1812: The Navy's War (38 page)

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Authors: George Daughan

Tags: #War of 1812

BOOK: 1812: The Navy's War
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WHILE ADMIRAL WARREN was making it difficult for the U. S. Navy to get to sea, American privateers were proving impossible to contain. Dozens were putting out, menacing British ships from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the West Indies and any other place captains and their owners thought might be profitable, including around the British Isles. They seemed to be everywhere, even at the western end of the St. Lawrence River, operating out of Sackets Harbor. The
Neptune
and the
Fox
were two such. They performed a heroic action on July 19, 1813, capturing the British gunboat
Spitfire
and fifteen fully loaded bateaux she was escorting in the St. Lawrence.
Privateers were particularly effective in the West Indies, becoming bolder with time, even landing on Jamaica and raiding plantations for food. Cries for protection were heard in London from West Indian merchants and planters. Protests rained down on the Admiralty from every place the privateers swarmed. Especially vocal were British merchants trying to navigate in their home waters.
Taking advantage of dirty weather and adverse winds, privateers slipped out from their ports with relative ease. They became America’s answer to Britain’s blockade. Secretary Jones had always had a high appreciation of their value, unlike his captains, who scorned them. American naval officers felt that money alone motivated privateers. They could never be counted on to fight enemy warships unless they were forced to. And privateers drove up prices for everything naval vessels needed, often creating unnecessary shortages. In Jones’s view, however, commerce raiding was so vitally important, and the navy’s ships so few, that privateers, whatever their drawbacks, were necessary. In fact, they were the only possible response to Britain’s blockade.
On March 3, 1813, a desperate Congress authorized any citizen to attack any British armed vessel of war without a privateer’s commission. Few did. Preying on merchantmen was far easier. In the course of the war, Madison commissioned 526 privateers and letters of marque to operate on the high seas and on the Great Lakes. Most of them came from Massachusetts (150), Maryland (112), and New York (102). According to Lloyds of London’s list, in the first seven months of the war, American privateers captured five hundred British merchantmen, and their success continued unabated, in spite of everything the Admiralty did to combat them.
Britain’s privateering was on a much smaller scale. Unlike the United States, privateers were not a critical part of the Admiralty’s naval strategy. Most British privateers were letters of marque, and Nova Scotia was their main base. In the opening months of the war, forty-four of them captured more than two hundred prizes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
 
