French Ensor Chadwick

“ The Chesapeake was taken to Halifax. Lawrence and Ludlow were buried there with every honor. The remains of the former were later taken to New York, where in the churchyard of old Trinity they now lie. Lawrence’s dying words: “Don’t give up the ship,” were later blazoned on a flag flown by Perry on Lake Erie, where the dead hero was to have his revenge, for hero he was, however mistaken in judgment. His fatal action was the ignoring of the value of preparation in war. Discipline and training are as necessary as valor, an axiom which our people are only too slow to learn. ”

“ Scarcely is there an American ship-of-war which has not to boast a victory over the British flag; scarcely one British ship in thirty or forty that has beaten an American. With the bravest seamen and the most powerful navy in the world, we retire from the contest when the balance of defeat is so heavily against us. ”

“ I had learned in Europe long before joining the United States that the respect we exact from foreigners is paid more to America afloat than to a continent they think as far off at least as the moon. They see our men-of-war and they know very well what they have done and, from the appearance and character of our officers, what they might do again—and there is [223] a tangibility in the deductions from knowledge and eyesight which beats books and statistics. ”

“ The French fleet of the Consular and Napoleonic period was now not only ill-officered, but through the constant blockades of the British had but little of the sea habit by which only a navy can be efficient. The Spanish navy had no real organization or other qualities of success under circumstances of even much worse neglect. The British ships, well officered, well manned, and with constant sea practice, had no real antagonists, for it is absurd to compare in efficiency such organizations as that which fought under Nelson at Trafalgar and those under Villeneuve and Gravina in the same battle. ”

“ The Hornet, on the Montagu’s arrival, put to sea late in the evening unmolested.
The war had now lasted six months, and instead of the little American navy being swept from the sea, it had been a David to smite a Goliath. The capture of three British frigates in the three successive combats stirred Britain to the quick. Said the Pilot of London: “Five hundred merchantmen [taken] and three frigates! Can this be true? Will the English people read this unmoved? Any man who foretold such disasters this day last year would have been treated as a madman or a traitor. ”

“ The world recognized the birth of a new power upon the ocean, which the future was to reckon with, though America herself was slow to accept her new situation. We had, however, afloat in 1815, three line-of-battle ships, the Washington, Independence, and Franklin, and in this year we were to end, as has already been mentioned, our Barbary troubles forever by the action of Decatur in command of the largest fleet we were to have at sea for many years. We began a new life with a self-respect which had needed a war for its revival. ”

“ So, too, the control of the sea decided the outcome of the Spanish War. When Sampson’s fleet destroyed Spain’s only battle squadron off Santiago de Cuba, Spain could no longer reinforce her army in Cuba, and surrender was a necessity. Even as this is written Germany’s every sea outlet is closed by the British fleet, so superior in number to the German, and German commerce on the sea is for the time entirely swept away, leaving Great Britain for the moment navally and commercially supreme upon the ocean. ”

“ It would be unjust to the memory of John Adams, to whom the Continental navy chiefly owed its beginnings, and who was ever the vigorous supporter of the newer navy, not to record his life-long views as expressed to the House of Representatives in November, 1800: “I confidently believe that few persons can be found within the United States who do not admit that a navy, well-organized, must constitute the natural and efficient defence of this country against all foreign hostility.” ”

“ In every epoch of difficulty—the French spoliations, the British impressments, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, our Civil War, and the Spanish War—this truth has been painfully apparent in the want of foresight and preparation of an adequate army and navy. It has cost us dear. ”

“ Throughout his career he recognized the importance of its control, and immediately on his arrival at Cambridge to take the command of the American army then collected before Boston, he began to look into the question of a naval force, with a view to capturing the enemy’s supplies. Such capture would not only be a deprivation to the British forces, but a much needed aid to the Americans who needed everything which goes to support an army, excepting food, which the surrounding country supplied for the moment plentifully enough. ”

“ The good citizen is he or she who bears an active hand in cleansing and making merry the black spots of the neighborhood; who cherishes a home however small; who takes an increasingly intelligent interest in all that contributes to the country’s welfare, and feels a keenly patriotic hope for the future of the nation.
For such citizens THE AMERICAN BOOKS are designed—a series of small volumes on current American problems. The keynote of the series will be the discussion of distinctively American movements and questions connected with the future prosperity of the United States. ”

“ Thus ended, practically, the extraordinary career of piracy and slavery which through so many generations had been submitted to by Europe. It was not, however, until 1824, when the demand for continuance of tribute from Holland was successfully resisted, that Algiers finally dismissed the idea of return to her ancient ways.
It should be a proud memory to Americans that it was the American navy which first resisted and brought to terms the barbarous corsairs, so long the scourge of commerce and enslavers of white men. ”

“ And while the canal has lightened our strategic difficulties in that our battle fleet can now reach San Francisco from the Caribbean in a fourth of the time it took the Oregon to make her celebrated passage from San Francisco to Key West, there is upon us the heavy burden of the defence of the isthmus, its position being in effect insular. It can only remain in our hands by our controlling the sea. Fortifications assist in its defence for the time being, but should we go to war it must finally go into the hands of the power with a superior navy. ”

