Sir: As the Chesapeake appears now ready for sea, I request that you will do me the favor to meet the Shannon with her, ship to ship, to try the fortune of our respective flags.
Captain Philip Broke
I am an undone man. I am the first British naval officer that has struck his flag to an American.
Captain John Carden
There is more boasting about the defeat of one American frigate than there used to be about the defeat of whole fleets. This is no small compliment to the Americans.
William Cobbett
When President Madison and Congress started the 1812 War, America’s navy numbered only seven frigates, three sloops, and seven brigs. However miniscule these numbers, they could have been far worse. If President Jefferson had had his way, he would have eliminated the entire blue-water fleet. Just as Jefferson believed in relying on militia to defend American territory, he just as zealously believed that gunboats in harbors best protected America’s shores. In 1812, there were 176 gunboats rotting at anchor; they would prove to be militarily useless and thus an utter waste of the $1½ million expended to build, equip, arm, and man them.1
The War Hawks squared the United States off against the world’s greatest naval power, whose fleet then boasted 584 warships, including 102 ships-of-the-line, 124 frigates, and 358 smaller warships. Of course, most of these warships were deployed far from North America. The British initially had only 1 ship-of-the-line, 9 frigates, and 27 smaller warships in Canadian waters, mostly at the fleet’s headquarters at Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Admiralty would steadily reinforce these forces over the next two-and-a-half years.2
Nonetheless, in this David versus Goliath naval war, the Americans won two of three battles by capturing or sinking 17 British warships, while losing 10 warships. Three related reasons explain this – American warships were better made, manned, and armed than comparable British warships. In all, the war at sea at once inspired American jubilation and British despair.3
Madison enormously expanded American naval power when he signed into law the Act Concerning Letters of Marque on June 26, 1812. Indeed, American privateers actually damaged Britain strategically and economically far more than the navy. In the war’s first half year, privateers captured 450 prizes while the navy took only 50. During the entire war, Lloyd’s of London recorded that American privateers took over 1,175 vessels, of which 802 were either brought back to a prize court or destroyed, and 375 recaptured by British warships. These depredations forced the Admiralty to divert ever more warships from blockade to convoy duty. Trans-Atlantic insurance rates soared by 30 percent from 1812 to 1814 even though merchant ships were required to sail in huge, slow-moving convoys protected by warships.4
The 1812 War’s first cannon shots thundered at sea. Anchored in New York’s harbor was a 5-warship flotilla commanded by Commodore John Rodgers that included his flagship the 44-gun President, 56-gun United States, 38-gun Congress, 18-gun Hornet, and 16-gun Argus. His squadron put to sea on June 23, and chased the 38-gun Belvidera away from New York Bay then eastward. The Belvidera finally escaped when the captain ordered all extra equipment and water casks dumped overboard to lighten the load and quicken the speed. The Americans would rarely enjoy such overwhelming naval power again. Rodgers then led his squadron in search of British merchant vessels.
In mounting indignation, Admiral Herbert Sawyer, the Royal Navy’s North America commander, listened to the Belvidera’s captain recount the chase after he brought his battered vessel to Halifax. With Rodgers’ squadron at sea, Sawyer could not implement his plan of blockading each large American port. He assigned Captain Philip Broke to command a ship-of-the-line and four frigates, including the Belvidera, and ordered him to find Rodgers’ squadron and smite the upstart Americans a very stern lesson in naval power and national superiority. After his warships captured the 14-gun Nautilus off Sandy Hook at New York Bay’s entrance, Broke deployed them along the coast from northern New Jersey to New York Bay, with Captain James Dacres’s 38-gun Guerriere, the southernmost.5
Captain Isaac Hull’s 54-gun Constitution was sailing north from Annapolis when lookouts spotted Guerriere on July 12. Hull closed for action then abruptly veered eastward when the rest of Broke’s squadron sailed to support the Guerriere. The chase lasted a week as Hull led his pursuers to Boston, where he safely anchored. Most of Broke’s squadron returned to blockade New York Bay, but the Guerriere continued northward to protect Saint Lawrence Bay against the Constitution and other American warships.
Hull swiftly resupplied the Constitution and sailed from Boston on August 2. He steered toward Saint Lawrence Bay hoping that he and his crew would reap a fortune ravaging British merchant ships. Lookouts on the Constitution and Guerriere spotted each other on August 19, and each captain sailed directly against the other. In less than 30 minutes, the Constitution’s broadsides bashed the Guerriere to the verge of sinking. Dacres struck his colors. Hull removed the Guerriere’s crew before torching it.
