1812: The Navy's War

by George Daughan

  On November 19, Dearborn marched twenty-five miles from Plattsburg to the Canadian border, but when his militiamen refused to go any farther, he retreated back to winter quarters at Plattsburg on November 23, completing a humiliating, farcical, four-day campaign. In his report to Secretary Eustis, Dearborn bemoaned the lack of more regular troops and offered to resign.

  Smyth, meanwhile, was preparing a river crossing and assault on Fort Erie. While he was getting ready, so were the British, who were well informed about his activities. They were aided by Smyth himself, who made no effort to conceal what he was doing, perhaps thinking that if he made enough noise the Canadian militiamen would lose heart and surrender without the need for heavy fighting. Whatever his motives, he made pretentious, widely publicized statements condemning Van Rensselaer’s strategy and ability while trumpeting the zeal and prowess of his own army. He also announced his intention to invade, and he even gave details of his plans.

  If Smyth hoped the Canadians would lose heart, he was mistaken. The Canadian militia and British regulars were buoyed by their victory at Queenston, and they awaited Smyth with increasing confidence and numbers. The defeatist talk that Brock worried about earlier had disappeared from Upper Canada.

  While Smyth was threatening Fort Erie, the British began bombarding Fort Niagara again from Fort George. General Sheaffe hoped to divert American attention from Fort Erie by threatening to follow up his victory at Queenston by capturing Fort Niagara. Cannonading commenced at five o’clock on the morning of November 21 and lasted until sunset.

  Under Lieutenant Colonel George McFeeley, the garrison at Fort Niagara responded in kind, and they gave as good as they got. A Mrs. Doyle, wife of a private captured at Queenston, fired a six-pounder from the old mess house, pouring out red hot shot for as long as she had ammunition. McFeeley said she “showed fortitude equal to the maid of Orleans.” The Americans fought so well that Sheaffe gave up any thought of attacking.

  At the other end of the Niagara, on November 28, General Smyth began his attack on Fort Erie at three o’clock in the morning. Two advance parties, totaling two hundred men, under Lieutenant Colonel Charles Boerstler and Captain William King, rowed silently across the river in ten boats. Smyth had enlisted the help of navy lieutenant Samuel Angus, who was temporarily in charge at Black Rock while Lieutenant Elliott was at the other end of Lake Ontario helping Chauncey. Angus supplied seventy seamen to row Smyth’s troops.

  The British were well prepared. They fired on the boats as they crossed and attacked the men when they landed. Nonetheless, Boerstler and King fought their way inland and managed to spike a number of guns, but they were hopelessly outnumbered. British lieutenant colonel Cecil Bisshop counterattacked and forced them back to their boats under fire. The Americans brought what wounded they could with them, but many were captured before they reached the boats.

  On the other side of the river, Smyth began embarking the main force at dawn, but in spite of his earlier bombast, only 1,200 regulars were ready. Both he and Dearborn thought at least 3,000 were required for success, but the militiamen would not cross over, and many of Smyth’s regulars were in poor health. In view of this, Smyth called off the attack. He tried once more on the first of December, but he could only assemble 1,500 men, and they were not physically ready to fight either. Again, Smyth canceled the invasion. By this time his men had lost all faith in him. Many wanted to kill him. Winfield Scott in his Memoirs wrote that Smyth “showed no talent for command and made himself ridiculous on the Niagara frontier.”

  Having lost the confidence of the troops and his superiors, and having become something of a laughingstock, Smyth requested leave, which Dearborn quickly granted. Smyth returned to Washington, where a much annoyed president had him dropped from the army’s rolls.

  With the Niagara region now in the grip of winter, military activity came to an end until spring. From time to time both sides expressed fears that the other might initiate surprise attacks, but nothing materialized.

  GENERAL WILLIAM HENRY Harrison was also running into severe difficulties trying to recapture Detroit and invade Upper Canada. In September, October, and November, he concentrated on building an army that could retake Detroit. But just provisioning the troops was impossible. On October 25 from his headquarters at Piqua, Ohio, he complained that his men were “without blankets, and much the greater part of them totally destitute of every article of winter clothing.”

