John Randolph Spears

“ Although any historian of the American Navy must be almost exclusively occupied with the deeds of men whose chief business it was to secure and promote the peace of the nation, one chapter of this work must be devoted to achievements which, though bloodless and in no sense spectacular, were of great importance not only to the American people but to the whole world. ”

“ Macdonough found there just the workmen needed, and to insure the control of this gateway to the American Union during the next season, he laid, early in the spring, the keel of a full-rigged ship—a corvette—to which he gave the significant name of Saratoga. The forests furnished timber in abundance, the rolling-mills made the bar iron for fastenings, and the foundry turned out no less than one hundred and seventy-seven tons of shot for the great guns. ”

“ At this critical moment a neighboring chief, known to the whites as Po Adam, came to their rescue. He not only guided the boat through the surf, but by brandishing his sabre overawed the waiting natives in the canoes, and Captain Endicott got safely out to sea. There he picked up the four sailors who were swimming from the Friendship, and then all went to a settlement some distance away, called Muckie.
The sailors said that no less than twenty natives had come off to the ship in the first boat. At first they had scattered over the deck with no arms in sight and acting as if full of curiosity. ”

“ In the treaty with England that ended the War of 1812 it was agreed that the United States would assist the mother country in putting down the trade in slaves then carried on between the African and the American coasts. There is, perhaps, nothing more humiliating in the history of the American Republic than the true story of what followed in carrying out the American agreement. How could it be otherwise? For the American nation was ruled by men who believed that slavery was “a Divine institution.” ”

“ The men who had been accustomed to down the running deer and moose found no difficulty in hitting a target with either great gun or musket, even though the deck heaved and fell beneath their feet or their “roosting places” in the tops swayed through wide angles.
For a time the uncertainty as to the character of each ship sighted served to train their nerves, as the work of boarding the merchant ships, which were the only ones seen for a time, gave them experiences of another kind, and then came the day of trial—their first taste of blood. ”

“ Every thread of canvas was spread, and for forty hours the frigate and the sloop stretched away across the stormy sea with every sail as round and firm as the breast of a giant runner; with the weather60 rigging singing taut; with every man on deck alert, and with each captain pacing to and fro without rest, looking at every turn from the sea to the clouds and from them to his sails and then away to the enemy ”

“ Then the Penguin drifted clear. Her bowsprit fell into the sea, broken short off above the figure-head, and her foremast fell over the lee rail. Her bow came up into the wind, and with such canvas as was spread on her mainmast flat aback, she drifted stern on, a helpless wreck.
The Hornet wore around before the wind and came back with a fresh broadside ready, but McDonald hauled down the Penguin’s flag and once more shouted that she had surrendered. The first of the two “actions of a disgraceful character to the Americans” was ended. It had lasted but twenty minutes from the first gun. ”

“ An American naval officer protects an American citizen—protects even his own shipmates—from insult at the hands of a foreign official at his peril. When an American naval officer raises his sword between even the most contemptible of foreign officials and one who wears the American uniform the shadow of “the Foxardo affair,” and of a long train of similar affairs, comes upon him to relax his grasp.
Captain Lewis Warrington having succeeded Porter, he found the work almost completed. ”

“ But when the Phœbe swept up beside the Yankee ship Captain Hillyar experienced a very great revulsion of feeling. He had approached the Essex under the quarter, where not one of her guns could bear on him, and then slightly shifting his helm he ranged up alongside and within fifteen feet of her. And then to his utter discomfiture he found the Yankee guns fully manned, and every man save one was fit and eager for fight. ”

“ The Battles of Lake Erie and Champlain were fought when the nation’s navy was young and ambitious, but let not even the most optimistic patriot abate one jot of his confidence in the men who now stand erect and uncover their heads whenever they see the old flag hoisted to the peak. For in every class that graduates at Annapolis there are Macdonoughs and Perrys and Hulls and Bainbridges and Porters and Nicholas Biddles and John Paul Joneses. ”

“ It is not the weight of metal carried, nor the weight of metal thrown; it is the weight of metal driven home into the enemy that wins the battle.
This, although not the last encounter, was the last real battle of the War of 1812; like the first of the war (Constitution-Guerrière) , and like every other in which the Americans won, and like that between the Shannon and the Chesapeake, where the British were victorious, it proved, beyond dispute, that the most important art known to a naval ship is the art of aiming guns accurately. ”

“ Let the reader travel the whole nation over—travel from Eastport to San Diego and from Whatcom to Key West, he cannot find a region that stirs the blood of the patriot more than does the Adirondacks. Three times since the Americans first fought for liberty came the hosts of the enemy with the north wind into the narrow gulch where lies Lake Champlain—they came in whelming drifts to the Split Rock, to Saratoga, and to Plattsburg. ”

