Six Frigates

by Ian W. Toll

  Republicans were threatened with mob violence. On May 7, after the city’s assembled militia companies had passed the president’s house in review, groups of young men spread out through the streets, fired with patriotic emotion and fueled by liquor. Some knocked down lampposts and smeared mud on the statue of Benjamin Franklin on the steps of the Philadelphia Library. After dark, a mob gathered outside the home of Benjamin Franklin Bache, where Peggy Bache, five months pregnant, was alone with their three young children. A few proposed to set the house on fire, but they confined themselves to battering on the door and breaking some of the windows. Drunken gangs were out all night, carousing in the streets and singing patriotic songs beneath the windows of imagined traitors. The sleep-deprived inhabitants of Carter’s Alley complained that one such “Band of Brothers” had insisted on singing until four o’clock in the morning, and hoped they would find some other place to “warble their wood notes wild.”

  Deborah Logan, a Philadelphia Quaker, later recalled the hostile climate: “Friendships were dissolved, tradesmen dismissed, and custom withdrawn from the Republican party…. Many gentlemen went armed that they might be ready to resent any personal aggression.” Leading Republicans were shadowed by Federalist spies. Jefferson, finding himself “dogged and watched in the most extraordinary manner,” traveled by circuitous routes in order to be certain he was not being followed. Agents of the Federalist-controlled Post Office opened and read his private letters. Many Republicans, finding they could no longer endure the climate of oppression in the capital, departed for their homes while Congress was still in session. “No one who was not a witness to the scenes of that gloomy period can form any idea of the afflicting persecutions and personal indignities we had to brook,” Jefferson wrote years later.

  High Federalists encouraged the public to believe that foreigners were conspiring with native-born traitors to prepare for a French invasion of the American mainland. A recruiting advertisement for a Federalist militia in Philadelphia read: “Your country, my boys, is threatened with invasion! Your houses and farms with fire, plunder, and pillage! and your wives and daughters with ravishment and assassination by horrid outlandish sans-culotte Frenchmen!” The Hamiltonian Gazette of the United States asked: “Is it not high time to enquire who are these traitors, who have sold their country and are ready to deliver it to the French?…Whose houses are the resort of Frenchmen, and who are always in French company?”

  Federalists in Congress moved to enact the Alien and Sedition Acts, perhaps the most infamous series of laws in American history. The latter empowered federal magistrates to prosecute journalists and authors who published news or editorial opinions that could be interpreted as “false, scandalous, and malicious” or that might tend to “excite against government officials the hatred of the good people of the United States.” Bache warned that “the good citizens of these States had better hold their tongues and make tooth picks of their pens.”

  From his suite of rooms at the St. Francis Hotel, Jefferson laid down the opposition party’s lines of defense. The XYZ revelations, he told Madison, had produced “such a shock on the republican mind, as has never been seen since our independence.” Several House Republicans had retreated from the capital, and others had crossed the aisle to join the pro-war party. “All, therefore, which the advocates of peace can now attempt,” Jefferson wrote, “is to prevent war measures externally, consenting to every rational measure of internal defence & preparation.”

  But the opposition no longer had the votes to deny the Federalists their naval and military buildup. A new slogan, often repeated in toasts and promulgated widely in the newspapers, was: “Millions for defense, but not a cent for tribute.” From April through mid-July, Congress passed twenty separate laws to put the nation on a war footing. The 1798 navy budget would reach $1.4 million, exceeding naval spending in all past years combined, and comprising 30 percent of non-interest federal spending that year. Adams ordered a general embargo on trade to France and its colonies and signed a formal declaration abrogating the Treaty of 1778. French diplomatic representatives were stripped of their credentials and American naval vessels were authorized to capture any armed ship sailing under French colors, in American territorial waters or out of them. A provisional army was being raised and coastal fortifications were being built up and down the coast. In the seaports, agents had begun the work of purchasing, converting, arming, outfitting, and manning new ships of war. It seemed likely that the country would be engaged in a full-scale naval war before the summer was out.

