Perilous Fight Page 10
A month later the prisoners taken from the Chesapeake were transported aboard the Bellona to Halifax. At 9:15 a.m. on Monday, August 30, 1807, having being convicted of mutiny, desertion, and contempt by a court-martial at which he was given no counsel and offered no defense, Ratford was hanged from the fore yardarm of the Halifax, the ship he had deserted from. The three others, “in consideration of their former good conduct,” were sentenced “only … to Corporal Punishment” of five hundred lashes apiece.60
FOR WEEKS war seemed all but certain. “Never since the battle of Lexington have I seen this country in such a state of exasperation as at present,” Jefferson wrote his friend Pierre-Samuel du Pont de Nemours, the French émigré economist and reformer, three weeks after the firing on the Chesapeake, “and even that did not produce such unanimity.” Phineas Bond, Britain’s consul in Philadelphia, had lived in the country for twenty years and had seen eruptions of democratic anger before, and he advised London that this one would die down in the usual manner after some venting of steam, but even he was taken aback by the “universal Ferment” the incident had provoked, with mass meetings in cities up and down the coast denouncing the British action.61 Traveling through New York, Augustus Foster, who also knew something about American mobs, hastened out of his carriage and decided to proceed incognito as soon as he heard the news of the Leopard’s attack—just in time, as it turned out, for a crowd almost immediately congregated and threatened to throw his horse and curricle into the Hudson River.
In Hampton crowds of armed men boarded tenders that had come ashore from the British squadron and demolished two hundred casks of fresh water and burned one of the boats. The funeral for Robert MacDonald, the American seaman who died from his wounds after the Chesapeake returned to Norfolk, brought out four thousand citizens, officials, and dignitaries. “Their blood cries for vengeance, and when our Government directs, vengeance it shall have,” declared a solemn toast to the wounded and dead proclaimed at a meeting attended by nearly seven hundred in Norfolk a few weeks later.62
Not even the new British minister in Washington, David Erskine, was sure if Berkeley’s orders represented a new and more aggressive policy directed from London, but in Washington the administration frantically tried to rush plans into place to prepare for the worst. Jefferson issued a proclamation ordering all British armed ships out of American waters without delay and directed Madison that “the interdicted ships are enemies”; if the British should try to land any men, his orders were to “kill or capture them as enemies.” On July 5 the cabinet called on state governors to make 100,000 militiamen ready; two days later the governor of Virginia was requested to mobilize troops to defend Norfolk and the American navy gunboats in the area against further British attack.63
Stephen Decatur was sent orders to relieve Barron. On July 1 he went aboard the wounded Chesapeake to assume command, and a few hours later Barron limped off past the assembled crew and officers. For the first time since the Chesapeake struck her flag, the colors of the United States broke out aloft, along with Decatur’s broad pennant.
The next day a swarm of shipwrights from the navy yard in Washington arrived and set to work heaving out her wounded masts. Decatur immediately had the guns set right and put the crew to work exercising them relentlessly, sometimes firing them twice a day, working to make second nature the choreography of heaving in three tons of metal with the rope tail tackles; sponging out the sparking embers and ramming home the cartridge bag of powder, then shot and wadding; pricking the cartridge with a wire and pouring in powder from the horn; heaving the gun back out with the side tackles; shifting the aim with handspikes; firing and dodging the sometimes unpredictable direction of the gun’s recoil, which could crush a man in a second; and then doing it again and again until they could do it like machines even when staring death in the face. No American captain ever neglected gunnery practice again.
The British squadron did not depart but neither did it make any aggressive moves, and slowly the sense of crisis began to ease. By the fall, word came that Berkeley’s actions had been officially disavowed by the Admiralty and he was being recalled from Halifax to London. Humphreys too was soon back in England and placed on half pay. He would never again receive a sea command; a few years later he changed his name to Davenport, in acknowledgment, he said, of his “accession to a considerable property in right of his second wife,” which may have been true but was also a convenient way to leave behind his considerable notoriety.
