The history of our Navy from its origin to the present day, 1775-1897, vol. 1 (of 4)

There were many causes operating through weary years to force the American nation to declare war against the British in 1812, which the reader will recall readily, of course. Great Britain retained the frontier posts which she had agreed to surrender when the war of the Revolution came to an end. She used these posts as headquarters for Indian tribes, whose friendship she cultivated that she might use them to the injury of the United States. She even incited them to attack the American pioneers, and furnished them with guns and scalping knives when night assaults on peaceful settlers were to be made. Although all Europe was submerged in a turmoil of blood, she turned aside from the great interests there to foment discord between the States of the American Union, seeking thereby to disrupt the nation in the hope that a part—the New England part, at that—would return to the colonial relationship. Remembering the prodigious growth of American shipping and the consequent complaints of her own shipowners, she used every means to harass American commerce. To detail all of the evils she heaped upon the decks of American ships is unnecessary, but the reader will remember that a time came when she ordered that every American ship carrying cargo to any part of Europe must call first at a port in England, land the cargo, pay duty on it, and then carry it away again, subject to such regulations as seemed most beneficial to her.

As the Edinburgh Review for November, 1812, said, “the spirit of animosity and unconciliating contempt pervaded the whole proceedings of the government” toward the Americans. And although “they are descended from our loins—they speak our language—they have adopted our laws—they retain our usages and manners—they read our books—they have copied our freedom—they rival our courage; yet they are less popular and less esteemed among us than the base and bigoted Portuguese, or the ferocious and ignorant Russians.”

That the retention of the frontier posts, the inciting of the Indians to night attacks on the frontiersmen, and the interferences with American oversea trade were separately sufficient causes of war and, combined, more than sufficient, will not now be seriously disputed, if the advocate of peace will stop to consider what ought to be done were any one of these uncalled-for aggressions attempted now. And yet so great was the American antipathy to another war, so great was the American desire to hold a neutral position as to the wars of Europe, that neither the one nor the other nor all together were sufficient to nerve them to strike the blow. Still another and a stronger incentive was needed, if war was to be declared—a grievance that would appeal to the heart of the whole people. And not only was this incentive found; it was continually present and crying aloud for vengeance.

To fully appreciate this, the chief cause of the War of 1812 between the United States and England, one must first know well how the crews of the British naval ships of that day were recruited and what manner of life these crews led when in actual service. As to the manner of recruiting, the facts are, no doubt, well known to almost every reader. Gangs of men, under the lead of petty officers, and commonly piloted by a crimp, were sent ashore in home ports by the captain who found his ship short-handed. These gangs went to the resorts of seamen in the port where the ship happened to lie, and there took by force every English-speaking sailor they could find and carried him on board the warship. Failing to find a resource in the sailors’ boarding-houses, they knocked down any able-bodied man encountered in the street, and he was then carried instantly to the ship. Failing in getting enough men in this fashion—as, for instance, when the ship was in a foreign port or on the high seas—it was the custom, the every-day custom, to send the press-gang, on board any ship where it was supposed that English-speaking sailors might be found, and there take and carry off all such sailors.

The life that the crews so recruited led cannot, of course, be described here in full detail. The reader will readily imagine that the officers who snatched a man away from his home without even the poor privilege of telling his wife and children of his fate would not show any great care for the feelings or comfort of the man when on board the ship. But any picture of the life there which an American, at the end of the nineteenth century, might base on the mere fact that sailors were kidnapped, would be wholly inadequate, for the reason that no American of these days, unacquainted with the facts, could imagine such a degraded state of slavery. That the crews were ill-fed; that they were worked to the limit of their endurance; that the pay was as nothing (it is on record that one kidnapped man received £14 2s. 6d. for serving two and a half years); that the kidnapped men were not allowed to go ashore and were not allowed to write letters to their families where any effort was likely to be made for their release—all these conditions are, or were, a matter of course. It was in the matter of preserving what the officers called discipline—in keeping these unfortunate slaves in subjugation—that the real brutality of the British naval officers appeared. For the officers, who depended on clubs and manacles to recruit their crews, made no appeal to them save through their fears—used nothing to enforce an order but the cat-o’-ninetails. One undenied description of the flogging of a man on a British man-o’-war—a man-o’-war well known later on in the annals of the American navy—shall serve as an illustration of the ordinary punishments inflicted there.

