1812: The Navy's War

by George Daughan

  By passing beyond the Kennebec, Burrows was bending his orders a bit, but he was in luck. At nine o’clock on the morning of the fifth he saw a brig getting under way in Johns Bay west of the giant granite rocks at Pemaquid Point. She appeared to be a warship.

  At about the same time, a lookout aboard the 14-gun British brig Boxer spied the Enterprise, and her captain, twenty-nine-year-old Commander Samuel Blyth, ordered his seventy-man crew to quarters and cleared for action. The Enterprise was obviously an American warship, and he went after her. Blyth’s orders were to annoy American traders along the Maine coast, but of course he couldn’t pass up an enemy warship.

  The two ships looked evenly matched, with the Enterprise having a slight edge. She carried fourteen eighteen-pound carronades, two long nines, and a crew of 102, while the Boxer had twelve eighteen-pound carronades, two long sixes, and a crew of 76 officers and men plus 11 boys. The weather was clear and the wind light from the north-northwest. When the Boxer raced after the Enterprise , Burrows hauled upon a wind and stood to the west, keeping six miles away from the enemy. Blyth continued to chase him, firing his guns as he went, but with no impact at that distance. Burrows, who had the weather gauge, remained out of range until three o’clock, when he suddenly tacked and ran down directly at the Boxer “with an intention to bring her to close action.”

  In twenty minutes Burrows ran the Enterprise alongside the Boxer within half pistol shot (about ten yards). Each ship held its fire until the other was alongside, and then both broadsides erupted, initiating an intense, broadsideto-broadside gunfight. Both captains fell in the first exchange. An eighteen-pound ball struck Blyth, killing him instantly, and a musket ball hit Burrows, mortally wounding him. “Our brave commander fell,” the officers aboard the Enterprise reported, “and while lying on deck, refusing to be carried below, raised his head and requested that the flag never be struck.”

  After fifteen minutes of a brutal exchange, the Enterprise pulled ahead and fired one of her nine-pounders with effect before rounding to on the starboard tack and raking the Boxer. The British ship soon ceased firing. All her braces and rigging were shot away, the main topmast and topgallant mast hung over the side, and the fore and mainmasts were nearly gone. Only the quarterdeck guns were manned. Three feet of water flooded the hold, and more was rushing in. Her deck was strewn with dead and wounded, and no surgeon was aboard to tend them. She was in desperate straits.

  The Enterprise now pulled into a position from which to rake the Boxer again and completely destroy her but held her fire. While she did, British Lieutenant McCrery, who had assumed command when Blyth fell, consulted his officers and decided to give up. Since Blyth had nailed their ensigns to the masts, they could not be hauled down. McCrery had to hail the Enterprise in order to surrender. It was four o’clock.

  Isaac Hull later described the Boxer’s condition. Her “masts, sails, and spars . . . [were] literally cut to pieces, several of her guns dismounted and unfit for service; her topgallant forecastle nearly taken off by the shot; her boats cut to pieces, and her quarters injured in proportion.” The Boxer had four killed and eighteen wounded; the Enterprise, three killed and fourteen wounded.

  Lieutenant Edward McCall, now in command of the Enterprise, sailed into Portland with the wounded Boxer in tow. The town gave the victorious Americans a rousing welcome. The bodies of the two captains were brought ashore and given an elaborate funeral. The crews of both ships attended, as did Portland’s notables and Captain Isaac Hull, who came up from Portsmouth. “A great concourse of people assembled from town and country,” the Portland Gazette reported. “The wharfs and streets were lined with people on both sides; tops of houses and windows were filled with men and women and children.” The two young captains were buried side by side in Portland’s Eastern Cemetery, where they rest today. The ceremony of their burials made a deep impression on all who witnessed it, including young Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

  The deaths of these two promising young men were a reminder of the terrible price being paid for the war. Deeply affected by the killing and wounding, Lieutenant McCall arrested Sailing Master William Harper, accusing him of cowardice. McCall charged that Harper had “endeavored to screen himself from the shot of the enemy behind the foremast and under the heel of the bowsprit while the enemy lay on our quarter by doing which he set an example to the crew of the Enterprise that might have led to her surrender and disgrace to the American character.” McCall also charged that Harper “advised me to haul down the colors at a time when the firing from the enemy was much diminished and ours could be kept up with unabated effect.”

