Perilous Fight Page 9

  He was tall, over six feet, and strongly built but also overweight and nearsighted, giving him a perpetual squint. He was amiable and made friends easily. He had also acquired his share of enemies. An apparently offhand but too familiar remark to Stephen Decatur had resulted in a noticeable frostiness between them of late. Strolling through Norfolk one day in February 1806 with Decatur and some other navy officers, Barron had tried to defend Decatur from the ribbing one of the others started to give him about “the particular attraction” that brought him to town. Barron spoke up and said that no, he knew that Decatur’s affections were elsewhere engaged. That, anyway, was how things stood as far as Barron knew; Decatur had told him earlier of his engagement to a woman in Philadelphia. What Barron didn’t know, but which the other officers apparently did, was that Decatur had since met Susan Wheeler, the daughter of Norfolk’s mayor, had fallen head over heels for her, and was planning to marry her just a few weeks later—having abruptly broken off his other engagement, a fact he didn’t particularly care to have made public. Mortified at having his less than completely honorable conduct brought to light, Decatur had turned on his heels and walked off. Barron was notably absent from the list of guests at the wedding.48

  Barron had also made a bitter enemy of John Rodgers. That in itself was not terribly surprising; Rodgers picked fights with everyone. Rodgers had once addressed a furious letter to Edward Preble stating that while their present duties constrained him “from requiring you to explain your observation on the comparative good order” of their respective ships “and other incoherent remarks” Preble had made, “when we meet in the United States you shall then be explicitly informed of my opinion of your conduct.”49 Although nothing further happened in that instance, Rodgers’s feud with Barron came within a whisker of an actual duel in February 1807. Rodgers thought Barron had tried to thwart his chances to assume command of the Mediterranean squadron when Samuel Barron had fallen ill; when Rodgers did get the appointment and Barron wrote to congratulate him, Rodgers dismissed him in a message sent through Bainbridge as “two faced” and a “Judas,” and dared Barron to send him a challenge when they returned to America. “I shall impute it to a want of what no gentleman—one who wears a uniform—should be deficient in” should Barron fail to do so, he added for good measure.50

  Both men named seconds, and the dictates of honor at that point took charge; any hint of wanting to avoid a “meeting” would now be taken as a sign of cowardice, which was worse than swallowing whatever the original affront had been. Barron was particularly touchy since delays caused first by an illness and then by an order from the secretary of the navy forbidding him to leave Norfolk—in an attempt to avert the impending duel—had started rumors that he was trying to back out. That forced Barron to declare that if Rodgers “will come to Norfolk and accede to my terms of short distance”—meaning an almost certainly fatal outcome for one or both of the men—he was ready; failing that, he later proposed, he would have no alternative but “breaking my orders and seeking you where you are to be found.” As the men were on the verge of meeting in Havre de Grace, Maryland, the seconds negotiated an agreement. A letter from them to Rodgers was published, declaring that Barron “does not now perceive the necessity of calling on you,” though he remained “injured by the style of your reply,” and at the same time expressing their certainty that Rodgers could not “entertain a suspicion dishonorable to captain Barron” and had spoken out of “instantaneous irritation” only.51

  Whatever the truth about Barron’s courage or lack thereof, most of the Chesapeake lieutenants were Rodgers’s protégés, and most were willing to put a doubtful interpretation on Barron’s conduct in this affair of honor. Meanwhile, though, they had seen little of their commanding officer. Barron left the job of bringing the ship down to Master Commandant Charles Gordon, his second in command. Barron traveled to his home in Hampton to wait for their arrival. Before leaving the navy yard, Barron had complained that the gunpowder supplied by the navy yard was “not fit for service.” The navy department replied that he could have it “remanufactured” when he reached Malta.52 As Gordon brought the ship past Mount Vernon on the way down the Potomac, he ordered the customary sixteen-gun salute to the grave of George Washington. Henry Allen, who was in charge of carrying out the salute, found to his consternation that half of the cartridges were the wrong size for the guns. Gordon, furious, ordered the gunner placed under arrest. Just below Mount Vernon, Dr. Bullus and his wife, three children, and two servants came aboard. Their small mountain of baggage, crated furniture, and household paraphernalia was stowed as best it could be about the frigate’s gun deck.

