Morris was more than pleased with the Adams’s performance. She had been recently converted to a corvette at the Washington Navy Yard. The work began on August 12, 1813, and was completed on November 18. She had a crew of two hundred fifty and carried twenty-six eighteen-pounders and two twelve-pounders for bow chasers. Morris’s first lieutenant was Alexander S. Wadsworth of Portland, Maine. Morris was from Maine himself, having been brought up in the little backwoods town of Woodstock. Wadsworth had been second lieutenant aboard the Constitution when she fought the Guerriere.
Morris headed for the Canaries and then the Cape Verde Islands. From there he sailed west to the northern end of the Caribbean. Along the way he captured two small merchant brigs. He then took the Woodbridge, a large East Indiaman, in thick weather. He had a crew aboard examining her cargo, when the visibility improved, revealing a twenty-five-ship convoy close by with two large warships for guards. They saw the Adams at the same time that she saw them, and they raced after her. Morris got his men off the rich prize quickly and fled, making good his escape, but he was very unhappy to be leaving all that booty behind.
On May 1 Morris was off the mouth of the Savannah River, desperate for food and water. The city was fifteen miles upriver, but the Adams drew too much water to get her there. Morris anchored off the lighthouse at the entrance to the river and sent boats to the city for provisions. The day after he arrived, the captured brig Epervier appeared, and Morris took whatever stores she could supply. Two days later the Peacock arrived, and Warrington, who was more than a little surprised to find Morris there, contributed more to the Adams.
By now the British at nearby Cumberland Island knew of the Adams. Aware of his exposure, Morris left on May 8, warping the ship out of the Savannah River in a light wind and beginning another cruise. He looked first for the Jamaica Convoy and found it on May 24, but two seventy-fours, two frigates, and three brigs were escorts, which made cutting out a merchantman nearly impossible. After hanging on the convoy for two days, Morris gave up and sailed to Ireland via the Newfoundland Grand Banks. On the way, he captured and destroyed two brigs. On July 4 he was off the mouth of the Shannon River. From there he sailed north along the Irish coast for five days but did not see a single ship. He then turned back south, and off the Irish Channel he ran into the 36-gun British frigate Tigris, under Captain Robert Henderson.
She chased him, and she was gaining in a light sea with a headwind as night came on. Morris “let the lower anchors drop from the bows,” otherwise lightened the ship, and towed her during the night, as he had the Constitution in 1812, when she escaped from the Halifax squadron. In the morning, a providential breeze allowed him to leave the frigate. The Adams made “thirty-one miles in three hours, very close-hauled to the wind,” he explained in his autobiography. He attributed the speed to the absence of the anchors.
On July 19 Morris met two more British frigates, which sped after him. He threw on all sail and managed to stay just beyond gunshot range of the fastest pursuer. The chase lasted for forty grueling hours, during which the Adams ran four hundred miles of latitude. A short squall in the middle of the night allowed Morris to change course unseen and finally escape.
Scurvy had now become a serious problem aboard the Adams. Several deaths had already occurred, and thirty men were unfit for duty. On July 25 Morris headed home. On the way he captured a ship, a brig, and a schooner. By August 16, his sick list had grown to fifty-eight, many of them serious cases of scurvy. It was urgent to get to port right away. Heavy fog enveloped the ship for three days, however, preventing accurate observations for latitude and longitude, but continual soundings made Morris confident he was on course for Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On August 17 the fog was still with them when, at four o’clock in the morning, a lookout suddenly shouted, “Breakers!” Before Morris could react, the forward part of the ship ran up on a slippery rock close to the Isle of Haute off the coast of Maine. By a heroic effort, Morris and the remaining healthy men saved the crippled ship and then struggled to bring her to the mouth of the Penobscot River. Well before they reached it, however, the British brig-sloop Rifleman spotted them. Morris knew a frigate or two from Halifax would soon be after him.
