Six Frigates

by Ian W. Toll

  Choosing to avoid the busiest sea-lanes—those into New York, Boston, the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays—Decatur steered for a landfall near Block Island Sound. On December 3, the United States raised Montauk Point, at the eastern end of Long Island, and the next morning came to anchor off New London, Connecticut. Separated from her captor by thick fog and later by adverse winds, the Macedonian took refuge in Newport, Rhode Island. The Newport Mercury trumpeted the news under the headline ANOTHER BRILLIANT NAVAL VICTORY. Newporters pressed down to the wharves to get a glimpse of the prize. “This day has been a most gratifying sight for us,” wrote Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry, who commanded the Newport naval station, “this beautiful frigate mooring as a prize in our harbor.”

  Lieutenant Archibald Hamilton, son of the Navy Secretary, was dispatched to carry Decatur’s report to Washington. He reached the capital on the night of December 10, a date that had been previously chosen for a “naval ball” at Tomlinson’s Hotel on Capitol Hill. Virtually all of official Washington was there, including members of Congress, cabinet heads, Supreme Court justices, diplomatic ministers, and First Lady Dolley Madison. The captured ensigns of the Guerrière and the Alert, a British brig captured by the Essex on August 13, were displayed on one of the walls of the ballroom. The band played long and loud, and one guest complained that the dancers stepped “as usual upon the toes and trains of those that did not dance.”

  At about 10:00 p.m., Lieutenant Hamilton appeared at the door, still dirty from his ride. He was escorted into the center of the ballroom “amid the loud acclamations of the Company, and greeted with national music from the band.” In a theatrical gesture, Lieutenant Hamilton knelt before Dolley Madison and unfurled the Macedonian’s ensign (which he had carried with him from New London) on the floor. The newspapers reported the scene in loving detail, embroidering it with rhetoric about how America had “snatched the Trident of Neptune from the mistress of the ocean,” etc. But it was a day not so fondly remembered by the staunch pacifists of the Society of Friends, when a renegade Quaker first lady celebrated the combat victories of warships built by a renegade Quaker shipwright, and blushed approvingly as a trophy of war was flung at her feet. “This was rather overdoing the affair…,” wrote Mrs. B. H. Latrobe to a friend; “and I could not look at those colors with pleasure, the taking of which had made so many widows and orphans.”

  The next morning, President Madison forwarded Decatur’s official report to Congress, adding: “too much praise cannot be bestowed on that officer and his companions on board, for the consummate skill and conspicuous valor by which this trophy has been added to the naval arms of the United States.” The same week, reports had arrived in Washington of a bloody victory won by the American 18-gun sloop Wasp over the British 16-gun Frolic on October 18. The victories brought a timely boost to national morale and eased the pain of the humiliating reverses suffered by the army on the Canadian frontier. “Our brilliant naval victories,” said an army officer, “serve, in some measure, to wipe out the disgrace brought upon the Nation by the conduct of our generals.”

  In the last week of December, United States and Macedonian sailed in company down Long Island Sound and anchored off Throg’s Neck. Decatur and most of his officers traveled ahead by boat for a “grand naval dinner” on December 29 at the City Hotel in Manhattan. The four-story red brick building dominated an entire city block on Broadway between Cedar and Thames, just north of Trinity Church. A row of “fashionable shops” faced the avenue, and on the first floor was a vast, airy public hall, the largest in North America. The banquet was the hottest ticket in New York. Five hundred guests crowded into the dining room, and at least three hundred more were turned away at the door. The room was garishly decorated with masts, spars, sails, transparent paintings, and flags entwined with laurel. Each table had as its centerpiece a miniature model of an American frigate, and at the head table, where Mayor DeWitt Clinton presided with Decatur seated on his right, the centerpiece was an artificial lake, with banks made of real grass, and a model of the United States floating at her moorings. During the toasts, a sail behind the head table was clewed up like a curtain, exposing an illuminated transparent painting depicting the captures of Macedonian and Guerrière. The band struck up “Yankee Doodle,” a song seldom heard since the days of the Revolution (“We are glad this old tune is coming into fashion,” Niles’ remarked). The guests danced late into the night, and upstairs, in one of the hotel’s seventy-eight rooms, a mother gave birth to a baby boy, whom she named Stephen.

