Under the very reduced amount of their commercial movement, the tonnage of the Middle and Southern states was more than adequate to their local necessities; and they now had no need of the aid which in conditions of normal prosperity they received from the Eastern shipping. The latter, therefore, having lost its usual local occupation, and also the office it had filled towards the other sections of the Union, was either left idle or turned perforce to privateering. September 7, 1813, there were in Boston harbor ninety-one ships, two barks, one hundred and nine brigs, and forty-three schooners; total, two hundred and forty-five, besides coasters. The accumulation shows the lack of employment. December 15, two hundred square-rigged vessels were laid up in Boston alone.[182] Insurance on American vessels was stated to be fifty per cent.[183]

Whether tonnage to any large amount was transferred to a neutral flag, as afterwards so much American shipping was during the Civil War, I have not ascertained. It was roundly intimated that neutral flags were used to cover the illicit intercourse with the enemy before mentioned; but whether by regular transfer or by fraudulent papers does not appear. An officer of the frigate "Congress," in her unprofitable voyage just mentioned, says that after parting with the "President," she fell in with a few licensed Americans and a great number of Spaniards and Portuguese.[184] The flags of these two nations, and of Sweden, certainly abounded to an abnormal extent, and did much of the traffic from America; but it seems unlikely that there was at that particular epoch any national commerce, other than British, at once large enough, and sufficiently deficient in shipping of its own, to absorb any great number of Americans. In truth, the commerce of the world had lost pretty much all its American component, because this, through a variety of causes, had come to consist chiefly of domestic agricultural products, which were thrown back upon the nation's hands, and required no carriers; the enemy having closed the gates against them, except so far as suited his own purposes. The disappearance of American merchant ships from the high seas corresponded to the void occasioned by the blockade of American staples of commerce. The only serious abatement from this generalization arises from the British system of licenses, permitting the egress of certain articles useful to themselves.

The results from the conditions above analyzed are reflected in the returns of commerce, in the movements of American coasters, and in the consequent dispositions of the enemy. In the Treasury year ending September 30, 1813, the value of the total exports from the Eastern states was $3,049,022; from the Middle section, $17,513,930; from the South, $7,293,043. Virginia is here reckoned with the Middle, because her exports found their way out by the Chesapeake; and this appreciation is commercial and military in character, not political or social. While this was the state of foreign trade under war conditions, the effect of local circumstances upon coasting is also to be noticed. The Middle section, characterized by the great estuaries, and by the description of its products,—grain primarily, and secondly tobacco,—was relatively self-sufficing and compact. Its growth of food, as has been seen, was far in excess of its wants, and the distance by land between the extreme centres of distribution, from tide-water to tide-water, was comparatively short. From New York to Baltimore by road is but four fifths as far as from New York to Boston; and at New York and Baltimore, as at Boston, water communication was again reached for the great lines of distribution from either centre. In fact, traffic from New York southward needed to go no farther than Elk River, forty miles short of Baltimore, to be in touch with the whole Chesapeake system. Philadelphia lies half-way between New York and Baltimore, approximately a hundred miles from each.

The extremes of the Middle section of the country were thus comparatively independent of coastwise traffic for mutual intercourse, and the character of their coasts co-operated to reduce the disposition to employ coasters in war. From the Chesapeake to Sandy Hook the shore-line sweeps out to sea, is safely approachable by hostile navigators, and has for refuge no harbors of consequence, except the Delaware. The local needs of the little communities along the beaches might foster a creeping stream of very small craft, for local supply; but as a highway, for intercourse on a large scale, the sea here was too exposed for use, when taken in connection with the facility for transport by land, which was not only short but with comparatively good roads.

In war, as in other troublous times, prices are subject to complicated causes of fluctuation, not always separable. Two great staples, flour and sugar, however, may be taken to indicate with some certainty the effects of impeded water transport. From a table of prices current, of August, 1813, it appears that at Baltimore, in the centre of the wheat export, flour was $6.00 per barrel; in Philadelphia, $7.50; in New York, $8.50; in Boston, $11.87. At Richmond, equally well placed with Baltimore as regarded supplies, but with inferior communications for disposing of its surplus, the price was $4.00. Removing from the grain centre in the other direction, flour at Charleston is reported at $8.00—about the same as New York; at Wilmington, North Carolina, $10.25. Not impossibly, river transportation had in these last some cheapening effect, not readily ascertainable now. In sugar, the scale is seen to ascend in an inverse direction. At Boston, unblockaded, it is quoted at $18.75 the hundredweight, itself not a low rate; at New York, blockaded, $21.50; at Philadelphia, with a longer journey, $22.50; at Baltimore, $26.50; at Savannah, $20. In the last named place, nearness to the Florida line, with the inland navigation, favored smuggling and safe transportation. The price at New Orleans, a sugar-producing district, $9.00, affords a standard by which to measure the cost of carriage at that time. Flour in the same city, on February 1, 1813, was $25 the barrel.

In both articles the jump between Boston and New York suggests forcibly the harassment of the coasting trade. It manifests either diminution of supply, or the effect of more expensive conveyance by land; possibly both. The case of the southern seaboard cities was similar to that of Boston; for it will not be overlooked that, as the more important food products came from the middle of the country, they would be equally available for each extreme. The South was the more remote, but this was compensated in some degree by better internal water communications; and its demand also was less, for the white population was smaller and less wealthy than that of New England. The local product, rice, also went far to supply deficiencies in other grains. In the matter of manufactured goods, however, the disadvantage of the South was greater. These had to find their way there from the farther extreme of the land; for the development of manufactures had been much the most marked in the east. It has before been quoted that some wagons loaded with dry goods were forty-six days in accomplishing the journey from Philadelphia to Georgetown, South Carolina, in May of this year. Some relief in these articles reached the South by smuggling across the Florida line, and the Spanish waters opposite St. Mary's were at this time thronged with merchant shipping to an unprecedented extent; for although smuggling was continual, in peace as in war, across a river frontier of a hundred miles, the stringent demand consequent upon the interruption of coastwise traffic provoked an increased supply. "The trade to Amelia,"—the northernmost of the Spanish sea-islands,—reported the United States naval officer at St. Mary's towards the end of the war, "is immense. Upwards of fifty square-rigged vessels are now in that port under Swedish, Russian, and Spanish colors, two thirds of which are considered British property."[185] It was the old story of the Continental and License systems of the Napoleonic struggle, re-enacted in America; and, as always, the inhabitants on both sides the line co-operated heartily in beating the law.

The two great food staples chosen sufficiently indicate general conditions as regards communications from centre to centre. Upon this supervened the more extensive and intricate problem of distribution from the centres. This more especially imparted to the Eastern and Southern coasts the particular characteristics of coasting trade and coast warfare, in which they differ from the Middle states. These form the burden of the letters from the naval captains commanding the stations at Charleston, Savannah, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire; nor is it without significance that Bainbridge at Boston, not a way port, but a centre, displayed noticeably less anxiety than the others about this question, which less touched his own command. Captain Hull, now commanding the Portsmouth Yard, writes, June 14, 1813, that light cruisers like the "Siren," lately arrived at Boston, and the "Enterprise," then with him, can be very useful by driving away the enemy's small vessels and privateers which have been molesting the coasting trade. He purposes to order them eastward, along the Maine coast, to collect coasters in convoy and protect their long-shore voyages, after the British fashion on the high seas. "The coasting trade here," he adds, "is immense. Not less than fifty sail last night anchored in this harbor, bound to Boston and other points south. The 'Nautilus' [a captured United States brig] has been seen from this harbor every week for some time past, and several other enemy's vessels are on the coast every few days." An American privateer has just come in, bringing with her as a prize one of her own class, called the "Liverpool Packet," which "within six months has taken from us property to an immense amount."[186]

Ten days later Hull's prospects have darkened. There has appeared off Portsmouth a blockading division; a frigate, a sloop, and two brigs. "When our two vessels were first ordered to this station, I believed they would be very useful in protecting the coasting trade; but the enemy's cruisers are now so much stronger that we can hardly promise security to the trade, if we undertake to convoy it." On the contrary, the brigs themselves would be greatly hazarded, and resistance to attack, if supported by the neighborhood, may entail destruction upon ports where they have taken refuge; a thought possibly suggested by Cockburn's action at Havre de Grace and Frenchtown. He therefore now proposes that they should run the blockade and cruise at sea. This course was eventually adopted; but for the moment the Secretary wrote that, while he perceived the propriety of Hull's remarks, "the call for protection on that coast has been very loud, and having sent those vessels for that special purpose, I do not now incline immediately to remove them."[187] It was necessary to bend to a popular clamor, which in this case did not, as it very frequently does, make unreasonable demands and contravene all considerations of military wisdom. A month later Hull reports the blockade so strict that it is impossible to get out by day. The commander of the "Enterprise," Johnston Blakely, expresses astonishment that the enemy should employ so large a force to blockade so small a vessel.[188] It was, however, no matter for surprise, but purely a question of business. The possibilities of injury by the "Enterprise" must be blasted at any cost, and Blakely himself a year later, in the "Wasp," was to illustrate forcibly what one smart ship can effect in the destruction of hostile commerce and hostile cruisers.

Blakely's letter was dated July 31. The "Enterprise" had not long to wait for her opportunity, but it did not fall to his lot to utilize it. Being promoted the following month, he was relieved in command by Lieutenant William Burrows. This officer had been absent in China, in mercantile employment, when the war broke out, and, returning, was captured at sea. Exchanged in June, 1813, he was ordered to the "Enterprise," in which he saw his only service in the war,—a brief month. She left Portsmouth September 1, on a coasting cruise, and on the morning of the 5th, being then off Monhegan Island, on the coast of Maine, sighted a vessel of war, which proved to be the British brig "Boxer," Commander Samuel Blyth.

