers, which were known for their extraordinary speed, she was fitted out with twelve 6-pounder cannons. Her first challenge was to take on the French vessels that had been attacking U.S. commercial ships. These were not naval vessels but privateers—privately owned ships that had been authorized by the French government to capture helpless American shipping vessels. As part of a squadron led by the frigate Constellation, Enterprise captured eight of these privateers and liberated eleven previously taken American vessels.

  In 1801, Enterprise sailed for the Mediterranean where the Barbary States of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli continued to harass American commercial shipping.

  Encountering a Barbary corsair of fourteen guns named Tripoli, Enterprise engaged her in a three-hour battle. Twice during the fierce engagement the Tripolitans struck their colors as a sign of surrender, but when the Americans sent a boat to board, the enemy reopened fire and hoisted their colors. After a third resumption of devastating fire, the Tripolitan captain tore down his colors and tossed them into the sea. Amazingly, the American Sailors had sustained no losses while their defeated enemy had fifty killed or wounded. The Americans jettisoned the Tripolitan guns and ordered the defeated corsair into the nearest port. Upon his return to Tripoli, the defeated captain—already wounded in the fierce battle—was ordered by the monarch to ride through the streets on the back of a jackass and was then beaten with a stick five hundred times on the soles of his feet. Needless to say, there were considerably fewer volunteers for service in the Tripolitan Navy after that.

  Enterprise later captured the Tunisian ship Paulina and, with the frigate Constitution, the Tripolitan ketch Mastico. She also bombarded the North African coast on several occasions, sent landing parties inshore, and together with other ships of the American squadron attacked the capital city of Tripoli. In this latter engagement, Enterprise led a group of gunboats into the inner harbor, where her crew boarded and captured several enemy
gunboats after fierce hand-to-hand combat.

  In the early summer of 1805, the Tripolitan monarch signed a treaty that effectively ended the so-called Barbary War, and Enterprise was then laid up in ordinary, a term similar to the more modern “in mothballs,” meaning that the vessel was put out of commission but preserved for possible future use. That future use was not far off. Relations with Great Britain continued to deteriorate, and in 1809 she was refitted and back at sea.

  When war was declared in June 1812, the Navy quickly converted Enterprise into a more capable brig, armed with two long-range 9-pounders and fourteen shorter-range 18-pounders called carronades, so named because they were originally designed in Carron, Scotland. For the first year of hostilities she cruised along the East Coast of the United States, searching for English quarry. On 4 September 1813, near Pemaquid Point, Maine, an Enterprise lookout called down from his perch near the top of the mainmast, reporting that he had spotted another brig anchored in a small inlet. Enterprise cleared for action and hoisted battle ensigns to the tops of her two masts. The other brig, HMS Boxer, did likewise, and the two stood out to open water, loaded with various arrays of round shot and grapeshot.

  For several hours the two ships lay becalmed, unable to get at one another. Then at about 1130 a breeze sprang up from the south. Fortunately for Enterprise, she lay to the south of Boxer, which gave the Americans the advantage of the weather gage, just as the earlier Enterprise had enjoyed for a time at Valcour Island.

  With local residents watching from the nearby shore, Boxer evaded for a time, trying to work herself into a more favorable position. But Enterprise managed to keep her advantage, all the while closing on her British adversary. Finally, at just past 1500, what sounded to those on shore like a sudden clap of thunder rolling across the water signaled the beginning of the battle as Enterprise fired a broadside from her starboard side. Boxer responded immediately with all the guns along her opposite side, then known as the larboard.

  This first exchange of fire was hardly decisive, yet it was very significant. A cannonball struck and killed Samuel Blyth, the British captain, leaving the ship’s only other officer in command. A musket ball fired by one of the Boxer’s sharpshooters struck down the American captain, Lieutenant William Burrows. As he lay mortally wounded upon the deck, his head propped up by a rolled hammock, Burrows looked up at the ensign fluttering in the breeze, its peppermint stripes already rent by several shrapnel holes, and said to Lieutenant Edward McCall, who had assumed command, “Never strike that flag.” Both vessels fought on, their seconds in command carrying on in a manner that each navy expected of them.

  Seventeen-year-old William Barnes had grown up in the small town of Woolwich, Maine, and now worked with six other men serving one of Enterprise’s large carronades. Each time the 2,700-pound gun fired, young Barnes had to stand clear to make sure the heavy carriage did not run over his feet as it flung itself backward in recoil. A heavy rope, called a breeching, was fastened to the ship’s side on either side of the gun and passed through a ring on the bulbous after end of the weapon, the cascabel in ordnance parlance; the breeching stopped the cannon’s recoil just enough to allow Barnes to get at the muzzle of the weapon. It was his responsibility to run a corkscrewlike tool called a worm down inside the still-smoking barrel to dislodge the chunks of smoldering powder left behind by the firing of the weapon. If he failed to clear it sufficiently, the remaining residue could prevent the fresh powder cartridge or the ball from being properly loaded.