In the year 1811 the British frigate Macedonian was commanded by Capt. John S. Carden, and his executive officer was one David Hope. “It was a peculiar feature of the brutal punishment of flogging that officers and men who at first sickened and fainted at the sight of it gradually grew indifferent and in some instances acquired a craving for the bloody ordeal and took a fiendish delight in superintending it. David Hope was one of these. He took the exquisite delight of a connoisseur in the art of flogging, being especially fond of seeing the tender flesh of boys lacerated and torn.” One day a midshipman on the Macedonian named Gale, “a rascally, unprincipled fellow,” lost a handkerchief. A sailor found it on the deck, and as it was unmarked, kept it. Gale saw it in the sailor’s possession, and the sailor was court-martialled, convicted of theft, and sentenced to be flogged through the fleet—to receive 300 lashes from the cat—and to serve one year in prison.

On the day appointed the Macedonian’s launch was put into the water and rigged, under the supervision of this David Hope, with a frame on which the bare-backed sailor was lashed. A surgeon, to keep watch that the man was kept alive, boarded the launch with the boatswain and the boat’s crew, and then all hands were called to man the rail and rigging, where all could view the torture.

This done, the lash was applied to the man’s back until “the flesh resembled roasted meat burned nearly black before a scorching fire.”

Then the launch was sent to another ship and to another and another, where fresh boatswains applied the lash anew to the raw back of the man, the doctor standing by and seeing that the man remained conscious to suffer the torment. When 220 blows had been given the doctor ordered the whipping stopped. The sailor begged to have the other eighty blows given that he might be done with it, but this was refused. He was carried back to the Macedonian and cared for until he had recovered his strength, when the remaining eighty were given to him, and then he was flung into prison.

Just before the War of 1812 a deserter from a British ship slipped on board the United States frigate Essex. When an officer with a gang came for him he was, of course, surrendered. On asking, then, that he be allowed to go below for his clothes, permission was granted, but instead of getting his clothing he ran to the carpenter’s bench, picked up an axe, and deliberately chopping off his left hand, he carried it on deck and threw it at the feet of the British lieutenant, saying he would cut off his foot also before he would serve again in the British navy. As he was no longer able to do duty as a sailor the lieutenant left him.

Lest these stories seem to the humane reader to exaggerate the horrors of life on a British naval ship, the following facts from the London “Annual Register” for 1781 (page 41 of “Principal Occurrences”) will be found conclusive: The total number of men “raised” for the navy, 1776 to 1780, was 170,928. Of these, 1,243 only were killed by the enemy, while 18,545 “died,” and 42,069 deserted. More than ten per cent. of all who were “raised” “died,” while almost one-fourth of them all succeeded in deserting, in spite of the rigors of the imprisonment into which they were carried.

It is necessary to give figures relating to the Revolutionary period instead of the era of the War of 1812, because British officials have absolutely refused to publish any such statistics since 1800.

What bearing all these facts have on the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain, if not plain already, will very soon appear. Animated by the belief that “our maritime supremacy is in fact a part of the law of nations,” and by the further belief that “America certainly cannot pretend to wage war with us; she has no navy to do it with,” the British naval officers kidnapped English-speaking sailors wherever they were found, even when these sailors were confessedly born citizens of the United States. The British government did, indeed, rule that where an American (natural-born) had a certificate from the American government attesting his nativity—where he could, by documentary evidence, prove his nativity—he might be excused by the British “recruiting” gangs, but the rule was, in fact, a mere diplomatic subterfuge for use should policy at any time require a “disavowal.” In actual practice the only judge of a man’s citizenship was the recruiting officer of the short-handed ship, and the lithe-limbed Yankee sailor was just the kind of a man the British press-gang was looking for. In fact, the British periodicals of that day continuously scoffed at these citizenship papers, and it was asserted in Parliament, as well as by the press, that the American naval officers, as well as naval officials stationed on shore, deliberately issued false papers at every opportunity—in short, that the Americans, as a nation, were liars, perjurers, and forgers.