The antagonists in the approaching combat were nearly of equal force, the respective armaments being, "Enterprise," fourteen 18-pounder carronades, and two long 9-pounders, the "Boxer," twelve 18-pounder carronades and two long sixes. The action began side by side, at half pistol-shot, the "Enterprise" to the right and to windward (position 1). After fifteen minutes the latter ranged ahead (2). As she did so, one of her 9-pounders, which by the forethought of Captain Burrows had been shifted from its place in the bow to the stern,[189] was used with effect to rake her opponent. She then rounded-to on the starboard tack, on the port-bow of the enemy,—ahead but well to the left (3),—in position to rake with her carronades; and, setting the foresail, sailed slowly across from left to right. In five minutes the "Boxer's" maintopmast and foretopsailyard fell. This left the "Enterprise" the mastery of the situation, which she continued to hold until ten minutes later, when the enemy's fire ceased. Her colors could not be hauled down, Blyth having nailed them to the mast. He himself had been killed at the first broadside, and almost at the same instant Burrows too fell, mortally wounded.



The "Boxer" belonged to a class of vessel, the gun brigs, which Marryat through one of his characters styled "bathing machines," only not built, as the legitimate article, to go up, but to go down. Another,—the immortal Boatswain Chucks,—proclaimed that they would "certainly d—n their inventor to all eternity;" adding characteristically, that "their low common names, 'Pincher,' 'Thrasher,' 'Boxer,' 'Badger,' and all that sort, are quite good enough for them." In the United States service the "Enterprise," which had been altered from a schooner to a brig, was considered a singularly dull sailer. As determined by American measurements, taken four days after the action, the size of the two was the same within twenty tons; the "Boxer" a little the larger. The superiority of the "Enterprise" in broadside force, was eight guns to seven; or, stated in weight of projectiles, one hundred and thirty-five pounds to one hundred and fourteen. This disparity, though real, was in no sense decisive, and the execution done by each bore no comparison to the respective armaments. The hull of the "Boxer" was pierced on the starboard side by twelve 18-pound shot, nearly two for each of the "Enterprise's" carronades. The 9-pounder had done even better, scoring five hits. On her port side had entered six of 18 pounds, and four of 9 pounds. By the official report of an inspection, made upon her arrival in Portland, it appears that her upper works and sides forward were torn to pieces.[190] In her mainmast alone were three 18-pound shot.[191] As a set-off to this principal damage received, she had to show only one 18-pound shot in the hull of the "Enterprise," one in the foremast, and one in the mainmast.[192]

From these returns, the American loss in killed and wounded, twelve, must have been largely by grapeshot or musketry. The British had twenty-one men hurt. It has been said that this difference in loss is nearly proportionate to the difference in force. This is obviously inexact; for the "Enterprise" was superior in gun power by twelve per cent, while the "Boxer's" loss was greater by seventy-five per cent. Moreover, if the statement of crews be accurate, that the "Enterprise" had one hundred and twenty and the "Boxer" only sixty-six,[193] it is clear that the latter had double the human target, and scored little more than half the hits. The contest, in brief, was first an artillery duel, side to side, followed by a raking position obtained by the American. It therefore reproduced in leading features, although on a minute scale, the affair between the "Chesapeake" and "Shannon"; and the exultation of the American populace at this rehabilitation of the credit of their navy, though exaggerated in impression, was in principle sound. The British Court Martial found that the defeat was "to be attributed to a superiority of the enemy's force, principally in the number of men, as well as to a greater degree of skill in the direction of her fire, and the destructive effects of her first broadside."[194] This admission as to the enemy's gunnery is substantially identical with the claim made for that of the "Shannon,"—notably as to the first broadside. As to the greater numbers, one hundred and twenty is certainly almost twice sixty-six, and the circumstance should be weighed; but in an engagement confined to the guns, and between 18-pounder carronade batteries, it is of less consequence than at first glance appears. A cruiser of those days expected to be ready to fight with many men away in prizes. Had it come to boarding, or had the "Boxer's" gunnery been good, disabling her opponent's men, the numbers would have become of consideration. As it was, they told for something, but not for very much.

If national credit were at issue in every single-ship action, the balance of the "Chesapeake" and "Shannon," "Enterprise" and "Boxer," would incline rather to the American side; for the "Boxer" was not just out of port with new commander, officers, and crew, but had been in commission six months, had in that time crossed the ocean, and been employed along the coast. The credit and discredit in both cases is personal, not national. It was the sadder in Blyth's case because he was an officer of distinguished courage and activity, who had begun his fighting career at the age of eleven, when he was on board a heavily battered ship in Lord Howe's battle of June 1, 1794. At thirty, with little influence, and at a period when promotion had become comparatively sluggish, he had fairly fought his way to the modest preferment in which he died. Under the restricted opportunities of the United States Navy, Burrows had seen service, and his qualities received recognition, in the hostilities with Tripoli. The unusual circumstance of both captains falling, and so young,—Burrows was but twenty-eight,—imparted to this tiny combat an unusual pathos, which was somewhat heightened by the fact that Blyth himself had acted as pall-bearer when Lawrence, three months before, was buried with military honors at Halifax. In Portland, Maine, the two young commanders were borne to their graves together, in a common funeral, with all the observance possible in a small coast town; business being everywhere suspended, and the customary tokens of mourning displayed upon buildings and shipping.

After this engagement, as the season progressed, coastwise operations in this quarter became increasingly hazardous for both parties. On October 22, Hull wrote that neither the "Enterprise" nor the "Rattlesnake" could cruise much longer. The enemy still maintained his grip, in virtue of greater size and numbers. Ten days later comes the report of a convoy, with one of the brigs, driven into port by a frigate; that the enemy appear almost every day, and never without a force superior to that of both his brigs, which he fears to trust out overnight, lest they find themselves at morning under the guns of an opponent of weightier battery. The long nights and stormy seas of winter, however, soon afforded to coasters a more secure protection than friendly guns, and Hull's letters intermit until April 6, 1814, when he announces that the enemy has made his appearance in great force; he presumes for the summer. Besides the danger and interruption of the coasting trade, Hull was increasingly anxious as to the safety of Portsmouth itself. By a recent act of Congress four seventy-fours had been ordered to be built, and one of them was now in construction there under his supervision. Despite the navigational difficulties of entering the port, which none was more capable of appreciating than he, he regarded the defences as so inadequate that it would be perfectly possible to destroy her on the stocks. "There is nothing," he said, "to prevent a very small force from entering the harbor." At the same moment Decatur was similarly concerned for the squadron at New London, and we have seen the fears of Stewart for Norfolk. So marked was Hull's apprehension in this respect, that he sent the frigate "Congress" four miles up the river, where she remained to the end of the war; her crew being transferred to Lake Ontario. New York, the greater wealth of which increased both her danger and her capacity for self-protection, was looking to her own fortifications, as well as manning, provisioning, and paying the crews of the gunboats that patrolled her waters, on the side of the sea and of the Sound.

The exposure of the coasting trade from Boston Bay eastward was increased by the absence of interior coastwise channels, until the chain of islands about and beyond the Penobscot was reached. On the other hand, the character of the shore, bold, with off-lying rocks and many small harbors, conferred a distinct advantage upon those having local knowledge, as the coasting seamen had. On such a route the points of danger are capes and headlands, particularly if their projection is great, such as the promontory between Portsmouth and Boston, of which Cape Ann is a conspicuous landmark. There the coaster has to go farthest from his refuge, and the deep-sea cruiser can approach with least risk. In a proper scheme of coast defence batteries are mounted on such positions. This, it is needless to say, in view of the condition of the port fortifications, had not been done in the United States. Barring this, the whole situation of the coast, of trade, and of blockade, was one with which British naval officers had then been familiar for twenty years, through their employment upon the French and Spanish coasts, as well Mediterranean as Atlantic, and in many other parts of the world. To hover near the land, intercepting and fighting by day, manning boats and cutting out by night, harassing, driving on shore, destroying the sinews of war by breaking down communications, was to them simply an old experience to be applied under new and rather easier circumstances.

Of these operations frequent instances are given in contemporary journals and letters; but less account has been taken of the effects, as running through household and social economics, touching purse and comfort. These are traceable in commercial statistics. At the time they must have been severely felt, bringing the sense of the war vividly home to the community. The stringency of the British action is betrayed, however, by casual notices. The captain of a schooner burned by the British frigate "Nymphe" is told by her commander that he had orders to destroy every vessel large enough to carry two men. "A brisk business is now carrying on all along our coast between British cruisers and our coasting vessels, in ready money. Friday last, three masters went into Gloucester to procure money to carry to a British frigate to ransom their vessels. Thursday, a Marblehead schooner was ransomed by the "Nymphe" for $400. Saturday, she took off Cape Ann three coasters and six fishing boats, and the masters were sent on shore for money to ransom them at $200 each." There was room for the wail of a federalist paper: "Our coasts unnavigable to ourselves, though free to the enemy and the money-making neutral; our harbors blockaded; our shipping destroyed or rotting at the docks; silence and stillness in our cities; the grass growing upon the public wharves."[195] In the district of Maine, "the long stagnation of foreign, and embarrassment of domestic trade, have extended the sad effects from the seaboard through the interior, where the scarcity of money is severely felt. There is not enough to pay the taxes."[196]

South of Chesapeake Bay the coast is not bold and rocky, like that north of Cape Cod, but in its low elevation and gradual soundings resembles rather those of New Jersey and Delaware. It has certain more pronounced features in the extensive navigable sounds and channels, which lie behind the islands and sandbars skirting the shores. The North Carolina system of internal water communications, Pamlico Sound and its extensions, stood by itself. To reach that to the southward, it was necessary to make a considerable sea run, round the far projecting Cape Fear, exposed to capture outside; but from Charleston to the St. Mary's River, which then formed the Florida boundary for a hundred miles of its length, the inside passages of South Carolina and Georgia were continuous, though in many places difficult, and in others open to attack from the sea. Between St. Mary's and Savannah, for example, there were seven inlets, and Captain Campbell, the naval officer in charge of that district, reported that three of these were practicable for frigates;[197] but this statement, while literally accurate, conveys an exaggerated impression, for no sailing frigate would be likely to cross a difficult bar for a single offensive operation, merely to find herself confronted with conditions forbidding further movement.

