For almost two years, and long and weary ones they were to the ambitious officers connected with her, the famous old frigate Constitution lay idle in the port of Boston, while the ships of less repute in the Navy were telling the world of the prowess of Yankee seamen when fighting for freedom. She had been found in such a state of decay on her return from her combat with the British frigate Java, that it was necessary to haul her out and rebuild her.

More than half of her crew were transferred to the Great Lakes, and, as has been told, some of them were on Lake Erie to help Perry win lasting fame, while some saw Chauncey fill and back in the presence of Sir James Yeo on Lake Ontario.

However, in December, 1813, she was ready for sea, and with a new crew of well-selected men under Captain Charles Stewart, she sailed on a little cruise that neither added to nor detracted from her fame. Leaving Boston on the 30th of the month, she was for seventeen days at sea without seeing a sail. On February 14th, however, on the coast of Surinam, she overhauled the British war-schooner Picton, of sixteen guns, which she captured together with a letter of marque that was in convoy. It is perhaps worth noting that the difference between a letter of marque and a privateer is this: while both are licensed to prey on the enemy, the principal business of the letter of marque is to carry cargo.

On working her way homeward the Constitution fell in with the thirty-six-gun British frigate La Pique, Captain Maitland, off Porto Rico. Time had been, and that not so long before, when a British frigate of that size would have come booming down on the Constitution eager for a fight. But the results of a few such boomings had taken the “uncircumspect gallantry” out of the British Admiralty if not out of all the British commanders. Captain Maitland had written orders not to engage a ship of the weight of the Constitution, and he up-helm and ran for it. Night coming on, he escaped through Mona passage. James says that the crew of La Pique felt so very badly when they found that they were to run instead of fight, that they positively refused to take their evening’s allowance of grog.

The Constitution arrived off Cape Ann on April 3, 1814, and there found the two big British frigates Junon and Tenedos in chase of her. By throwing over provisions and starting her water the Constitution reached the harbor of Marblehead. This port was undefended by forts, and it is asserted by the British that Captain Parker, of the Tenedos, wanted to go in and have a fight, but was prevented by Captain Upton, of the Junon, who was the ranking officer. In any event, they did not go in nor did they prevent the Constitution leaving Marblehead for Salem soon afterward. Then she returned to Boston once more and there she remained until December 17, 1814, when she sailed out of Boston, still under command of Captain Stewart, while the blockading ships were temporarily off port. And then came the cruise in which, as Maclay says, “she achieved her greatest triumph and performed her most brilliant service.”

The news that “the Constitution is again cruising,” was quickly learned on the blockading squadron on its return to the station, for the British had spies a-plenty in all American ports, and especially among the Federalist party in New England. The dread announcement was sent by every passing British vessel in all directions, “and thereafter British ships-of-the-line maintained a double lookout, and their smaller frigates sailed in couples, while their sloops-of-war stood away from every sail that bore the least resemblance to the Constitution.”

On December 24th, off the Bermudas, the British merchant-ship Lord Nelson was taken. She sailed thence by the way of the Madeiras to the Portuguese coast, and there “for several days cruised within sight of the Rock of Lisbon.” Here, on February 18, 1815, Captain Stewart went in chase of the big liner Elizabeth without knowing what he was after, but he left her to follow a smaller sail seen a little later, and so fell in with a British merchant-ship, the Susan, which was taken.

Meantime, the British liner arrived at Lisbon, where he learned that the Constitution was offshore. And as it happened, the British frigate Tiber was there and the Tiber was commanded by the Captain Dacres who had been so handsomely beaten in the Guerrière by the Constitution under Hull. Straightway the two started in chase of the Yankee, but they never had the satisfaction of overtaking her. For the Constitution, with equal, if not greater, speed, was returning once more down-wind toward the Madeiras.

A right curious story of this passage is told by Richard Watson Gilder in “Hours at Home.” He says that, on February 19th, while a group of lieutenants were standing on the quarter-deck of the Constitution talking about the fact that they had met no enemy of equal force during the cruise, and calling it ill-luck, they were approached by Captain Stewart, who had overheard their talk. He said:

“I assure you, gentlemen, that before the sun again rises and sets, you will be engaged in battle with the enemy, and it will not be with a single ship.”

Captain Stewart was a man subject to presentiments. He believed in them, and this one foreshadowed a combat such as he described and within the time-limit.