Much worse was in store, however. In a few days General Sir John Sherbrooke’s invasion of eastern Maine commenced, trapping Morris and the disabled Adams in the Penobscot. Learning that the British had attacked nearby Castine, Morris moved his ship father up the Penobscot to Hampden, just south of Bangor. He was certain the invaders would come after the Adams, and he prepared to defend her. He called for help from the Maine militia, and nearly four hundred unexpectedly appeared, along with thirty regulars under Lieutenant Lewis, who had escaped from Castine. Using the Adams’s guns, Morris set up two batteries and made arrangements to destroy the ship, should it be necessary.
On the morning of September 2, Captain Robert Barrie of the Royal Navy and Lieutenant Colonel Henry John attacked Morris with three hundred fifty soldiers. They quickly dispersed the Maine militiamen, forcing Morris to burn the Adams to keep her out of Barrie’s hands. Morris and his men fled into the Maine woods. He kept the crew together, and they made their way through difficult terrain to Canaan on the Kennebec River, where Morris borrowed money from the Bank of Waterville to feed his crew. He then made his way to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the welcoming arms of Commodore Isaac Hull at the navy yard. During the entire two-hundred-mile trek, not one man deserted, and none died.
In spite of all his efforts, Morris’s cruise had been an abysmal failure. He did capture ten vessels, but they were of no importance. Of far greater consequence was the loss of one of the country’s few warships and an inordinate number of men as a result of scurvy. Secretary Jones gave Morris a chance to redeem himself, however. Sitting idle near Portsmouth was the abandoned frigate Congress. Earlier, Jones had dispatched her crew to Lake Ontario. He now assigned Morris to restore her and be her new captain. Morris eagerly grasped the opportunity.
A HEAVY SNOW storm in January 1814 allowed the 14-gun Enterprise (restored after her battle with the Boxer), under Lieutenant James Renshaw, to break out from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in company with the 16-gun Rattlesnake, under Master Commandant John O. Creighton. The brigs were on a commerce-destroying mission. They were warned to avoid single-ship duels. In his orders Secretary Jones “strictly prohibited [them] from giving or receiving a challenge, to, or from an enemy vessel.—the character of the American Navy does not require those feats of chivalry. And your own reputation is too well established to need factitious support.”
Sailing together, the brigs reached St. Thomas in the northeastern corner of the Caribbean. They then cruised west along the southern coast of Cuba, around Cape San Antonio at the island’s western extremity, and ran east through the Florida Straits to the Atlantic coast.
While the brigs had been searching the northern Caribbean, Captain Stewart was cruising the southern part in the Constitution, neither having much luck. Off Florida, the Enterprise and the Rattlesnake were surprised when they chased a British privateer and saw more than two dozen of her crew suddenly making for shore in their boats. The privateer’s men thought the brigs were British men-of-war who were going to impress them. They were more afraid of the Royal Navy than they were of the Americans.
The Enterprise and the Rattlesnake were then chased by a frigate, and on February 25 they had to separate. The frigate went after the Enterprise. At the end of a long chase, Renshaw slipped into the Cape Fear River and sailed up to Wilmington, North Carolina, where the frigate could not follow. The Rattlesnake reached the Cape Fear safely on March 9. The cruise had been a big disappointment for both ships.
In early May, Master Commandant Creighton was transferred from Wilmington, where he was refitting the two brigs, to the Washington Navy Yard to superintend construction of the new sloop of war Argus. He was Captain Thomas Tingey’s chief lieutenant during the British attack on the capital in August. Creighton was thus spared the disaster that bef
ell the Rattlesnake on her next cruise. On July 11, the 50-gun Leander, under Captain Sir George Collier, caught her near Cape Sable in a heavy sea and took her to nearby Halifax. The Enterprise, although a notoriously slow sailer, was never captured.
Another brig, the 16-gun Siren, under Master Commandant George Parker, slipped out of Boston during February. Parker steered to Madeira and then set his course southward. He passed the Canaries and planned to sail down the coast of Africa to the Cape of Good Hope. Parker had been first lieutenant aboard the Constitution when she defeated the Java. He was a much admired officer. During that battle, he had taken the place of Charles Morris, who was recuperating from injuries suffered in the fight with the Guerriere.