The great menace to the inside traffic consisted in the facility with which cruisers outside could pass from entrance to entrance, contrasted with the intricacies within impeding similar action by the defence. If a bevy of unprotected coasters were discerned by an enemy's lookouts, the ship could run down abreast, send in her boats, capture or destroy, before the gunboats, if equidistant at the beginning, could overcome the obstacles due to rise and fall of tide, or narrowness of passage, and arrive to the rescue.[198] A suggested remedy was to replace the gunboats by rowing barges, similar to, but more powerful than, those used by the enemy in his attacks. The insuperable trouble here proved to be that men fit for such work, fit to contend with the seamen of the enemy, were unwilling to abandon the sea, with its hopes of prize money, or to submit to the exposure and discomfort of the life. "The crews of the gunboats," wrote Captain Campbell, "consist of all nations except Turks, Greeks, and Jews." On one occasion the ship's company of an American privateer, which had been destroyed after a desperate and celebrated resistance to attack by British armed boats, arrived at St. Mary's. Of one hundred and nineteen American seamen, only four could be prevailed upon to enter the district naval force.[199] This was partly due to the embarrassment of the national finances. "The want of funds to pay off discharged men," wrote the naval captain at Charleston, "has given such a character to the navy as to stop recruiting."[200] "Men could be had," reported his colleague at St. Mary's, now transferred to Savannah, "were it not for the Treasury notes, which cannot be passed at less than five per cent discount. Men will not ship without cash. There are upwards of a hundred seamen in port, but they refuse to enter, even though we offer to ship for a month only."[201]

During the American Civil War, fifty years after the time of which we are speaking, this internal communication was effectually intercepted by stationing inside steamers of adequate force; but that recourse, while not absolutely impracticable for small sailing cruisers, involved a risk disproportionate to the gain. Through traffic could have been broken up by keeping a frigate in any one of the three sounds, entrance to which was practicable for vessels of that class. In view of the amount of trade passing back and forth, which Campbell stated to be in one period of four months as much as eight million dollars, it is surprising that this obvious expedient was not adopted by the enemy. That they appreciated the situation is shown by the intention, announced in 1813, of seizing one of the islands; which was effected in January, 1815, by the occupation of Cumberland and St. Simons'. As it was, up to that late period the routine methods of their European experience prevailed, with the result that their coastwise operations in the south differed little from those in the extreme north. Smaller vessels occasionally, armed boats frequently, pushed inside the inlets, seizing coasters, and at times even attacking the gunboats. While the positive loss thus inflicted was considerable, it will readily be understood that it was much exceeded by the negative effect, in deterring from movement, and reducing navigation to the limits of barest necessity.

In these operations the ships of war were seconded by privateers from the West Indies, which hovered round this coast, as the Halifax vessels did round that of New England, seeking such scraps of prize money as might be left over from the ruin of American commerce and the immunities of the licensed traders. The United States officers at Charleston and Savannah were at their wits' ends to provide security with their scanty means,—more scanty even in men than in vessels; and when there came upon them the additional duty of enforcing the embargo of December, 1813, in the many quarters, and against the various subterfuges, by which evasion would be attempted, the task was manifestly impossible. "This is the most convenient part of the world for illicit trade that I have ever seen," wrote Campbell. From a return made this summer by the Secretary of the Navy to Congress,[202] it is shown that one brig of eighteen guns, which was not a cruiser, but a station ship at Savannah, eleven gunboats, three other schooners, and four barges, were apportioned to the stretch of coast from Georgetown to St. Mary's,—over two hundred miles. With the fettered movement of the gunboats before mentioned, contrasted with the outside cruisers, it was impossible to meet conditions by distributing this force, "for the protection of the several inlets," as had at first been directed by the Navy Department. The only defensive recourse approximately satisfactory was that of the deep-sea merchant service of Great Britain, proposed also by Hull at the northward, to assemble vessels in convoys, and to accompany them throughout a voyage. "I have deemed it expedient," wrote Campbell from St. Mary's, "to order the gun vessels to sail in company, not less than four in number, and have ordered convoy to the inland trade at stated periods, by which means vessels may be protected, and am sorry to say this is all that can be effected in our present situation."[203] In this way a fair degree of immunity was attained. Rubs were met with occasionally, and heavy losses were reported from time to time. There was a certain amount of fighting and scuffling, in which advantage was now on one side, now on the other; but upon the whole it would appear that the novelty of the conditions and ignorance of the ground rather imposed upon the imagination of the enemy, and that their operations against this inside trade were at once less active and less successful than under the more familiar features presented by the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts.

Whatever more or less of success or injury attended the coastwise trade in the several localities, the point to be observed is that the enemy's operations effectually separated the different sections of the country from one another, so far as this means of intercourse was concerned; thereby striking a deadly blow at the mutual support which might be given by communities differing so markedly in resources, aptitudes, and industries. The remark before made upon the effect of headlands, on the minor scale of a particular shore-line, applied with special force to one so extensive as that of the United States Atlantic coast in 1813. Cape Cod to the north and Cape Fear to the south were conspicuous examples of such projection. Combined with the relatively shelterless and harborless central stretch, intervening between them, from the Chesapeake to Sandy Hook, they constituted insuperable obstacles to sustained intercommunication by water. The presence of the enemy in great numbers before, around, and within the central section, emphasized the military weakness of position which nature herself had there imposed. To get by sea from one end of the country to the other it was necessary to break the blockade in starting, to take a wide sweep out to sea, and again to break it at the desired point of entrance. This, however, is not coasting.

The effect which this coast pressure produced upon the welfare of the several sections is indicated here and there by official utterances. The war party naturally inclined to minimize unfavorable results, and their opponents in some measure to exaggerate them; but of the general tendency there can be no serious doubt. Mr. Pearson, an opposition member of the House from North Carolina, speaking February 16, 1814, when the record of 1813 was made up, and the short-lived embargo of December was yet in force, said: "Blocked up as we are by the enemy's squadron upon our coast, corked up by our still more unmerciful embargo and non-importation laws, calculated as it were to fill up the little chasm in the ills which the enemy alone could not inflict; the entire coasting trade destroyed, and even the little pittance of intercourse from one port to the other in the same state destroyed [by the embargo], the planters of the Southern and Middle states, finding no market at home for their products, are driven to the alternative of wagoning them hundreds of miles, in search of a precarious market in the Northern and Eastern states, or permitting them to rot on their hands. Many articles which are, or by habit have become, necessary for comfort, are obtained at extravagant prices from other parts of the Union. The balance of trade, if trade it may be called, from these and other causes being so entirely against the Southern and Middle states, the whole of our specie is rapidly travelling to the North and East. Our bank paper is thrown back upon the institutions from which it issued; and as the war expenditures in the Southern and Middle states, where the loans have been principally obtained, are proportionately inconsiderable, the bills of these banks are daily returning, and their vaults drained of specie, to be locked up in Eastern and Western states, never to return but with the return of peace and prosperity."[204]

The isolation of North Carolina was extreme, with Cape Fear to the south and the occupied Chesapeake north of her. The Governor of the central state of Pennsylvania, evidently in entire political sympathy with the national Administration, in his message to the legislature at the same period,[205] is able to congratulate the people on the gratifying state of the commonwealth; a full treasury, abundant yield of agriculture, and the progress of manufacturing development, which, "however we may deprecate and deplore the calamities of protracted war, console us with the prospect of permanent and extensive establishments equal to our wants, and such as will insure the real and practical independence of our country." But he adds: "At no period of our history has the immense importance of internal navigation been so strikingly exemplified as since the commencement of hostilities. The transportation of produce, and the intercourse between citizens of the different states, which knit more strongly the bonds of social and political union, are greatly retarded, and, through many of their accustomed channels, entirely interrupted by the water craft of the enemy, sinking, burning, and otherwise destroying, the property which it cannot appropriate to its own use." He looks forward to a renewal of similar misfortune in the following year, an anticipation more than fulfilled. The officials of other states, according to their political complexion, either lamented the sufferings of the war and its supposed injustice, or comforted themselves and their hearers by reflecting upon the internal fruitfulness of the country, and its increasing self-sufficingness. The people were being equipped for independence of the foreigner by the progress of manufactures, and by habits of economy and self-denial, enforced by deprivation arising from the suppression of the coasting trade and the rigors of the commercial blockade.