Raids in Chesapeake Bay
 
T
HE ADMIRALTY PLACED even more emphasis on blockading Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River than it did on Boston and New York. On December 26, 1812, Admiral Warren had received specific orders to establish “the most complete and vigorous blockade of the ports and harbors of the Bay of the Chesapeake and of the river Delaware.”
Warren was acutely aware of the urgency felt in London, and he did his best to carry out his orders, but he continued feeling that he did not have enough resources. On December 29, from his winter headquarters in Bermuda, he again requested more ships and men. The extra ships that had been promised had yet to arrive. Warren also complained about the number of British seamen joining the American navy after they were captured and the devastating impact of enemy privateers pillaging with impunity in the Caribbean.
By January 1813, Warren had a battleship, two frigates, and a sloop of war blockading Chesapeake Bay, but they patrolled in the open ocean outside the Capes, and dozens of privateers out of Baltimore eluded them. During the first week of February, however, additional warships arrived—a sail of the line, a frigate, a brig, and a schooner. The entire squadron then moved just inside the Chesapeake Capes and anchored in Lynnhaven Bay, making it far more difficult for privateers to get to sea, although many still did.
The reinforced British squadron reached its new anchorage just hours after Captain Charles Stewart brought the refurbished
Constellation
to Hampton Roads. After leaving Washington he had stopped at Annapolis and then, afraid ice might trap him there, proceeded to Hampton Roads, where he planned to stop briefly before slipping past the blockaders and driving out to sea for a lengthy cruise.
He was surprised on the morning of February 4 to find not only the British squadron inside the Chesapeake Capes, but a portion of it sailing after him. He immediately sought the protection of nearby Elizabeth River, hoving up “and kedging the ship up to the flats” where she grounded. Lacking detailed knowledge of the shallow Elizabeth, the British ships did not follow.
While waiting for high tide, Stewart lightened his ship—taking out stores and dumping water. At seven o’clock in the evening she floated free, and “by placing . . . boats along the narrows,” he was able to work her up the Elizabeth to Norfolk, where the guns of Fort Nelson and Fort Norfolk, situated on opposite sides of the river, could protect her. Having survived this initial brush with the British fleet, Stewart erected strong defenses to protect the
Constellation
against an attack by land and sea. Secretary Jones ordered Captain John Cassin, commandant of nearby Gosport Navy Yard, to help him.
While Stewart was securing his frigate, Rear Admiral George Cockburn set out from Bermuda in the 74-gun
Marlborough
with a squadron to take command in the Chesapeake and in the Delaware. Fighting contrary winds in the Gulf Stream, he arrived at Lynnhaven Bay inside the Chesapeake Capes on the third of March. His fleet now consisted of three seventy-fours,
Poictiers
,
Victorious
, and
Dragon
; four frigates,
Maidstone
,
Junon
,
Belvidera
(Captain Richard Byron still in command), and
Statira
; along with assorted smaller vessels. Cockburn sent Captain Sir John Beresford in the 74-gun
Poictiers
with a few smaller vessels to secure Delaware Bay.
Cockburn’s first objective was capturing the
Constellation
. Her defenses were now formidable. Craney Island, which guarded the mouth of the Elizabeth River, was heavily fortified. Even if Cockburn could drive the defenders off the island, his larger ships could not get up the Elizabeth River, nor could his smaller ones, since a flotilla of gunboats and shore batteries guarded Norfolk and Gosport. He did not have the resources to attack overland, so he reluctantly decided to wait for them. Once he had enough troops, he planned to attack the frigate “at the same time on both banks.”
Nineteen days later, Admiral Warren himself arrived in the
San Domingo
with additional ships, increasing the British squadron to five 74-gun sails of the line (
Marlborough
,
San Domingo
,
Poictiers
,
Victorious
, and
Dragon
), five frigates, two sloops of war, three tenders, and assorted smaller vessels—by any measure, an immense fleet.
Captain Stewart expected an attack momentarily, but knowing the
Constellation
was trapped, Warren decided to wait for more ground troops before making a move on her. He turned instead to hit-and-run raids along the shores of the Chesapeake, up her great rivers—the James, York, Rappahannock, Potomac, Patuxent, Patapsco, and Susquehanna—and her innumerable creeks and inlets. He hoped to rattle Washington and bring home the war to the residents of the entire area, undermining support for the war. He also wanted to create a big enough diversion that Madison would be forced to pull resources from the Canadian theater to defend Chesapeake Bay. Governor-General Prevost had been urging Warren to help take the pressure off Canada.
Leaving a force to guard the Elizabeth River, Warren sailed the rest of his squadron up to Annapolis as a sort of demonstration, taking whatever prizes came his way and sending raiding parties up nearby rivers and creeks. He then dispatched Cockburn with an amphibious force of one frigate, two brigs, four schooners, and three hundred men to the head of the bay to conduct more raids. The aggressive Cockburn delighted in the assignment, but, as always, he and Warren had to be concerned with desertion. When their small boats rowed up the narrow creeks and rivers, men took whatever opportunity presented itself and ran away. The loss of men had to be balanced against sinking, capturing, or burning a few small vessels, plantations, villages, and towns. Seamen were not easily replaced.