As early as 1747, when Massachusetts was a colony in most peaceful relations with the home government, a press-gang caused a bloody riot on the streets of Boston, where press-gangs were “already stigmatized as barbarous by public opinion.” Indeed, one of the irritations leading to the hostilities begun in 1775 was the work of the press-gang. The war of the Revolution forever settled the question of the right of the British government to impress an American, but instead of stopping such violations of the rights of a free-minded people it rather increased them. For the hatred and contempt which the British felt toward the Americans as a people during that war was intensified by the result of it. It was the personal pleasure of the British officer to get these Yankees where he could make them feel his power. It is on record (see “Life of Elder Joseph Bates”) that the British officers were particular to see that these Americans took off their hats when the band played “God Save the King,” and that a common form of address was “Here, you damned Yankee scoundrel,” do this or that. That the “damned Yankee scoundrel” was triced up and flogged on the slightest provocation by these officers, who confessedly enjoyed seeing flesh creep under the lash, scarcely need be said.

No sooner was the war of the Revolution over and American merchant ships free to sail to British ports than the outrages began on the American seamen. It was literally true that the United States had no navy and could not wage war with England. We did not have even one ship-of-war left to carry the flag, and the party that ruled the nation then was utterly opposed to building one. It called itself the party of the people—it was fearful lest something or somebody enslave the people—but when the friends of American seamen, shanghaied into the barbarous slavery of a British warship, protested, this “liberty-loving” party pigeon-holed the documents. But let us be just in this matter. It was the liberty-loving party that did at last declare war. The opposition preferred to trust in “the humanity” and “sense of justice” which the offending nation was supposed to possess.

So the press-gangs worked on merrily. Not only was the American walking in the street of a foreign city in immediate danger; the American ships on the high seas were stopped and stripped of their crews. The British ships even lay to off New York, Boston, and other American ports to intercept American merchantmen, from which seamen were taken until they were so short-handed that they were lost. The American seamen were left to face death by shipwreck, as they were disciplined to death on the decks of British naval warships. And because they were lithe and quick-witted—because they more readily devised means for escape from this slavery than others—they were transferred to the ships doing duty on the coasts of Africa and in the East Indies, just as American prisoners captured during the war of the Revolution were sent to and compelled to serve on those stations.

As the Edinburgh Review for November, 1812, admitted, “they were dispersed in the remotest quarter of the globe, and not only exposed to the perils of service, but shut out, by their situation, from all hope of ever being reclaimed.” They were doomed to slavery for life.

How the indignation was of slow growth—so slow, indeed, that it needed the outrages of the Barbary pirates to stir it even to the feeblest blaze—has already been told in the story of the origin of the new navy. But at last a majority of two was found for a resolution of the Congress declaring that a seaside nation ought to have a navy, and so a navy was built—a navy so small in numbers as to be absolutely insignificant when compared with that whose “supremacy is in fact a part of the law of nations.” It was built of American oak, manned by American seamen, and sent afloat with the American flag flying from every mast. It did good—it did the best kind of work—but when the Barbary pirates were cowed it was reduced “to a peace footing.” There was never an effort made with it to resent the enslaving of American seamen. So the aggressions increased continually. And the politicians talked. They talked about the illegal confiscation of American ships under the decrees and orders of the French and English governments—they were more concerned about the dollars than the liberties of the people—and finally when war seemed inevitable, they seriously discussed the advisability of abandoning the seacoast to the expected invaders! The chatter about no European enemy being able to find a permanent footing on the broad American soil, where so many millions of freemen were to be ready with squirrel rifles and shotguns to repel him, was quite as common at the beginning of the nineteenth century as it is at the end of it. The word “jingo” was not in use in those days. But the men who asserted that government existed solely in order that the power of the whole people should be exerted to protect every individual in all his rights wherever in the wide world he might find himself, heard plenty of equally opprobrious epithets applied to them. And the utmost that was done for the sake of national honor was the building of a lot of boats for “harbor-defence.”

