proceed on her course, hoisted the boat up and hauled by the wind on the larboard tack; ends clear and pleasant.”
In this battle the young midshipman first heard a hostile shot and received his initial “baptism of fire.” The accounts of this affair given by the two commanders, Rodgers and Bingham, cannot be reconciled. Captain Bingham, acquitted of blame, was promoted February 7, 1812, to post-rank in the British navy. The event widened the breach between the two nations, and was the foreshadowing of coming events not long to be postponed. Probably Rodgers’ chief regret was that the punished vessel had not been the Guerriere.
The rest of the year, 1811, was spent by our sailors in constant readiness and unremitting discipline in order to secure the highest state of naval efficiency. Exercise at the carronades and long guns was a daily task. The coming war on the ocean was to be a contest in gunnery, and to be won by tactical skill, long guns, and superiority in artillery practice. Nothing was left to chance on the American ships. Congress had neglected the navy since the Tripolitan war, and with embargoes, non-intercourse acts, and a puerile gun-boat system, practically attempted to paralyze this arm of defence. Commodore Rodgers’ squadron was an exception to the general system, and his was the sole squadron serviceable when the declaration of hostilities came.
Rodgers hoped by speedy victories to demonstrate the power of the American heavy frigate to blow to atoms “the gun-boat system,” and change British insolence into respect. Lack of opportunity caused him personal disappointment; but his faith and creed were fully justified by the naval campaign of 1812.
CHAPTER IV.
MEN, SHIPS AND GUNS IN 1812.
Commodore John Rodgers was a man of the time, a typical naval officer of the period. He was minutely careful about the food and habits of his men, and made the President as homelike as a ship could be. He was not precisely a man of science, as was the case with his son in the monitor Weehawken, for this was the pre-scientific age of naval warfare. Indeed, it can scarcely be said with truth that he had either patience with or appreciation of Robert Fulton, the Pennsylvanian whose inventions were destined to revolutionize the methods of naval warfare. This mechanical genius who anticipated steam frigates, iron armor, torpedoes and rams, rather amused than interested Rodgers. To the commodore, who expected no miracles, he seemed to possess “Continuity but not ingenuity.” Fulton had not yet perfected his apparatus, though he had in 1804 blown up a Danish frigate off Copenhagen, and in 1810 had published in New York his “Torpedo War and Submarine Explosion.” This book is full of illustrations so clear, that to look at them now provokes the wonder that his schemes found so little encouragement. Five thousand dollars were appropriated by Congress March 30, 1810, for submarine torpedo experiments. Discouragement evidently followed: for our government in 1811, following the example of France and England rejected his plans for a submarine torpedo boat.
“The Battle of the Kegs” was too often referred to in connection with Fulton’s projects. This threw a humorous but not luminous glow over the whole matter. It gave to a serious scientific subject very much the same air as that which Irving has succeeded in casting over the early history of New York.
Having glanced at the typical American commander, let us now see what kind of sailors handled the ships and guns of 1812. In an old order book of Commodore Rodgers’, we find one to midshipman M. C. Perry, dated “President off Sandy Hook 26th May 1813,” directing him to proceed to New York and enter for the ship six petty officers and fifty seamen and boys. From this we may guess the quality of the crews of American men-of-war.
“You are desired to be particular in entering none but American citizens, and indeed, native-born citizens in preference.” He is especially directed to ship good healthy men able to perform duty, active and robust, while only those of good character and appearance are to be accepted for the warrant and petty officers. As Matthew Perry was but seventeen years of age, the order shows the confidence his commander placed in his judgement. In Perry’s diary the simple entry under May 28 is “At 12 p. m. the pilot boat left the ship with Mr. Hunt and Midp. M. C. Perry as a recruiting officer for the ship.”
It is the favorite idea of Englishmen who have formed their opinions from James the popular historian of the British navy, that the victories of American ships over their own in 1812 were owing to the British deserters among the Yankees. James, with amazing credulity, believes that there were two hundred Englishmen on the Constitution, that two-thirds of the sailors in the navy of the United States were bred on the soil and educated in the ships of Great Britain, and to these our navy owed at least one half of its effectiveness.
It is much nearer the truth to state that nine-tenths of the American crews were native-born, and but about one-twentieth of British nationality, the rest being a mixture. Three-fourths of the natives were from the northern states; half of the remaining quarter from Virginia, and nearly all of respectable parentage.
Of the officers, the midshipmen were lads of from eleven to fifteen years of age. There were in commission during the war about 500 naval officers, 34,960 sailors and petty officers, and 2,725 marines. The government possessed six navy yards.
In addition to the officer’s knowledge of the scientific principle of gunnery, and the thorough familiarity of the gun-crews with their duties, each ship’s company when away from its cannon was a disciplined battalion. The manual of small arms comprehended every possible stroke of offence and defence. Pikes, cutlasses and axes were the weapons relied on, though a few rifles, in the hands of sharp shooters perched in the crows-nests and in the tops, and a brace of pistols at each man’s belt had their places. The Yankee cutlass had already crossed with the Moorish scimiter at Tripoli, in more than one victory, and “our sailors felt a just confidence in its merits.”[2] The pike was the boarding weapon, the sailor’s bayonet, with which he charged the enemy on his own decks, or repelled his attacks, and was not the least of small arms. The war of 1812, with men speaking the same language, was practically a civil war in which the sword was again to be taken up against equals in every respect. Hence the need of constant practice in handling tools. The uninterrupted drill bore its fruit in due season.
One potent secret of American excellence of naval service, which raised our standard of war ships and guns even higher than the highest in Europe, was the rule of promotion for merit. This nerved every sailor and petty officer to do nothing less than his best at all times. In this respect, the navy of the western world contrasted effectively with that of Great Britain, where commissions were bought and sold in open market.
The Yankee captain taught his men to take pride in their guns as if they were human. Of many an American sailor in 1812 it could be said:
“His conscience and his gun, he thought
His duty lay between.”
The American men-of-war went to sea with sights on their guns that enabled a cannonneer to fire with nearly the accuracy of a rifle. In their occasional use of sheet-lead cartridges, which required less sponging and worming after firing than those of flannel and of paper, they anticipated the copper shells of recent American invention.
The broadsides of that day may seem to us ridiculous in weight, as compared to those of our time. A projectile from an iron-clad now exceeds the entire mass of metal thrown by the largest of the old line-of-battle ships. The heaviest broadside in the United States in 1812—that thrown by the United States carrying fifty-four guns—was but 846 pounds. Nevertheless the American ships had usually heavier and better guns and of longer range than the British. The power of a line-of-battle ship had been condensed into the space of a frigate. This was the American idea, to increase the weight of metal thrown in broadside without altering