  Madison, who now represented his home district in the Virginia state legislature, had never shared an intimate friendship with Adams (as Jefferson once had) and his loathing for the New Englander was now palpable. The Federalists, he said, had plotted to inflame public opinion to serve purely domestic political purposes. They were conjuring the specter of a French invasion in order to justify punitive measures against their rivals. “Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  On the Fourth of July, 1798, at the same hour Congress was debating the Alien and Sedition Acts, Constellation was in latitude 32° 18' N by longitude 73° 42' W, about 370 miles off the coast of South Carolina, laboring in heavy seas and gale-force easterlies that rose all through the afternoon and evening. Captain Truxtun ordered close reefs in the topsails, then sent the hands aloft to strike the topgallant yards. At eight o’clock the next morning, the wind backed abruptly into the north—“blowing a violent Hurricane, with much Rain”—and now the ship scudded under bare poles. The wind backed still further into the west northwest, where it continued to blow hard with a “high and cross Sea running.”

  Constellation was weathering her first storm, and Truxtun was not entirely pleased with her. Though the guns were housed and “all was made as snug as possible,” the vessel was taking on more water than Truxtun would have liked. He blamed shoddy caulking in her upper decks. The ship was uncomfortably wet, but there was no real danger. When the hands rigged the chain pumps, they pumped water out faster than it came in. Truxtun and the other veteran seamen on board the Constellation had endured far worse conditions at sea.

  All the next day the frigate ran under bare poles before “Hard Gales” out of the west southwest, with “the Sea running very Cross.” In the evening the wind finally began to subside, and the crew bent the mizzen and mizzen stay-sail, and then a close-reefed fore topsail. Truxtun gave the order to wear ship, and the Constellation stood into the west northwest, making sail in the rapidly moderating weather. The hands carried their wet clothes and hammocks on deck to dry in the sun, and went to work “repairing sundry small Matters that got rubbed, chafed, and out of Order in the Gale.”

  The captain was relentless in his demands for combat readiness. He insisted that “every Article, at any Time, Night or Day, be ready for Action in a Moment’s Warning.” Even when the weather turned ugly, the hands were obliged to drill at the cannon and small arms. The gunner and his mates filled cartridges of powder for muskets, pistols, blunderbusses, howitzers, and the heavy cannon. Imperfections on the surface of the 24-pound round shot were chipped clear and flakes of rust were removed from the cannon bores. Truxtun urged special attention to the training of men who would be stationed aloft, ordering that midshipmen and sailors practice the “use of, loading, pointing down on a Ship’s decks, of the Howitzers…which if well managed, have often cleared the decks of an enemy in a Short time.” A sharp lookout must be kept at all times, he told his lieutenants, and “Whenever a Sail is in Sight, I must be immediately informed, Night or Day.” All were collectively engaged in a mission to invent a new American institution. “We have an Infant Navy to foster and to organize, and it must be done.”

  On her maiden voyage, Constellation had been ordered to patrol from Cape Henry, at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, to the nation’s southern border, the St. Mary’s River b
etween Georgia and Spanish Florida. She was to hunt French privateers and provide “all possible Protection to the Vessels of the United States.” In the busy shipping lanes off the Carolina coast, the Constellation hailed as many as a dozen ships per day. But none had seen or heard of any enemy privateers. As the days passed, a tone of frustration crept into Truxtun’s journal entries.

  TUESDAY, JULY 3: Saw two Sail to the North West, gave Chace, and at seven PM spoke the armed Ship Sterling of Boston from Edenton, North Carolina, bound to Surinam, with a Schooner in Company from the same Place; these Vessels had been out 36 Hours, and seen no Cruizers.

  WEDNESDAY, JULY 11: At 9 saw a Ship to Leeward in the North North West, got to Quarters, and bore down upon her; at 10 spoke the Ship South Carolina, John German, Master, from Charlestown bound for Philadelphia, out two days, had seen no Cruizers.

  MONDAY, JULY 16: At 2 PM saw a Sail to the Northward, Gave Chace, and at 6 spoke the Schooner Peggy from Martinica, bound to Charleston; this Vessel…has seen no Vessel of War of any Sort.