  Harrison recognized that attempting to recapture Detroit would invite another disaster if he did not also take Fort Malden. He thought that when the ground froze, he might be able to attack Malden over the ice. So despite the lateness of the season, he kept organizing for a campaign, absorbing an enormous amount of the War Department’s resources. Harrison’s army of perhaps 4,000 was strung out over two hundred miles of hazardous terrain from the Maumee River in the west to the Sandusky River in the east. He divided his force into three columns. The left, consisting of 1,300 Kentucky militiamen and regulars, was headquartered in Fort Defiance at the juncture of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers under sixty-one-year-old Brigadier General James Winchester, an old Revolutionary War veteran. Harrison commanded the rest of the army himself. He hoped to converge the columns at the rapids of the Maumee, but the terrain and weather stymied him. Trying to march men and equipment through swamps during the autumn rains in that part of Ohio was incredibly difficult. Time passed, and delay followed delay. When January 1813 arrived, Harrison was still far from mounting an attack on either Detroit or Fort Malden.

  General Winchester, meanwhile, was itching to do something, and on January 17, when Americans from Frenchtown on the River Raison requested help destroying a small British occupying force that General Henry Proctor had sent from Fort Malden, he decided to escape the boredom of the fort and rescue the town. Acting on flimsy intelligence, Winchester dispatched half his men, about six hundred fifty, to Frenchtown, where they met a small but tenacious British force and, after a violent fight, defeated them and captured the town. Winchester soon followed with two hundred fifty more men, and Harrison marched to Fort Defiance to support him.

  With good intelligence of Winchester’s movements, General Proctor led a force of regulars and Potawatomi from Fort Malden across the frozen Detroit River to Frenchtown, surprised Winchester, and easily defeated him. Unaccountably, no American patrols were out watching for the British. Proctor returned to Fort Malden with five hundred prisoners, including Winchester, leaving behind forty American wounded, whom the Potawatomi mercilessly scalped. The story of this massacre grew in the telling, and “Remember the Raison” became a rallying cry in the South and West throughout the war.

  After Winchester’s defeat at Frenchtown, Harrison, who had reached Fort Defiance, took 2,000 men to the rapids of the Maumee, where he constructed a stronghold called Fort Meigs. To all intents and purposes, the land campaign was over for the season. It had been a complete failure. Harrison escaped blame, however; criticism focused on Winchester.

  UNLIKE HIS ARMY colleagues, Commodore Chauncey was having great success. On October 6, 1812, he arrived at Sackets Harbor, where Lieutenant Melancthon Woolsey welcomed him. Woolsey had been the senior officer in command on the Great Lakes, and Chauncey superseded him, but Woolsey would remain as Chauncey’s deputy and skipper of the 16-gun Oneida. Woolsey was an underappreciated veteran who had served in the navy since the Quasi-War with France. His roots went back to the Revolutionary War, when his father fought in the Continental Army. Although Chauncey took over command, Woolsey showed no animosity and did everything he could to support him.

  The Oneida was a small ship—eighty-five feet on the upper deck—but potent. She carried eighteen thirty-two-pound carronades, and under Woolsey her crew was the best by far on the Great Lakes. The renowned New York City shipbuilder Henry Eckford, an old friend of Chauncey’s who would play a major role in the building of the American fleet on Lake Ontario, had built the Oneida at Oswego in 1808. She helped enforce Jefferson’s em
bargo. Nineteen-year-old Midshipman James Fenimore Cooper served on board her for a time under Woolsey. When Chauncey saw the Oneida for the first time, he judged her to be a fine ship. To supplement her, Woolsey had purchased five schooners for conversion to warships. In addition, he had a ship on the stocks, the Madison, designed to mount twenty-four thirty-two-pound carronades. He hoped to have her ready in six weeks.

  The Canadian Provincial Marine had already built the 24-gun vessel Royal George at Kingston. She was meant to be larger and stronger than the Oneida. But the Provincial Marine was engaged almost exclusively in transportation and did not have crews trained for naval warfare, which gave Woolsey’s Oneida a distinct edge.