The effect of the latter, which by the spring of 1814 had been in force nearly a twelvemonth over the entire coast south of Narragansett Bay, can be more directly estimated and concisely stated, in terms of money, than can the interruption of the coasting trade; for the statistics of export and import, contrasted with those of years of peace, convey it directly. It has already been stated that the exports for the year ending September 30, 1814, during which the operation of the blockade was most universal and continuous, fell to $7,000,000, as compared with $25,000,000 in 1813, and $45,000,000 in 1811, a year of peace though of restricted intercourse. Such figures speak distinctly as well as forcibly; it being necessary, however, to full appreciation of the difference between 1813 and 1814, to remember that during the first half of the former official period—from October 1, 1812, to April 1, 1813,—there had been no commercial blockade beyond the Chesapeake and Delaware; and that, even after it had been instituted, the British license system operated to the end of September to qualify its effects.

Here and there interesting particulars may be gleaned, which serve to illustrate these effects, and to give to the picture that precision of outline which heightens impression. "I believe," wrote a painstaking Baltimore editor in December, 1814, "that there has not been an arrival in Baltimore from a foreign port for a twelvemonth";[206] yet the city in 1811 had had a registered tonnage of 88,398, and now boasted that of the scanty national commerce still maintained, through less secluded ports, at least one half was carried on by its celebrated schooners,[207] the speed and handiness of which, combined with a size that intrusted not too many eggs to one basket, imparted special facilities for escaping pursuit and minimizing loss. A representative from Maryland at about this time presented in the House a memorial from Baltimore merchants, stating that "in consequence of the strict blockade of our bays and rivers the private-armed service is much discouraged," and submitting the expediency "of offering a bounty for the destruction of enemy's vessels;" a suggestion the very extravagance of which indicates more than words the extent of the depression felt. The price of salt in Baltimore, in November, 1814, was five dollars the bushel. In Charleston it was the same, while just across the Spanish border, at Amelia Island, thronged with foreign merchant ships, it was selling at seventy cents.[208]

Such a contrast, which must necessarily be reproduced in other articles not indigenous, accounts at once for the smuggling deplored by Captain Campbell, and at the same time testifies both to the efficacy of the blockade and to the pressure exercised upon the inland navigation by the outside British national cruisers and privateers. This one instance, affecting one of the prime necessaries of life, certifies to the stringent exclusion from the sea of the coast on which Charleston was the chief seaport. Captain Dent, commanding this naval district, alludes to the constant presence of blockaders, and occasionally to vessels taken outside by them, chased ashore, or intercepted in various inlets; narrating particularly the singular incident that, despite his remonstrances, a flag of truce was sent on board the enemy by local authorities to negotiate a purchase of goods thus captured.[209] This unmilitary proceeding, which evinces the necessities of the neighborhood, was of course immediately stopped by the Government.

A somewhat singular incidental circumstance, supporting the other inferences, is found in the spasmodic elevation of the North Carolina coast into momentary commercial consequence as a place of entry and deposit; not indeed to a very great extent, but ameliorating to a slight degree the deprivation of the regions lying north and south,—the neighborhood of Charleston on the one hand, of Richmond and Baltimore on the other. "The waters of North Carolina, from Wilmington to Ocracoke, though not favorable to commerce in time of peace, by reason of their shallowness and the danger of the coast, became important and useful in time of war, and a very considerable trade was prosecuted from and into those waters during the late war, and a coasting trade as far as Charleston, attended with less risk than many would imagine. A vessel may prosecute a voyage from Elizabeth City [near the Virginia line] to Charleston without being at sea more than a few hours at any one time."[210] Some tables of arrivals show a comparative immunity for vessels entering here from abroad; due doubtless to the unquestioned dangers of the coast, which conspired with the necessarily limited extent of the traffic to keep the enemy at a distance. It was not by them wholly overlooked. In July, 1813, Admiral Cockburn anchored with a division off Ocracoke bar, sent in his boats, and captured a privateer and letter-of-marque which had there sought a refuge denied to them by the blockade elsewhere. The towns of Beaufort and Portsmouth were occupied for some hours. The United States naval officer at Charleston found it necessary also to extend the alongshore cruises of his schooners as far as Cape Fear, for the protection of this trade on its way to his district.

The attention aroused to the development of internal navigation also bears witness to the pressure of the blockade. "It is my opinion," said the Governor of Pennsylvania, "that less than one half the treasure expended by the United States for the protection of foreign commerce, if combined with state and individual wealth, would have perfected an inland water communication from Maine to Georgia." It was argued by others that the extra money spent for land transportation of goods, while the coasting trade was suspended, would have effected a complete tide-water inland navigation such as here suggested; and there was cited a declaration of Robert Fulton, who died during the war, that within twenty-one months as great a sum had been laid out in wagon hire as would have effected this object. Whatever the accuracy of these estimates, their silent witness to the influence of the blockade upon commerce, external and coastwise, quite overbears President Madison's perfunctory denials of its effectiveness, based upon the successful evasions which more or less attend all such operations.

Perhaps, however, the most signal proof of the pressure exerted is to be seen in the rebound, the instant it was removed; in the effect upon prices, and upon the movements of shipping. Taken in connection with the other evidence, direct and circumstantial, so far cited, what can testify more forcibly to the strangulation of the coasting trade than the fact that in the month of March, 1815,—news of the peace having been received February 11,—there sailed from Boston one hundred and forty-four vessels, more than half of them square-rigged; and that of the whole all but twenty-six were for United States ports. Within three weeks of April there arrived at Charleston, exclusive of coasters, one hundred and fifty-eight vessels; at Savannah, in the quarter ending June 30, two hundred and three. Something of this outburst of activity, in which neutrals of many nations shared, was due, as Mr. Clay said, to the suddenness with which commerce revived after momentary suspension. "The bow had been unstrung that it might acquire fresh vigor and new elasticity"; and the stored-up products of the country, so long barred within, imparted a peculiar nervous haste to the renewal of intercourse. The absolute numbers quoted do not give as vivid impression of conditions at differing times as do some comparisons, easily made. In the year 1813, as shown by the returns of the United States Treasury, out of 674,853 tons of registered—sea-going—shipping, only 233,439—one third—paid the duties exacted upon each several voyage, and of these many doubtless sailed under British license.[211] In 1814 the total tonnage, 674,632, shows that ship-building had practically ceased; and of this amount one twelfth only, 58,756 tons, paid dues for going out.[212] In 1816, when peace conditions were fully established, though less than two years had passed, the total tonnage had increased to 800,760; duties, being paid each voyage, were collected on 865,219.[213] Thus the foreign voyages that year exceeded the total shipping of the country, and by an amount greater than all the American tonnage that put to sea in 1814.

The movement of coasting vessels, technically called "enrolled," is not so clearly indicated by the returns, because all the trips of each were covered by one license annually renewed. A licensed coaster might make several voyages, or she might make none. In 1813 the figures show that, of 471,109 enrolled tonnage, 252,440 obtained licenses. In 1814 there is, as in the registered shipping, a diminution of the total to 466,159, of which a still smaller proportion, 189,662, took out the annual license. In 1816 the enrolment was 522,165, the licensing 414,594. In the fishing craft, a class by themselves, the employment rose from 16,453 in 1814 to 48,147 in 1816;[214] the difference doubtless being attributable chiefly to the reopening of the cod fishing on the banks of Newfoundland, necessarily closed to the American flag by the maritime hostilities.

The influence of the peace upon prices is likewise a matter too interesting to a correct appreciation of effects to be wholly passed over. In considering it, the quotations before the receipt of the news doubtless represent conditions more correctly than do the immediate changes. The official tidings of peace reached New York, February 11, 1815. The Evening Post, in its number of February 14, says, "We give to-day one of the effects of the prospect of peace, even before ratification. Our markets of every kind experienced a sudden, and to many a shocking, change. Sugar, for instance, fell from $26 per hundredweight to $12.50. Tea, which sold on Saturday at $2.25, on Monday was purchased at a $1.00. Specie, which had got up to the enormous rate of 22 per cent premium, dropped down to 2. The article of tin, in particular, fell from the height of $80 the box to $25. Six per cents rose from 76 to 88; ten per cents and Treasury notes from 92 to 98. Bank stock generally rose from five to ten per cent." In Philadelphia, flour which sold at $7.50 the barrel on Saturday had risen to $10 on Monday; a testimony that not only foreign export but home supply to the eastward was to be renewed. The fall in foreign products, due to freedom of import, was naturally accompanied by a rise in domestic produce, to which an open outlet with proportionate increase of demand was now afforded. In Philadelphia the exchange on Boston reflected these conditions; falling from twenty-five per cent to thirteen.

It may then be concluded that there is little exaggeration in the words used by "a distinguished naval officer" of the day, in a letter contributed to Niles' Register, in its issue of June 17, 1815. "No sooner had the enemy blockaded our harbors, and extended his line of cruisers from Maine to Georgia, than both foreign and domestic commerce came at once to be reduced to a deplorable state of stagnation; producing in its consequences the utter ruin of many respectable merchants, as well as of a great multitude besides, connected with them in their mercantile pursuits. But these were not the only consequences. The regular supply of foreign commodities being thereby cut off, many articles, now become necessaries of life, were raised to an exorbitant price, and bore much upon the finances of the citizen, whose family could not comfortably exist without them. Add to this, as most of the money loaned to the Government for the purposes of the war came from the pockets of merchants, they were rendered incapable of continuing these disbursements in consequence of this interruption to their trade; whence the cause of that impending bankruptcy with which the Government was at one time threatened.... At a critical period of the war [April, 1814] Congress found it necessary to remove all restrictions upon commerce, both foreign and domestic. It is a lamentable fact, however, that the adventurous merchant found no alleviation from these indulgences, his vessels being uniformly prevented by a strong blockading force, not only from going out, but from coming into port, at the most imminent risk of capture. The risk did not stop here; for the islands and ports most frequented by American vessels being known to the enemy, he was enabled from his abundance of means to intercept them there also. The coasting trade, that most valuable appendage to an extensive mercantile establishment in the United States, was entirely annihilated. The southern and northern sections of the Union were unable to exchange their commodities, except upon a contracted scale through the medium of land carriage, and then only at a great loss; so that, upon the whole, nothing in a national point of view appeared to be more loudly called for by men of all parties than a naval force adequate to the protection of our commerce, and the raising of the blockade of our coast."