On April 12 Cockburn landed on Sharpe’s Island at the mouth of the Choptank River and made off with some cattle for the fleet, which he paid for because the residents offered no resistance. On April 18 he appeared off the mouth of the Patapsco River, alarming Baltimore, taking soundings, and assessing the city’s defenses, particularly Fort McHenry.
Making charts wherever he went, Cockburn continued his rampage, dropping anchor on April 23 off Spesuite Island at the mouth of the Susquehanna River, where he obtained enough fresh food for Warren’s entire fleet with no difficulty. Four days later his marines occupied Poplar Island, and the next day Tilghman Island. Cockburn then attacked tiny Frenchtown on the Elk River, burning the village’s twelve buildings and destroying a few small vessels. On May 2 he attacked Harve de Grace, looting and burning forty of its sixty homes, Commodore John Rodgers’s estate, Sion Hill, among them. As the British looted Rodgers’s mansion, his mother, wife, and two sisters fled. They were allowed to depart before the invaders torched the building.
Cockburn then rowed four miles up the Susquehanna and destroyed—again without opposition—the Principio Iron Works, one of the country’s largest cannon foundries, and took away all the cannon and small arms warehoused there. On May 6 he entered the Sassafras River and sailed to the Maryland towns of Fredericktown and Georgetown, where he finally met some resistance from Maryland militiamen. In the ensuing fight, five of his men were wounded before they swept away the militiamen and burned both towns.
In a month and a half, Warren and Cockburn, raiding at will, took forty prizes and created alarm throughout the bay area. Washington was certainly shaken. “I . . . keep the old Tunisian sabre within reach,” Dolley Madison wrote to Edward Coles, the president’s private secretary, on May 12. “One of our generals has discovered a plan of the British,—it is to land as many chosen rogues as they can about fourteen miles below Alexandria, in the night, so that they may be on hand to burn the President’s house and offices. I do not tremble at this, but feel hurt that the admiral (of Havre de Grace memory) should send me word that he would make his bow at my drawing room very soon.”
Cockburn was indeed interested in Washington. He had had such an easy time of it marauding in Chesapeake Bay that he yearned to do more, such as capturing the capital, along with Baltimore and Annapolis. He was convinced they would fall easily. But London was still occupied with Napoleon, and the British ministry was not ready for anything other than hit-and-run raids in the Chesapeake and a tight blockade.
This gave the federal and state governments time to prepare defenses. Only Baltimore woke up to its vulnerability, however. The city had a population of close to 50,000, and under the leadership of Senator Samuel Smith a stout defense was organized. Fort McHenry, which had become a pathetic wreck with only fifty regulars and a few pitiful guns, was transformed into a strongpoint. Situated on Whetstone Point, the fort guarded the approaches to the city by water. If large British warships were able to get past it, they could unleash a devastating bombardment on the city. Overcoming serious obstacles of every kind, Smith managed by the fall of 1813 to have sixty heavy naval guns mounted and ready at the fort. Fifty-six of the guns came from a French warship that sank in the Chesapeake. When the ship was salvaged, the French consul in Baltimore donated the guns. Ship hulks were readied to be sunk as well. They would help block any British attempt to rush by the fort into the inner harbor.
General Smith’s experience with Baltimore’s defenses went back to 1778, during the Revolution, when he prepared the city for a possible invasion. During the first months of the War of 1812, however, Smith could not rouse any interest in improving the city’s defenses. The governor of Maryland, Levin Winder, ignored the danger. It took the outrage generated by Admiral Cockburn’s raids to give Smith the political support he needed to dramatically improve Baltimore’s security.
Smith thought North Point on Patapsco Neck was the logical place for the British to land an expeditionary force. Deep water there allowed large warships to come in close to shore and protect troop transports as they unloaded. Smith expected that a land attack would be combined with a sea bombardment of Fort McHenry. To give additional protection to the fort, he constructed two batteries on the Ferry Branch—Forts Covington and Babcock.
Unlike Smith, President Madison failed to improve Washington’s defenses, even though he thought the city was bound to be an inviting target. It was the nation’s capital, after all, and had a tiny population of only 8,200 (1,400 of whom were slaves). The difficulty vessels of any size would have in navigating the Potomac’s shoals and sandbars was a natural defense, and Fort Washington, twelve miles below the city, could be an important obstacle as well, but the fort and its personnel were unaccountably not strengthened. All Secretary Jones did was organize an embarrassingly small Potomac flotilla, consisting of one schooner and three gunboats, under Master Commandant Arthur Sinclair, designed to counter small enemy vessels in the river.

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