By noon of the next day (February 20, 1815) the Constitution had arrived within one hundred and eighty miles of Madeira, which then bore southwest-by-west. A light easterly breeze was drifting over the water, and the sky was cloudy, when at 1 o’clock in the afternoon a sail was seen a little on the port bow. Hauling the Constitution up to the point, Captain Stewart made all sail in chase, and an hour later discovered a second sail in company with, but beyond, the first. By this time the first ship’s hull was above the horizon, and because of false ports painted on her side she had somewhat of the look of a fifty-gun ship. When this was suggested by a lieutenant to Captain Stewart, however, he replied that she did not look as large as that, and then added:

“Be this as it may, you know I promised you a fight before the setting of to-day’s sun, and if we do not take it now that it is offered, we can scarcely have another chance. We must flog them when we catch them, whether she has one gun-deck or two!”

As it appeared later on, the first of these sails was the small British frigate Cyane, Captain Thomas Gordon Falcon, and the second the ship-rigged sloop-of-war Levant, Captain the Honorable George Douglas. Both were standing to the north and east with the wind coming in over the starboard bow, the smaller vessel being several miles away astern and in the lee of the larger one.

As the Constitution, with her studding-sails bellying aloft, came driving down the wind, the Cyane began signalling to her consort, and a little later (it was just after 4 o’clock) she up with her helm and, wearing around, spread all her sails to join the Levant.

The very beautiful chase that followed was prolonged, rather than shortened, by a freshening breeze, because under the pressure of its wide-spread canvas the Constitution’s main-royalmast broke off at the eyes of the top-gallant rigging, and for maybe fifteen minutes there was a lively time aloft in getting a new mast up and the canvas pulling once more.

She had held her own with the Cyane, even while crippled, and when all sail was once more spread the Constitution quickly overhauled the little British frigate and at 5 o’clock tried a few shots at her with the bow-chasers, all of which, however, fell short.

So the Cyane arrived unhurt alongside of her consort, the Levant, where both determined to fight the Yankee frigate, and stripped down to fighting canvas. A moment later they seemed to have thought it advisable to put off the combat until night should come, in order to get the advantage of manœuvring in the dark, and they once more up-helm and made sail. But they soon saw that the Constitution was upon them—that no delay was possible—and coming back to the starboard tack, with sails rap full, they formed in line, the little frigate Cyane about two hundred yards astern of the Levant, and so awaited the Constitution.

The Constitution had come ploughing down with the wind over her port quarter. As she arrived opposite the two ships she stripped off her canvas, as a fighter his shirt, and wearing around she ranged up on the starboard tack to windward of the two Britishers, and at 6.10 o’clock, with the Cyane two hundred and fifty yards away on the port quarter, and the Levant as far away on the port bow, opened fire on both. The plucky seamen of the British ships replied instantly, and for fifteen minutes every gun on all three ships that could be brought to bear was worked with the fiercest energy. The huge cloud of smoke that arose from the Yankee guns completely fogged in the enemy, but the enemy’s fire had notably slackened away, and Captain Stewart ordered his men to cease firing in order that he might see where the enemy lay.

As the smoke drifted down-wind, the spars of the sloop Levant were disclosed right abeam. The Constitution had forged ahead in the fifteen minutes’ firing, and she had the Levant directly under her guns. But because the Constitution had forged ahead, the Cyane had obtained a little more sea-room, as well as immunity from the fire of the Constitution, and she was just beginning to luff up across the Constitution’s stern when the thinning smoke revealed her.

An opportunity for a most beautiful display of Yankee seamanship had come. Firing a staggering blow from double-shotted guns at the Levant off his lee beam, Captain Stewart threw the sails on the Constitution’s main and mizzen masts flat aback, and then bracing in the foresails till they just fluttered in the breeze, he drove her stern on, back across the bow of the luffing English frigate, and raking her fore and aft, compelled her to fill away. Then after partly filling his sails, to keep the Constitution beside the enemy, he fired such deadly broadsides into her that the men were driven from her guns, and her fire almost ceased. As a right good song says:

But at 6.35 o’clock a new complication had arisen. The Levant, lying ahead of her consort, Cyane, and out of the fire of the Constitution, began to luff up where she could rake the Yankee. But the wakeful Captain Stewart had his eyes on her, and as she sailed up to cross the Constitution’s bows he rapidly filled the Constitution’s sails, put his helm up, bluffed the Cyane down to leeward, and, running forward, crossed under the stern of the Levant and gave her two raking broadsides in swift succession.

For the moment the Levant had had enough, and sheeting home her top-gallant sails, she sped away from the giant Yankee.

