REAR ADM. GEORGE COCKBURN returned to Chesapeake Bay on February 23, 1814, following a six-week voyage from Bermuda that took him first to the blockade off New London, Connecticut. The New England weather was frigid, and Cockburn suffered a mild case of frostbite. While off Long Island he decided to change flagships because the Sceptre had undergone a full refit in Bermuda that made her so top-heavy Cockburn feared she would capsize in heavy seas. He transferred his flag to the 74-gun Albion and made his way south. He stopped at Cape May at the mouth of the Delaware Bay to check on the blockaders there before finally arriving in the Chesapeake.1
The admiral spent a month rearranging the Chesapeake blockade before receiving orders from Vice Admiral Cochrane to locate a suitable place to establish a fortified base. Cockburn chose Tangier Island, centrally located between the Virginia shores of the bay and close to the mouth of the Potomac. The island offered deep-water anchorage and a protected land area where he could execute Cochrane’s order to gather and recruit slaves for either service or resettlement. Although it provided a change of pace, the occupation of the island and the construction of a fort, which Cockburn named Fort Albion, did little to relieve the monotony of maintaining the blockade. Robert Barrie, who had spent the winter in charge of the blockade, lamented to his half-sister Eliza Clayton, “I am tired of blockading and long to be sent to the Eastward to cruise. . . . [H]ere we are very cold and . . . very dissatisfied at doing nothing.”2
The monotony of the blockade was in stark contrast to the frenzied activity in Bermuda. Cochrane, still dreaming up schemes of a massive invasion of the American South, first had to quell a question of command. His predecessor, Admiral Warren, refused to believe the Admiralty had relieved him. Even after he saw Cochrane’s orders and received Lord Melville’s letter of the previous November relieving him of command, Warren remained at Bermuda issuing orders before he finally accepted that he was no longer in charge.3
Cochrane, with the command issue settled, wrote to Cockburn in April with orders that undoubtedly made Cockburn extremely happy. “You are at perfect liberty as soon as you can muster a sufficient force to act with the utmost Hostility against the shores of the United States,” Cochrane wrote. “This is now the more necessary to draw off their attention from Canada, where I am told they are sending their entire military force. Their sea port towns laid in ashes and country wasted will be some sort of retaliation for their savage conduct in Canada. . . . [I]t is therefore but just, that retaliation shall be made near to the seat of their government, from whence those orders emanated.”4
The pace of British operations picked up at the start of April 1814, when Cockburn began sending out parties in search of runaway slaves and supplies. Food was becoming a major problem as the number of African refugees increased at Fort Albion. At one point the entire squadron was down to barely a one-week supply of bread and beef. The arrival of a supply ship from Bermuda helped avert dissolution of the blockade and allowed Cockburn to resume his campaign against the inhabitants of both shores of the Chesapeake.5 He ordered Barrie to take the 74-gun Dragon; the 7-gun schooner St. Lawrence (the former American privateer Atlas); and three tenders, the Catch-Up-a-Little, Erie, and Utility, up the Potomac to replenish the squadron’s water supply while seeking out both American militia and runaway slaves. Cockburn was already finding the refugee slaves a problem because they consumed supplies, tied up troops to provide protection, and demanded transport to Halifax—not Bermuda—in keeping with Cochrane’s proclamation. Cockburn’s doubts about Cochrane’s grand scheme to recruit an army of freed slaves grew.6
As the operational tempo began increasing, and more and more refugee blacks arrived on Tangier Island, Cockburn wrote to Cochrane:
If you attach importance to forming a Corps of these blacks to act against their former masters, I think my dear sir your proclamation should not so distinctly hold out to them the option of being sent as free settlers to British Settlements, which they will most certainly all prefer to the danger and fatigue of joining us in arms; in the temptations I now hold out to them I shall therefore only mention generally our willingness and readiness to receive and protect them, and to put arms in their hands if they choose to use them in conjunction with us.7