The next epic frigate duel erupted on October 25, 1812, when Captain Stephen Decatur’s 56-gun United States blasted Captain John Carden’s 49-gun Macedonia into surrender. Once again superior seamanship and gunnery decided the battle. The United States fired over 70 broadsides to the Macedonia’s 30. The British crew suffered 6 killed and 72 wounded to the America crew’s 7 killed and 5 wounded. This victory was especially symbolic for American propagandists since Carden had a reputation for cruelty and anti-Americanism. Being defeated by the upstart Americans enraged and shamed Carden. In delivering his sword to Decatur, Carden expressed his anguish that ‘I am an undone man. I am the first British naval officer that has struck his flag to an American.’ Decatur hastened to reassure him: ‘You are mistaken, sir; your Guerriere has been taken by us, and the flag of a frigate was struck before yours.’6
The Americans racked up more victories, with the 18-gun Wasp capturing the 16-gun Frolic in October 1812; the 18-gun Hornet, the 18-gun Peacock in February 1813; the 46-gun Essex, the 20-gun Alert and a transport with 197 redcoats in July 1813; the 16-gun Enterprise, the 14-gun Boxer in September 1813; the 32-gun Peacock, the 18-gun Epervier in April 1814; the 32-gun Wasp, the 18-gun Reindeer in May 1814; and the Wasp, the 18-gun Avon in September 1814. Yet, the British won their share, although almost always when their warships spread far more canvas and manned far more cannons than the Americans, such as the capture of the 12-gun Viper by the 32-gun Narcissus in November 1812, the 10-gun Argus by the 11-gun Pelican in August 1813, and the 14-gun Vixen by the 38-gun Belvidera in December 1813. British expeditions destroyed some American warships in their lairs, like the 44-gun Columbia and 22-gun Argus at Washington’s navy yard, and the 28-gun Adams at Castine, Maine. The Royal Navy, supplemented by British privateers, devastated American shipping. In all, the British captured 714 merchant ships and burned 200 or so more. They also captured or destroyed at least 93 American privateers.7
Captain Lawrence commanded the ill-fated 50-gun Chesapeake, the frigate that suffered the unprovoked British attack in 1807. In May 1813, Lawrence and his crew longed for the open sea and prize money reaped from capturing British vessels, but two frigates blocked Boston. One frigate was the 52-gun Shannon. Captain Philip Broke had commanded the Shannon for seven years, and had honed his gunners to fire rapid and deadly broadsides. On May 31, Broke issued a letter to Lawrence with these fighting words: ‘Sir: As the Chesapeake appears now ready for sea, I request that you will do me the favor to meet the Shannon with her, ship to ship, to try the fortune of our respective flags.’8 He promised that the other frigate, the 38-gun Tenedos, would not join the combat no matter what. Honor demanded no other course for Lawrence than to accept this challenge. On June 1, the Chesapeake sailed forth flying a banner reading ‘Free Trade and Sailor’s Rights.’ The frigates closed for combat. Just 13 minutes after the first exchange of broadsides, the Chesapeake struck its colors. British gunners had devastated the Chesapeake with 362 shots, killing 48 and wounding 99, while the Shannon suffered 23 killed and 58 wounded while enduring 158 shots. Lawrence was among the dying, his last words: ‘Don’t give up the ship.’9 News of the Shannon’s triumph sparked jubilation among war-weary Britons. In his Political Register, William Cobbett reported that there was ‘more boasting about the defeat of one American frigate than there used to be about the defeat of whole fleets. This is no small compliment to the Americans.’10
America’s frigate captains ventured ever further toward the ends of the earth. Captain Hull’s Constitution encountered Captain Henry Lambert’s Java off Brazil’s coast on December 29, 1813. The Constitution’s broadsides so badly bashed the Java that, after she struck her colors, Hull ordered her sunk rather than towed to a port.