And then came a day when, to the injury that had been done unceasingly, was added insult, the memory of which to this day brings the hot blush of shame as well as the flood-tide of indignation to the brow of every American patriot.

It was on the 16th of November, 1798. As the reader will remember, this nation was then actually at war with France, although no formal declaration of war had been made. The French ship Croyable, of fourteen guns, had been captured, taken into the American service under the name of Retaliation, and recaptured by the French ship Insurgent. Because of these troubles a fleet of sixty American merchant ships had gathered at Havana to await a convoy, and the Constellation, Capt. Thomas Truxton, and the Baltimore, Capt. Isaac Phillips, were sent to bring them home.

This service having been performed in satisfactory manner, the Baltimore was sent alone to convoy a smaller fleet from Charleston back to Havana.

On November 16, 1798, while en route on this passage, the convoy fell in with a British squadron consisting of two seventy-four-gun ships-of-the-line, one ninety-eight-gun ship-of-the-line, and two thirty-two-gun frigates. Because both Great Britain and the United States were then at war with France, the two nations were, of course, allies at this time. Nevertheless, knowing that the British ships were sure to be anxious for more sailors, Captain Phillips signalled his fleet to square away before the wind, and so get out of reach, while he bore up to have a talk with the Englishmen.

On arriving near the flagship—the Carnatic, Captain Loring—Captain Phillips pulled over to her in his gig. He was received with the usual civilities, and then was coolly informed that every man on board the Baltimore who did not carry the government certificate that he was an American citizen would be impressed into the British service.

A ship of the American navy was to be treated as merchant ships had been treated.

Captain Phillips protested, and said he would surrender his ship first. Then he returned to the Baltimore, where he found a British lieutenant already on deck and mustering the crew.

No form of protest was of any avail. Everything said or done excited only the contemptuous smile of the lieutenant, and in the end, being overpowered by the great ship-of-the-line squadron, Captain Phillips had the humiliation of seeing five of his men impressed in the British service.

Meantime Captain Loring had taunted Captain Phillips with the statement that there were already a number of impressed American citizens in the Carnatic’s crew.

And all that the American government did in the matter was to dismiss the unfortunate Phillips from the service—dismiss him as a scapegoat for the scurvy sins of those really responsible for the disgrace that had fallen upon the navy. For Phillips very well knew how the administration had pigeon-holed the complaints of the friends of kidnapped seamen—knew very well that the Navy Department could not be depended on to support him in resenting such aggression.

In one respect Phillips deserved his punishment—he had sworn to defend the flag, and he did not fire a gun. Not only should he have cleared his ship for action; it was his duty to fight, Nicholas-Biddle fashion, until the last plank was shot from under his feet.

Humiliated as every patriot was when the story of this outrage was spread over the nation, greater and lingering shame was in store. Not only did the outrages on American commerce increase as the years passed on; a still heavier blow was to fall on the face of American manhood. A British ship was to shoot an American ship to pieces in order to recapture four impressed Americans who had succeeded in escaping from the slavery they had endured—the British frigate Leopard was to assault the Chesapeake on the high seas in time of peace.

But before that attack another was made that was less aggravating than the one on the Baltimore, only because it was the second of its kind—because, being the second, the American people may be supposed to have been somewhat accustomed to their humiliation. This was on June 12, 1805. Lieut. James Lawrence—he had his revenge afterward in the Hornet-Peacock fight—was carrying a small gunboat to the Mediterranean to help in the war with the pirates. Off Cadiz he had the misfortune to fall in with the British fleet under Admiral Collingwood, when three of his men were taken from him. That the administration at Washington (it was during Mr. Jefferson’s second term) rested easily under the outrage is plain from the fact that only the briefest mention of it is made in any history. The impressment of Americans was such a common, such an every-day, occurrence that the fact of three taken from a national ship was, to use a newspaper reporter’s expression, worth only a three-line jotting.