Such was the experience which sums up the forgotten bitter truth, concerning a war which has left in the United States a prevalent impression of distinguished success, because of a few brilliant naval actions and the closing battle of New Orleans. The lesson to be deduced is not that the country at that time should have sought to maintain a navy approaching equality to the British. In the state of national population and revenue, it was no more possible to attempt this than that it would be expedient to do it now, under the present immense development of resources and available wealth. What had been possible during the decade preceding the war,—had the nation so willed,—was to place the navy on such a footing, in numbers and constitution, as would have made persistence in the course Great Britain was following impolitic to the verge of madness, because it would add to her war embarrassments the activity of an imposing maritime enemy, at the threshold of her most valuable markets,—the West Indies,—three thousand miles away from her own shores and from the seat of her principal and necessary warfare. The United States could not have encountered Great Britain single-handed—true; but there was not then the slightest prospect of her having to do so. The injuries of which she complained were incidental to a state of European war; inconceivable and impossible apart from it. She was therefore assured of the support of most powerful allies, occupying the attention of the British navy and draining the resources of the British empire. This condition of things was notorious, as was the fact that, despite the disappointment of Trafalgar, Napoleon was sedulously restoring the numbers of a navy, to the restraining of which his enemy was barely competent.

The anxiety caused to the British Admiralty by the operations of the small American squadrons in the autumn of 1812 has already been depicted in quotations from its despatches to Warren.[215] Three or four divisions, each containing one to two ships of the line, were kept on the go, following a general round in successive relief, but together amounting to five or six battle ships—to use the modern term—with proportionate cruisers. It was not possible to diminish this total by concentrating them, for the essence of the scheme, and the necessity which dictated it, was to cover a wide sweep of ocean, and to protect several maritime strategic points through which the streams of commerce, controlled by well-known conditions, passed, intersected, or converged. So also the Admiralty signified its wish that one ship of the line should form the backbone of the blockade before each of the American harbors. For this purpose Warren's fleet was raised to a number stated by the Admiralty's letter to him of January 9, 1813, to be "upwards of ten of the line, exclusive of the six sail of the line appropriated to the protection of the West India convoys." These numbers were additional to detachments which, outside of his command, were patrolling the eastern Atlantic, about the equator, and from the Cape Verde Islands to the Azores, as mentioned in another letter of February 10. "In all, therefore, about twenty sail of the line were employed on account of American hostilities; and this, it will be noticed, was after Napoleon's Russian disaster was fully known in England. It has not been without interfering for the moment with other very important services that my Lords have been able to send you this re-enforcement, and they most anxiously hope that the vigorous and successful use you will make of it will enable you shortly to return some of the line of battle ships to England, which, if the heavy American frigates should be taken or destroyed, you will immediately do, retaining four line of battle ships." Attention should fasten upon the importance here attached by the British Admiralty to the bigger ships; for it is well to learn of the enemy, and to appreciate that it was not solely light cruisers and privateers, but chiefly the heavy vessels, that counted in the estimate of experienced British naval officers. The facts are little understood in the United States, and consequently are almost always misrepresented.

The reasons for this abundance of force are evident. As regards commerce Great Britain was on the defensive; and the defensive cannot tell upon which of many exposed points a blow may fall. Dissemination of effort, however modified by strategic ingenuity, is thus to a certain extent imposed. If an American division might strike British trade on the equator between 20 deg. and 30 deg. west longitude, and also in the neighborhood of the Cape Verdes and of the Azores, preparation in some form to protect all those points was necessary, and they are too wide apart for this to be effected by mere concentration. So the blockade of the United States harbors. There might be in New York no American frigates, but if a division escaped from Boston it was possible it might come upon the New York blockade in superior force, if adequate numbers were not constantly kept there. The British commercial blockade, though offensive in essence, had also its defensive side, which compelled a certain dispersion of force, in order to be in local sufficiency in several quarters.

These several dispersed assemblages of British ships of war constituted the totality of naval effort imposed upon Great Britain by "the fourteen sail of vessels of all descriptions"[216] which composed the United States navy. It would not in the least have been necessary had these been sloops of war—were they fourteen or forty. The weight of the burden was the heavy frigates, two of which together were more than a match for three of the same nominal class—the 38-gun frigate—which was the most numerous and efficient element in the British cruising force. The American forty-four was unknown to British experience, and could be met only by ships of the line. Add to this consideration the remoteness of the American shore, and its dangerous proximity to very vital British interests, and there are found the elements of the difficult problem presented to the Admiralty by the combination of American force—such as it was—with American advantage of position for dealing a severe blow to British welfare at the period, 1805-1812, when the empire was in the height of its unsupported and almost desperate struggle with Napoleon; when Prussia was chained, Austria paralyzed, and Russia in strict bonds of alliance—personal and political—with France.

If conditions were thus menacing, as we know them to to have been in 1812, when war was declared, and the invasion of Russia just beginning, when the United States navy was "fourteen pendants," what would they not have been in 1807, had the nation possessed even one half of the twenty ships of the line which Gouverneur Morris, a shrewd financier, estimated fifteen years before were within her competency? While entirely convinced of the illegality of the British measures, and feeling keenly—as what American even now cannot but feel?—the humiliation and outrage to which his country was at that period subjected, the writer has always recognized the stringent compulsion under which Great Britain lay, and the military wisdom, in his opinion, of the belligerent measures adopted by her to sustain her strength through that unparalleled struggle; while in the matter of impressment, it is impossible to deny—as was urged by Representative Gaston of North Carolina and Gouverneur Morris—that her claim to the service of her native seamen was consonant to the ideas of the time, as well as of utmost importance to her in that hour of dire need. Nevertheless, submission by America should have been impossible; and would have been avoidable if for the fourteen pendants there had been a dozen sail of the line, and frigates to match. To an adequate weighing of conditions there will be indeed resentment for impressment and the other mortifications; but it is drowned in wrath over the humiliating impotence of an administration which, owing to preconceived notions as to peace, made such endurance necessary. It is not always ignominious to suffer ignominy; but it always is so to deserve it.

President Washington, in his last annual message, December 7, 1796, defined the situation then confronting the United States, and indicated its appropriate remedy, in the calm and forcible terms which characterized all his perceptions. "It is in our own experience, that the most sincere neutrality is not a sufficient guard against the depredations of nations at war. To secure respect for a neutral flag requires a naval force, organized and ready, to vindicate it from insult or aggression. This may even prevent the necessity of going to war, by discouraging belligerent powers from committing such violations of the rights of the neutral party as may, first or last, leave no other option" [than war]. The last sentence is that of the statesman and soldier, who accurately appreciates the true office and sphere of arms in international relations. His successor, John Adams, yearly renewed his recommendation for the development of the navy; although, not being a military man, he seems to have looked rather exclusively on the defensive aspect, and not to have realized that possible enemies are more deterred by the fear of offensive action against themselves than by recognition of a defensive force which awaits attack at an enemy's pleasure. Moreover, in his administration, it was not Great Britain, but France, that was most actively engaged in violating the neutral rights of American shipping, and French commercial interests then presented nothing upon which retaliation could take effect. The American problem then was purely defensive,—to destroy the armed ships engaged in molesting the national commerce.

President Jefferson, whose influence was paramount with the dominant party which remained in power from his inauguration in 1801 to the war, based his policy upon the conviction, expressed in his inaugural, that this "was the only government where every man would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern;" and that "a well-disciplined militia is our best reliance for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them." In pursuance of these fundamental principles, it was doubtless logical to recommend in his first annual message that, "beyond the small force which will probably be wanted for actual service in the Mediterranean [against the Barbary pirates], whatever annual sum you may think proper to appropriate to naval preparations would perhaps be better employed in providing those articles which may be kept without waste or consumption, and be in readiness when any exigence calls them into use. Progress has been made in providing materials for seventy-four gun ships;" but this commended readiness issued in not laying their keels till after the war began.

Upon this first recommendation followed the discontinuance of building ships for ocean service, and the initiation of the gunboat policy; culminating, when war began, in the decision of the administration to lay up the ships built for war, to keep them out of British hands. The urgent remonstrances of two or three naval captains obtained the reversal of this resolve, and thereby procured for the country those few successes which, by a common trick of memory, have remained the characteristic feature of the War of 1812.

NOTE.—After writing the engagement between the "Boxer" and the "Enterprise," the author found among his memoranda, overlooked, the following statement from the report of her surviving lieutenant, David McCreery: "I feel it my duty to mention that the bulwarks of the 'Enterprise' were proof against our grape, when her musket balls penetrated through our bulwarks." (Canadian Archives, M. 389, 3. p. 87.) It will be noted that this does not apply to the cannon balls, and does not qualify the contrast in gunnery.

