1812: The Navy's War
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE - Road to War
CHAPTER TWO - Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights
CHAPTER THREE - Jefferson’s Embargo and the Slide Toward War
CHAPTER FOUR - Madison’s Strategy
CHAPTER FIVE - The United States Declares War
CHAPTER SIX - Blue-Water Victories
CHAPTER SEVEN - The Constitution and the Guerriere
CHAPTER EIGHT - Ripe Apples and Bitter Fruit: The Canadian Invasion
CHAPTER NINE - Canadian Disasters Accumulate
CHAPTER TEN - More Blue-Water Victories
CHAPTER ELEVEN - The Constitution and the Java
CHAPTER TWELVE - A Sea Change
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Napoleon and Alexander
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - The Canadian Invasion Resumes
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - The Chesapeake and the Shannon
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Raids in Chesapeake Bay
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Oliver Hazard Perry
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Attack on Montreal
CHAPTER NINETEEN - The War at Sea in 1813
CHAPTER TWENTY - The Allies and Napoleon
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - British and American War Plans
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - The British Blockade
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - The Essex
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - Burning Washington
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - The War at Sea Continues in 1814
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - Negotiations Begin at Ghent
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - Baltimore
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - Plattsburgh
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - A Peace Treaty
CHAPTER THIRTY - The Hartford Convention
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - New Orleans
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - An Amazing Change
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - A New Era
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - From Temporary Armistice to Lasting Peace: The Importance ...
Acknowledgments
NOTES
GLOSSARY
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Copyright Page
For Mary, Mark, Alex, Tyler, and Kay with love
“If our first struggle was that of our infancy, this last was that of our youth; and the issue of both, wisely improved, may long postpone if not forever prevent a necessity for exerting the strength of our manhood.”
—JAMES MADISON
THE SAILS OF A SQUARE-RIGGED SHIP1. Flying jib
2. Jib
3. Fore topmast staysail
4. Fore staysail
5. Foresail, or course
6. Fore topsail
7. Fore topgallant
8. Mainstaysail
9. Maintopmast staysail
10. Middle staysail
11. Main topgallant staysail
12. Mainsail, or course
13. Maintopsail
14. Main topgallant
15. Mizzen staysail
16. Mizzen topmast staysail
17. Mizzen topgallant staysail
18. Mizzen sail
19. Mizzen topsail
20. Mizzen topgallant
21. Spanker
INTRODUCTION
“SAIL HO!” CRIED a lookout from the main masthead of the USS President. It was six o’clock in the morning on June 23, 1812, and the 44-gun heavy frigate was sailing in latitude 39°26’ north, and longitude 71°10’ west, one hundred miles southwest of Nantucket Shoals. Commodore John Rodgers stepped quickly on deck and took a well-used bronze telescope from a binnacle drawer. The sails of a large ship came immediately into view. Before long it was plain the stranger was a frigate sailing alone. Rodgers could hardly believe his good luck. She could only be British, probably out of Halifax or Bermuda, and she was standing toward him.
At nearly the same moment, the officer of the watch aboard His Majesty’s 36-gun frigate Belvidera informed Captain Richard Byron that a lookout had caught sight of the upper sails of five ships in the southwest. Byron had orders from Admiral Sawyer, commander of the British North American Station at Halifax, to intercept the French privateer Marengo, expected to sortie from New London, Connecticut. He was not expecting to run into an American squadron, much less a hostile one, for the news had not yet reached him that the United States had declared war on June 18. There had been rumors and speculation in Halifax before he left, certainly, but nothing more. The British government, worried about Napoleon’s growing strength in Europe, was determined to avoid a conflict. The Admiralty had directed commanders in American waters to “take special care” to avoid clashes with the U. S. Navy and to exercise “all possible forbearance towards the citizens of the United States.”
Uncertain whether the five sails were British or American, Byron stood toward them. When he was within six miles, he made the private signal but received no reply. Instead, Commodore Rodgers hoisted flags ordering a general chase. He was leading a powerful squadron comprised of nearly all of the navy’s serviceable warships. This included his own 44-gun President; the 44-gun United States, under Captain Stephen Decatur, the navy’s most famous officer; the 36-gun Congress, under Captain John Smith; the 18-gun sloop of war Hornet, under Master Commandant James Lawrence; and the 16-gun brig Argus, under Master Commandant Arthur Sinclair. The President, being the fastest ship, took the lead close-hauled on the larboard tack, while Decatur trailed behind in the slower United States.
Seeing how aggressively the Americans (their identity no longer in doubt) were approaching, and how outnumbered he was, Byron tacked from his pursuers and made all sail to the northeast with the wind on his larboard beam. At 8:30 he edged away a point and set topgallant studding sails. The slower ships in the American squadron lagged behind, but the President gradually drew closer to the Belvidera, and at eleven o’clock Rodgers ordered the ship cleared for action.
A marine drummer beat the familiar call to quarters, as the crew raced to battle stations alow and aloft. By now the breeze had hauled around to the westward and was lighter. Rodgers positioned himself at the starboard bow chaser on the forecastle with two midshipmen acting as messengers.