In disavowing Berkeley, the British government underscored that it was not disavowing impressment. The government offered to pay compensation to the families of the American seamen who were killed, and publicly acknowledged that it was contrary to British policy to stop national ships belonging to a neutral power. But it adamantly rebuffed attempts by Monroe in London to widen the discussion of the Chesapeake affair to include a comprehensive resolution of America’s longstanding complaints about the British policy of stopping and impressing sailors out of American merchant ships. “They insist upon mixing two questions which we insist upon separating. We are ready to atone where we were wrong, but determined to maintain our rights,” the British foreign minister, George Canning, told a colleague. Most British newspapers thought even that was going too far, and expressed satisfaction, as one put it, that American “arrogance” received “a severe rebuke” in the form of the Leopard’s broadsides.64
· · ·
RECRIMINATIONS OVER the Chesapeake affair continued to reverberate within the American navy for years. American public opinion in 1807 was already turning against what Jefferson once termed that “most barbarous of appeals,” the practice of challenging men to duels over personal disagreements. In the aftermath of the sensational duel in 1804 that left Alexander Hamilton dead at the hand of Vice President Aaron Burr, antidueling associations were formed, sermons were preached, and editorials denounced the practice as a barbaric throwback. In 1806 Congress made it a criminal offense for officers of the army to issue challenges.
But not for officers of the navy: Congress may have felt powerless to stop dueling between naval officers both because many of their duels were fought in foreign ports and because it had become a virtual epidemic in the service. One in twelve American navy officers who died on active duty before 1815 were killed in duels, eighteen in all; easily twice that number had fought a duel; and every officer lived with the knowledge that his reputation for courage was always liable to be tested on the field of honor. Many of the duels were fought over ridiculous disputes or slights, but the loss of respect that an officer faced from ignoring even a slight was far from trivial. Midshipman Richard Somers had once challenged the entire midshipmen’s berth aboard the frigate United States after they ostracized him for failing to properly defend his honor—or so they felt—when fellow midshipman Stephen Decatur had teasingly called him “a fool” and Somers had let the remark pass. Actually, Decatur and Somers were close friends, had been since boyhood, and had thought nothing of the matter. But it was clear Somers now had to defend his honor. Selecting Decatur as his second, Somers exchanged shots with his first opponent and took a ball in his right arm; switching to his left hand, he faced his second opponent and missed him completely, taking a ball in his thigh this time; overruling Decatur’s insistence that he stop, he then took on his third opponent with Decatur propping up his wavering right elbow and somehow managed to slightly wound his adversary. At that point the remaining midshipmen agreed that honor had been satisfied.65
It would have taken a miracle in the wake of the Chesapeake’s humiliation for men of this culture of honor to avoid trading accusations that would lead to pistols at ten paces. If Barron thought that his officers would close ranks around him as the wardroom of the Philadelphia had around William Bainbridge, he was disabused of the notion within minutes of striking the Chesapeake’s flag. While the British boarding party was still aboard carrying out their search for deserters and Barron was lying wounded in his cabin, a bloody rag
tied around his leg, he had called his officers in, sent his servant out, ordered the doors shut, and asked for their views. Gordon hesitated and finally opined that Barron had “spared the effusion of blood, but it would have been better had we given her a few broadsides” before giving the order to surrender. Allen did not mince his words. “We have disgraced our flag,” he said with unconcealed disdain.66
The next day the officers signed a letter to Secretary of the Navy Smith.
The undersigned officers of the late U.S. Ship Chesapeake feeling deeply sensible of the disgrace which must be attached to the … premature surrender of the U.S. Ship Chesapeake without their previous knowledge or consent and desirous of proving to their country and the world, that it was the wish of all the undersigned to have rendered themselves worthy of the flag under which they had the honor to serve, by a determined resistance to an unjust demand, do request the Secretary of the Navy to order a Court of Inquiry into their conduct … and that an order may be issued for the arrest of Commodore James Barron on the charges herewith exhibited.67
Allen wrote his father a few days later, “You cannot appreciate you cannot conceive of my feeling at this moment, Was it for this I have continued so long in the service against your wishes—the wish of all my friends; to be so mortified, humbled—cut to the soul … I was near cursing him … give us a Commander give us a man to lead to us to glory.”