  A court-martial, held the following December and January, found Harper not guilty. Had the charge been substantiated, he could have been sentenced to death.

  THE TRIUMPH OF the Enterprise came at the same time as Perry’s far more important success on Lake Erie. They made up to a degree for the Chesapeake’s defeat back in June that year. President Madison, like most of the country, was profoundly disturbed by the Chesapeake-Shannon affair. He was anxious to celebrate any victory. Perry and the Enterprise were a welcome return to the path of glory.

  Unfortunately, during the last six months of 1813, there were few other encouraging moments for the U.S. Navy. Even getting to sea was difficult for the American fleet. Two of the country’s vaunted heavy frigates, the Constitution and the United States, were blockaded—“Old Ironsides” in Boston and the United States in the Thames River with the Macedonian and the Hornet. The other heavy frigate, John Rodgers’s President, was out at sea on her third cruise. She had escaped from Boston earlier, but nothing had been heard from her or her companion, the Congress (John Smith). Charles Morris and the Adams were confined to Chesapeake Bay, and the Constellation was still trapped in Norfolk. What had happened to David Porter and the Essex was a mystery. He failed to rendezvous with Bainbridge as planned, but where he went and how well he was faring was unknown.

  LIEUTENANT HENRY ALLEN’S Argus appeared, at first, to be a bright spot in this gloomy picture. On June 18 Allen stood out from New York, bound for France with Ambassador William Crawford aboard, eluding the blockade off Sandy Hook with no trouble. Allen was one of the navy’s young stars. Decatur was loud in his praise, attributing their triumph over the Macedonian to Allen’s masterful gunnery.

  Allen’s orders from Secretary Jones were to deliver Crawford to France and then undertake a commerce-destroying mission around the British Isles. Like Rodgers, Jones believed the British were vulnerable in their home waters. He also thought that a fleet of swift, powerful sloops of war attacking Britain’s trade would create a huge problem for the Royal Navy and make a decisive contribution to ending the war. Allen’s mission was something Jones would have liked to order on a large scale, but he did not have the ships or the men to do it.

  The passage across the Atlantic was marked by heavy turbulence. Ambassador Crawford recounted a particularly uncomfortable day in his journal—Wednesday, June 30: “The wind increases to a storm. The Argus marches o’er the mountainous wave. The rain descends in torrents and drives me from the deck. The guns on the lee side are constantly underwater, and every heavy sea washes the deck with its mountainous billows. It is impossible to stand on the deck without clinging to a rope. It is extremely difficult to keep dry even in the cabin, unless I get into the berth, which I am the more inclined to do from the violent retching which the motion of the vessel communicates to my stomach.”

  The Argus arrived at L’Orient on July 11, having taken one prize en route. Allen immediately went to work preparing for his next mission, and on July 20 he set out for the mouth of the English Channel. During the next week the Argus took three small prizes between Ushant and the Scillies Islands. Allen’s orders required him to burn all prizes. Jones did not want him weakening his crew by using men to sail captured vessels to friendly (French) ports.

  Expecting the British to be out in force looking for him, Allen shaped a course for Cape Clear and the southwester
n coast of Ireland. He disguised his ship by painting her black with a thick yellow stripe across her gun ports to make her look like a British man-of-war. On August 1, off the mouth of the River Shannon, Allen captured his fifth prize, the Fowey, and set her on fire. The next day he captured the Lady Francis, and in the following twelve days, sailing along the southern coast of Ireland and up St. George’s Channel, he took fourteen more prizes—a spectacular performance, better than any ship on either side had managed.

  The commander of Britain’s Irish Station in Cork, Vice Admiral Edward Thornborough, was understandably embarrassed by the bold American raider operating in his backyard. The Royal Navy was spread so thin that Thornborough had few ships he could assign to chase Allen. That changed on August 12, however, when the brig Pelican put into Cork. Thornborough immediately dispatched her captain, Commander John F. Maples, to go after Argus. The Pelican was a new ship, having been launched in August 1812 and commissioned the following November. Her skipper was a veteran who knew his business. He had fought with Nelson at Copenhagen and Trafalgar, and also with Hyde Parker on the Jamaica Station in the frigate Magicienne.