And another three-line jotting is devoted to what is called the Leander affair. A British squadron was cruising off Sandy Hook on what is, in these years, the favorite American ground for yacht races. They were lying in wait, as was their custom, for American ships, from which they could gather in seamen. When a little American sloop came along on April 25, 1806, “a shot was recklessly fired from one of them, the Leander.” It is fair to suppose that this shot was fired as a joke on the sloop’s crew. If one recalls the undisputed character of such men as Lieutenant Hope of the Macedonian, already described, one may readily believe that the average British officer of that day would have thought it a good joke to scare a sloop’s crew by firing a cannon-ball across her deck. The gunner on the Leander, to make the joke as laughable as possible, aimed carefully. His shot killed the man at the tiller.

When the people of New York learned the facts through the return of the sloop, the local excitement was very great. All the vessels in the harbor hoisted their flags at half-mast on the day the body was buried, while the Tammany Society attended the funeral in a body. So Mr. Jefferson’s government felt constrained to protest. At that, Captain Whitby, who commanded the Leander, was taken through the form of a court-martial, unanimously acquitted of wrong-doing and promoted.

The crowning outrage, however, came in the year 1807. Early in that year a squadron of British warships had congregated in the mouth of Chesapeake Bay to blockade some Frenchmen lying at Annapolis. The American Congress had granted an appropriation meantime (though with stingy hand) for enough seamen to man the frigate Chesapeake, that was to be sent out under Capt. Charles Gordon to the Mediterranean, where she was to take the place of the Constitution. She was to carry Commodore James Barron with her (his real title was captain), and he was to command at the Mediterranean station.

The Chesapeake was partly fitted out at Washington, and then she dropped down to Norfolk to complete her preparations for sea, and ship enough men to fill her crew. While she was still lying at Washington seven men applied at the recruiting station in Norfolk, who said they were American citizens—who made oath to that statement, in fact, and were permitted to sign as members of the crew of the Chesapeake, and they were sent on to join the ship then at Washington. Soon after this it appeared that three of the men had deserted from the British warship Melampus and four from the Halifax. Just how the fact that they were deserters became known is not definitely stated, but from the details given and from the manifest ill-temper of the British officers in the doings that followed, it is reasonable to suppose that at least one of these seven men met some of the British officers on shore, and feeling safe under the American flag, ventured to reply, in disrespectful manner, to remarks made by the officers. There is, indeed, no doubt the officers were defied and, so, deeply offended.

In those days one Erskine represented the British government at Washington. He tried to have the seven deserters returned to the ships from which they came. Now, in spite of the fact that the British officers were in those days diligently engaged in kidnapping American-born sailors from American ships, the American Navy Department had issued strict orders to the recruiting officers “to enlist no British subjects known to be such.” And, further, it must be said that there was no law authorizing an American commander to deliver up deserters from foreign navies when found in American ships. Nevertheless, an investigation was made as to the antecedents of the seven men, and then it was discovered that the British officials were wholly unable to prove that any one of them was a British subject. More important still, it was proved that instead of having voluntarily shipped in the British navy, the three men who had deserted from the Melampus had been kidnapped from an American merchant ship in the Bay of Biscay. Two of them were natives of Maryland, and one, although born in South America, had come to Massachusetts when a child and had there become a lawful citizen of the United States. The names of the three were William Ware, Daniel Martin, and John Strachan, and all were colored. As to the four from the Halifax, it was not proved where they were born except as they swore they were of American birth, but very likely three of them were of English birth, for they deserted the Chesapeake and disappeared. The fourth appears in history both as Jenkin Ratford and as John Wilson. He was a white man and, unfortunately for himself, he remained on the ship.

Because the three men were definitely proved to be American citizens, and because there was nothing to disprove Ratford’s oath that he too was one, the Navy Department refused to surrender the men, and the diplomatic correspondence was closed. The American authorities having received no protest after the decision was rendered, supposed that the matter was dropped altogether.