Before the Siren reached the Cape of Good Hope, however, Parker died, and Lieutenant Nathaniel D. Nicholson took command. On July 12, off the coast of South Africa, a lookout spotted a large enemy ship. Nicholson did everything he could to get away, jettisoning carronades, anchors, boats, cables, and spare spars, but nothing helped. After a chase of eleven hours, the 74-gun Medway, under Captain Augustus Brine, captured the brig. Samuel Leech, a British deserter, was aboard the Siren when she surrendered, but his identity went undiscovered. The officers and men of the Siren were taken into the Medway, where Captain Brine, with a careless disregard for the rules of civilized warfare, allowed his men to plunder them. He also permitted the prize crew aboard the Siren to take whatever they pleased. No American captain ever allowed his crew to rob helpless prisoners.
WHILE THE SLOOPS and the Adams were engaged at sea, work on the 74-gun battleships continued at an excruciatingly slow pace—the Washington under Hull at Portsmouth, New Hampshire; the Independence under Bainbridge in Boston; and the Franklin in Philadelphia under Commodore Alexander Murray and Naval Agent George Harrison, superintendent of the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
Of the new 44-gun frigates, the Guerriere was in the Delaware River, ready for sea but blockaded. The Java was unfinished in Baltimore, being used as a receiving ship. Her captain, Oliver Hazard Perry, was overseeing construction, but he appeared bored with the assignment and spent a good deal of time in Newport, Rhode Island. While he was away, work slowed dramatically on the frigate. The Columbia was destroyed at the Washington Navy Yard in August to prevent her from falling into British hands when they burned the city.
Despite the myriad problems with the new American ships, the Admiralty continued to have them on its mind. The Times of London wrote that the new American navy being built “must be annihilated.... Let us never forget that the present war is an unprovoked attack on the very existence of Great Britain.... The United States is now persuaded that the sea is her element, and not ours.... Now America stands alone; hereafter she may have allies. Let us strike while the iron is hot.”
The U.S. Navy was also trying to build Robert Fulton’s steam frigate, designed to break the blockade of New York Harbor. Secretary Jones even considered a similar ship for Lake Ontario. David Porter was enthusiastic about her possibilities, and so was Stephen Decatur. While Decatur was in New York, he had become a strong supporter of Fulton’s steam frigate and publicized its potential in an open letter on January 3, 1814.
The navy gave the inventor a substantial sum to build it, and Fulton the First, the world’s first steam warship, was launched at New York on October 29, 1814. Twenty thousand enthusiastic spectators witnessed her slide into the water. The giant ship was then towed to a New Jersey shipyard to have its 120-horsepower engine installed. Fulton the First was still there when the war ended. She was finally delivered to the navy in June 1816.
At year’s end, the navy had 10,617 men in service. Of these, 3,250 were on the lakes—500 on Lake Champlain, 2,300 on Lake Ontario, and 450 on Lake Erie—while 405 were prisoners. The rest were in various ports around the country. Very few were at sea. The number of seamen in the service was entirely inadequate to compete with the British on the lakes and the oceans and to defend the coast. Secretary Jones was not reluctant to remind the president of this unpleasant fact, but there was little, apparently, they could do about it.
Privateers continued to be a bright spot for Madison. During the war 526 set out. Of these, 26 were ships, 67 brigs, 364 schooners, 35 sloops, and 34 miscellaneous small craft. By virtue of their exceptional speed and handling, especially when sailing close-hauled, schooners were the preferred model. The British managed to capture 148 of the privateers.
As had happened during the Revolution, the size of American privateers and their effectiveness improved as the war progressed. They often traveled in packs for protection and profit. Estimates of how many vessels they captured varied from 1,175 to 2,300. Lloyds of London claimed that during the war American privateers captured 1,175 British merchantmen and 373 had been recaptured or released. Niles’ Weekly Register thought the number of captures was over 2,300. Other estimates were in between, but, by any measure, the number was high.