At that the little frigate Cyane began to wear around before the wind as if to escape also, but the Yankee wore around after her with greater speed, and crossing her stern from starboard to port, raked her much as the Levant had been raked. At that the Cyane came farther around and fired her port battery into the starboard bow of the Constitution, but when, at exactly 6.50 o’clock, the Constitution ranged up beside her, she hauled down her flag. It was just forty minutes since the action at close range began. Second Lieutenant B. V. Hoffman, of the Constitution, was at once sent to take charge of the Cyane.

This much accomplished, the Constitution stood up-wind in chase of the Levant, that had made sail to get out of the fight, and soon saw her coming “very gallantly back to find out his friend’s condition.” Here, indeed, was the “uncircumspect gallantry” of which Sir Howard Douglas speaks. For the Levant met the Constitution at 8.50 o’clock, just two hours after the Cyane had surrendered. Captain the Honorable George Douglas should have known that the little frigate Cyane could have had no hope in the fight alone with the giant Yankee—that he himself would have still less in returning. It was a foolhardy movement, yet one that necessarily appeals for sympathy to the fighting men of both nations. The Levant luffed to pass to windward of the Constitution, failed, passed to leeward, and the two exchanged broadsides. Then the Levant spread everything to escape, but the Constitution wore around in chase, and by 9.30 was sending shot from her bow-chasers into the fleeing Englishman. At that the Levant also hauled down her flag.

As the Levant’s flag came down, John Lancey, of Cape Ann, one of the Constitution’s men, was dying under the surgeon’s hands. The surgeon had told him that death was near, and the man replied:

“Yes, sir, I know it. But I only want to hear that the other ship has struck.”

A moment later the Yankees on deck began to cheer, and, hearing them, Lancey raised his head, waved an arm that had been partly shot away, gave three feeble cheers, and fell back dead.

Another tale of the battle says that after the British captains were in the Constitution’s cabin a midshipman came in to ask Captain Stewart if the men could have their evening grog. As the time for serving it had passed before the battle began, Captain Stewart asked if they had not had it already, and the midshipman replied, to the astonishment of the Englishmen:

“No, sir. It was mixed ready for serving just before the battle began, but the older sailors of the crew said they didn’t want any ‘Dutch courage’ on board and capsized the grog-tub in the lee scuppers.”

Later still the two Englishmen, according to Gilder, got into a heated dispute, each blaming the other for making manœuvres that lost the battle, but Stewart stopped the quarrel. He said:

“Gentlemen, there is no use in getting warm about it; it would have been all the same whatever you might have done. If you doubt that, I will put you all on board again and you can try it over.”

As to the relative force, Allen says that the Cyane was of a class known as “donkey frigates,” and that she carried twenty-two short thirty-twos on the main deck and eight short eighteens and two nines on quarter-deck and forecastle. Lieutenant Hoffman, who took charge of her, says she had two more short eighteens. This is no doubt the truth of the matter. It is agreed that the Levant carried eighteen short thirty-twos, two long nines, and a short twelve that could be worked on either side. The two together carried a crew of three hundred and twenty, of whom thirty-nine were boys, according to Allen. The combined crews could fire a broadside of seven hundred and fifty-four pounds to the Constitution’s six hundred and forty-four pounds net weight. Without mentioning the Constitution’s number of men, which was at most four hundred and fifty-six, we can concede what Allen claims, the “immense superiority” of the Yankee. For not only were the long twenty-fours of the Constitution far and away better than the short thirty-twos of the British ships, just as the long guns of the Phœbe and Cherub were superior to the short guns of the Essex at Valparaiso: the crew of the Constitution had been trained very much better than any ordinary British crew. More important still, the force of the Constitution was concentrated in a single ship under the command of one able man. The force of the British was divided between two ships and could not be so well handled. When the British Court of Inquiry at Halifax “applauded” the British officers “for the gallant defence each had made,” it did something which an American writer finds pleasure in placing before American readers. But when, as Allen relates, “the Court also expressed to the remaining crew of the Cyane, in the strongest terms, the sense entertained of their determined loyalty in resisting the temptations held out by the enemy to draw them from their allegiance, which they retained also under circumstances of almost unprecedented severity exercised toward them whilst on board the Constitution,” it placed on its records a falsehood. The charge was false on its face, for the lowest count of the crew of the Constitution, after the battle, as printed in any American work, gives her four hundred and forty-four men, of whom ten, at most, were wounded more or less. After manning her prizes she still had an ample crew to work the ship and man another prize or two. Because the Yankee sailors were treated like men, were well-fed and well-paid, the Yankee frigates in this war, with the exception of the black-listed Chesapeake, were fully manned. There was no occasion for recruiting among the British prisoners. Moreover, when this falsehood was first published, the officers of the Constitution denied under oath the charge, and said further, that, instead of trying to seduce the British crews, many of the British seamen volunteered to ship on board the Constitution but were in no case permitted to do so, because “the loss of the Chesapeake had taught us the danger of having renegades aboard.”