Three weeks later he gave vent to more specific accusations. The half hour Barron had kept the British lieutenant waiting for his answer he spent “dictating, penning, and copying” when he could have used the time to get the ship cleared for action and the men to their guns, Allen told his father. “Now had the men been beat to Quarters … in 20 minutes they could have been in complete readiness for a fight (although we had on board a raw undisciplined crew, part of whom were never stationed at a gun in their lives before) But NO it was the wish of the Commodore.” Questioned at the court of inquiry, Allen minced no words at all: “I do believe that the surrender of the Chesapeake was principally owing to Commodore Barron’s want of courage and want of conduct.”68
Barron, for his part, wrote to Dr. Bullus on July 3 blaming everyone but himself. “The gunners Worthless Cowardly trifling in the extreme … Allen … the most Vindictive Rascal of them all he came to that Ship with all the Prejudices that his friend Comdr R[odgers] could inculcate and I am induced to believe that all the Reports now in circulation Prejudicial to me have originated with him … about Striking the Colors, believe me, that there was no order of mine executed with one hundreth part of the Alacrity that this was.”69
A relative of Barron’s called out Gordon over his implied criticism of his commander and they exchanged seven shots; an argument over whether Gordon’s challenger fired too soon on the last shot led to another duel, between Gordon and the man’s second, in which both men were wounded. Two of the Chesapeake’s midshipmen disagreed on whether Barron was a coward and fought a duel in which Barron’s accuser was wounded in the thigh. Gordon fought yet another duel in which he was seriously wounded in the lower abdomen, an injury that left him with “an air hole in his side” that never healed. Finally, Secretary Smith ordered Decatur to forbid any further duels among his officers. In all, nine duels were fought as a result of the Chesapeake’s surrender.70
Following the court of inquiry, Barron was brought up before a court-martial. Stephen Decatur was named to the court and tried to recuse himself, writing the secretary of the navy that as soon as the event occurred he had “formed and expressed an opinion that Commo. Barron had not done his duty,” but the secretary waved that aside. The president of the court, Commodore Rodgers, Barron’s old enemy, had no such compunctions. Barron would always claim that he had been made a scapegoat, but the most damaging testimony came from his own mouth. “What was my duty with the Leopard? My duty was defense; not attack—resistance, not assault. It was my duty to use my utmost exertions to keep my ship out of battle, not to bring her to battle with the ship of a friendly power.” He was sentenced to suspension from the navy for five years.71 The Chesapeake’s hapless gunner was dismissed from the service and the captain of marines given a reprimand for failing to see that his men had proper cartridges for their muskets. All the other officers were cleared of any wrongdoing.
As more distant repercussions from the Chesapeake affair rippled through the navy, it at times seemed a contest as to whether defiance or demoralization would have the upper hand. The Chesapeake was supposed to have relieved the Constitution on the Mediterranean station. The Constitution’s cruise had stretched on and on, to four years now; many of the sailors’ two-year enlistments had long since expired; and as the weeks went by with no sign or word of their relief, discontent and restlessness had grown. By the time the Constitution finally received her recall orders on August 18, 1807, five of her men were in irons following a near mutiny.
Her commander, Commodore Hugh G. Campbell, had handled the incident with a judiciousness and tact that appeared to have defused the immediate crisis and regained the crew’s respect, but still it was an ugly situation. The confrontation started when one of the ship’s much-disliked lieutenants, William Burrows, had tried to have two men flogged for going too far from the ship when the crew had been allowed to go swimming one evening at anchor in Syracuse harbor. Burrows had shouted to the men to come back, but the men had not heard him at first; when they did come aboard, Burrows ordered the men to strip and told a boatswain’s mate to take a rope to them. An angry knot of seamen immediately formed, one shouting to the men they were fools if they obeyed the order to remove their shirts; the boatswain’s mate threw down his rope; and Burrows, in a rage, went for one of the delinquent men with a handspike.