By mid-May Cockburn had gathered 242 refugees, 151 of whom he sent to Bermuda. He kept 38 men who had enlisted in the Colonial Marines and made Royal Marine sergeant major William Hammond their drill instructor. By the end of the campaign, the Colonial Marines numbered 250 men. Under Hammond’s training the escaped slaves evolved into one of Cockburn’s most reliable units, although Cockburn had been quite skeptical when Hammond began training the first 38 recruits. “They are naturally neither very valorous nor very active,” Cockburn wrote to Cochrane on April 29.8 In another letter Cockburn added that they “pretend to be very bold and very ready to join us in any expedition against their old masters,” but he doubted their usefulness in combat.9
The Colonial Marines soon dispelled those doubts. In mid-May the force, now numbering eighty men, saw its first action. Their steadfastness and eagerness soon had Cockburn boasting that “they have induced me to alter the bad opinion I had of their whole Race and I now really believe these, we are training, will neither show want of zeal or courage when employed by us in attacking their old masters.”10
The Colonial Marines provided a measure of loyalty Cockburn’s British sailors and Royal Marines did not, because the black soldiers did not desert. The only disappointment the British had in the former slaves was their unwillingness to serve in army units in the West Indies. They were willing to fight in the local unit because it afforded them revenge against their former masters, while service in the West Indies appeared to them as exchanging one master for another.11
The desperation of the slaves to escape bondage was heart-rending. On May 2, two women gave birth while making their escape in canoes. Another woman who tried to escape with an infant handed the baby boy to British sailors while she went back to retrieve a possession she had left behind. The woman never returned, and the baby grew up on Royal Navy vessels. The Albion’s cook, who was black, cared for the boy while the flagship’s captain, James Ross, looked after his welfare. The boy remained a ward of the Royal Navy until he died in an accident when he was eighteen.12
Cockburn picked up in April 1814 where he had left off in November 1813, once again terrorizing the inhabitants of the Chesapeake. He was well aware that the Admiralty had relieved Admiral Warren in part for his perceived soft touch with the detested Yankees. Cockburn was not about to make that mistake. His boat crews fanned out across the lower Chesapeake burning storehouses, seizing grain and livestock, and carrying off tobacco, which was sold for prize money.13 On April 20, 1814, a party of seamen and Royal Marines chased a fleet of forty fishing boats trying to slip into the Potomac. Most of the vessels made it to safety, but the British managed to capture and burn seven of them. Five of the destroyed boats came from the little fishing port of Onancock, and their loss devastated the town.14
Ten days later, Capt. George Edward Watts of the brig Jaseur spotted a large American privateer hiding in the East River near St. Michaels. He ordered Lt. Henry West to cut out the ship with twenty-four sailors and marines. On the night of May 2, West and six men boarded the schooner and overpowered her captain and the seven men standing watch. The British fastened the hatches, trapping twenty more Americans below deck, then quietly slipped the schooner from her moorings and took her out, much to the elation of Captain Watts. The schooner was the 228-ton Grecian, a veteran privateer owned by a friend of Joshua Barney. Watts said the schooner was “one of the fleetest and most beautiful schooners in America, coppered and copper-fastened, pierced for 20 guns.” In addition to the twenty prisoners the Grecian was carrying a cargo of munitions and arms, which Watt confiscated.15 The Royal Navy took the ship into service, also under the name Grecian.
The British activity on Tangier Island did not go unnoticed. The supply and recruiting parties quickly earned the attention of militias along the Virginia coast. The Americans harassed Cockburn’s units as they searched for food and water—and in doing so played right into Cockburn’s hands. The rear admiral used his watering and foraging parties to lure American militia into the open. If the local citizen-soldiers refused to show themselves, Cockburn developed an information network that could point them out. A boat from one of the warships would land a group of sailors and marines, who would seek out a friendly black man to act as a local guide and “facilitator.” This man, aside from pointing out where to find provisions, would run from plantation to plantation spreading word of the British offer of freedom and leading any slaves willing to run to the British. The facilitators also acted as an informal intelligence network providing Cockburn and his officers with details on where the militia had their camps, their strength, and their movements.