  Before Chauncey arrived at Sackets Harbor, a British force had appeared unexpectedly off shore on July 19, 1812, intent on capturing the Oneida. The British ships were the Royal George, Earl of Moira, Duke of Gloucester, Seneca, and Simcoe, a squadron that sounded far more powerful than it was because the crews lacked training. The Oneida alone would have given them trouble in a fight. The British demanded the surrender of the Oneida and the Lord Nelson, a Canadian merchant schooner Woolsey had captured on June 5. Woolsey answered with a single, long thirty-two-pounder he had mounted on a battery to defend the port. After a twohour exchange from long range, the British vessels withdrew.

  By a Herculean effort, Chauncey and Woolsey had a fleet up and running during the first week of November. With it, Chauncey was ready to challenge the British for control of Lake Ontario. Winter had already begun, but he was planning an expedition against Kingston. Ned Myers, one of Chauncey’s young seamen, pointed out that this was “rather a latish month for active service on those waters.”

  The same month that Chauncey’s fleet became ready on Lake Ontario, an event occurred that underscored his growing strength. On November 2, while he was in the midst of planning his attack, he set out in the Oneida to find a British vessel reported to be keeping an eye on Sackets Harbor. He stood for Kingston to cut her off, but the night was exceptionally dark and rainy with squalls. At daylight, when the haze cleared, he discovered that he was off Kingston, where he saw the main British lake fleet—the 26-gun Royal George and the armed schooners Duke of Gloucester (14 guns) and Prince Regent (18 guns)—lying at anchor about five miles away. Thinking they would be after him, Chauncey wore ship to the southward and cleared for action. But strangely, the British squadron remained immobile, appearing to take no notice of Chauncey. He could not understand what was going on.

  Hard as it was for Chauncey to comprehend, Master and Commander Hugh Earl, the British commanding officer, decided to forgo a fight, judging perhaps that his crews were not ready to get into a brawl with the Oneida. Whatever the reason, Chauncey, more than a little puzzled, returned to Sackets Harbor and continued preparing for an attack on Kingston and on Earl’s squadron, even though it was early winter and the weather was severe.

  On November 7, Chauncey sailed from Sackets Harbor to strike the British fleet. His squadron consisted of his flagship Oneida and six schooners—all converted merchantmen. His task force was strong, mounting in total forty guns of different calibers and four hundred thirty men, including marines. It was a bold move. Ned Myers, later made famous by James Fenimore Cooper in the book Ned Myers; Or, Life Before the Mast, was aboard the Oneida. Lieutenant Elliott, who had left Black Rock and joined Chauncey for the occasion, was skipper of the schooner Conquest.

  An untimely gale kept Chauncey away from Kingston that day. It blew through the night, and in the morning, when the wind abated, Chauncey discovered the Royal George and gave chase. He kept her barely in sight through a long day but lost her during the night. The following morning, the ninth, he saw her again and chased her into Kingston Harbor, where she anchored under the guns of Kingston’s strong battery. Undaunted, Chauncey closed and exchanged fire with the ship and the batteries for an hour and forty-five minutes. The wind was blowing Chauncey’s ships directly toward the batteries, however, and he decided to haul off and resume the fight the next day. In the morning gale force winds were again blowing, forcing Chauncey to reluctantly beat out in a narrow channel under a heavy press of sail to the open lake and return to Sackets Harbor.

  Although he failed to attack Earl’s squadron successfully, Chauncey now had command of Lake Ontario and could transport troops and supplies to any part of it while preventing the British from doing the same. It was a significant achievement. Chauncey had cut the vital route moving critical supplies from the St. Lawrence to the Niagara region and west. If he could maintain superiority, Upper Canada would fall easily into American hands. Whether the Madison administration could exploit Chauncey’s remarkable victory, however, was uncertain.

  After returning to Sackets Harbor, Chauncey kept his shipwrights busy converting three more schooners and completing the 24-gun Madison. On November 26, master shipwright Eckford had her in the water, floating and ready to receive masts, spars, and guns. Chauncey wrote to Secretary Hamilton that it had only been “nine weeks since the timber that she is composed of was growing in the forest.” Much finishing work remained, but seeing her in the water at her winter mooring at this early date boosted everyone’s spirits.