Despite his very best efforts, Byron was unable to get away. The President kept creeping closer. At 11:30—still confused as to what was happening—Byron hoisted British colors in answer to the President and her lagging companions, which were already flying American standards.
At 4:20—more than eight hours after first sighting her—the President at last pulled to within gunshot range of the Belvidera. The wind was from the west-southwest and diminishing. Still unclear as to the intentions of the nearest ship, and seeing the odds stacked mightily against him, Byron did not want to initiate a fight. But his only chance of escaping was to shoot first and smash enough of the President’s spars and rigging to slow her down. He decided to run out his stern guns—two thirty-two-pound carronades and two eighteen-pound long guns—and be ready for anything. Not wanting to shoot accidentally, however, he ordered his lieutenants to have the gunners prick the cartridges but not prime the guns. He would wait and see what the Americans intended to do.
Byron did not have to wait long. Rodgers pulled to within point-blank range—less than half a mile—on the Belvidera’s weather quarter and, seeing Byron’s stern guns out and taking aim, fired two starboard bow chasers, one from the main deck and the other above it on the forecastle, where Rodgers was standing. He aimed and fired the gun on the forecastle himself, directing it at the Belvidera’s rigging. It was the first shot of the war. In no time, three balls from the well-trained American gun crews had hit their mark and did considerable damage. One of them struck the Belvidera’s rudder coat a
nd careened into the gunroom. Another smashed the muzzle of a larboard chase gun.
Byron was from an old navy family known for its bad luck, and fortune seemed once more to have deserted them. With the rest of the American squadron straining to get closer, and the President’s deadly bow chasers firing in convincing fashion, his chances of escaping appeared dim.
This unprovoked attack could only be explained by the Americans having declared war, Byron decided, and so he ordered his four stern guns to return fire, which they did with considerable effect.
The two ships now blasted away at each other for several minutes. Suddenly, the chase gun on the President’s main deck (underneath where Rodgers was standing) exploded, hurling the commodore high enough into the air that his leg cracked as he landed. The bursting gun, in turn, ignited the passing box that served it with powder, causing an explosion that shattered the main and forecastle decks around it. Midshipman John Taylor was killed and thirteen others wounded, including the gun captain and a nineteen-year-old midshipman named Matthew Calbraith Perry, who had been standing next to Rodgers.
With the other starboard chase gun on the President’s forecastle put out of commission for a time, Byron won a temporary reprieve. Halifax was to leeward, and if Byron lightened his load enough, the Belvidera had a slim chance of escaping. But Rodgers was not about to let this prize slip away, and he refused to go below to have his leg treated. Ignoring the excruciating pain, he continued to direct the battle from the quarterdeck.
The President’s starboard chase guns might be useless, but her main deck guns were ready to fire with single shots, and so Rodgers decided to end the whole business with dispatch. Ordering the helm put to starboard, he fired a full broadside aimed at Byron’s spars and rigging to slow her down. Some of these balls damaged the Belvidera, but not appreciably. And the time consumed by turning to fire a broadside only allowed Byron to increase his lead.
The erratic wind was so light now that all the ships were moving in slow motion. Byron continued to pull away, however, even as he continued firing his stern guns. Rodgers countered “by altering [his] course a half point to port and wetting [his] sails to gain a more effective position” on Byron’s starboard quarter, but all he managed to do was lose more ground. A similar attempt to position the President on Byron’s larboard quarter brought no better result, so Rodgers simply steered directly for the Belvidera and blazed away with his serviceable bow chasers, aiming at her spars and rigging, trying to get close enough to turn and fire a conclusive broadside.
Watching the President yaw and launch broadsides puzzled Byron. Rodgers had the faster ship; he had no reason to lose ground by yawing, when he could have run up to the Belvidera, blazed away with his heavy guns, and forced a surrender. “I acknowledge I was much surprised at [the President’s] yawing repeatedly and giving starboard and larboard broadsides,” Byron would later write, “when it was fully in his power to have run up alongside the Belvidera.”
At five o’clock—with the Belvidera’s stern guns continuing to tear at the President’s sails and rigging—Rodgers finally pulled to within point-blank range. But once again, instead of running up alongside his prey, he attempted to end the fight by ordering the helm put to starboard. The President turned and let loose yet another broadside from the main deck guns, which did more harm but did not appreciably slow the Belvidera down.
Byron’s fore topsail yard was shot through, causing him some difficulty, but the wind was light and the sea smooth, and he lost little ground. Rodgers continued the chase, while Byron’s stern guns kept up their deadly fire until 6:30, when Rodgers, in view of the damage done to his spars, rigging, and main yard, by now hanging by the lifts and braces alone, gave the order to luff across Belvidera’s stern and fire two more broadsides. Again they were ineffective.
At one point, noticing something odd in the movement of the President’s head sails, Byron thought perhaps she had lost control of her helm, and he suddenly yawed to fire a broadside. When he saw Rodgers’s fast reaction, however, he quickly reversed himself and resumed his flight. To increase speed he threw overboard several boats (a barge, yawl, gig, and jolly boat); a number of anchors (one bower, one stream anchor, and two sheet anchors); and fourteen tons of water. Gradually the Belvidera crept away from her pursuers, who were weighed down with the heavy provisions required for an extended cruise.