Privateers put out from ports all along the Atlantic coast, but New England, the bastion of Federalism, ironically sent out the largest number. Fifty-eight came from Baltimore; fifty-five from New York; forty-one from Salem, Massachusetts; thirty-one from Boston; and around fifteen from the smaller New England ports like Portland, Portsmouth, Marblehead, Beverly, Newburyport, Newport, and Providence. New Bedford, Massachusetts, had none: it was strongly Quaker and resolutely prohibited privateers from putting out or entering port.
Seamen consistently chose privateering over the navy or army. Marblehead, Massachusetts, for instance, had over 700 men in privateers and only 120 in the navy and 57 in the army, even though the town supported the war. Niles’ Weekly Register estimated 100,000 seamen were ready to serve in privateers.
Britain’s home islands were particularly lucrative hunting grounds. Many American privateers were large ships of twenty and even thirty guns with two-hundred-man crews. Powerful and fast, they wreaked havoc with shipping in the Irish Channel and the North Sea. British merchantmen found they could not sail safely around their own country without being attacked.
Britain’s Convoy Act did not apply to vessels traveling around the British Isles. Traffic was so extensive it would have been impractical to force all vessels to travel in protected convoys. By the fall of 1814 insurance rates had climbed threefold—the highest they had been since the war with France began in 1793. The Yankee privateer out of Bristol, Rhode Island, alone made forty captures, which translated into $3 million for the investors. And there were many more privateers with almost as spectacular records.
Angry about losses at the hands of the privateers, shipowners, merchants, manufacturers, and underwriters of the City of Glasgow, Scotland, issued a strong statement on September 17, 1814, expressing outrage:That the number of American privateers with which our channels have been infested, the audacity with which they have approached our coasts, and the success with which their enterprise has been attended have proved injurious to our commerce, humbling to our pride, and discreditable to the directors of our naval power, whose flag till late waved over every sea and triumphed over every rival.... There is reason to believe that in the short space of less than twenty-four months above 800 vessels have been captured by that power whose maritime strength we have hitherto . . . held in scorn.... Our ships cannot with safety traverse our own channels, ... insurance cannot be effected but at an excessive premium, and [it is shameful] that a horde of American cruisers should be allowed, unheeded, unresisted and unmolested to take, burn or sink our own vessels in our own inlets, and almost within sight of our own harbors.
The Scotsmen spoke for many other frustrated communities around the British Isles.
As frustrating as 1814 was for the American navy, the remarkable victories of individual warships contributed immeasurably to the respect the British ministry was developing for the capacity of the United States at sea. The success of American privateers reinforced this new attitude. The Liverpool government’s altered view of the potential strength of America at sea would play a major ro
le in fashioning a permanent peace, something that in August 1814 appeared unobtainable to President Madison and his supporters.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Negotiations Begin at Ghent
THE LONG DELAYED peace talks began the second week of August 1814, in the old Flemish city of Ghent. Since at least March 1813, President Madison had been eager for them. But Liverpool had been in no hurry. He was awaiting results from the battlefield that would support his demands at the negotiating table. By the time talks began at Ghent, however, the prime minister’s delay was working against him. In the spring of 1814 Liverpool and his colleagues had assumed that European matters would no longer absorb their energies as they had during the Napoleonic Wars. But as spring became summer, this assumption proved incorrect. Dealing with the aftermath of the Napoleonic collapse proved far more difficult than Liverpool and Castlereagh had imagined. Napoleon had transformed the continent. The frontiers of nearly every European country needed to be redrawn, and there was no agreement among the great powers about how that should be done. In addition, Britain had conquered all the French, Dutch, and Danish overseas colonies, and they needed to be reallocated.
Liverpool and Castlereagh had hoped that agreement on new European boundaries and the overseas possessions in British hands would be made at the time the peace treaty was signed with Bourbon France on May 30, but the jealousies and rivalries among the powers made that impossible. Liverpool then hoped that a conference of the four great powers, scheduled in London for ten days in June, would accomplish the same result, but that too failed. Instead of being resolved, the differences among Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Britain widened.
1812: The Navy's War Page 42