It was through this loose intelligence network that Cockburn learned the 2nd Virginia Militia Regiment constituted the main resistance to his current operations. The American commander, Lt. Col. Thomas Bayley, had established four camps from which to operate and monitor the British, not knowing that each time his soldiers tried to ambush a recruiting or foraging party they gave the British more information on their location. By May 27 Lt. James Scott of the Albion believed he could pinpoint one camp located on Pungoteague Creek, some fifteen miles south of Tangier Island. The militiamen operating from that camp had already gained Cockburn’s attention when they attempted to destroy the buoys the British placed to mark the shallows around Tangier Island. On May 28 Cockburn ordered Captain Ross to take 11 boats with 250 sailors and Royal Marines to teach the militia a lesson. Ross had problems finding the camp in the dark, and the noise his boats made alerted a second American detachment at Onancock Creek. When Ross finally found his bearings, he landed his men about a mile upstream from the Pungoteague camp.
The British expected to find a “six-gun battery” but instead found a lone 4-pounder field gun, which opened fire on the British as soon as they came into view. At the same time, thirty militia from the Onancock camp hustled to where the British had landed and opened fire with their muskets. The British replied with cannon and rocket fire from three of their boats and chased the militia from the field. Leading the pursuit were thirty Colonial Marines experiencing combat for the first time. As the unit approached the fieldpiece, the American crew fired a devastating blast of canister that killed one Colonial Marine and wounded another. The British pillaged several farmhouses as they chased the militia, but after two hours, threatened by a growing number of militia reinforcements, they returned to their boats.16
The little skirmish was somewhat costly to Ross’ force, which reported three dead and eleven wounded; the Americans reported just one man wounded. The British destroyed two barrack houses in addition to pillaging the local farms.17 The Colonial Marines, in particular, showed great discipline, order, and bravery. The slain Colonial Marine was Michael Harding, who was at the forefront of the British charge and, according to newspaper accounts, was found on the field in full uniform with four dollars in his pocket.18
On May 30 Cockburn decided to undertake another “gallant little affair.” He readied three boats from the Albion under Lieutenant Scott and was ready to send them in search of a militia camp when a seemingly minor incident occurred that set the pattern for military operations on the Chesapeake for the next three months. An informant told Cockburn that an American flotilla had left Baltimore with plans to join forces with warships from Washington and Norfolk, with the intent of capturing any small British vessels they encountered.
Cockburn at first discounted the information. He had heard stories about Joshua Barney and his “flying squadron” but had been unable to substantiate them. Something about the latest report, however, made Cockburn wonder if there was some truth to the news. He canceled the raid on the militia camp and sent the three boats of Albion sailors and marines and a group of Colonial Marines to reinforce Barrie, who was operating at the mouth of the Potomac. He ordered Barrie to take his task force and locate and either capture or destroy the American flotilla. Cockburn was about to find out not only that the report of Barney leaving Baltimore was true, but that the American flotilla was hunting for the British.19
Joshua Barney held a unique position. As a captain in the U.S. Flotilla Service he received the same pay and held the same authority as a captain in the U.S. Navy, but he and his command were outside the normal Navy chain of command. Barney reported directly to Secretary of the Navy Jones, and his command was separate from, but equal to, the Navy squadrons in Norfolk and Baltimore.20 The flotilla was an amalgam of vessels. The flagship was the block sloop Scorpion, which, along with Barney’s second-largest ship, the schooner Asp, had once been part of the Potomac Flotilla. The Asp needed overhaul and had yet to join Barney’s force. Barney had two U.S. Navy gunboats, No. 137 and No. 138, which he stripped of armament and used primarily as supply vessels. The flotilla also included the Vigilant, a 45-foot “barge” built in Baltimore. Barney acquired a small pilot boat that he named Lookout Boat for use as a messenger boat and twelve galleys, or “barges,” built in Baltimore and St. Michaels.