  The fourth USS Enterprise and HMS Boxer engaged in battle during the War of 1812. Seventeen-year-old William Barnes “wormed out the bore,” inserted the “wadding,” and manned the tackles while serving in one of the American ship’s gun crews during the battle. U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive

  Half-blinded by the smoke and coughing from the fumes, Barnes had just a few seconds to do his work before another Sailor would swab out the inside of the bore with a sponge fixed to a long pike to cool the chamber and douse any burning embers that might prematurely ignite the new powder charge. Another crew member followed with a fresh cartridge, a flannel bag that earlier had been carefully and precisely filled with explosive black powder by the ship’s gunner down in the copper-lined magazine well below the ship’s waterline. A twelve-year-old boy, known as a powder monkey, shuttled between the guns and the magazine, bringing fresh cartridges up from the magazine to replace those expended. Next down the bore went the 18-pound iron ball.

  Barnes again stepped to the muzzle to force a hunk of wadding down the cannon’s throat that prevented the ball from rolling out as the ship heaved and rolled in the seaway. He then helped several others man the tackles that were used to reposition the gun in the gun port. As Barnes heaved on the line with all his strength—his arms feeling as though they were coming out of his shoulder sockets, and his lungs burning from the pungent smoke-filled air—the heavy gun rumbled forward into place. The gun captain quickly supervised the aiming of the weapon, which at this range—“a half-pistol shot distance” as later described by McCall in his official report—required little adjustment. When the gun went off, Barnes felt as though someone had clapped him on both ears simultaneously.

  The two ships hammered at one another for the better part of an hour. Twice during the engagement, Enterprise managed to cross Boxer’s bow, a maneuver called crossing the T that is highly advantageous because it allows the crossing vessel to bring all the guns along her side to bear on her opponent’s bow, where few if any guns can be positioned. After the second such crossing, Boxer’s main topmast came crashing to the deck, bringing the main yard down with it. Continuing her murderous fire, Enterprise punched holes in Boxer’s hull with well-placed round shot and shredded her sails with hailstorms of grapeshot. At about 1600, Boxer’s guns fell silent, and a voice called across the water, “We have surrendered.” Using a voice trumpet, McCall asked why Boxer had not struck her colors. The answer came back that her captain had nailed her ensign to the mast before the battle and ordered, “Do not let these colors come down while I still have life in my body.”

  Three days later, young William Barnes made his way through the streets of Portland, Maine, as part of a large procession. He felt unsteady, as though the street were moving beneath his feet, an odd but common affliction among sailors who have spent long periods at sea upon decks constantly in motion. The whole town had turned out, and he couldn’t help but smile when a tall man walking solemnly at his left flinched noticeably when a cannon went off out in the harbor. It was Enterprise firing a shot every minute in salute to the funeral procession. Full honors were being accorded the deceased.

  The large entourage reached the Portland cemetery where everyone gathered around the gravesite as best they could. Barnes was fortunate to find a small hillock upon which to stand, giving him a good view. Over the heads of the town fathers and more senior members of Enterprise’s crew, he could see a casket over which was draped an American flag, its fifteen stars and fifteen stripes bright in the morning sun. Next to it was a second casket, its flag also red, white, and blue, but the colors arranged in the combined crosses of Saints George, Andrew, and Patrick. William Burrows, captain of the brig USS Enterprise, whose dying words were “Never strike that flag,” and Samuel Blyth, captain of His Majesty’s brig Boxer, who had told his crew, “Do not let these colors come down while I still have life in my body,” were being laid to rest side by side, where they would remain for the ages.

  Interims

  Successful in major engagements against the French, Barbary States, and Britain, the third Enterprise came to be known as “Lucky Little Enterprise” and continued her service after the War of 1812, fighting pirates, smugglers, and slavers, mostly in Caribbean waters. Though her luck seemed to have run out in 1823, when she ran aground in the West Indies and broke up, she had one last bit of good fortune in her. Even in that dark moment of her demise, not one of her crew was lost.

  The fourth ship to bear the name Enterpri
se was a schooner commissioned in December 1831, who spent much of her time patrolling South American waters and made an around-the-world voyage in 1835–36. She was sold out of the Navy in 1845, and there would not be another Enterprise in the U.S. Navy until 1877, when a ship described as “a steam-powered sloop of war, rigged as a bark” received the honored name. This fifth Enterprise also circumnavigated the Earth, serving in a naval hydrographic mission and bringing back a wealth of data that contributed much to our knowledge of the oceans. She ended her career as a training ship, first at the U.S. Naval Academy, then at a maritime school in Massachusetts. Sold in 1909, she was followed by the sixth Enterprise, a small motor patrol craft purchased by the Navy in 1916 to serve a homeland security role during World War I. She left the Navy in 1919.

  For more than a century following the War of 1812, the name Enterprise seemed to have seen its greater days of glory. While the fourth, fifth, and sixth namesakes served honorably and well, they went the way of the great majority of naval vessels. In much the same way, many young Sailors sign on for great adventure, hoping for a moment of glory, but the laws of chance dictate that only a few will see their aspirations fulfilled; the rest must carry out the mundane and the routine, the vital yet unexciting tasks of patrolling, showing the flag, keeping watch, gathering information, serving as deterrent, waiting for the day of challenge that may never come. Yet their importance cannot be overstated; just as the policemen on patrol on an uneventful night are essential to the security and well-being of the neighborhood they are protecting, so the Navy—its ships and Sailors—must carry on during the quiet times in history. There may be no obvious glory, and the ongoing work may not seem as important as those crescendos of crisis that capture the imaginations of writers and moviemakers, but there could be no security, no glorious responses to those rare challenges, no continuation of American democracy, without the dedication of those who serve quietly and stand ready.