  On New Year’s Day, the United States and her prize successfully navigated the difficult “Hell Gate” passage from Long Island Sound into the East River. “We came into New York with the Macedonian as a New Year’s gift, the star-spangled banner proudly waving over the British cross,” wrote Able Seaman Elijah Shaw. “We anchored between North Battery and Governor’s Island, and fired a number of grand salutes, which were answered by the Battery.” Both frigates were soon “thronged with spectators,” as members of the crews pocketed payments of admission from civilians.

  The enlisted seamen of the United States had not been invited to the December 29 banquet, and someone suggested giving a second dinner in their honor. On January 8, 1813, four hundred seamen, immaculately dressed in blue jackets and trousers with red waistcoats, were taken on board a steam-powered ferry boat and landed at New Slip pier. They marched in procession up Broadway, trailed by a “crowd of urchins,” to the City Hotel. “We found it difficult to elbow our way through the streets, so dense was the throng,” wrote Shaw.

  At dinner, served in the same hall in which the earlier event had been held, the sailors enjoyed the unfamiliar joys of an unlimited food and liquor ration. The boatswain and his mates hovered over the tables, enforcing discipline. As the plates were cleared away, the boatswain’s pipe announced the arrival of Alderman John Vanderbilt, who gave a long, appreciative speech, and of Commodore Decatur, who thanked the men for their “orderly and decorous conduct.” All the effects of the earlier banquet were recycled for the sailors—the clewing up of the sails, the revealing of the transparencies, the band striking up the old, patriotic tunes—and “their admiration was expressed by repeated huzzas, and enthusiastic acclamations.” The toasts offered on the sailors’ behalf (to “America’s brave and hardy sons of Neptune,” to “the American Eagle—may its claws grab the ships of the King of England”) were answered by toasts offered by the sailors themselves (to “plenty of prize money,” to “all the pretty girls who like Yankee tars”), and afterward they poured out of the ballroom in high spirits, smashing a number of plates and glasses as they went, and made their way up Broadway to the Park Theater, where the pit had been reserved for their exclusive use. During the performance, which featured a reenactment of the United States–Macedonian action, the sailors frequently interrupted the actors to offer praise or criticism.

  WHEN THE FIRST REPORTS of the loss of the Guerrière arrived in London, the newspapers devoted long, sober columns to the event. “It is more than merely that an English frigate has been taken…but that it has been taken by a new enemy, an enemy unaccustomed to such triumphs, and likely to be rendered insolent and confident by them,” The Times lamented. “Never before in the history of the world did an English frigate strike to an American; and though we cannot say that Captain Dacres, under all circumstances, is punishable for this act, yet we do say there are commanders in the English navy who would a thousand times rather have gone down with their colours flying, then have set their brother officers so fatal an example.”

  The shock of defeat hit the navy’s officers every bit as hard as the civilians. “What an unfortunate business the capture of the Guerrière frigate!” exclaimed Admiral David Milne of the HMS Impetueux—“It is a thing I could not have expected.” Nearly ten years had passed since a British man-of-war had been defeated in a single-ship action, and it had been even longer since a British frigate had struck her flag to an enemy of nominally equal force. It rem
ained an article of faith among naval officers that a 38-gun English frigate, as the Naval Chronicle put it, “should undoubtedly (barring extraordinary accidents) cope successfully with a 44-gun ship of any nation.” Even Captain Dacres, who knew the capabilities of the American 44s as well as anyone, declared at his court-martial (in which he was acquitted) that if given the opportunity, he would fight the Constitution again with another British frigate of the same dimensions and armament as the Guerrière.