Barney spent all winter recruiting for and fitting out his flotilla, with varying levels of success. Shipwrights turned out two types of barges—a 75-foot-long galley Barney dubbed a “first-rate” and the 50-foot-long “second-rates.” Arming the barges, however, was more difficult than expected because shortages plagued Barney. “I have been severely disappointed in the delivery of the guns (light 18-pounders),” he wrote to Secretary Jones on April 4, 1813.21 As for the heavier ordnance, Barney quickly realized that 24-pounder long guns and 42-pounder carronades were too heavy for his barges. He received a shipment of 18-pounder long guns and 32-pounder carronades, but those proved too heavy for the second-rate barges, and Barney eventually swapped the 18-pounders for 12-pounders.22
The commander of the Chesapeake Flotilla actually had more boats than he could man. With shipyards in Baltimore, Washington, and St. Michaels on the Eastern Shore churning out barges, Barney had twenty-six vessels in Baltimore by spring. He was able to man barely half of them. Competition for manpower remained intense. The Army and Navy were both recruiting in Baltimore. The Navy was building two new sloops of war, the Ontario and the Erie, and had plans to begin construction of a 44-gun frigate, the Java. The Army was looking to augment its strength by recruiting “Sea Fencibles,” a home defense force for ports. The Army had recruited two companies in Baltimore who were to serve under Maj. George Armistead, commander at Fort McHenry. John Gill, commander of one of the two companies, approached Barney with the idea of transferring his 104-man unit to the flotilla. Barney liked the idea but told Gill to forward his request directly to Jones. The transfer died when Barney’s political rival, Samuel Smith, exerted pressure on both Jones and Secretary of War Armstrong to keep the Fencibles out of the flotilla.23
Barney’s efforts to recruit on the Eastern Shore also ran into political problems of a different sort. Local elections were due in October, and politicians from both parties were loath to see potential voters leave. Lt. Solomon Frazier, Barney’s first lieutenant, was in charge of superintending the construction of barges and recruiting in the St. Michaels area, and he told Barney about the problems with enlisting men. Barney somewhat wryly told Frazier to “promise all Democrats” they would be home in time to vote that October.24
Not even the Navy Department, it seemed, could solve the recruiting problem, even when it ordered its own personnel to the flotilla. Jones told Capt. Robert Spence, superintendent of the sloop of war Ontario, to transfer all of his enlisted men to Barney. The Ontario, Jones said, was not going anywhere because of the blockade, and Barney had the greater need for sailors. Spence sent 85 of his 105 sailors. Of those, 68 reported for duty so drunk that Barney put them in irons; the other 17 men were on the sick list.25
As Barney prepared to put to sea, his flotilla remained undermanned. In April he somewhat derisively wrote Jones, “If I had the Sea Fencibles, which are doing worse than nothing at the fort [McHenry], I could man five more barges.”26 On April 17 he set out on his first shakedown cruise with ten barges, each short at least ten men, on a course for Annapolis. He quickly learned the deficiencies of his galleys. The 50-foot barges did “not answer well, shipped [took on] much water and are dangerous in anything of a sea.” Construction was faulty on at least three of the barges, which lost their rudders during the short transit down the bay, Barney added.27
On April 28 Barney received some good news. The Senate confirmed his special status as a captain in the U.S. Flotilla Service and conferred the rank of lieutenant on his two subcommanders, Frazier and Solomon Rutter. Because he commanded his own flotilla, Barney assumed the title of commodore.
Barney set out on a second cruise from Baltimore on April 29, and within days reported that his smaller galleys continued to suffer from construction and design defects. “I had to take everything out of the barges of the second class, even their shot (except fifteen rounds) and put it into the large boats,” he wrote Jones. “In going down, and whilst laying off Point Lookout at anchor, I was very near losing them, as they took in great quantities of Water; to remedy which, I have concluded to have Wash-boards put round them about eight Inches high, which will keep out the water and of course make them more safe, I am Obliged to do this as the men are very unwilling to remain in them in their present state.”28
The flotilla encountered fierce gales as it proceeded down the bay, and Barney put in for shelter at Drum Point at the mouth of the Patuxent River. He sent out scouts to investigate reports that the British were active on the Potomac. The scouts returned with word that the British were evacuating slaves. On May 3 Barney sent the Vigilant and the Lookout Boat to scout the Potomac. On learning the river was clear of British warships, he moved his entire flotilla there and anchored in the Potomac from May 8 to May 9. Once again the second-rate barges wallowed in heavy weather, even at anchor. Barney told Jones that had it not been for the weather, he would have “gone into Tangier Sound for a day or two,” even with the faulty second-rate barges.29
Logistics were another of Barney’s concerns. Gunboat No. 137, his supply vessel, was a disaster. The gunboat was a dreadfully poor sailor and, worse, could barely carry the provisions Barney needed. He reported to Jones,
On examining the Bread put onboard the gunboat I found a great quantity has been wet by leaks in her deck, which Obliges me to take every thing out and to have her caulked, before she can serve again; indeed sir, she and No. 138 are both such miserable tools I do not know what to do with them, they cannot carry any thing more than their own armament, as 3500 lb. bread bags filled her, the salt provision on deck where their men were obliged to sleep, and they sail so bad, that I am afraid to trust them out of my sight ahead or astern.30
The flotilla returned to Baltimore on May 11, and Barney begged Jones for permission to hire a schooner to act as a supply and hospital boat. Jones denied the request, telling the commodore to make do with what he had and suggesting he use the Asp as his supply ship. The Asp, however, was still at the Washington Navy Yard undergoing refit and would never join the flotilla.31 The shakedown cruises did embolden Barney and cement his belief in the ability of his flotilla to elude the British. He slipped past the ship of the line Dragon unseen off Kent Island on his first cruise, and on the second he boldly entered and anchored in the Potomac, sailing unseen past multiple Royal Navy patrols.