FOOTNOTES:

[128] Broke's Letter to Lawrence, June, 1813. Naval Chronicle, vol. xxx. p. 413.

[129] Rodgers' Report of this cruise is in Captains' Letters, Sept. 27, 1813.

[130] Captains' Letters, Dec. 14, 1813.

[131] Captains' Letters, June 3, 1812.

[132] The Department's orders to Evans and the letter transferring them to Lawrence, captured in the ship, can be found published in the Report on Canadian Archives, 1896, p. 74. A copy is attached to the Record of the subsequent Court of Inquiry, Navy Department MSS.

[133] James' Naval History, vol. vi., edition of 1837. The account of the action between the "Chesapeake" and "Shannon" will be found on pp. 196-206.

[134] Secretary to the Admiralty, In-Letters, May, 1814, vol. 505, p. 777.

[135] Naval Chronicle, vol. xxx, p. 413.

[136] Broke, in his letter of challenge, "was disappointed that, after various verbal messages sent into Boston, Commodore Rodgers, with the 'President' and 'Congress,' had eluded the 'Shannon' and 'Tenedos,' by sailing the first chance, after the prevailing easterly winds had obliged us to keep an offing from the coast."

[137] For the reason here assigned, and others mentioned in the narrative, the author has preferred to follow in the main James' account, analyzed, and compared with Broke's report (Naval Chronicle, vol. xxx. p. 83), and with the testimony in the Court of Inquiry held in Boston on the surrender of the "Chesapeake," and in the resultant courts martial upon Lieutenant Cox and other persons connected with the ship, which are in the Navy Department MSS. The official report of Lieutenant Budd, the senior surviving officer of the "Chesapeake", is published in Niles' Register (vol. iv, p. 290), which gives also several unofficial statements of onlookers, and others.

[138] Not "across"; the distinction is important, being decisive of general raking direction.

[139] Actually, a contemporary account, borrowed by the British "Naval Chronicle" (vol. xxx. p. 161) from a Halifax paper, but avouched as trustworthy, says the "Chesapeake" was terribly battered on the larboard bow as well as quarter. The details in the text indicate merely the local preponderance of injury, and the time and manner of its occurrence.

[140] A slight qualification is here needed, in that of the injured of the "Shannon" some were hurt in the boarding, not by the cannonade; but the general statement is substantially accurate.

[141] Decatur to Navy Department. Captains' Letters, June, 1813.

[142] Decatur to Navy Department. Captains' Letters, June, 1813.

[143] Naval Chronicle, vol. xxix. p. 497.

[144] Croker to Warren, Jan. 9, 1813. Admiralty Out-Letters, British Records Office. My italics.

[145] Message of the Governor of Connecticut, October, 1813. Niles' Register, vol. v. p. 121.

[146] Message of the Governor of Connecticut, October, 1813. Niles' Register, vol. v. p. 121.

[147] Niles' Register, vol. v. p. 302.

[148] Captains' Letters.

[149] Niles' Register, vol. vi. p. 136.

[150] Captains' Letters, Nov. 3 and Dec. 31, 1809; March 26, 1810; and Oct. 12, 1813.

[151] American State Papers, Naval Affairs, vol. i. p. 307.

[152] Ante, page 16.

[153] The official reports of Warren and Cockburn concerning these operations are published in the Naval Chronicle, vol. xxx. pp. 162-168.

[154] Captains' Letters, June 21, 1813.

[155] The American official account of this affair is given in Niles' Register, vol. iv. pp. 375, 422. James' Naval History, vol. vi. pp. 236-238, gives the British story.

[156] Captains' Letters, April, 1813.

[157] Captains' Letters, May 21, 1813.

[158] Ibid.

[159] James, Naval History (edition 1837), vol. vi. p. 231.

[160] Warren's Gazette Letters, here referred to, can be found in Naval Chronicle, vol. xxx. pp. 243, 245.

[161] Croker to Warren, March 20, 1813. Admiralty Out-Letters, Records Office.

[162] Niles' Register, vol. iv. p. 404.

[163] The rise of the tide is about two and a half feet.

[164] This is the number stated by James, the British naval historian, and is somewhat difficult to reconcile with Warren's expression, "the troops and a re-enforcement of seamen and marines from the ships." To be effective, the attack should have been in greater numbers.

[165] The British story of this failure, outside the official despatches, is given in James' Naval History, vol. vi. pp. 232-234.

[166] Report of the commander of the "Scorpion" to Captain Morris, July 21, 1813. Captains' Letters.

[167] This letter, from the commanding officer of the "Narcissus", is in Niles' Register, vol. iv. p. 279.

[168] Morris to Navy Department, August 13, 23, and 27. Captains' Letters.

[169] Captain Hayes, of the "Majestic," in charge of the blockade of Boston, wrote to Warren, October 25, 1813: "Almost every vessel I meet has a license, or is under a neutral flag. Spanish, Portuguese, and Swedes are passing in and out by hundreds, and licensed vessels out of number from the West Indies. I find the licenses are sent blank to be filled up in Boston. This is of course very convenient, and the Portuguese consul is said to be making quite a trade of that flag, covering the property and furnishing the necessary papers for any person at a thousand dollars a ship." Canadian Archives, M. 389. 3. p. 189.

[170] Annals of Congress, 1813-1814, vol. i. p. 500.

[171] This parenthesis shows that the censures were not directed against New England only, for the blockade so far declared did not extend thither.

[172] Niles' Register, vol. iv. pp. 370, 386.

[173] Ibid., p. 387.

[174] Niles' Register, vol. iv. p. 387.

[175] Ibid., p. 402.

[176] Ibid.

[177] Ibid. Author's italics.

[178] Morris to Navy Department, Dec. 20 and 26, 1813. Captains' Letters.

[179] Post, chapter xviii.

[180] British Records Office, Secret Papers MSS.

[181] Niles' Register, vol. v. p. 311.

[182] The Columbian Centinel, Boston, Sept. 7 and Dec. 15, 1813.

[183] Ibid., Dec. 18.

[184] Ibid.

[185] Campbell to the Navy Department, Nov. 11, 1814. Captains' Letters.

[186] Captains' Letters.

[187] Ibid., June 24, 1813.

[188] Hull to Navy Department, July 31, 1813. Ibid.

[189] Cooper tells the story that when this gun was transported, and preparations being made to use it as a stern instead of a bow chaser, the crew—to whom Burrows was as yet a stranger, known chiefly by his reputation for great eccentricity—came to the mast to express a hope that the brig was not going to retreat.

[190] Report of Lieutenant Tillinghast to Captain Hull. Captains' Letters, Sept. 9, 1813.

[191] Hull to Bainbridge, Sept. 10. Niles' Register, vol. v. p. 58.

[192] Report of the carpenter of the "Enterprise." Captains' Letters.

[193] There is a discrepancy in the statements concerning the "Boxer's" crew. Hull reported officially, "We have sixty-seven, exclusive of those killed and thrown overboard." (Sept. 25. Captains' Letters.) Lieutenant McCall, who succeeded to the command after Burrows fell, reported that "from information received from officers of the 'Boxer' it appears that there were between twenty and thirty-five killed, and fourteen wounded." (U.S. State Papers, Naval Affairs, vol. i. p. 297.) The number killed is evidently an exaggerated impression received, resembling some statements made concerning the "Chesapeake;" but it is quite likely that the "Boxer's" loss should be increased by several bodies thrown overboard.

[194] Naval Chronicle, vol. xxxii. p. 473.

[195] Columbian Centinel, July 28, Sept. 1, and Nov. 13, 1813.

[196] Ibid., Sept. 25.

[197] Campbell to Navy Department, Jan. 4, 1814. Captains' Letters.

[198] For full particulars see Captains' Letters (Campbell), June 12, 1813; Jan. 2 and 4, Aug. 20, Sept. 3, Oct. 8, Oct. 15, Dec. 4, 1814.

[199] Campbell, Dec. 2, 1814. Captains' Letters.

[200] Dent to Navy Department, Jan. 28, 1815. Ibid.

[201] Campbell, Feb. 3, 1815. Ibid.

[202] June 7, 1813. Navy Department MSS.

[203] Captains' Letters, Sept. 3, 1814.

[204] Benton's Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, vol. v. p. 202.

[205] Dec. 10, 1813. Niles' Register, vol. v. pp. 257-260.

[206] Niles' Register, vol. vii. p. 194.

[207] Ibid., vol. viii. p. 234.

[208] Ibid., vol. vii. p. 168. Quoted from a Charleston, S.C., paper.

[209] Captains' Letters, May 3, 23, 24; June 27, 29; August 7, 17; Nov. 9, 13, 23, 1813.

[210] Niles' Register, vol. viii. p. 311. Quoted from a Norfolk paper.

[211] American State Papers, Commerce and Navigation, vol. i. p. 1017.

[212] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 12.

[213] American State Papers, Commerce and Navigation, vol. ii. p. 87.

[214] Ibid., vol. i. p. 1017; vol. ii. pp. 12, 87.

[215] Ante, vol. i. pp. 402-404.

[216] Admiralty's Letter to Warren. Feb. 10, 1813.



CHAPTER XIV

MARITIME OPERATIONS EXTERNAL TO THE WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1813-1814

In broad generalization, based upon analysis of conditions, it has been said that the seacoast of the United States was in 1812 a defensive frontier, from which, as from all defensive lines, there should be, and was, opportunity for offensive returns; for action planned to relieve the shore-line, and the general military situation, by inflicting elsewhere upon the opponent injury, harassment, and perplexity. The last chapter dealt with the warfare depending upon the seaboard chiefly from the defensive point of view; to illustrate the difficulties, the blows, and the sufferings, to which the country was exposed, owing to inability to force the enemy away from any large portion of the coast. The pressure was as universal as it was inexorable and irresistible.