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 2: At 10 AM saw a Sail in the South West, gave Chace…she proved to be the Eliza from Savannah, bound to Boston, out two Days, and had neither seen or heard of any french Cruizers.

  The afternoon of August 5 found the Constellation fifty miles off Cape Roman, South Carolina, when a whale suddenly surfaced alongside the ship and blew off “a tremendous Water Spout.” Truxtun, who had heard stories of whale strikes that had smashed the hulls of vessels not much smaller than Constellation, ordered the cannon fired in hopes of frightening the creature away. Before a gun could be run out, however, the whale sounded. A few minutes later it resurfaced at a more comfortable distance and spouted again. The skies opened the next afternoon, and Truxtun wrote of “a Flood of Rain pouring down in Quantities that equalled, and perhaps surpassed, whatever before fell in the same Space of Time in any Quarter of the Globe. In Fact our Scuppers could not carry it off the Decks as fast as it fell, the Consequence of which was, that it run over the Gunwales in immense Quantities.”

  Regretting that he had failed to meet an enemy vessel, Truxtun decided it was time to take the Constellation back to port for water and provisions. On August 15, she doubled Cape Henry and entered Chesapeake Bay. At noon the next day she rode the tail of the flood into Hampton Roads and anchored under Sewell’s Point, with the cluster of rooftops known as Hampton Town visible through the trees on the north shore. Two of the gunner’s mates, having “behaved exceeding ill…and in a mutinous Manner,” were clapped in irons and sent to the jail in Norfolk.

  WHILE THE CONSTELLATION was shaking down at sea, the first Secretary of the Navy was taking up the duties of his office. President Adams’s choice for the office was Benjamin Stoddert, a successful forty-seven-year-old merchant from the burgeoning little port of Georgetown, at the head of navigation on the Potomac River. In appointing Stoddert, Adams had reasoned that a merchant, experienced in outfitting ships for foreign trade, was best qualified to oversee the naval mobilization of 1798. A merchant would be practiced in the arts of bargaining with shipwrights, in managing the details of manning and provisioning, in the dull rigors of accounting, and in judging the reliability of sea officers. The instinct to manage costs for profit ran in every merchant’s blood—who better to watch over the public purse?

  Stoddert was a former cavalry officer and a Revolutionary War veteran who had been wounded at Brandywine. He had prospered by purchasing tobacco from producers in the Potomac basin and exporting it to business partners in Europe. From the windows of his mansion on the Potomac bluffs, he could watch the slow-moving river take its long, lazy turn to the south. Further east was a lowland wilderness that was, implausibly, the predetermined site of the new Federal City, to which Congress and the federal government planned to relocate in another year.

  Arriving in Philadelphia on June 12, 1798, Stoddert set up the new department in two adjacent offices at 139 Walnut Street, where his staff consisted of one chief clerk, four assistant clerks, and a messenger boy. A crushing workload awaited him. His desk was piled high with applications for clerkships and officers’ commissions that McHenry, in the last days of his naval stewardship, had ignored. As Stoddert took office, the entire U.S. naval fleet—three frigates and assorted schooners, brigs, and sloops of war—amounted to a dozen vessels officered by fifty-nine men. Two years later, the fleet would include forty-nine vessels, altogether carrying more than a thousand guns, and the officer corps would number more than seven hundred men.

  Stoddert despaired of making sense of the incomprehensible accounts he had inherited from his predecessor. A rapid fleet mobilization depended on prompt and efficient day-to-day administration—approvals of provisioning requisitions, payments of salaries, orders to move weapons and ammunition, and constant balancing of accounts with a far-flung network of craftsmen and contractors. The drudgery of bookkeeping may not have been the most thrilling aspect of naval business, but Stoddert understood that it was indispensable. He asked Congress for authorization to hire clerks at a salary greater than the $500 per annum first authorized, and Congress, having come to appreciate the value of good accounting as a means of maintaining control over its own appropriations, assented.