The Constitution lost six killed and nine more or less wounded. The donkey frigate Cyane lost twelve killed and twenty-six wounded out of her crew of one hundred and eighty; the Levant lost seven killed and sixteen wounded out of one hundred and forty. The British gunners did about as poorly as usual in their Navy of that day. The Yankee gunners did rather worse than usual. They were at close range long enough to sink both of the enemy’s ships had they done as well as the Hornet’s crew did with the British Peacock, or the Wasp with the British Avon. The battle was, and is, famous not for its gunnery, but for the magnificent manner in which Captain Stewart handled his ship. Other captains—Hull and Bainbridge, for instance—had handled her when a single enemy turned and twisted and fore-reached, but Stewart backed and filled and reached and wore to meet the manœuvres of two ships that, commanded by the ablest of British seamen, strove to cross and rake him. And not only did he meet their movements—not only did he avoid a raking himself, but he raked each of them repeatedly. No better seamanship was ever displayed.

By hard work after the battle, the Yankee seamen got all three ships in sailing order before 2 o’clock next morning, and they sailed to Porto Praya, in the island of St. Jago, Cape de Verde, where they arrived on March 10, 1815. Here a merchant brig was employed as a cartel to carry the prisoners. The next day came on with a thick fog lying low over the water while the air above the top-gallant yards was comparatively clear. The Americans were busy at 12.05 o’clock (noon) transferring the prisoners, when a large sail was seen from the deck standing into the harbor. There was plainly no lookout aloft, and Captain Stewart was well-nigh caught napping.

Stewart, however, was cool enough for the emergency, and had all hands called to their quarters to go out and meet the new ship, but when this was done two other huge sails were seen and it became evident that three large frigates were coming into the harbor. As was eventually learned, they were the fifty-gun frigate Newcastle, Captain Lord George Stewart; the fifty-gun frigate Leander, Captain Sir Ralph Collier, K.C.B., and the forty-gun Acasta, Captain Robert Kerr, ships that should have been blockading Boston when the Constitution escaped. Either of the larger ships was an overmatch for the Constitution. It was a neutral port, but the British regard for neutrality had been shown at Valparaiso and Fayal, and there was nothing to do but to run for liberty.

Signalling to his prizes to follow, Captain Stewart cut his cable, and so well-trained were the American officers and men that within ten minutes from the time the first ship of the enemy was seen, the Constitution and her two prizes were standing out of the harbor together. Though less spectacular than the manœuvres in the battle, the celerity, skill, and unanimity with which the Americans executed this movement show their seamanship quite as plainly.

As the American ships sailed through the fog the guns in the battery on shore began to roar. A number of prisoners who had been on shore on the business of fitting the cartel for sea had taken possession of the Portuguese forts and were firing signal-guns to attract the attention of the British ships. But the British ships were coming from the south—they were beating up against a good northeast breeze, and the Yankee and her prizes hugged the east side of the port and slipped out very well to windward of the enemy.

Until clear of the north point of the harbor the Yankees sailed under nothing higher than their top-sails; not even their higher yards were across, and so it happened that they escaped the eyes of the British lookouts. But when the point was cleared, top-gallant sail and royal-yards were crossed and the sails instantly spread to the breeze, to the astonishment of the lookouts perched above the fog-bank on the British ships. To them it was as if the Yankee sails had grown by magic up into the air and were sailing unsupported on the top of a cloud.

But if magical to the lookouts, it was sober business for the commanders below, who, by a series of “blunders” (James says so), had happened on the retreat of the ship they had failed to hold in Boston, and a race began such as had rarely stirred the souls of those engaged.

Once clear of land the Constitution cut adrift two boats that were towing astern. She was only a mile or so to windward of the enemy, and as the point was cleared, all six of the ships were on the port tack lying close up to the wind. The Constitution’s log says that at 12.50 o’clock she was holding her own with the Newcastle and Leander, on her lee quarter, while the Acasta, about dead astern, was dropping out of the race. And the log of the Acasta notes that the Constitution was gaining on her while she herself gained on the two prizes.

