1812: The Navy's War (24 page)

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Authors: George Daughan

Tags: #War of 1812

BOOK: 1812: The Navy's War
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Both sides now hunkered down for the long winter, but they remained on guard against a possible surprise strike over the frozen lake. Chauncey prepared defenses, but no attack occurred. While he was doing it, he planned an attack of his own over the ice, but the severity of the weather prevented him from executing it.
 
 
WHILE CHAUNCEY WAS extending control over Lake Ontario, Lieutenant Macdonough was busy on Lake Champlain. Both sides recognized how vital the lake was. An attack on Montreal or Quebec was impossible without the ability to move men and supplies over its waters. The lake formed the boundary between the northwestern part of Vermont and the northeastern portion of New York, flowing north into Canada for a brief period, before emptying into the Richelieu River. Ten miles of strong rapids blocked the entrance to the Richelieu, prohibiting ships from moving directly between the two bodies of water. Beyond the rapids, the Richelieu flowed north for ninety-six miles, emptying into the St. Lawrence River northeast of Montreal. Invaders since the days of Samuel de Champlain in the early seventeenth century had used the lake and related waterways as a highway to move armies and supplies either north or south.
Lieutenant Macdonough arrived at White Hall at the southern end of the lake on October 13. Even though Montreal was the most important objective of the president’s campaign against Canada, Secretary Hamilton did not send Macdonough orders to move to the lake until September 28, and he did not receive them until the first week of October. He was in Portland, Maine, when the orders arrived, and like Chauncey, he was delighted to be getting into the fight rather than sitting on the sidelines minding gunboats.
Lieutenant Sidney Smith, who had been in command on Lake Champlain and would now be Macdonough’s second, was there to greet him when he arrived. Smith had mixed feelings about being superseded by Macdonough and would not give him the wholehearted support that Chauncey was getting from Woolsey at Sackets Harbor.
Smith’s meager force was at Vergennes, Vermont, and consisted of two undermanned sloops, the
Growler
and the
Eagle
, both of which needed work, and two decrepit gunboats. One of them was partially sunk in the water, and the seams in both were so open one could put a hand through them.
Like Chauncey, Macdonough was in an arms race. At the northern end of the lake, in a well-protected harbor on the Isle aux Noix, the British were working on vessels that would give them naval supremacy on Lake Champlain. To win the shipbuilding race, Macdonough needed at least a hundred more seamen, additional officers, and supplies of every kind.
In addition to his other problems, Macdonough had problems coordinating with Chauncey and with General Dearborn. Sailors of the type Macdonough needed were not available on Lake Champlain, and he naturally looked to Chauncey for help, but little was forthcoming. Chauncey needed men as much as Macdonough did. Also, Macdonough had difficulty working with the army at Plattsburg and Albany. In preparing for his abortive attack on Montreal, General Dearborn had commandeered the six best schooners on the lake without consulting Macdonough.
With the failure of Dearborn’s Montreal campaign, naval activity on the lake stopped for the winter. On December 12, 1812, Macdonough wrote to Hamilton that his vessels were in a secure harbor and that he was “getting everything in readiness for the spring.” He reported that the British had two gunboats at their Isle aux Noix base and three sloops, and they were working on a large schooner, designed to carry twelve or fourteen guns.
By then, Macdonough had a squadron of his own, consisting of the
President
, mounting two long twelve-pounders and six heavy army shell guns; the
Growler
, with two twelve-pounders, four six-pounders, and one long eighteen-pounder on a circle; the
Eagle
with six six-pounders and one eighteen in a circle; and two gunboats, carrying one long twelve-pounder each. In addition, he had three sloops for troop transports. Macdonough judged that his fleet was potentially superior to the British, but he was still woefully short of men.
CHAPTER TEN
 
More Blue-Water Victories
 
W
HILE INAUGURATING A crash program on the lakes, Madison was also providing a new strategy for his blue-water fleet. During the first week of September, he decided to deploy the navy’s ships in three small squadrons, rather than grouping them together, as Commodore Rodgers recommended. Influenced by the success of Isaac Hull and David Porter operating on their own, the president returned to Decatur’s idea of cruising singly or in small groups, leaving the details of where the ships went to the enterprise of their commanders.
On September 9, Secretary Hamilton ordered the fleet split into three squadrons led by Rodgers, Decatur, and Bainbridge. In order of seniority, each commodore was to select one heavy frigate, one light frigate, and a brig. In addition to his flagship
President
, Rodgers chose the
Congress
, under Captain John Smith, and the
Wasp
, under Master Commandant Jacob Jones. Decatur kept the
United States
and picked the
Chesapeake
, under Captain Samuel Evans, and the
Argus
, under Arthur Sinclair. Bainbridge was left with the
Constitution
, the
Essex
, under Captain Porter, and the
Hornet
, under Master Commandant James Lawrence, an arrangement Bainbridge found more than satisfactory. The
Constitution
had proven herself a superb ship, and he regarded Porter and Lawrence as brilliant fighters.
Madison gave the three commodores broad discretion in carrying out their assignments. Hamilton told them to “pursue that course which . . . may . . . appear the most expedient to afford protection to our trade and to annoy the enemy; returning to port as speedily as circumstances will permit, consistent with the great objects in view and writing to the Department by all proper opportunities.” Needless to say, Rodgers, Decatur, and Bainbridge were happy to be charting their own courses.
When Hamilton issued the new orders, nearly the entire fleet was in Boston. The
President
, the
United States
, the
Constitution,
the
Congress
, the
Argus
, and the
Hornet
were there
.
The
Chesapeake
was as well, but she was undergoing extensive repairs and would not be ready to sail until the middle of December. Decatur would have to leave without her. The 18-gun sloop-of-war
Wasp
was in the Delaware River, as was David Porter’s
Essex
. The
Constellation
and the
Adams
were in Washington. The 16-gun
Syren
was at New Orleans, and both the 14-gun
Vixen
and the 10-gun
Viper
were at Charleston.
In order to deceive the British, Rogers suggested to Hamilton that his squadron and Decatur’s leave Boston together and separate afterward. Rodgers thought the British might be fooled into thinking they were dealing with a large squadron, rather than single ships. The British might then keep their cruisers together in a large squadron or two, taking their ships away from blockading major ports to pursue a phantom fleet.
 