By 6:45 Byron was out of range of the President’s bow chasers, and with a heavy heart Rodgers recognized that, in spite of his having superior power and speed, he had lost the chase. “I now perceive with more mortification than words can express,” he wrote in his journal, “that there was little or no chance left of getting within gunshot of the enemy again.” Nonetheless, he vainly continued the chase with all the sail he could muster until 11:30, by which time the Belvidera was miles ahead, and Rodgers gave up, signaling the rest of the squadron to do likewise.
The President had three men killed and nineteen wounded, sixteen of them from the bursting of the chase gun. The Belvidera had two killed and twenty-two wounded.
Decatur was unhappy. Watching the Belvidera’s sails disappear over the horizon was painful. Had the chase been conducted properly, he believed, she surely would have surrendered. “We have lost the Belvidera; [she] . . . ought to have been ours,” he wrote to his fiscal agent, Littleton Tazewell.
Figure Intro.1: Escape of the Belvidera, June 23, 1812 (courtesy of U.S. Naval Academy Museum).
The Belvidera sailed on to Halifax, capturing three surprised American merchantmen along the way, none of whose captains had any idea war had been declared—the Fortune, out of Newburyport, Massachusetts; the Malcolm, from Portland, Maine; and the Pickering, of Gloucester, Massachusetts. When Byron dropped anchor in Halifax Harbor on June 27, however, Admiral Sawyer unexpectedly released the three prizes. He had yet to be officially notified that war had broken out, and so far as he was concerned, his orders were to placate the Americans. The Times of London later declared that Sawyer had acted “in furtherance of that spirit of amity and conciliation so repeatedly displayed” by the British government. This characterization of His Majesty’s policies toward America would have brought a sardonic grin to President Madison’s face, for they had, from his point of view, been just the opposite.
The clash between the President and the Belvidera was the opening battle in what Americans came to view as their second war of independence. Like all wars, once begun it took on a life of its own, lasting far longer than expected, producing one unpleasant surprise after another, stirring the most hateful passions, precipitating heinous crimes, and sacrificing enough young fighters on land and at sea to touch the hardest heart.
CHAPTER ONE
Road to War
FOR PRESIDENT MADISON there was a certain inevitability about the War of 1812. Ever since his initiation into national politics during the latter stages of the Revolutionary War, he had found British policies toward their former colonies to be marked—except for brief periods—by enmity and condescension.
The roots of Britain’s hostility, of course, dated to well before the Revolution, when George III—who dominated the cabinet and Parliament—refused to acknowledge that his subjects in America had the same rights as those in Britain (with the exception of Irish Catholics, who had no rights). The refusal of American patriots to submit to unequal status eventually led to armed conflict at Lexington and Concord, and then, over a year later, to a Declaration of Independence. The obdurate king had fought back—hard—to make the American traitors submit and return to the empire. The lengthy war that followed gradually wore down the colonial rebels. Only the timely intervention of France—seeking revenge for her defeat in the Seven Years War—prevented George III from restoring America to his kingdom. Great-power rivalry thus gave the colonists their first taste of independence.
The Treaty of Paris, which ended the war in September 1783, hardly reconciled the king or his people to colonial liberty. Bitter about their humiliating defeat, the Brit
ish watched with satisfaction as the thirteen states floundered without a central government under the Articles of Confederation. Many in London expected the American experiment in republican government to fail. Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, who took office in December 1783 at age twenty-four, refused to send an ambassador to the United States or withdraw from the forts along the northern frontier with Canada, as required by the Treaty of Paris. And he vigorously enforced the navigation acts, which, among other things, excluded American ships from trading with British colonies in the West Indies. Thomas Jefferson, the American ambassador to France at the time, wrote that Britain was “the only nation on earth who wishes us ill from the bottom of her soul.”
Nor did Britain’s sour attitude diminish when the Constitution was approved in 1788 or when George Washington became president in 1789—the year the French Revolution began. Most Americans welcomed the changes taking place in France, believing that the French revolutionaries represented the future and Britain the past. But skeptics admired British constancy far more than French experimentation, and early in Washington’s first term two incipient political parties began developing unexpectedly, one of them, forming around Alexander Hamilton, the Treasury secretary, was pro-British, while the other, gathering around Thomas Jefferson, the secretary of state, and James Madison, the leader of the House of Representatives, was decidedly pro-French.
Hamilton admired in particular Britain’s mixed constitution, which supported a hierarchical, supposedly paternalistic government featuring a strong but limited monarch, as well as a hereditary aristocracy with enough political power to check both the king and society’s lower elements. More impressive yet was its House of Commons, elected by a small number of wealthy voters and thus representing the opinion of the country’s well-to-do in a reasonable fashion. Such structural elitism Hamilton considered indispensable to Britain’s liberty and well-being. Similarly he felt that a moneyed, well-educated, and morally upright business class in America would provide the necessary leadership for its new republican government, protecting it against the irrational impulses of the untutored masses.