The era’s most distant naval battles took place in the South Pacific. Captain David Porter commanded the 32-gun Essex, which, during the first half of 1813, ravaged British shipping in the South Atlantic. In June, he sailed into the Pacific, captured a dozen whalers, and converted one into the Essex Junior. On March 26, 1814, the two American warships were anchored at Valparaiso, Chile, when the Royal Navy’s 46-gun Phoebe and 26-gun Cherub appeared. The enemy captains and crews glared at each other and waited for the others to sail from the neutral port. A storm broke the stalemate on March 28. Unsportingly, the British captains sailed against the two American warships when the Essex was disabled. British broadsides killed 58 and wounded 65, while only 5 British sailors were killed and 10 were wounded.11
Initially Whitehall was reluctant to blockade the United States.12 Doing so would exacerbate the problems that British manufacturers suffered from their loss of European markets because of Napoleon’s Continental System. The Admiralty finally derived a compromise between British strategic and economic interests. Trade would continue with New England, the largest market and a mostly anti-war region. The navy would blockade the rest of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Even this less comprehensive blockade took a long time to implement as ever more warships were diverted from distant seas to American waters. By February 1813, the blockade included 15 ships-of-the-line, 15 frigates, and 50 smaller warships.13 With the reopening of Europe’s markets after Napoleon’s empire collapsed, the Admiralty extended the blockade to New England’s coast on April 2, 1814.
The blockade devastated America’s economy. Foreign trade plummeted and, with it, government revenues. Most Americans got poorer as they paid higher prices for goods. Only military contractors reaped fortunes by providing often shoddy equipment, weapons, uniforms, munitions, and provisions to the army and navy.
The Madison administration exacerbated this when, in December 1813, Congress passed a bill that prevented any American ships from leaving port, forbade any British imports, and allowed trade only in licensed neutral vessels. From 1811 to 1814, the tonnage of American ships involved in foreign trade shriveled from 948,000 to 60,000, and tariff revenues from $13.3 million to $6 million.14 This forced the White House to perform its latest flip-flop by getting Congress to revoke the embargo in March 1813, just four months after implementing it. To fight its war, the Madison administration was forced increasingly to rely on loans at higher interest and discount rates.
As if the blockade were not damaging and humiliating enough, the British launched coastal raids to devastate American communities. During spring 1813, Admiral George Cockburn’s flotilla systematically looted and burned, and occasionally raped and murdered its way around Chesapeake Bay, leaving behind smoldering ruins at Frenchtown, Havre de Grace, Georgetown, Fredericktown, Principio, and Hampton.15 Cockburn boasted that his men ‘soon became experts at the art of burning Yankee property.’16 Lieutenant Charles Napier was among the few Britons ashamed of these crimes against humanity, with ‘every horror ... committed with impunity, rape, murder, pillage; and not a man was punished.’17 Yet, typically, the Americans were their own worst enemies. All along, Jefferson’s much vaunted militiamen and gunboat crews could only helplessly watch the destruction of their communities from a safe distance when they did not flee beyond the horizon.
Duels between American and British warships dwindled as the blockade tightened. By early 1813, the Royal Navy had 10 ships-of-the-line, 38 frigates, and 52 smaller warships in American waters, now under Admiral John Warren’s command.18 The British bottled up more American warships in their ports until by late 1814 almost none were at sea. Of America’s frigates, the Royal Navy plugged the Constitution at Boston, the Constellation at Norfolk, the Adams at Alexandria, the President at Newport, and the United States at New London.
Victories in the war’s last naval battles spilt one to two between Britain and America. On January 14, 1815, 3 British frigates, the 40-gun Endymion, 38-gun Pomone, and 38-gun Tenedos caught up to Captain Stephen Decatur’s 52-gun President and pounded him into striking his colors. On February 20, 1815, the Constitution, now commanded by Captain Charles Stewart, squared off against the 34-gun Cyrene and 20-gun Levant near Madeira, and battered them both into surrendering. On March 23, the 20-gun Hornet captured the 19-gun Penguin after a running fight.
Overall, the naval war between Britain and America was far more important psychologically than strategically. The two to one ratio of victories at sea over the British diverted Americans from the mostly dismal news from the frontier. Of course, this same news had the opposite effect on Britain’s politicians and public.
The absurdity of fighting the United States struck ever more Britons. Opposition members of Parliament pointed out that the war cost £10 million a year, five times the Royal Navy’s £2 million payroll. Simply by tripling wages, the Royal Navy could solve its recruitment problem and thus no longer need to press American sailors. This policy would simultaneously end the reason for the war and save money. Conservatives blasted this proposal. Britain was fighting America for more important reasons than mere money – the nation’s sacred honor was at stake. The war would continue until Britain had satisfied its honor.19