 
MADISON’S FRESH APPROACH to the navy roughly coincided with the appointment of a new British commander at Halifax. On August 12 the Admiralty announced it was replacing Vice Admiral Herbert Sawyer with a shrewd diplomat in naval garb, Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, a senior admiral with experience dating back to before the Revolution. At fifty-nine, Warren had served at all levels of the Royal Navy, including ordinary seaman. And he had seen plenty of combat, though he was known more as an administrator and a diplomat than a fighter. At one time he was Britain’s ambassador to Russia.
Before leaving for his new post, Warren traveled from his home in Nottingham to London for extensive talks with the First Lord of the Admiralty, Viscount Melville. During the conversations Melville made it clear that Lord Liverpool wanted Warren to initiate an immediate armistice so that serious negotiations to end the war could start. But if that failed, he was to vigorously prosecute the war. To help him, the Admiralty was enlarging his command to include not only the old North American Station but the Leeward Islands Station and the Jamaica Station as well. Warren’s authority would then extend over all of the West Indies, the entire American coastline from Maine to Louisiana, the Great Lakes, and Lake Champlain.
Warren reached Halifax on September 27, and by that time the fight with America had markedly changed. The war “seems to assume a new as well as more active and inveterate aspect than before,” he wrote to the Admiralty after only eight days on the job. Indeed it had, and the Madison administration was adamant about continuing the war until Britain renounced impressment. So Warren had a real fight on his hands, and the Americans were performing far better on the ocean than anyone had expected. Their privateers were swarming in the West Indies and in the approaches to the St. Lawrence River. They were even appearing around the British Isles and the important trade routes. But of much greater importance, the despised American navy had won two single-ship duels, baffling and enraging London.
Before doing anything else, Warren sought an armistice. On September 30 he wrote to Secretary of State Monroe, “The Orders in Council of 7 January 1807 and 26 April 1809 cease to exist.... Under these circumstances I am commanded to propose to your government the immediate cessation of hostilities.”
Given how vigorously the United States was prosecuting the war, Warren entertained little hope of success. His misgivings were confirmed when Monroe waited almost a month before writing back on October 27 that an armistice would only be possible if Britain gave up the practice of impressment. Warren had no power to negotiate this complicated issue, but it was obvious to him, and certainly to Monroe, that Liverpool would never agree to end impressment as a condition for opening talks. The prime minister and his colleagues believed impressment was essential to Britain’s security; they would never give it up.
Warren now understood that he was going to be doing far more fighting than talking. Their lordships had come to the same conclusion. The two unexpected American naval victories had caused such an uproar in London that the Admiralty’s first priority became destroying the U. S. fleet or blockading it. They expected Warren to seal enemy warships, privateers, and letters of marque in their ports. Their lordships never wanted another American man-of-war active on the high seas. Lord Melville wrote to Warren, emphasizing that he was to blockade all the principal ports south of Rhode Island, including the Mississippi, and put “a complete stop to all trade and intercourse by sea with those ports.”
New England was to be treated differently. Melville wanted naval traffic stopped, but not commercial trade. He did not want to offend Federalist sympathizers in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, but he did want to stop enemy warships from using their harbors, particularly Boston.
Liverpool also wanted Warren to encourage New England separatism by the judicious issuing of trading licenses, which allowed an American ship to trade in Halifax or anywhere else. British newspapers like the
Times
of London had fed the public with such a steady diet of the antiwar diatribes printed in Boston’s Federalist newspapers that it appeared to many in Britain that if given the proper incentives, New England would secede from the Union.
Unfortunately for Warren, while New England was a hotbed of anti-Madison sentiment, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were also producing half of America’s privateers and letters of marque, and they were indistinguishable from unarmed traders. New England privateers had become so annoying that in Warren’s first days at Halifax he ordered the 64-gun
Africa
and the 74-gun
San Domingo
(his flagship) to lead a squadron patrolling the Gulf of St. Lawrence to stop the murderous attacks of privateers on ships carrying supplies to Quebec. By the end of October, Yankee privateers had taken an astonishing one hundred and fifty British vessels.
Warren was also expected to guard all of Britain’s extensive commercial traffic within his jurisdiction. The Convoy Act stipulated that every merchant vessel, without exception, was to sail as part of a convoy, but even when sailing together, protected by warships, traders were vulnerable to attack.
Initiating a tight blockade, guarding merchant convoys, and encouraging New England separatism were not Warren’s only assignments; he was directed to conduct amphibious raids in the Chesapeake Bay area, to keep the population in a perpetual state of alarm, not knowing when or where mobile British forces would strike next. Warren was cautioned to conduct only raids. He did not have enough soldiers to penetrate inland or to hold territory after the raids. The Admiralty provided a small number of ground troops for these operations—two battalions of six hundred forty men each and an artillery company.
By the end of December, Warren still had not gotten his blockade or raids going to the satisfaction of London, and when it became clear that Napoleon had met with disaster in Russia, and Britain no longer needed to placate America, the Admiralty was far more forceful in pressing Warren to get on with his blockade and raids.

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