At 1.10 Captain Stewart ordered the Cyane to tack, and Lieutenant Hoffman, in command, obeyed. The Cyane was rapidly dropping into the clutches of the enemy before that, but now she sailed away and escaped altogether, the three British ships holding after the Constitution and Levant.

Thirty-five minutes after the Cyane had tacked away, the Newcastle, the leading British ship, opened fire on the Constitution. The ships were close enough for the officers, standing on the hammock-nettings, to see each other, but the shots all fell short, so firing ceased and the ships stood along in the close-hauled race until 3 o’clock, when the Levant had lagged close enough to the enemy to be in real danger. So Captain Stewart signalled her to tack, as the Cyane had done, whereat, to the astonishment of the Yankees, all three of the British frigates tacked after her, and the Constitution sailed away free.

The explanation made by the British writers regarding this remarkable episode is that the commanders of both the Newcastle and the Leander supposed that the little Levant was either the “President, Congress, or Macedonian.” It is difficult for an unbiassed mind to see how this helps them any. Suppose it had been the big Yankee frigate President instead of a little low-decked-sloop-of-war? How did it happen that two frigates, each of which was of greater force than the Yankee President and another that was of but little less force, were needed to capture “the waggon?”

We cannot know what was in the minds of these British captains, but we do know that the British Admiralty had warned the captains of British frigates to take a reef in their “uncircumspect gallantry,” so to speak. They were, as the captain of the Phœbe said when after the Essex, to capture the Yankee frigates with the least possible danger to themselves. They were to take no risks. Granting that these two British captains really made an honest mistake in supposing a little sloop was a big Yankee frigate—granting it, although James called Rodgers a coward for making, as James says he did, a similar mistake—they abandoned the ship which they fully believed to be a frigate to chase a manifestly smaller ship, a ship that we may grant they imagined was the “Congress or Macedonian.”

It is very likely presumptuous for a landsman to tell what lesson is taught by any event at sea, but if the action of these three big British frigates shows anything, it shows the tremendous influence for evil which such orders as that of the British Admiralty are sure to have. Nothing more impressive is to be found in Mahan’s learned work on the influence of the sea power than what he says about the demoralization that followed, among the French naval officers, when a very similar order was issued by the French Marine Department. For the head of a navy department to warn the captains of the naval ships to be prudent—to in any way mention to them any such word as prudence—is to give a shield to those who are by nature cowards, and a blow in the face to those who are by nature brave and ambitious and enterprising. The most serious blunder made by any American in authority during the War of 1812 was made by the Secretary of the Navy when he sent an order to Boston for the Constitution to remain in port after her escape from Broke’s squadron. Had not Captain Hull, with an enterprise and daring that will never be sufficiently praised, taken her to sea without waiting for further orders, these stories of American victories afloat would never have been written, and the war would have ended—who can say how it would have ended?

It remained for the British Admiralty to make the blunder which our Secretary tried to make—and so the Constitution escaped from the British squadron off the Cape de Verde, and the great British squadron chased the little Levant back into the neutral port.

There, when the Levant had anchored, they surrounded her, and assisted by the escaped prisoners who had captured and manned the Portuguese battery on shore, they fired broadside after broadside at her. They were at a range of their own choosing. They were in the harbor where the water was a dead-flat level, and they continued their fire for fifteen minutes without a single shot striking her hull.

At the end of that time the Yankee lieutenant (Ballard) who commanded the little sloop, thinking that they might eventually hit her and hurt somebody, hauled down his flag.

Sir George Collier, who commanded the British squadron in this chase, committed suicide ten years later because his utter failure was thrown into his face at a public gathering.

The Cyane reached New York on April 10th, and the Constitution returned to Boston in May, to learn that the war was really ended when the battle took place. The Congress awarded a gold medal and a sword to Captain Stewart, and silver medals to the other officers under him for “gallantry, good-conduct, and services in the capture of the British vessels-of-war, the Cyane and Levant, and a brave and skilful combat.”

The fighting days of the Constitution—the Old Ironsides—the most famous ship of the American Navy—were done. The hastening decay of idleness eventually seized upon her timbers, and it was announced that she was to be broken up. But Oliver Wendell Holmes, of blessed memory, wrote a poem and she was spared. Generations of naval cadets have since learned the art of war and cultivated their natural love of the flag upon her decks, and now, although a hundred years have passed since the flag was first raised above her quarter-deck, her name still appears upon the naval register, and there it shall remain so long as one of her timbers will support another. And this is the poem that saved her:

Old Ironsides.