  At Norfolk still more passengers and baggage joined the ship. Gaetano Carusi, with his wife and family, and several other Italian musicians were returning home after two utterly miserable years in the service of the United States. Recruited to lead the newly created Marine Band, practically browbeaten by American officers in Sicily into coming to Washington at the meager pay of $12 a month, Carusi had experienced nothing but one disappointment after another. (At one point, the commandant of the Marine Corps, who wanted nothing to do with the musicians, put them to work digging latrines in the hope of getting them to quit.) Paying $40 out of his own pocket to get to Norfolk, Carusi was relieved to be seeing the last of a country that, he said, had only “deceived, betrayed, and insulted” him.53

  Twelve miles east of Norfolk, at the mouth of the Chesapeake, lay Lynnhaven Bay, the habitual anchoring point of a strong British squadron that had been operating in the area since the summer of 1806. Relations between the British and the locals had generally been much better than they were in New York. The British ships had arrived there after chasing three French warships into Annapolis, and had remained ever since to keep the French bottled up. British officers frequently went into Norfolk and were generally welcomed as an addition to the social life of the town; they were even more enthusiastically welcomed by the farmers of Princess Anne County, who suddenly had a new and very high-paying customer for their cattle and produce right at their doorstep.

  The proximity to American soil was also welcomed by more than a few British sailors, who began deserting at a steady clip. In February 1807, while the officers of the frigate Melampus were giving a party on board for some of the ladies and gentlemen from Norfolk they had become acquainted with, five of the crew jumped into the captain’s gig and rowed like madmen for shore. A sentry on deck challenged them with a hail; that was followed by a volley of musket fire from the ship’s marines, but the men reached Sewell’s Point safely, gave three cheers, and vanished into the countryside. A few weeks later a boat crew sent from the sloop of war Halifax to retrieve a kedge anchor took advantage of a rain squall that hid them from view of the ship to beat it to shore, threatening the midshipman who was in command of the party that they would beat his brains out if he tried to stop them. Musket fire and then a cannon shot echoed from the Halifax, but the boat was soon completely shrouded in the mist and lowering dusk, and it too reached Sewell’s Point.

  Within days four of the deserters were aboard the Chesapeake, having signed on to her crew. Three were Americans, all from the Melampus: Daniel Martin, an African American man from Westport, Massachusetts; William Ware, an “Indian looking” black man from Maryland; and John Strachan, a white man from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The fourth, Jenkin Ratford from the Halifax, was English, which the American recruiter in Norfolk apparently knew perfectly well, since he asked him if he didn’t have “a second name” to use; Ratford was entered on the ship’s books as John Wilson.

  The Halifax’s captain stormed into Norfolk to demand his men back and was treated to something of a practical-joke runaround, made worse when he encountered Ratford himself on the street. In his joy of liberation in what he loudly declared to be “the Land of Liberty,” Ratford unleashed a string of verbal abuse at his former captain that he had no doubt been saving up for years. The captain confronted the American lieutenant in charge o
f the recruiting rendezvous, who referred him to the local civil authorities; he then went to the mayor, who referred him to Decatur, as commander of the Norfolk Navy Yard; Decatur referred him back to the recruiter. Allen heard rumors in town that the British were prepared to take the men back by force.54

  On the morning of June 21, the fifty-gun ship of the line Leopard ran up Lynnhaven Bay and dropped her anchor by the Melampus and the seventy-four-gun ship of the line Bellona. On her way from Halifax, the Leopard had stopped and searched a dozen American merchant ships and pressed several men from them; just two days earlier she had seized an American schooner off the Delaware capes carrying sugar and coffee to Philadelphia from Havana, taken the crew aboard, and torn up their American protection certificates.55

  A few hours after the Leopard’s arrival, Commodore Barron went aboard the Chesapeake, and the American frigate at last weighed anchor and dropped down the roads, preparing to stand to sea the next morning.