It remains still to consider the employment and effects of the one offensive maritime measure left open by the exigencies of the war; the cruises directed against the enemy's commerce, and the characteristic incidents to which they gave rise. In this pursuit were engaged both the national ships of war and those equipped by the enterprise of the mercantile community; but, as the operations were in their nature more consonant to the proper purpose of privateers, so the far greater number of these caused them to play a part much more considerable in effect, though proportionately less fruitful in conspicuous action. Fighting, when avoidable, is to the privateer a misdirection of energy. Profit is his object, by depredation upon the enemy's commerce; not the preservation of that of his own people. To the ship of war, on the other hand, protection of the national shipping is the primary concern; and for that reason it becomes her to shun no encounter by which she may hope to remove from the seas a hostile cruiser.

The limited success of the frigates in their attempts against British trade has been noted, and attributed to the general fact that their cruises were confined to the more open sea, upon the highways of commerce. These were now travelled by British ships under strict laws of convoy, the effect of which was not merely to protect the several flocks concentrated under their particular watchdogs, but to strip the sea of those isolated vessels, that in time of peace rise in irregular but frequent succession above the horizon, covering the face of the deep with a network of tracks. These solitary wayfarers were now to be found only as rare exceptions to the general rule, until the port of destination was approached. There the homing impulse overbore the bonds of regulation; and the convoys tended to the conduct noted by Nelson as a captain, "behaving as all convoys that ever I saw did, shamefully ill, parting company every day." Commodore John Rodgers has before been quoted, as observing that the British practice was to rely upon pressure on the enemy over sea, for security near home; and that the waters surrounding the British Islands themselves were the field where commerce destruction could be most decisively effected.

The first United States vessel to emphasize this fact was the brig "Argus," Captain William H. Allen, which sailed from New York June 18, 1813, having on board a newly appointed minister to France, Mr. William H. Crawford, recently a senator from Georgia. On July 11 she reached L'Orient, having in the twenty-three days of passage made but one prize.[217] Three days later she proceeded to cruise in the chops of the English Channel, and against the local trade between Ireland and England; continuing thus until August 14, thirty-one days, during which she captured nineteen sail, extending her depredations well up into St. George's Channel. The contrast of results mentioned, between her voyage across and her occupancy of British waters, illustrates the comparative advantages of the two scenes of operations, regarded in their relation to British commerce.

On August 12 the British brig of war "Pelican," Captain Maples, anchored at Cork from the West Indies. Before her sails were furled she received orders to go out in search of the American ship of war whose depredations had been reported. Two hours later she was again at sea. The following evening, at half-past seven, a burning vessel to the eastward gave direction to her course, and at daybreak, August 14, she sighted a brig of war in the northeast, just quitting another prize, which had also been fired. The wind, being south, gave the windward position to the "Pelican," which stood in pursuit; the "Argus" steering east, near the wind, but under moderate sail to enable her opponent to close (positions 1). The advantage in size and armament was on this occasion on the British side; the "Pelican" being twenty per cent larger, and her broadside seventeen per cent heavier.

At 5.55 A.M., St. David's Head on the coast of Wales bearing east, distant about fifteen miles, the "Argus" wore, standing now to the westward, with the wind on the port side (2). The "Pelican" did the same, and the battle opened at six; the vessels running side by side, within the range of grapeshot and musketry,—probably under two hundred yards apart (2). Within five minutes Captain Allen received a wound which cost him his leg, and in the end his life. He at first refused to be taken below, but loss of blood soon so reduced him that he could no longer exercise command. Ten minutes later the first lieutenant was stunned by the graze of a grapeshot along his head, and the charge of the ship devolved on the second. By this time the rigging of the "Argus" had been a good deal cut, and the "Pelican" bore up (3) to pass under her stern; but the American brig, luffing close to the wind and backing her maintopsail (3), balked the attempt, throwing herself across the enemy's path, and giving a raking broadside, the poor aim of which seems to have lost her the effect that should have resulted from this ready and neat manoeuvre. The main braces of the "Argus" had already been shot away, as well as much of the other gear upon which the after sails depended; and at 6.18 the preventer (duplicate) braces, which formed part of the preparation for battle, were also severed. The vessel thus became unmanageable, falling off before the wind (4), and the "Pelican" was enabled to work round her at will. This she did, placing herself first under the stern (4), and then on the bow (5) of her antagonist, where the only reply to her broadside was with musketry.

In this helpless situation the "Argus" surrendered, after an engagement of a little over three quarters of an hour. The British loss was two killed and five wounded; the American, six killed and seventeen wounded, of whom five afterwards died. Among these was Captain Allen, who survived only four days, and was buried with military honors at Plymouth, whither Captain Maples sent his prize.[218] After every allowance for disparity of force, the injury done by the American fire cannot be deemed satisfactory, and suggests the consideration whether the voyage to France under pressure of a diplomatic mission, and the busy preoccupation of making, manning, and firing prizes, during the brief month of Channel cruising, may not have interfered unduly with the more important requirements of fighting efficiency. The surviving officer in command mentions in explanation, "the superior size and metal of our opponent, and the fatigue which the crew of the 'Argus' underwent from a very rapid succession of prizes."



From the broad outlook of the universal maritime situation, this rapid succession of captures is a matter of more significance than the loss of a single brig of war. It showed the vulnerable point of British trade and local intercommunication; and the career of the "Argus," prematurely cut short though it was, tended to fix attention upon facts sufficiently well known, but perhaps not fully appreciated. From this time the opportunities offered by the English Channel and adjacent waters, long familiar to French corsairs, were better understood by Americans; as was also the difficulty of adequately policing them against a number of swift and handy cruisers, preying upon merchant vessels comparatively slow, lumbering, and undermanned. The subsequent career of the United States ship "Wasp," and the audacious exploits of several privateers, recall the impunity of Paul Jones a generation before, and form a sequel to the brief prelude, in which the leading part, though ultimately disastrous, was played by the "Argus."

While the cruise of the "Argus" stood by no means alone at this time, the attending incidents made it conspicuous among several others of a like nature, on the same scene or close by; and it therefore may be taken as indicative of the changing character of the war, which soon began to be manifest, owing to the change of conditions in Europe. In general summary, the result was to transfer an additional weight of British naval operations to the American side of the Atlantic, which in turn compelled American cruisers, national and private, in pursuit of commerce destruction, to get away from their own shores, and to seek comparative security as well as richer prey in distant waters. To this contributed also the increasing stringency of British convoy regulation, enforced with special rigor in the Caribbean Sea and over the Western Atlantic. It was impossible to impose the same strict prescription upon the coastwise trade, by which chiefly the indispensable continuous intercourse between the several parts of the United Kingdom was maintained. Before the introduction of steam this had a consequence quite disproportionate to the interior traffic by land; and its development, combined with the feeling of greater security as the British Islands were approached, occasioned in the narrow seas, and on the coasts of Europe, a dispersion of vessels not to be seen elsewhere. This favored the depredations of the light, swift, and handy cruisers that alone are capable of profiting by such an opportunity, through their power to evade the numerous, but necessarily scattered, ships of war, which under these circumstances must patrol the sea, like a watchman on beat, as the best substitute for the more formal and regularized convoy protection, when that ceases to apply.

From the end of the summer of 1813, when this tendency to distant enterprise became predominant, to the corresponding season a year later, there were captured by American cruisers some six hundred and fifty British vessels, chiefly merchantmen; a number which had increased to between four and five hundred more, when the war ended in the following winter.[219] An intelligible account of such multitudinous activities can be framed only by selecting amid the mass some illustrative particulars, accompanied by a general estimate of the conditions they indicate and the results they exemplify. Thus it may be stated, with fair approach to precision, that from September 30, 1813, to September 30, 1814, there were taken six hundred and thirty-nine British vessels, of which four hundred and twenty-four were in seas that may be called remote from the United States. From that time to the end of the war, about six months, the total captures were four hundred and fourteen, of which those distant were two hundred and ninety-three. These figures, larger actually and in impression than they are relatively to the total of British shipping, represent the offensive maritime action of the United States during the period in question; but, in considering them, it must be remembered that such results were possible only because the sea was kept open to British commerce by the paramount power of the British navy. This could not prevent all mishaps; but it reduced them, by the annihilation of hostile navies, to such a small percentage of the whole shipping movement, that the British mercantile community found steady profit both in foreign and coasting trade, of which the United States at the same time was almost totally deprived.

The numerous but beggarly array of American bay-craft and oyster boats, which were paraded to swell British prize lists, till there seemed to be a numerical set-off to their own losses, show indeed that in point of size and value of vessels taken there was no real comparison; but this was due to the fact, not at once suggested by the figures themselves, that there were but few American merchant vessels to be taken, because they did not dare to go to sea, with the exception of the few to whom exceptional speed gave a chance of immunity, not always realized. In the period under consideration, September, 1813, to September, 1814, despite the great falling off of trade noted in the returns, over thirty American merchant ships and letters of marque were captured at sea;[220] at the head of the list being the "Ned," whose hair-breadth escapes in seeking to reach a United States port have been mentioned already.[221] She met her fate near the French coast, September 6, 1813, on the outward voyage from New York to Bordeaux. Privateering, risky though it was, offered a more profitable employment, with less chance of capture; because, besides being better armed and manned, the ship was not impeded in her sailing by the carriage of a heavy cargo. While the enemy was losing a certain small proportion of vessels, the United States suffered practically an entire deprivation of external commerce; and her coasting trade was almost wholly suppressed, at the time that her cruisers, national and private, were causing exaggerated anxiety concerning the intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland, which, though certainly molested, was not seriously interrupted.

