Figure 19.1: Irwin Bevan, President and High Flyer, 23 September 1813 (courtesy of Mariner’s Museum, Newport News, Virginia).
He knew their lordships would be outraged and would intensify their hunt for him, which was gratifying, but at the same time he did not want to tempt fate any further. With provisions running low, he headed home, setting a course for the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, where he made two more captures and sent them as prizes to the United States.
He continued southwest, and near the southern shoal of Nantucket he spotted an armed schooner that looked interesting. When he saw her signaling, he looked at the Royal Navy’s private signals he had acquired and answered appropriately. Whereupon, His Majesty’s 5-gun schooner High Flyer, Admiral Warren’s tender, sped toward the President with the British ensign flying and hove to under her stern. Lieutenant George Hutchinson, the schooner’s dimwitted skipper, believed the President was His Majesty’s frigate Seahorse. One of Rodgers’s lieutenants, outfitted in a British uniform, went aboard the High Flyer and brought Hutchinson back to the President to meet Rodgers. Still believing he was on the Seahorse and that Rodgers was her captain, Hutchinson handed over Admiral Warren’s instructions detailing the number of British squadrons along the American coast, their force, and their relative positions, along with pointed orders to capture the President. Hutchinson was unaware that he was talking to Rodgers until the commodore introduced himself.
Before the High Flyer became the Admiral’s tender, she had been an American privateer out of Baltimore—and a famous one. British Captain John P. Beresford captured her in heavy seas on January 9, 1813, in the 74-gun Poictiers; he was very proud of his success and couldn’t wait to tell Warren. Beresford reported that the schooner was “a particularly fine vessel, coppered and copper fastened, and sails remarkably fast.” She was typical of the Baltimore schooners that were giving the Admiral so much trouble. Admiral Warren was delighted to have the High Flyer for a trophy. One can only imagine his reaction when she was so easily recaptured, and by his nemesis Rodgers.
After his conversation with the hapless Hutchinson, Rodgers sailed for Newport and slipped into port with his prize, dropping anchor on September 26, thwarting Britain’s mighty effort to catch him. Warren wrote to the Admiralty, “I made the best disposition in my power to intercept his return to port,” but that had not been enough. Warren had committed an unprecedented twenty-five warships to the effort. The frigates Junon and Orpheus and the sloop of war Loup-Cervier (the former American ship Wasp) were patrolling off Newport, but they never saw the President or the High Flyer.
In the end, Rodgers’s cruise had not been spectacular, but he did capture twelve vessels and diverted a substantial number of enemy warships from other duties to hunt for him. Secretary Jones considered that worthwhile. Rodgers was not resting on his laurels, however. He moved the President to Providence for better protection and set to work getting her repaired and provisioned for another cruise. By the middle of November she was ready, but Rodgers did not attempt to sortie until the first week of December. Adverse weather and the British warships off Block Island kept him in port until December 4, when he sailed out, eluding the battleship Ramillies and the frigates Loire and Orpheus, as well as the smaller vessels cruising in shore.
Rodgers’s departure was another blow to Warren. It reinforced the Admiralty’s judgment that he was not up to the job and had to be replaced.
The British were interested as much in the Constitution as they were the President . After her return to Boston early in 1813, they kept a close eye on the harbor. Charles Stewart had the big frigate ready for sea by the end of September, but adverse winds and the blockade kept him in port until the last day of the year, when he slipped out to sea. A determined skipper with a good ship could always break free in bad weather. No blockade could have stopped Stewart. Nonetheless, the Admiralty blamed Warren.
WHILE RODGERS AND Stewart were able to get to sea, Decatur remained trapped in the Thames River with the United States, Macedonian, and Hornet. When he fled there in June, he concentrated on escaping, looking for “the first good wind and a dark night” to break out and return to New York via Long Island Sound. But if that were impossible, he wrote Secretary Jones, he would take his ships six miles upriver, where “the channel is very narrow and intricate and not a sufficient depth of water to enable large ships to follow.” The place he had in mind was Gales Ferry, six miles above New London. Decatur thought he’d be safe there if he had more twenty-four-pounders and some gunboats from the New York flotilla.