  HENRY ALLEN was on deck as officer of the watch as the Chesapeake passed the British ships in Lynnhaven Bay at about nine on the morning of June 22, 1807. A signal broke out on the Bellona, and soon Allen noticed the Leopard standing out under easy sail ahead of them, apparently in no hurry to take advantage of the favorable southwesterly wind to get to sea.

  At noon, as the Chesapeake approached the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, the wind shifted to the southeast, forcing her to tack several times to clear the land. By now the Leopard was several miles to the south and unmistakably began dogging the American’s course, tacking when she tacked, always staying to windward, steadily closing their gap to a mile. Allen’s unease grew as he saw that the Leopard’s lower gunports were open. “This fellow is coming on board of us to demand deserters and if they are not delivered up we shall have hell to hold,” muttered the ship’s sailing master.56 From time to time Barron and Gordon cast a glance at the British ship but said nothing. At 2:30 dinner was served in the captain’s cabin, and the ship’s commanding officers went below.

  It was the normal courtesy for a ship wishing to speak another to come up on her leeward side. But around three, as the Chesapeake slowed to put off the Norfolk pilot, the Leopard suddenly shot up on her windward quarter, fifty or sixty yards away. All her guns were run out, their tompions removed. The Leopard’s captain, Salusbury Pryce Humphreys, hailed that he had dispatches for the commander of the Chesapeake; Barron shouted back for him to send a boat aboard and he would heave to.

  Standard orders for every warship of every navy of the world called for beating to quarters when approaching another ship of war, sending her crew running to battle stations on the signal traditionally given by the beating of the marines’ snare drum. Barron would later insist that he had neglected to do so because he had no clue of any unfriendly intentions on the part of the British ship, even when he saw the Leopard’s guns run out. If so, he was certainly disabused of the notion a minute later, when he read the astonishing order handed to him in his cabin by the Leopard’s lieutenant. Even the British recognized that a foreign “national ship” was sovereign territory. The order from Vice Admiral George Cranfield Berkeley, commander in chief of the North American station, was addressed to all the British ships under his command, and as much as it tried to disguise the fact, it was an act of territorial infringement tantamount to war:

  Whereas many Seamen, subjects of His Brittanic Majesty, and serving in His Ships and Vessels as per margin, while at Anchor in the Chesapeak deserted and entered On Board the United States frigate called the Chesapeak, and openly paraded the Streets of Norfolk in sight of their Officers under the American flag, protected by the Magistrates of the Town, and the Recruiting Officer belonging to the above mentioned American Frigate … the Captains & Commander of His Majestys Ships and Vessels under my Command are therefore hereby required and directed in case of meeting with the American frigate the Chesapeak at Sea, and without the limits of the United States to shew to the Captain of her this Order; and to require to search his Ship for the deserters from the before mentioned Ships.… and if a similar demand should be made by the American, he is to be permitted to search for any Deserters from their Service, according to the Customs and usage of Civilized Nations in terms of peace and Amity with each other.57

  Attached was a note from Humphreys, which he would later explain was his attempt “as a gentleman, to soften and ameliorate the apparent severity and harshness” of Berkeley’s order that it was his duty to obey:

  The Captain of the Leopard will not presume to say anything in addition to what the Commander in Chief has stated, more than to express a hope, that every circumstance respecting them may be adjusted, in a manner that the harmony subsisting between the two countries, may remain undisturbed.58

  Barron asked the lieutenant to sit down while he wrote a reply. A half hour passed and the lieutenant began getting very uncomfortable. A signal broke out on the Leopard. Finally, after another ten minutes, Barron handed over his answer. In it he stated that he knew of no deserters on his ship, but added that he was “instructed never to permit the crew of any ship that I command to be mustered by any other but her own officers.”