Further evidence of the control exerted by the British Navy, and of the consequent difficulty under which offensive action was maintained by the United States, is to be found in the practice, from this time largely followed, of destroying prizes, after removing from them packages of little weight compared to their price. The prospect of a captured vessel reaching an American port was very doubtful, for the same reason that prevented the movement of American commerce; and while the risk was sometimes run, it usually was with cargoes which were at once costly and bulky, such as West India goods, sugars and coffees. Even then specie, and light costly articles, were first removed to the cruiser, where the chances for escape were decidedly better. Recourse to burning to prevent recapture was permissible only with enemy's vessels. If a neutral were found carrying enemy's goods, a frequent incident of maritime war, she must be sent in for adjudication; which, if adverse, affected the cargo only. Summary processes, therefore, could not be applied in such cases, and the close blockade of the United States coast seriously restricted the operations of her cruisers in this particular field.



Examination of the records goes to show that, although individual American vessels sometimes made numerous seizures in rapid succession, they seldom, if ever, effected the capture or destruction of a large convoy at a single blow. This was the object with which Rodgers started on his first cruise, but failed to accomplish. A stroke of this kind is always possible, and he had combined conditions unusually favorable to his hopes; but, while history certainly presents a few instances of such achievement on the large scale, they are comparatively rare, and opportunity, when it offers, can be utilized only by a more numerous force than at any subsequent time gathered under the American flag. In 1813 two privateers, the "Scourge" of New York and "Rattlesnake" of Philadelphia, passed the summer in the North Sea, and there made a number of prizes,—twenty-two,—which being reported together gave the impression of a single lucky encounter; were supposed in fact to be the convoy for which Rodgers in the "President" had looked unsuccessfully the same season.[222] The logs, however, showed that these captures were spread over a period of two months, and almost all made severally. Norway being then politically attached to Denmark, and hostile to Great Britain, such prizes as were not burned were sent into her ports. The "Scourge" appears to have been singularly fortunate, for on her homeward trip she took, sent in, or destroyed, ten more enemy's vessels; and in an absence extending a little over a year had taken four hundred and twenty prisoners,—more than the crew of a 38-gun frigate.[223]

At the same time the privateer schooner "Leo," of Baltimore, was similarly successful on the coast of Spain and Portugal. By an odd coincidence, another of the same class, bearing the nearly identical name, "Lion," was operating at the same time in the same waters, and with like results; which may possibly account for a contemporary report in a London paper, that an American off the Tagus had taken thirty-two British vessels. The "Leo" destroyed thirteen, and took four others; while the "Lion" destroyed fifteen, having first removed from them cargo to the amount of $400,000, which she carried safely into France. A curious circumstance, incidental to the presence of the privateers off Cape Finisterre, is that Wellington's troops, which had now passed the Pyrenees and were operating in southern France, had for a long time to wait for their great-coats, which had been stored in Lisbon for the summer, and now could not be returned by sea to Bayonne and Bordeaux before convoy was furnished to protect the transports against capture. Money to pay the troops, and for the commissariat, was similarly detained. Niles' Register, which followed carefully the news of maritime capture, announced in November, 1813, that eighty British vessels had been taken within a few months in European seas by the "President," "Argus," and five privateers. Compared with the continuous harassment and loss to which the enemy had become hardened during twenty years of war with France, allied often with other maritime states, this result, viewed singly, was not remarkable; but coming in addition to the other sufferings of British trade, and associated with similar injuries in the West Indies, and disquiet about the British seas themselves, the cumulative effect was undeniable, and found voice in public meetings, resolutions, and addresses to the Government.

Although the United States was not in formal alliance with France, the common hostility made the ports of either nation a base of operations to the other, and much facilitated the activities of American cruisers in British seas. One of the most successful of the privateers, the "True Blooded Yankee," was originally equipped at Brest, under American ownership, though it does not appear whether she was American built. On her first cruise her prizes are reported at twenty-seven. She remained out thirty-seven days, chiefly off the coast of Ireland, where she is said to have held an island for six days. Afterwards she burned several vessels in a Scotch harbor. Her procedure illustrates the methods of privateering in more respects than one. Thus, two large ships, one from Smyrna and one from Buenos Ayres, were thought sufficiently valuable to attempt sending into a French port, although the enemy watched the French coast as rigorously as the American. The recapture of a third, ordered to Morlaix, received specific mention, because one of the prize crew, being found to be an Englishman, was sentenced to death by an English court.[224] Eight others were destroyed; and, when the privateer returned to port, she carried in her own hold a miscellaneous cargo of light goods, too costly to risk in a less nimble bottom. Among these are named eighteen bales of Turkey carpets, forty-three bales of raw silk, seventy packs of skins, etc.[225] The "True Blooded Yankee" apparently continued to prefer European waters; for towards the end of 1814 she was taken there and sent into Gibraltar.

While there were certain well-known districts, such as these just mentioned, and others before specified, in which from causes constant in operation there was always to be found abundant material for the hazardous occupation of the commerce-destroyer, it was not to them alone that American cruisers went. There were other smaller but lucrative fields, into which an occasional irruption proved profitable. Such were the gold-coast on the west shore of Africa, and the island groups of Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape Verde, which geographically appertain to that continent. Thither Captain Morris directed the frigate "Adams," in January, 1814, after first escaping from his long blockade in the Potomac. This voyage, whence he returned to Savannah in April, was not remunerative; his most valuable prize, an East India ship, being snatched out of his hands, when in the act of taking possession, by an enemy's division in charge of a convoy of twenty-five sail, to which probably she had belonged, and had been separated by the thick weather that permitted her capture.[226] A year before this the privateer "Yankee," of Bristol, Rhode Island, had had better success. When she returned to Narragansett Bay in the spring of 1813, after a five months' absence, she reported having scoured the whole west coast of Africa, taking eight vessels, which carried in the aggregate sixty-two guns, one hundred and ninety-six men, and property to the amount of $296,000. In accordance with the practice already noticed, of distributing the spoil in order better to insure its arrival, she brought back in her own hold the light but costly items of six tons of ivory, thirty-two bales of fine goods, and $40,000 in gold-dust.[227] This vessel was out again several times; and when the war closed was said to have been the most successful of all American cruisers. Her prizes numbered forty, of which thirty-four were ships or brigs; that is, of the larger classes of merchantmen then used. The estimated value of themselves and cargoes, $3,000,000, is to be received with reserve.[228]

It was in this neighborhood that the privateer schooner "Globe," Captain Moon, of Baltimore, mounting eight 9-pounder carronades and one long gun, met with an adventure illustrative of the fighting incidental to the business. To this the privateersmen as a class were in no wise loath, where there was a fair prospect of the gain for which they were sent to look. Being off Funchal, in the island of Madeira, November 1, 1813, two brigs, which proved to be English packets, the "Montague" and "Pelham," were seen "backing and filling;" that is, keeping position in the open roadstead which constitutes the harbor, under sail, but not anchored. Packets, being in government service, were well armed for their size, and as mail carriers were necessarily chosen for speed; they therefore frequently carried specie. In one taken by the "Essex," Captain Porter found $55,000, which as ready cash helped him much to pay his frigate's way in a long and adventurous career. It does not appear that the "Globe" at first recognized the character of these particular vessels; but she lay-by during the night, watching for their quitting the shelter of neutral waters. This they did at 9 P.M., when the privateer pursued, but lost sight of them in a squall. The next morning they were seen in the southwest, and again chased. At 10.15 A.M. the "Montague" began firing her stern guns. The schooner replied, but kept on to board, knowing her superiority in men, and at 12.30 ran alongside (1). The attack being smartly met, and the vessels separating almost immediately, the attempt failed disastrously; there being left on board the packet the two lieutenants of the "Globe" and three or four seamen. Immediately upon this repulse, the "Pelham" crossed the privateer's bow and raked her (P 2), dealing such destruction to sails and rigging as to leave her unmanageable. The "Montague" and "Globe" now lay broadside to broadside (2), engaging; and ten minutes later the "Montague" by her own report was completely disabled (M 3). Captain Moon claimed that she struck; and this was probably the case, if his further incidental mention, that the mailbags were seen to be thrown overboard, is not a mistake. The action then continued with the "Pelham," within pistol-shot (3), for an hour or so, when the schooner, being found in a sinking condition, was compelled to haul off; "having seven shot between wind and water, the greater part of our standing and running rigging shot away, and not a sail but was perfectly riddled and almost useless." After separating, the several combatants all steered with the tradewinds for the Canaries; the British going to Teneriffe, and the American to the Grand Canary.[229]

From the injuries received, it is apparent that, for the armaments of the vessels, this was a very severe as well as determined engagement. The British had six killed and twelve wounded; the American five killed and thirteen wounded, besides the prisoners lost in boarding. All three captains were severely hurt, that of the "Montague" being killed. The figures given are those reported by each side; how exaggerated the rumors current about such encounters, and the consequent difficulty to the historian, is shown by what each heard about the other's casualties. A Spanish brig from Teneriffe told Moon that the enemy had twenty-seven men killed; while the British were equally credibly informed that the "Globe" lost thirty-three killed and nineteen wounded.