British Commodore Robert Oliver intended to keep Decatur bottled up. He ordered Captain Hardy in the 74-gun Ramillies and Captain Hugh Pigot in the 36-gun Orpheus to return to their station off the Thames, while he went back to patrolling off Sandy Hook in the 74-gun Valiant, accompanied by the 44-gun Acasta. Decatur was immediately aware of the switch. He was also painfully aware of the scandalous traffic in goods and intelligence between the British ships and traitors onshore. He was determined to interrupt that traffic and to harass, and even sink, the Ramillies and the Orpheus.
When Congress passed the so-called “Torpedo Act” in March 1813, all sorts of inventions appeared. On June 25 John Scutter Jr., using one of the more promising devices, made an attempt on the Ramillies. Scutter outfitted the schooner Eagle with food and a huge bomb that exploded when sufficient food was removed. He explained that the device contained “a quantity of powder with a great quantity of combustables . . . placed beneath the articles the enemy were to hoist out. The act of displacing these articles was to cause an explosion, by a cord fasten’d to the striker of a common gun lock, which ignited with a train of powder—the first or second hogshead moved the cord.”
Scutter hoped the Ramillies would bring the Eagle alongside, and when she attempted to haul the food out, the explosion would blow a huge hole in her and sink her. Completely taken in by Scutter, Hardy sent barges to capture the Eagle and bring her to his battleship. Bad weather forced the barges to anchor the Eagle, however, and move the food themselves, causing a huge explosion that killed all aboard the boats but did not touch the Ramillies.
Another attempt was made using a submarine similar to David Bushnell’s famous Turtle, which was deployed during the War of Independence and came very close to sinking Admiral Howe’s flagship Eagle in New York Harbor in 1776. Unfortunately, the bomb the new submarine carried could not be fastened to the Ramillies’s hull, and the attempt failed, but it came close enough that afterward Hardy swept his hull every two hours.
Although these two attempts failed, Decatur was determined to try again, using one of Robert Fulton’s inventions. When Decatur was in New York, he had been captivated by Fulton’s active imagination, particularly his thoughts on torpedoes and submarines. Fulton visited New London and wanted to try out a new invention he called an underwater cannon. His torpedoes and mines had never proven practical. He thought he would overcome his difficulties with a cannon that could shoot underwater. Decatur was anxious for him to try, but the experiment never came off.
Captain Hardy and Admiral Warren were offended by Decatur’s use of these “infernal machines,” and Hardy threatened countermeasures. He announced that if any more attempts were made, he would retaliate against the coast, bombarding every place in range.
While Decatur was on the attack with unconventional means, he was also strengthening the defenses at Gales Ferry, where he had moved his three ships. Worried that Hardy would make a determined effort to recover the Macedonian, he built a fortification known as Fort Decatur, which protected approaches to Gales Ferry from the water. Decatur also received two companies of regulars to defend the fort from a land attack. He fashioned a huge chain that prevented warships from rushing up the Thames River. His defenses were solid—in fact, too solid for James Biddle, captain of the Hornet, who had his mind fixed on escaping. He thought Decatur should devote his energies to busting out rather than defending against an attack. “Decatur has lost very much of his
reputation by his continuance in port,” Biddle wrote to his brother. “Indeed he has certainly lost all his energy and enterprise.”
Biddle was mistaken about his chief’s character, however. When it appeared that Hardy’s squadron offshore had shrunk and the danger of a British attack had lessened, Decatur moved his ships back downriver to Market Wharf in New London and prepared to escape on a dark night or in bad weather. By December 12, he was ready, but as his three ships were attempting to sortie in total darkness, he saw blue lights flashing from behind on both shores, and he interpreted them as signals to Hardy from Federalist traitors. He was forced to return to the protection of his fort.