“ As the early morning passed and 8 o’clock drew nigh, the idle seamen in the lookout boat suddenly bent to their oars and drove the swift cutter, with signals fluttering in the air, into the bay. The long roll of the drums beating to quarters on the Yankee ships followed. ”

“ As the student of American naval history turns the leaves of Cooper’s invaluable work, nothing found there is likely to impress him more deeply than the list of names of the officers retained on the naval register after the Peace Establishment Act of 1801. For he will find there at a glance the names of the majority of the heroes of the early days—the names of such men as Dale and Bainbridge and Stewart and Hull and Somers and Decatur and Perry and Macdonough, to bring to mind the notable deeds done when the nation was young. ”

“ The smoke rose up in huge volumes above the loftiest sails and rolled away in bulging clouds on every side, but the men at the great guns of the Wasp, peering through the sulphurous fog, hurled their shot with unerring accuracy, while those that were perched in the tops used their muskets to pick off the officers of the enemy, first of all. ”

“ There is no doubt that Decatur deliberately inflicted a wound that would not prove mortal. Decatur had a fight with the mate of a merchant ship in 1799, in which he wounded the mate precisely as he wounded Barron. He was a dead shot when he chose to be.
Decatur died in the arms of his wife at the mansion on an estate known as Kalorama, a mile from Georgetown, on the night of the duel. He was but forty years old. His body was deposited in a vault at Kalorama on the 24th in the presence of a tremendous concourse of people, including nearly all the officials, American and foreign, of the capital. ”

“ As already intimated, Americans were the most persistent and ingenious promoters of the trade. This was chiefly due to two causes. The first was that the American flag was prima facie evidence that a vessel was an honest trader and it preserved the ship from search by any other cruiser than an American man-of-war. In the next place, the Yankees could build the swiftest and cheapest ships afloat.
To the honor of the Anglo-Saxon race be it said that the British Government led in the attempts to down the damnable traffic, but in the face of the American flag the British cruiser was powerless. ”

“ The Penguin having the weather-gage, in spite of her crippled rigging, was steadily drawing down on the Yankee. It was plain that the British gunners were no match for the Yankees, and Captain Dickenson determined to try boarding. Putting up his helm he sent his ship straight at the Hornet. Just then a bullet stretched him dead on the deck, but First Lieutenant James McDonald took his place and bravely called on the men to follow him. The British bow came crashing against the Hornet’s side just abaft the main rigging. The Yankees flocked to the quarter-deck to repel boarders. ”

“ When it is recalled that the gun-boats that gathered around the Yankee schooner Ticonderoga were driven off by firing bags of musket-balls at them—musket-balls that simply dusted the entire decks of every one in reach—and that these decks were unprotected by bulwarks while each carried a crew of not less than twenty-six (one good authority says an average of fifty each) —when all this is considered, it is fair to add one hundred to the two hundred and seventy killed and wounded of which we are certain. The British unquestionably lost a third of their force afloat. ”

“ On the way to the Bermudas a gale came on, when the President was dismasted. The Endymion was not only dismasted but had to throw over all the guns (short thirty-twos) on her forecastle and quarter-deck. The President was so badly strained when on the bar at Sandy Hook that she was never commissioned in the British Navy. But, although she had been derisively called “the waggon” while she carried the American flag, her lines were followed by her captors in building new ships after she was taken, and so, too, was her style of armament. ”

“ Nevertheless, the favorite British historian James, although he had read Hillyar’s letter, wrote:
“The Essex, as far as is borne out by proof (the only safe way where an American is concerned) , had twenty-four men killed and forty-five wounded. But Captain Porter, thinking by exaggerating his loss to prop up his fame, talks of fifty-eight killed and mortally wounded, thirty-nine severely, twenty-seven slightly.” ”

“ Such exhibitions as this of the American spirit have done more than cannon-shot to promote and to preserve peace between the nations. Captain Hillyar was so much impressed by it that he promised Porter that he, too, would respect the neutrality of the port, and he would have done so, very likely, only that he was handicapped by his orders from the Admiralty, which compelled him to “capture the Essex with the least possible risk to his vessel and crew.” Hillyar was a cool and calculating man of fifty years. ”

“ The American statesmen could not quite see their way to taking possession of the domain on the Pacific, but this they could do: They could and they would prevent England’s grasping it. To this end a strong squadron was ordered around Cape Horn to the Pacific, and the command of it was given to the hero of Lake Borgne, Captain Thomas ap Catesby Jones,—he who with less than two hundred brave seamen on open gun-boats withstood for an hour the shock of a British flotilla, manned by nine hundred and eighty men, besides the officers. ”

“ But because naturalized Americans have not infrequently received harsh treatment when in their native countries, and especially because American law presumes that every accused person is innocent of wrong-doing until proven guilty to the satisfaction of a jury of his peers, it is absolutely essential to the preservation of American rights that every American naval officer hold to Captain Ingraham’s understanding of duty. ”