Campbell had been ashore, and when he returned a little after eight o’clock, he found the marines and officers under arms and took in the situation at once. “Follow me to my cabin,” he told the lieutenant on deck. “I fear me there has been some misconduct among the officers as well as among the crew.” The next morning Campbell mustered the crew and asked those whose enlistments had expired to state their grievances. The men complained of the cruel treatment they had suffered under the harsh regime of the ship’s lieutenants; they were especially resentful that men whose enlistments had expired months earlier should be flogged at all, which outraged their sense of justice. They said if the captain would sail for home at once they would quietly obey his orders; if not, they would take the ship home themselves. “Well,” Campbell replied, “if you have a mind to take the ship, you may.” He promised, however, that if they could wait for him to conclude his business he would sail for America as soon as possible and henceforth no man would be punished unless he deserved it. A short while later, when news of the Chesapeake affair reached the ship at Málaga, Campbell called the crew together and asked if they were ready to fight their way through the British navy back to America if war had broken out, as was rumored. The men had given three hearty cheers in the affirmative.72
The Constitution arrived in Boston in October 1807 after an ultimately uneventful crossing. Campbell recommended that five men be court-martialed, but Secretary Smith overruled him, ordered the men discharged from the service, and left it at that. The frigate was moved to the navy yard in New York, where more than year’s worth of deferred maintenance lay before her; she needed a mainmast, an entire new set of sails, new topgallant masts and dozens of other spars, new rigging, boats, water casks.73 America’s naval presence was now confined to her own ports and yards.
Iron guns of the American navy (Naval History & Heritage Command)
CHAPTER 3
“A Defence Worthy of Republicans”
A WOODEN ship began to rot the instant it touched water, rotted all the faster when it was laid up in port, as all the ships of America’s small navy now were; but these were still fine ships, among the finest in the world. They were the offspring of an American shipbuilding tradition that went back to early colonial times, old enough to have ga
ined much practical acumen but still too young and small to be afflicted with the pilfering, chicanery, corruption, bureaucracy, and conservatism that were the bane of the shipyards of as vast and venerable an institution as the Royal Navy of the last decade of the eighteenth century.
In early 1794, as Congress was moving to approve the construction of the first ships for the new United States navy—the capture of ten American merchant ships by Algerine corsairs the previous October had swayed even some of Secretary of State Jefferson’s Republican followers to support the bill—Joshua Humphreys, a Philadelphia Quaker who had overseen the construction of several warships during the Revolution, set down his ideas about what those new ships would need to look like. He had written Robert Morris, one of the state’s first two United States senators and an influential figure in naval matters ever since serving as agent of marine for the Continental Congress during the Revolution. Morris was also a fabulously wealthy man, or at least had been before issuing his own personal notes for $1.4 million to help finance the Yorktown campaign in 1781. “It is time this country was possessed of a Navy,” Humphreys began, and immediately got to the point. “As our navy must for a considerable time be inferior in numbers,” he wrote, its ships had to be individually more formidable than any enemy ships of the same class they were likely to encounter: “such Frigates as in blowing weather as would be an overmatch for double deck Ships, & in light winds, to evade coming to action.”
In other words, they had to be large enough to carry armaments that would outgun even a double-decker ship of the line when rough seas prevented the more powerful vessel from opening its lower gunports; they had to be fleet enough to outsail the larger ship in light breezes. And in an equal match, they should hold their own against any enemy frigate known, and even smaller ships of the line up to sixty-four guns. Humphreys thought the keel should be a minimum of 150 feet long, about 20 feet longer than the largest British frigates of the day. “Ships built on these principles will render those of an Enemy in a degree useless, or require a greater number before they dare attack our Ships,” Humphreys argued.1