  Only as the lieutenant was being rowed back did Barron finally order Gordon to get the men to quarters, but even then he phrased it in a hesitant way, saying only, “You had better get your gun deck clear”; Gordon thought that might mean only to be ready to beat to quarters. After several more minutes’ hesitation, Barron told Gordon to bring the men to quarters, but without a drumroll or letting the men show themselves through the gunports so the British could not “charge us with making the first hostile show.”

  The result was utter confusion. The marine drummer, not understanding this unusual order, started beating his drum only to be hit by Gordon with the hilt of his sword to stop him. Many of the crew didn’t know what to make of that and thought the order had been countermanded. The gun deck was jammed with equipment and supplies and Dr. Bullus’s luggage and furniture. Henry Allen rushed to his station as captain of the second division of guns and tried to get his men to start clearing away 720 feet of six-inch anchor cable that lay directly behind the guns, throwing barrels and casks down the main hatch, carrying down to the cockpit two decks below nine of the sick men who’d had their hammocks strung directly over the guns. Just then came a single shot from the Leopard, then another, then a crashing broadside that cut through the Chesapeake’s masts and sails.

  The Chesapeake’s befuddled gunner was struggling in the magazine to load powder horns to prime the guns: he had neglected to fill more than three of them beforehand. The flintlocks for the guns were not properly fitted, and the slow matches that were always supposed to be ready as a backup had not been prepared either. Allen sent a midshipman running to get an iron, known as a loggerhead, heating in the galley stove to set off the primer.

  Two more broadsides hit directly into the hull. One set loose a shower of splinters on the deck above that tore into Barron’s leg, carrying off a good chunk of his right calf. But the gun deck took the brunt. A twenty-four-pound ball hit one of Allen’s men directly in the chest, killing him instantly and spattering Allen with blood and splinters of bone. Three other men in Allen’s division were wounded. Captain Gordon appeared through the chaos with a message from Barron—“For God’s sake fire one gun for the honor of the flag, I mean to strike”—and asked Allen why they were not firing. Allen shouted that he needed powder to prime the guns, and Gordon himself ran to the magazine, on his way meeting a boy who at last was heading up with two filled horns. Gordon grabbed them, ran the length of the gun deck, and tossed them across the open main hatch to Allen. Allen got three of his guns primed and grabbed a loggerhead, but still the guns would not fire: the iron was not hot enough to ignite the powder. In desperation Allen finally seized a coal from the galley stove with his bare hands and fired off a single gun. At almost the same instant Barron shouted down the hatch, “Stop firing, stop firing! We have struck, we have struck.”59

&n
bsp; Three of the Chesapeake’s men lay dead, another eight seriously wounded. Another man would later die from his wounds.

  Two boats from the British ship came over; a boarding party lined up the crew and interrogated them for three hours. Ratford was found hiding in the coal hold and, along with the Americans from the Melampus, was taken across to the Leopard, where they were put in irons.

  Allen, to his eternal mortification, was sent across to the Leopard with a note from Barron formally surrendering the ship. He returned with the British captain’s note refusing it: “Having to the utmost of my power fulfilled the instructions of my Commander in Chief, I have nothing more to desire; and must, in consequence, proceed to join the remainder of the Squadron … I am ready to give you every assistance in my power and do most sincerely deplore that any lives should have been lost in the execution of a service which might have been adjusted more amicably.”

  The Leopard blithely returned that night to take up her customary anchorage within the sovereign territory of the United States of America. The Chesapeake, her mainmast shot through in three places, seven of her main and fore shrouds shot away, her mizzen rigging entirely cut to pieces, two dozen round shot lodged in her hull, limped back to Norfolk, the next morning silently passing the anchored British squadron at Lynnhaven Bay.