  Maples was in luck. The day after he left Cork, he was cruising in St. George’s Channel when he spoke a brig whose captain told him he had seen a strange man-of-war steering to the northeast. Maples headed in that direction. The following morning, August 15, at four o’clock a lookout aboard the Pelican spotted a vessel on fire and a brig standing from her. The burning vessel was the large merchantman Belford, carrying, among other things, a large shipment of wine; the brig was the Argus. Maples immediately gave chase. In an hour and a half he pulled to within sight of St. David’s Head off the coast of Wales. The Argus was only four hundred yards away.

  Allen had been waiting for him. He had seen the Pelican as soon as Maples saw him, and there was no doubt in his mind that this was a British warship. At first, Allen attempted to gain the weather gauge, but failing that, he shortened sail and simply waited, determined to have it out toe-to-toe with the approaching enemy. When shortly it became clear that the Pelican was more powerful than the ten-year-old Argus, Allen stood his ground. He never gave a thought to running, as he undoubtedly should have, given his orders and the Pelican’s strength. The Argus had eighteen twenty-four-pound carronades, two long twelve-pounders, and a crew of 104. The Pelican had sixteen thirty-two-pound carronades, two long twelve-pounders, two six-pound long guns, and a crew of 116.

  Allen’s primary mission was commerce destroying, and getting into a bloody fight with this larger British ship, even if Allen won, would make carrying out his orders impossible. He’d be lucky if he could limp into a French port afterward. While his orders did direct him to “capture and destroy” enemy warships as well as commercial vessels, Secretary Jones would have undoubtedly approved bypassing this engagement so that Allen could continue his remarkable reign of terror. Furthermore, Allen’s crew was dead tired from their exertions of the last few days; his men needed a rest. But Allen could not pass up this opportunity for glory, and he had an important advantage. The Argus was faster and more maneuverable than the Pelican, and that could make all the difference. By the same token, Argus’s speed would have allowed her to run away without much trouble. Allen chose not to because he had a good chance of winning, or so he thought.

  When the two ships were two hundred yards apart, they opened fire. Oddly, the Pelican’s broadsides were more effective. Allen was known as a superb gunner; it was hard to understand why his crew were not better marksmen—perhaps it was fatigue. In the opening rounds, a thirty-two-pound ball smashed Allen’s left knee, and after gallantly trying to carry on, he fainted from loss of blood and had to be carried below. First Lieutenant William Watson was then hit in the head and knocked unconscious. Second Lieutenant Howard Allen (not related to the fallen captain) took command as Maples maneuvered to rake the Argus by the stern. Howard Allen responded by backing the main topsail, which slowed the Argus and put her into a position to cross the Pelican’s bow and rake her. It was a critical moment in the battle. A well-directed broadside at that distance would have crippled the Pelican enough for Howard Allen to defeat her. But his broadside, inexplicably, did no damage. Maples took advantage of the reprieve and came up alongside the Argus, pummeling her with his heavy guns. He then raked her by the bow and the stern. The Argus was finished. Maples was preparing to board when Howard Allen struck his colors. The fighting had raged for forty-three minutes. The Argus had six killed and eighteen wounded, five of them mortally (Lieutenant Watson recovered). The Pelican had two killed and five wounded.

  The battle was a stunning conclusion to the Argus’s otherwise spectacularly successful cruise. Captain Henry Allen and the rest of the prisoners were taken to Dartmoor Prison in Plymouth, where four days later Allen died. The British gave him a hero’s funeral and buried him in Plymouth’s St. Andrews Churchyard, along with Midshipman Richard Delphey. Allen never found out that he had been promoted to master commandant in July. In London, the Times boasted, “The victory of the Pelican over Argus is another proof of British superiority on the ocean.”