“ The Seven Years’ War had ended only in 1763, and during this period many American privateers were afloat. The slave trade also was a favorite New England occupation, and piracy itself at the period was not altogether disreputable if [32] applied only to those “natural enemies,” the French and Spanish. Nearly all the officers of the new Continental navy had their first war training in privateers, and very frequently during the Revolution officers took a hand at privateering in the moments of enforced leisure when there was no naval ship to which they could be assigned. ”

“ Never did the government of a great country go to war under such conditions of ineptitude as did ours. Buchanan’s effort to reinforce Fort Sumter had come to grief through the folly of General Scott, who had caused the change from the heavily armed war-steamer, Brooklyn, lying at Fort Monroe, to the merchant steamer, Star of the West. ”

“ There had undoubtedly by this time been a falling off in the character of the American crews. The Atlantic now swarmed with privateers which, as in our Revolution, attracted the best men; the navy thus labored under a severe handicap. The privateers did immense damage to British commerce and caused the British merchant to long for peace, but they damaged our real naval interests. This damage would have been more real had not the British naval power now begun to tell in blockade, which became one of absolute strictness. ”

“ The British state of mind was expressed in a letter from Gallatin, then in London, to Monroe, the Secretary of State: “You may rest assured,” he said, “of the general hostile spirit of this nation, and of its wish to inflict serious injury upon the United States; that no resistance can be expected from Europe; and that no better terms will be obtained than the status ante bellum.” And so it turned out. On Christmas Eve, 1814, peace was signed, and though impressment was ignored, it was never again to be attempted. ”

“ The American is mainly an Anglo-Saxon, direct and practical in his way; the Spaniard an oriental, courteous, kindly in the relations of friendship and family, with much that is lovable, but impracticable, tribal in his tendencies, knowing little of the modern phases of government by a constitution, and bloodthirsty and devastating in putting down revolt or in settling political differences. An anarchic century in Spain produced like conditions in Cuba. Our proximity to Cuba and our many commercial interests there were very strong elements in the situation. ”

“ He would have been told that ere seven months had gone the American flag would have been swept from the ocean, the American navy destroyed, and the maritime arsenals of the United States reduced to ashes. Yet not one of the American frigates has struck. They leave their ports when they choose, and return when it suits their convenience. They cross the Atlantic, they visit the West Indies, they come to the chops of the [183] Channel, they parade along the coast of South America. Nothing chases them; nothing intercepts them—nay, nothing engages them but to yield in triumph. ”

“ The French commander had one of the greatest chances in history. The British fleet was in the Delaware awaiting the preparation of the British army to return to New York from Philadelphia. Howe had but six 64’s, three 50’s, and six frigates. They had been a sure prey to [52] the French had there been in command a man of greater energy. But d’Estaing had been transferred at the mature age of thirty-five from the army to the navy, the profession of all others which requires a life-long familiarity, and where the rigidity and formality of the army school of the period were wholly out of place. ”

“ The claim of the Barbary powers was expressed in a statement of their envoy while in London in 1786, to our minister, John Adams: “That Turkey, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco were the sovereigns of the Mediterranean; and that no nation could navigate that sea without a treaty of peace with them.” [13] Europe had practically accepted a situation of the most degrading kind; every nautical power paid tribute in money or presents and all had representatives among the Barbary slaves. ”

“ Perhaps yet more would have come, for just as the war closed, the first war-steamer to be built for over ten years, the Fulton, was ready for sea. With a double hull [221] of such thickness as to be impervious to harm from any but the heaviest guns, moved by a wheel in the middle which was protected from shot, it seems almost a pity that she should not have been tried with her two 100-pound guns upon the ships blockading New York. But even as it was America had good reason to be well satisfied with the work of her navy. ”

“ Fenimore Cooper began the seventeenth chapter of his classic history of the navy by some words of political wisdom which are applicable to this day, and apparently always will be: “Every form of government,” he says, “has evils peculiar to itself. In a democracy there exists a standing necessity for reducing everything to the average comprehension, the high intelligence of a nation usually conceding as much to its ignorance as it imparts. ”

“ He will always stand out boldly as one of the most fearless spirits of the sea, and had he lived in the Napoleonic epoch he would have been met by Napoleon as a kindred soul who might have saved him the great misfortune of Trafalgar, which so changed the history of Europe and the world. ”

“ The services of the small Continental navy thus from the very nature of things could effect comparatively little so long as the ship-of-the-line could go and come as it pleased. It was the French battleship in larger numbers than the English that completely changed the melancholy outlook of 1780 and 1781. In July of the latter year Rochambeau, in a letter to De Grasse urging him to come north, could use the words: “General Washington has but a handful of men.... This country has been driven to bay and all its resources are giving out at once.” ”

“ We have retired from the combat with the stripes yet bleeding on our backs. Even yet, however, if we could but close the war with some great naval triumph, the reputation of our maritime greatness might be partially restored. But to say that it has not hitherto suffered in the estimation of all Europe, and, what is worse, of America herself, is to belie common sense and universal experience. ‘Two or three of our ships have struck to a force vastly inferior!’ No; not two or three, but many on the ocean and whole squadrons on the lakes ”

“ The world was yet a world of piracy, and the extirpation of these wolves of the sea was a work which, when finished in the Mediterranean and in the West Indies, was to continue in the Far East to our own day. The situation, however, in the Caribbean Sea and its adjacent waters was particularly serious from the anarchic conditions arising through the revolt of Spain’s American dominions, with the exception of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, and this last was to join in the upheaval in 1821. ”