  It was difficult for the British public to keep the naval losses in perspective. The loss of a single frigate was trifling. England’s huge fleets were safe, and the strength of the Royal Navy was essentially undiminished. The August 13 capture of a British 20-gun brig and a troop transport by the U.S. frigate Essex was shrugged off, given the disparity in force—it was one of those unlucky events that could always happen in war. The bloody victory on October 18 of the American 18-gun sloop Wasp over the 16-gun HMS Frolic prompted more uneasiness, but the Royal Navy still came out ahead when both victor and prize were recaptured later that same afternoon by one of His Majesty’s 74-gun battleships, the Poictiers. The overall course of events in both North America and Europe was running very much in England’s favor. Three times the Americans had attempted to invade Canada, and three times they had been repulsed. In Spain, Wellington had won a critical victory at Salamanca and entered Madrid. Napoleon had reached Moscow, but with winter fast approaching it was doubtful whether he could hold the city, and his army was beginning to suffer heavy losses.

  But in January 1813, when reports of the capture of the Macedonian by the United States arrived in London, the British people were incredulous. The loss of two frigates seemed to mark the demise of something immensely valuable, though intangible: the Royal Navy’s almost mystical aura of qualitative superiority. The news “produced a sensation in the country scarcely to be equalled by the most violent convulsions of nature,” said George Canning, the Americans’ old bête noire, in a speech to the Commons. “[I]t cannot be too deeply felt that the sacred spell of invincibility of the British navy was broken by these unfortunate captures.” Referring to Napoleon’s defeats in Russia, The Times wrote: “The land spell of the French is broken, and so is our sea spell.”

  If English mastery of the sea was a racial and cultural trait, as some Englishmen had argued, then perhaps the American successes should be attributed to the common ancestry of “our trans-atlantic descendents.” No one should be surprised to learn that “men who are bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh” could fight well at sea, said the editors of the Québec Mercury. It was a fashionable opinion, but no less painful to contemplate. “It is a cruel mortification,” said one of the British ministers, “to be beat by these secondhand Englishmen upon our own element.”

  Dissenting voices protested that the public’s shock and consternation were all out of proportion. The Guerrière and Macedonian, they said, were simply overwhelmed by larger and more heavily armed adversaries. Some questioned whether the American 44s even deserved the name of frigates; perhaps they should be considered “disguised ships of the line.” Referring to a critic of Captain Dacres, an anonymous correspondent to the Naval Chronicle asked: “Has any person informed him that the upper deck of the Constitution is flush fore and aft, and that she thereby mounts a double tier of guns like a line-of-battle ship?” The Chronicle published a table comparing the dimensions of the American 44s—length on gun deck, beam, and tonnage—to those of the Guerrière and Macedonian. “Is not the term frigate most violently perverted,” the editors asked, “when applied to such vessels?”

  The Times brushed aside these excuses. “Is it true, or is it not, that our navy was accustomed to hold the Americans in utter contempt? Is it true, or is it not, that the Guerrière sailed up and down the American coast with her name painted in large characters on her sails, in boyish defiance of Commodore Rodgers? Would any captain, however young, have indulged such a foolish piece of vain-boasting if he had not been carried forward by the almost unanimous feeling of his associates?”

  A poem published in Cobbett’s Political Register, referring to the capture of the Macedonian, mocked Captain Carden’s assertion that he had been duped into engaging a ship more powerful than his own:

  When Carden the ship of the Yankee Decatur

  Attacked, without doubting to take her or beat her,

  A Frigate she seemed to his glass and his eyes;

  But when taken himself, how great his surprise

  To find her a SEVENTY-FOUR IN DISGUISE!

  If Jonathan thus has the art of disguising,

  That he captures our ships is by no means surprising;

  And it can’t be disgraceful to strike to an elf

  Who is more than a match for the devil himself!