And that was a very grave error on the part of the American authorities. For so great was the arrogance of the British naval officers, and so strong was their contempt for the American government and people, that they determined to take the men by force from the deck of the Chesapeake as soon as she had passed out to sea, and an order was issued by Admiral Berkeley commanding any British captain who found the Chesapeake at sea to board her, whether she would permit it or not, and take the men.

Naturally that order was kept secret, and Captains Barron and Gordon (Barron, by the fact of his rank, was the responsible official) had no idea that any real ill feeling existed, let alone that any intention to assault the ship was meditated. There was, indeed, some grumbling by British officers at Norfolk, and the officers of the Chesapeake heard of it, but there was not enough in it to excite their suspicions.

And so the 22d day of June, 1807, arrived, and the Chesapeake was, after a most remarkable fashion, ready for sea. She set her pennant, got up her anchor, and with her decks littered with baggage, chicken coops—what not—and her rammers, wads, matches, and powder-horns stowed no one knew where, she sailed away.

Meantime, while yet the Chesapeake’s anchor had not been gotten, the crew of the big British fifty-gun ship Leopard had made sail and gone to sea slowly—so slowly that she kept the Chesapeake constantly in sight.

At 3 o’clock in the afternoon the Leopard brought to near the Chesapeake and hailed her, saying that the officers and crew wished to send letters by her to friends in Europe. It was a common practice for warships as well as merchantmen to carry letters in that fashion, and the Chesapeake backed her mainyards and waited for the boat from the Leopard. When the boat came, a British lieutenant climbed to the deck of the Chesapeake, and then, instead of producing a package of letters, he drew forth a written demand from his captain for the return of the sailors alleged to be British subjects. With this demand he also presented a copy of the circular issued by his admiral which ordered any British ship falling in with the Chesapeake to take the so-called deserters from her by force if necessary. Captain Barron was very much surprised, but he refused to deliver up the men.

Meantime the Leopard had worked into the most advantageous position for attacking the Chesapeake, and with her ports open, cannon out, and matches lighted, she awaited the issue of the demand.

The lieutenant returned to his ship. Captain Humphreys of the Leopard mounted the rail and shouted:

“Commodore Barron must be aware that the orders of the admiral must be obeyed.”

No reply was made to this, and the words were repeated. A shot was fired across the bows of the Chesapeake. Another one was fired in like manner, and then a whole broadside was discharged directly at the American ship.

Being wholly unprepared for action, the Chesapeake could make no reply, and for twelve minutes (some accounts say fifteen) she lay there helpless while the British seamen worked their guns. Her masts, rigging, and sails were shot to pieces. Three men were killed and eighteen wounded, Captain Barron being among the wounded.

It was deliberate, cold-blooded murder, done to compel three American citizens to return to the slavery on a British ship into which they had been kidnapped. And it succeeded in its object.

Being, as said, wholly unprepared, no defence was made, and when Captain Barron saw that his crew were being killed uselessly, he hauled down his flag. Lieut. William H. Allen, on the Chesapeake, did manage to fire one gun by means of a coal carried in his bare hands from the galley fire, and the ball hulled the Leopard, but the flag was already down to the rail, and it was done only as a matter of honor.

So the crew of the Chesapeake were mustered on deck, the triumphant lieutenant returned, the four “deserters” were bundled over the rail into the British boat, and the Chesapeake was left, with her dead and wounded, to work her riddled sails in the course back to Norfolk.

The Leopard sailed on. The unfortunate Jenkin Ratford was hanged at the fore yardarm, and the three who were acknowledged to be kidnapped American citizens were sentenced to receive 500 lashes from the cat.

And what does the uninformed reader suppose the political leaders of the American republic did about it? They tore the Eagle from the American coat-of-arms and substituted the Porcupine—they asked the British government to disavow the act of Admiral Berkeley, and they ordered the building of 188 more gunboats for harbor defence!