Now back in Baltimore, Barney began planning for his next voyage, one in which he was determined to bring his enemy to action. On May 29 he set out with a force of eighteen ships. Among them were his flagship, the Scorpion, armed with one long 24-pounder cannon, one 18-pounder, and two 12-pounder carronades; the Vigilant, armed with a long 18-pounder cannon; the Lookout Boat, armed with an 18-pounder carronade; three first-rate barges each armed with a long 24-pounder cannon and one 42-pounder carronade; four first-rate barges each armed with a long 18-pounder cannon and a 32-pounder carronade; two second-rate barges each armed with one long 18-pounder cannon and a 24-pounder carronade; and four second-rate barges each armed with one long 12-pounder cannon and one 24-pounder carronade; as well as gunboat No. 138, armed with a long 18-pound cannon and two 12-pound carronades, and gunboat No. 137, which was unarmed and carried the flotilla’s supplies. The flotilla arrived off the mouth of the Patuxent River just as the British were preparing for their next operation.
Capt. George Watts of the frigate Jaseur must have been surprised when he looked north off the quarterdeck of the brig on the morning of June 1, 1814, and saw a forest of masts moving toward him. The Jaseur was anchored off Kedges Strait, near Smith Island on the Eastern Shore. The force moving toward her was the Chesapeake Flotilla.
Barney had reached the Patuxent River after a two-day transit from Baltimore. He set out at 3 a.m. on June 1 with the intention of attacking and capturing one of the smaller British warships operating near the Royal Navy anchorage on Tangier Island. A convoy of seven merchant ships intent on running the blockade sailed with the flotilla.
Operating alone, the Jaseur offered a tempting target. At 5 a.m., however, Barney’s lookouts spotted the 7-gun schooner St. Lawrence. The schooner was operating near the mouth of the Potomac in support of the ships’ boats and barges Admiral Cockburn had sent to reinforce Capt. Robert Barrie. Barney turned his sights from the Jaseur to the St. Lawrence and the boats he could see operating near the schooner.