  In negotiating with naval contractors, Stoddert treated the public’s money with as much care as if it were his own. In August, he was directing the purveyor, Tench Francis, to “buy the whole of the 130 or 140 Tons of Hemp on board the Voltaire, and all the duck [canvas] you can get from the owner, on Terms you think reasonable.” He urged his agents not to be taken in by the shrewd negotiating tactics of naval contractors. When victuals delivered to the United States were found unfit to eat, Stoddert upbraided the Treasury Department clerk who had signed a contract with the supplier. “How come the Bread & Fish turn out so very bad? Ought not the man who Sold the Bread, no doubt for very fine, take back what remains on hand? I think he ought, and that you insist upon his doing so. Or if he will not, he should be sued for fraud on the public.”

  Stoddert named Joshua Humphreys Chief Naval Constructor of the United States, and authorized him to oversee naval shipbuilding operations throughout the country. But Humphreys’s efforts to impose his authority on shipwrights in other cities met with strong resistance. Different techniques, styles, and designs prevailed in the various seaports, and much of the terminology had evolved into regional dialects that outsiders found unintelligible. To ask a master builder to take direction from another master builder, in another region, was contrary to every tradition of the profession. Humphreys now proposed to bring openness and transparency to an enterprise that had always been shrouded in the medieval secrecy of the craftsmen’s guild. Shipbuilding is a “noble art,” he told a colleague. “I consider it my duty to convey to my brother builders every information in my power.”

  Work was resuming in New York, Norfolk, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the second three of the six frigates. Humphreys’s former assistant, the English immigrant Josiah Fox, was appointed master constructor of the 38-gun frigate to be built in Norfolk, the ship that would soon be christened the Chesapeake. Her keel was laid on December 10. In New York, builder Foreman Cheesman laid the keel for the 44-gun President. She was to be built on the same lines as the United States and the Constitution. Humphreys encouraged Cheesman to learn from the expensive mistakes committed during the construction of her sisters. “It is the opinion of many of the officers of the frigate United States that her foremast is too far forward,” wrote Humphreys. “In order to remedy this in your frigate, I think it will be best to place yours about two feet further aft.” He also urged Cheesman to raise the President’s gun deck about two inches, which would provide enough room for a port on either side of the wardroom, allowing an additional gun aft in the gun deck battery while also adding “immeasurably to the health and convenience of the officers.”

  THE UNITED STATES had sailed from the Capes of Delaware on July 13, in company with the 20-gun Delaware. Their orders were to rendezvous in
Boston with another sloop of war and a revenue cutter. From there the little squadron was to sail for the Caribbean.

  During the passage to Boston, United States ran the Delaware hull-under in a few hours and had to shorten sail repeatedly in order to allow the smaller ship to remain in company. Captain Barry wrote Humphreys to say he was delighted with the speed and handling of the big frigate. “No ship ever went to Sea answers her helm better, and in all probability will surpass every thing afloat.” The sailing master, James Morris, added that the ship steered beautifully (“one spoke and a half of the wheel is all she wants”); she was fast (“we have been going 12 knots at the same time we could have carried a great deal of more sail”); and she was weatherly (“I saw Mr. Barron carry a lighted candle fore & aft when she was going 9 knots by the Wind”). Barry’s only complaint was that the frigate was “rather tender,” meaning that she carried too much weight above her center of gravity, and as a result heeled excessively. This was, he admitted, partly due to the unseamanlike way in which her firewood and spare lumber had been stacked between decks, instead of in the hold. He would rectify the fault by stowing the wood properly and adding 20 or 25 more tons of iron kentledge ballast.

  Truxtun’s review of the Constellation’s first performance at sea was more measured. He had never been a great believer in Joshua Humphreys’s theories of ship architecture, and was not willing to alter his judgment after six weeks at sea. He believed the Constellation was too long in relation to her beam, and noted that she had “hogged” perceptibly. He complained that her narrow beam limited the amount of space in her hold for stowage of provisions: “Three or four months’ full allowance of provisions and water is as much as this ship will carry, and then she will be very much down in the water for sailing fast.” Truxtun also criticized the frigate’s 22-foot draft, which would render her all but worthless in shoal waters.