  THE ARGUS WAS not the only American warship operating around the British Isles in the summer of 1813. Commodore Rodgers and the President were there as well. Rodgers had departed Boston on April 23 in company with Captain John Smith and the Congress. They split up on May 8. Rodgers hoped the President would see more action than she had on her first two voyages. His initial target was the homeward-bound Jamaica convoy. With this in mind, he cruised south of the Grand Banks. The only ships he saw, however, were Americans returning from Lisbon and Cadiz with British gold and silver in their coffers. Nothing annoyed him more than this blatant, legal trafficking with the enemy. The scandal of trading under British licenses would soon come to an end, however. In July 1813, Congress, with President Madison’s strong support, finally passed a bill making the noxious practice illegal. A three- to five-month grace period was allowed for ships coming from the Far East, Africa, and—most importantly—Europe.

  The first two months of Rodgers’s cruise were frustrating. He missed the Jamaica convoy, and thick fog hindered him as he hunted along the eastern edge of the Grand Banks, looking for vessels bound for Canada. At the end of May he took up a position west of the Azores, but again with no results until the second week of June, when he captured two small merchantmen, a letter of marque, and a packet. He sent the merchantmen to France as prizes and the packet as a cartel ship to England with seventy-eight prisoners, hoping to annoy the Admiralty.

  Rodgers then set sail for the northern area of the British Isles, something he had wanted to do since the war began. But as luck would have it, he did not see another ship until he was near the Shetland Islands off the northeast coast of Scotland. By then his provisions and water were running low, and he steered northeast for Bergen, Norway, to resupply.

  Norway was part of Denmark—a bitter enemy of Britain. An American warship had never visited Bergen before, so when people found out who Rodgers was, they extended their warmest hospitality. Unfortunately it did not include the food he needed. Bread and other provisions were simply not available. All the Norwegians could give him were water and a tiny amount of cheese and rye meal.

  When the Admiralty discovered the President had put into Bergen, it tried hard to catch her. On July 13 the Times reported that Rodgers was refitting and watering there, but by then he had already left. He stood out from Bergen on July 2 in search of a British convoy from the Russian port of Archangel. In the next two weeks he captured two small merchantmen, and on the eighteenth he met and joined forces with the American privateer Scourge, under Captain Samuel Nicoll, out of New York. Nicoll had been at work since June, along with another famous privateer, the Rattlesnake out of Philadelphia. During a busy month, the two raiders had captured twenty-two prizes. They did so well that the Admiralty thought they were part of an American squadron led by Rodgers. In fact, they were but a small part of an armada of American privateers swarming
around the British Isles. The embarrassed Admiralty tried to get rid of them but never succeeded. The Royal Navy’s hunters were too few and the American marauders too many.

  Rodgers shaped a course for the North Cape off Norway’s island of Mageroya. On the way he captured two more prizes, both brigs in ballast, which he burned after removing their crews and stores. He reported that “sun in that latitude, at that season, appeared at midnight several degrees above the horizon.” On the nineteenth of July, with the Scourge in company, lookouts on the President spied two large British ships in the distance, and judging them to be a line-of-battle ship and a frigate, Rodgers put on all sail to avoid them. The Scourge did the same, parting company with the President. The British men-of-war ignored the smaller ship and concentrated on the President, a prize that, if caught, would have made their captains heroes in Britain. Capturing Rodgers was a high priority for the Admiralty.

  Ironically, Rodgers was running from the very ships he had hoped to find. The men-of-war chasing him were the 38-gun frigate Alexandria and the 16-gun sloop of war Spitfire. Unfortunately, fog obscured his view, and he could not identify them. The President and the Scourge together could have easily beaten them; even the President alone could have.

  After eluding his pursuers, Rodgers stood south, shaping a course to take him back to Scotland’s northwestern coast, where he could watch for vessels at the northern end of the Irish Channel. He was there at the same time that Henry Allen and the Argus were patrolling at the southern end of the Channel. The tiny American navy, which was supposed to be blockaded in its home ports, was instead operating at both ends of a major British waterway. During the succeeding days, Rodgers captured three ships and sent them to England as cartels—more salt in the wound for the Admiralty.