Barrie had orders from Cockburn to “do any mischief on either side of the Potomac which you may find within your power” and had the authority to extend his operations as far upriver as Point Lookout or as far west as he pleased. He was “at full liberty to act as circumstance may point out to you as being most advisable for the service.”32 Barrie had set off at 8 p.m. on May 31 with three barges of sailors and marines from the Albion under Lt. George Urmston and four barges from the Dragon under Lt. George Pedlar. The British rowed through the night and at daybreak arrived off St. Jerome Creek, which flows into the Chesapeake just north of the Potomac. Barrie signaled the St. Lawrence to move into a covering position. Lt. David Boyd, commanding the former American privateer, moved toward the mouth of the creek with the tenders Catch-Up-a-Little and Erie trailing behind. Barrie ordered his boat crews to begin scouting the area, and around 9 a.m. on June 1 the British spotted the flotilla, although they still had no idea what it was.33
The Chesapeake Flotilla advanced toward the British arrayed in three divisions, each flying a broad red, white, or blue pennant. Barney commanded the red division, leaving his son, Maj. William Barney, in charge of the Scorpion. Lieutenant Frazier commanded the white division, and Lieutenant Rutter the blue. Using “sails and oars,” as Barney put it, the Americans steered toward Barrie, smelling blood.34
Barney’s aggressive approach put Barrie at an immediate disadvantage. Barrie believed that he was under attack from twenty-five vessels, not knowing that seven of the American vessels were unarmed merchant ships. He realized his force of seven barges was no match for the Americans bearing down on him and ordered a hasty retreat toward the St. Lawrence. He also played his trump card, signaling the Dragon to come to his assistance. The 74-gun ship of the line weighed anchor, but contrary winds at first prevented her from joining the brewing fight.35
The Chesapeake Flotilla bore down on the St. Lawrence on a wind from the north. Barney’s force arrived off St. Jerome Creek at 1 p.m., and then the weather that had so favored the Americans shifted. The winds became light and variable before swinging around to the south, bringing with them one of the summer storms that mark that season on the Chesapeake. The wind shift allowed the Dragon to raise sail and head to Point Lookout, directly toward the flotilla, a move that caught Barney off guard. He ordered the flotilla, which was sailing south, to head north into the Patuxent ahead of the British behemoth because the Royal Navy force now had the Potomac blocked. The flotillamen, with the British in pursuit, rowed mightily for Cedar Point, which marks the southern mouth of the Patuxent River. The British attempted to slow the Americans by firing rockets at the flotilla’s barges. The rockets had a longer range than the carronades several of the ships’ boats carried but were much less accurate. The noise and smoke they made, however, alarmed the American sailors.36
The American boats reversed course and moved into the shelter of the Patuxent, all except gunboat No. 137, which labored against the wind and the heavy sea. The gunboat was crucial to Barney because she carried most of the flotilla’s provisions, and as the British pursuers closed on her Barney ordered the Scorpion and gunboat No. 138 to cover No. 137 while the rest of the flotilla again turned about. Barney “sent men onboard 137 to row and tow her in, the tide and wind being against us.” While the extra hands attempted to row No. 137 away from Barrie, Barney reported, the Scorpion and No. 138 “opened a fire on the large schooner [the St. Lawrence], who was leading in with a number of barges.” The St. Lawrence bore off under the combined weight of the flotilla’s guns, giving the American mariners the opportunity they needed to row No. 137 to safety.37
After he saw Barney’s force safely enter the Patuxent, Barrie tried to lure the flotilla back into open water by attacking the seven merchant ships that had followed Barney down the bay. “I endeavored to tempt him to separate his forces by directing Lt. Pedlar with the Dragon’s barge and cutter, to cut off a schooner under Cove Point.”38 Barney, however, refused to permit Barrie to goad him into combat, instead allowing the British to capture and burn one of the merchant boats.
Barney had eluded the British for a third time, although he failed in his objective to attack the Royal Navy anchorage. The British use of rocket barges caught him somewhat by surprise, even though Cockburn had used them throughout his 1813 campaign. Barney wrote to Jones, “I find they can be thrown further than we can our shot; and conclude from this essay, this will be their mode of warfare against the flotilla.”39
The Chesapeake Flotilla anchored three miles up the Patuxent River while the Dragon and the St. Lawrence anchored at the mouth of the river along with most of the barges. Barrie sent several of the ships’ cutters back to Cockburn for reinforcements. Barney expected the move, writing to Jones, “Some attempt may probably be made to attack us. . . . In a day or two I expect the enemy will make their arrangements.” He asked Jones to send any troops in the area to help prevent a land attack on his anchorage.
After sealing off the mouth of the river, Barrie asked Cockburn to send the brig Jaseur and at least one frigate, which would allow him to “venture up the river, as our boats would be able to tow the frigate should it be necessary.” The additional force would tip the balance back in the Royal Navy’s favor in any direct encounter with the Americans.40
Both sides began moving reinforcements to the area. Cockburn ordered Capt. Alexander Kerr to bring up the Loire from Lynnhaven Bay “with any other ships of war” anchored there,41 while Maj. Alexander Stuart marched to St. Leonard Town in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, with a three-hundred-man battalion of the 36th U.S. Infantry Regiment. Once they arrived, the troops would guard against the overland attack Barney expected. However, they would be of no use against the tactics Barrie and Cockburn decided to employ against the flotilla and the people living along the Patuxent River.