  Both sides now hunkered down for the long winter, but they remained on guard against a possible surprise strike over the frozen lake. Chauncey prepared defenses, but no attack occurred. While he was doing it, he planned an attack of his own over the ice, but the severity of the weather prevented him from executing it.

  WHILE CHAUNCEY WAS extending control over Lake Ontario, Lieutenant Macdonough was busy on Lake Champlain. Both sides recognized how vital the lake was. An attack on Montreal or Quebec was impossible without the ability to move men and supplies over its waters. The lake formed the boundary between the northwestern part of Vermont and the northeastern portion of New York, flowing north into Canada for a brief period, before emptying into the Richelieu River. Ten miles of strong rapids blocked the entrance to the Richelieu, prohibiting ships from moving directly between the two bodies of water. Beyond the rapids, the Richelieu flowed north for ninety-six miles, emptying into the St. Lawrence River northeast of Montreal. Invaders since the days of Samuel de Champlain in the early seventeenth century had used the lake and related waterways as a highway to move armies and supplies either north or south.

  Lieutenant Macdonough arrived at White Hall at the southern end of the lake on October 13. Even though Montreal was the most important objective of the president’s campaign against Canada, Secretary Hamilton did not send Macdonough orders to move to the lake until September 28, and he did not receive them until the first week of October. He was in Portland, Maine, when the orders arrived, and like Chauncey, he was delighted to be getting into the fight rather than sitting on the sidelines minding gunboats.

  Lieutenant Sidney Smith, who had been in command on Lake Champlain and would now be Macdonough’s second, was there to greet him when he arrived. Smith had mixed feelings about being superseded by Macdonough and would not give him the wholehearted support that Chauncey was getting from Woolsey at Sackets Harbor.

  Smith’s meager force was at Vergennes, Vermont, and consisted of two undermanned sloops, the Growler and the Eagle, both of which needed work, and two decrepit gunboats. One of them was partially sunk in the water, and the seams in both were so open one could put a hand through them.

  Like Chauncey, Macdonough was in an arms race. At the northern end of the lake, in a well-protected harbor on the Isle aux Noix, the British were working on vessels that would give them naval supremacy on Lake Champlain. To win the shipbuilding race, Macdonough needed at least a hundred more seamen, additional officers, and supplies of every kind.

  In addition to his other problems, Macdonough had problems coordinating with Chauncey and with General Dearborn. Sailors of the type Macdonough needed were not available on Lake Champlain, and he naturally looked to Chauncey for help, but little was forthcoming. Chauncey needed men as much as Macdonough did. Also, Macdonough had
difficulty working with the army at Plattsburg and Albany. In preparing for his abortive attack on Montreal, General Dearborn had commandeered the six best schooners on the lake without consulting Macdonough.

  With the failure of Dearborn’s Montreal campaign, naval activity on the lake stopped for the winter. On December 12, 1812, Macdonough wrote to Hamilton that his vessels were in a secure harbor and that he was “getting everything in readiness for the spring.” He reported that the British had two gunboats at their Isle aux Noix base and three sloops, and they were working on a large schooner, designed to carry twelve or fourteen guns.

  By then, Macdonough had a squadron of his own, consisting of the President, mounting two long twelve-pounders and six heavy army shell guns; the Growler, with two twelve-pounders, four six-pounders, and one long eighteen-pounder on a circle; the Eagle with six six-pounders and one eighteen in a circle; and two gunboats, carrying one long twelve-pounder each. In addition, he had three sloops for troop transports. Macdonough judged that his fleet was potentially superior to the British, but he was still woefully short of men.

  CHAPTER TEN

  More Blue-Water Victories

  WHILE INAUGURATING A crash program on the lakes, Madison was also providing a new strategy for his blue-water fleet. During the first week of September, he decided to deploy the navy’s ships in three small squadrons, rather than grouping them together, as Commodore Rodgers recommended. Influenced by the success of Isaac Hull and David Porter operating on their own, the president returned to Decatur’s idea of cruising singly or in small groups, leaving the details of where the ships went to the enterprise of their commanders.