  Lord Liverpool’s ministry came in for severe criticism. “The size and force of the American frigates, with the great number of men they carry, were made known to government long before any difference took place between the two countries,” wrote “Oceanus” to the editors of the Naval Chronicle. “Why, therefore, did they not provide against the chance of our ships falling a prey to the enemy, from inferiority of force?” The Times took the government to task for having failed to have a “plan matured and ready, for falling upon the sea-coasts of America, blocking up her ports, hindering her privateers from sailing, and capturing or destroying every frigate she might dare to send to sea.” In its defense, the Admiralty pointed out that British naval forces in Halifax, Bermuda, and the West Indies, at the outset of the war, were superior to the entire U.S. Navy in the proportion of eighty-five to fourteen.

  Critics also charged that by sending Admiral Warren to North America with orders to negotiate a truce, the government had waged a “war of conciliation and forbearance.” In a long speech in the Commons, Canning charged that “the arm which should have launched the thunderbolt was occupied in guiding the pen,” and that the Royal Navy had been sent to “attack the American ports with a flag of truce.”

  The point was rendered moot on October 27, when the offered truce was rejected by the American government. Secretary of State James Monroe, responding to Admiral Warren’s offer, stated that peace negotiations must be preceded by a British pledge to cease impressing seamen from American ships. Warren had no authority to make such a concession, and the British government was unwilling to give up what Lord Bathurst termed “a right hitherto exercised without dispute, and of the most essential importance to our maritime superiority.” General reprisals were ordered against American shipping, and the Prince Regent published a “Declaration on the Causes of the American War,” charging the Madison administration with “palliating and assisting the aggressive tyranny of France.”

  There was no more talk of peace. Whatever the issues at the bottom of the Anglo-American quarrel, the captures of Guerrière and Macedonian had revealed a new and more urgent dimension to the war. To restore the charm of British naval supremacy, it was now necessary to “punish the temerity” of America, as a correspondent to the Naval Chronicle put it, “in pretending to dispute the command of the ocean with us.”

  WILLIAM BAINBRIDGE was one of the great survivors of the early American navy. He had been exonerated for every mishap that had occurred under his command, including the surrender of the Philadelphia to the Tripolitans in 1803, and he had managed to retain his place on the captain’s list despite taking several long furloughs to command merchant voyages in the years before 1812. His reputation as a fine seaman had served him well, as had his political skills, and the reverence for seniority that dominated the culture of the navy.

  In August 1812, while Isaac Hull and Constitution were at sea on the cruise that would climax in the victory over Guerrière, Bainbridge had received orders from Washington directing him to assume command of the Constitution. When Hull returned to Boston as a conquering hero, therefore, there was every possibility that the two officers would run afoul of one another. Instead, Hull chose to be accommodating. He car
ried the guilty knowledge that he had sailed without orders, while knowing that those orders would probably deprive him of his ship. William Bainbridge stood above him on the captain’s list and therefore had every right to expect a certain degree of deference. Moreover, Hull had learned, on arriving in Boston, of the untimely death of his brother, and he required time ashore to grieve and to put his family’s financial affairs in order. When Bainbridge revealed Secretary Hamilton’s orders giving him command of the Constitution, Hull readily agreed to the transfer. Bainbridge came aboard the frigate and hoisted his broad commodore’s pendant on September 15.

  The change in command touched off a near mutiny. Several sailors and at least one petty officer broke ranks and begged the beloved “Capt. H.” not to leave the ship. “Many of our crew were not at all pleased with this arrangement,” wrote Moses Smith. “We had become personally attached to Captain Hull, and hated to have him leave us. Such was the state of feeling that it almost amounted to a mutiny.” Ten years earlier, a younger William Bainbridge might have responded to such an affront by flogging every man on the ship. Now he tried diplomacy, asking: “My men, what do you know about me?” A few replied that they had served under Bainbridge on the Philadelphia, and spent a year and a half in Tripoli as prisoners, and would prefer to sail with “any of the other commanders.” When informed that the change in command was irreversible, the dissenters “requested to be transferred on board any other vessel.”