Connecticut Federalists did indeed have a treasonous liaison with Captain Hardy. Many people in the New London area liked him. When Hardy first appeared as a blockader in April 1813, he did his best to get along with Connecticut’s residents. New London historian Frances M. Caulkins wrote in 1852 that “Sir Thomas Hardy soon acquired among the inhabitants an enviable reputation for courtesy and humanity. He released some vessels, allowed others to be ransomed, paid kind attention to prisoners, and pledged his word that fishermen should not be disturbed. Liberal payment was made [in specie] for supplies taken from the coast or islands in the Sound, and parties landing for refreshment refrained entirely from plunder.”
IN THE MIDDLE of December 1813, the Congress returned from her lengthy cruise in the South Atlantic and put into Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Captain John Smith was looking forward to being reunited with Isaac Hull, his old friend from Mediterranean days. The Congress had been eight months at sea, and during that time she had captured only four prizes, the most unproductive voyage of any frigate during the war. Secretary Jones wanted her repaired, refitted, and back out to sea as soon as possible. Her damage was not extensive, despite her long voyage, but her crew, their enlistments expiring, were leaving. Smith, who was seriously ill from consumption, found it impossible to enlist a new crew. Apparently, the deepwater navy could not compete with army enlistment bonuses, navy bounties for service on the lakes, or privateers. In May Secretary Jones decided to send what was left of the Congress’s crew to Sackets Harbor to help man Chauncey’s Mohawk. Hull removed the Congress’s guns and sent her farther up the Piscataqua River for protection.
The Congress was the least of Hull’s worries, however. Lack of money, men, and supplies continued to impede work on his major project, the 74-gun ship. As long as she was building, his navy yard was a prime target. The Admiralty was anxious to destroy the new American seventy-fours before they became active, and Hull’s defenses were weak. He also had to deal with the rampant smuggling going on between Maine and Halifax, but he had almost no tools to do it with.
By the end of 1813, smuggling in Maine, Georgia, Vermont, and New York had reached such proportions that Madison and the Congress passed a far-reaching embargo on every type of shipping, including coastal shipping and fishing outside harbors. The law even prohibited inland waterways from being used for shipping without presidential permission. Massachusetts Federalists were indignant, viewing the act as aimed directly at their economy.
Despite the embargo, commerce across the Canadian border, by land and sea, flourished. Even more galling to Madison was the flow of supplies going to the British fleet off the American coast. Without this sustenance Warren’s blockade would have been far less effective. By the end of 1813 the Admiral had a stranglehold on America’s waterborne commerce. In New York Harbor, for instance, a hundred forty merchantmen were laid up, unable to sail. During 1813 shipping out of New York had dwindled to $60,000. In 1806 it had been nearly $16 million.
Yet, as difficult as it was for merchant shipping to continue trading, privateers came and went with relative ease. Even in Chesapeake Bay, the most closely guarded waterway, Baltimore privateers were able to get in and out. Warren wrote to the Admiralty on December 30 from Bermuda that “dark nights and strong winds” have allowed “several large clipper schooners, strongly manned and armed, [to] run through the blockade in the Chesapeake.” Many of the merchants whose ships were sitting in port had invested in privateers. And they were often, but not always, richly rewarded for their enterprise, which made up for the losses inflicted by the blockade.
BEFORE THE YEAR was out, word finally came of David Porter and the Essex in the form of two letters from him dated July 2 and 22, 1813. Desperate for relief from the steady stream of bad news, the president was quick to tout Porter’s accomplishments. The National Intelligencer published his letters on December 16. They revealed that before reaching the coast of Brazil, Porter captured the British brig Nocton, carrying $55,000 in specie. But he missed Bainbridge at their places of rendezvous, the penultimate being St. Catherine’s Island off the southern coast of Brazil. Instead of proceeding to cruise in the vicinity of St. Helena, the last rendezvous point, Porter sailed south around treacherous Cape Horn into the eastern Pacific, the first American warship to do so. (The Essex had also been the first to round the Cape of Good Hope during the Quasi-War with France.)
After navigating the horrendous seas off Cape Horn, Porter reached Valparaiso, where he obtained provisions and then embarked on a remarkably successful career of attacking the substantial British whaling fleet in the eastern Pacific, particularly around the Galapagos Islands. His letters reported that he captured twelve British whalers, delivering a catastrophic blow to their sizable whaling industry in that part of the world. All told, the British had twenty whalers in the eastern Pacific. Those that survived Porter’s rampage had to confine themselves to port. Most of the enemy whalers carried letter of marque papers and were a threat to American whalers. Porter was thus protecting the American fleet while he was destroying Britain’s.
Porter was also occupying a number of warships that the Admiralty had sent to find him. Two of them searched the eastern Pacific, the 36-gun frigate Phoebe, under Captain James Hillyar, and the 18-gun sloop of war Cherub, under Captain Thomas Tucker. The 26-gun Racoon, under Commander William Black, accompanied them as far as South America and then headed north along the Pacific coast. Black’s mission was to sail to the mouth of the Columbia River, destroy John Jacob Astor’s settlement at Astoria, and take possession of the whole area in the name of His Majesty. When the Racoon arrived, Black discovered that the Canadian Northwest Fur Company—after threatening that the Royal Navy was on the way—had already purchased Astor’s American Pacific Fur Company, which included Fort Astoria and the surrounding settlement. Dispatching the Racoon was more evidence of the Liverpool ministry’s imperial ambitions in America.
President Madison knew the British would be after Porter, and he was anxious for his return. Madison needed all the heroes he could get. The war was going far worse than he had ever imagined, and the British were giving no indication they were willing to negotiate an end to it.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Allies and Napoleon
DESPITE AMERICA’S MYRIAD setbacks in 1813, the British were not in a position to capitalize on them. As much as they wanted to smite the United States, they had to bide their time and deal first with a still dangerous Napoleon Bonaparte. The battle to prevent him from again becoming master of Europe occupied them throughout the year. Only after the dictator’s defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, and his subsequent retreat to France, did it appear that his ambitions would be curbed. And even then, his demise was uncertain.
Although Britain’s life hung in the balance on the European continent, the prime minister still refused to rid himself of the unnecessary war with America. Madison had made it plain that he was desperate for a settlement. The only remaining issue was impressment, and the president had promised guarantees that British seamen would not be permitted to serve on either American warships or merchantmen. Liverpool, however, refused to listen.
The prime minister’s intransigence came from an underlying confidence that Napoleon would be beaten and from the success of British arms in North America. With the expenditure of few resou
rces, Britain had frustrated Madison’s attempts to acquire Upper Canada, and the Royal Navy had tightened its blockade of the American coast. Instead of feeling pressure to make peace with Madison, Liverpool and his colleagues saw an opportunity to deal a crippling blow to what they thought were the republic’s maritime ambitions and, at the same time, to massively expand the British Empire on the North American continent.
Once Napoleon’s power was smashed, Liverpool intended to treat the United States as if Madison had been a poor imitation of the French dictator. The Times proclaimed that, “Whilst Bonaparte was at once invading Russia and Spain, the President thought it not a shame to imitate him by overrunning the Canadas and Florida.” As far as the British were concerned, there would be no compromise with Madison, as there would be none with Napoleon. Liverpool wanted a free hand in North America to make certain that neither Canada nor Florida was in American hands, nor even Louisiana. The ministry consistently maintained that Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase had been illegal.
British ambitions in North America had to be put on hold, however, while they dealt with Napoleon. When 1813 began, it was not at all clear that he could be swept away. He was back in Paris assembling an impressive new army. Britain controlled the sea, but only Russia, in alliance with Prussia and Austria, could destroy Bonaparte’s army. The czar was committed to doing so, but his troops needed time to rest. They had suffered mightily in the struggle to expel the French from their country. Kutuzov, the commander in chief, insisted that his men needed to recuperate. He was not anxious to plunge into Central Europe. He was content with having thrown Bonaparte out of Russia. Alexander, on the other hand, wanted to push west across the Niemen into Prussia and the Duchy of Warsaw while Napoleon was on the run. He was determined to drive on to Paris and destroy the dictator’s regime. What Russia chose to do would determine if a resurgent Bonaparte could be defeated.
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