Volume 5

The royal navy : a history from the earliest times to the present / by Wm. Laird Clowes. Assisted by Sir Clements Markham, Captain A.T. Mahan, U.S.N., H.W. Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, etc.

  • Clowes, W. Laird (William Laird), Sir, 1856-1905.
Date:
1897-1903
    less heavily than against foreign commerce; and it revived an almost archaic industry, that of the waggoners, who travelled slowly, parallel with the coast-line, to carry with an infinitely greater labour and expense the goods that had formerly gone in the sloops and schooners. The return to this primitive method of interchange implied much of the suffering of primitive times, for it meant that one part of the country might lack the necessaries of which another part possessed an over-abundance. As soon as the blockade was established it created the widest inequalities in the prices of com- modities in different parts of the country.1 Flour cost nearly three times as much in Boston as in Richmond, and rice four times as much in Philadelphia as in Charleston, while imported articles like sugar rose five-fold in price. Exports practically ceased by the close of 1813. In that year they amounted to but two hundred thousand dollars in New York as against over twelve million in the year preceding the outbreak of the war, while, during the same period, Virginia’s original exports of five million dollars fell off to twenty thousand. The import duties diminished with even greater rapidity, until finally they could only be raised in New England. The ruin was widespread. As yet the people of the United States were not manufacturers, but small farmers, traders, and seafarers. The trader of the towns saw all his trade destroyed, and could give no employment to the sailors who had formerly worked for him; while the farmer grew crops which could not be moved to any remunerative market, so that no ready money came in to him; and yet for whatever he needed, save what he himself produced, he had to pay five times as much as formerly. The coast dwellers in Virginia and Maryland were forced to experience, not merely the weight of the blockade, but also actual physical contact with the enemy. Another British squadron lay in the Delaware, and forays were made here and there along the coast. New York was blockaded, but very little was done save to put a stop to commerce. There was another squadron at Nantucket, with Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy, Nelson’s flag captain, as commodore. Hardy’s ships closed southern New England to the world, but they did very little in the way of attacking or harassing the coast itself, for Hardy, one of the most gallant captains who ever lived, a man who had won his spurs in the greatest sea fights of all time, and who prided himself on his ability to meet armed 1 Adams, vii. 263.
    foes in battle, felt impatient at mere marauding, and countenanced it with reluctance. The directly opposite policy -was pursued in Chesapeake Bay. There Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren was in command, hut the chief work was done by Bear-Admiral Sir George Cockburn. Cockburn organised a few of the lightest ships of Warren’s fleet, and some captured schooners, into a flotilla with which he could penetrate at will the creeks and rivers. He was a capable, brave, energetic man, hating' his foes and enjoying his work; and he carried out with scrupulous fidelity the order to harass the American coast. Not merely did he attack any militia that might from time to time assemble, but he also destroyed towns and hamlets, and worked widespread havoc throughout the country that lay within striking distance of tide-water. Houses were burned, farms plundered, stores pillaged, and small towns destroyed, while the larger places, and even Baltimore, were thrown into a panic which caused the inhabitants to neglect their business, but did not cause them to take such efficient measures for self-defence as the exercise of reasonable forethought would have demanded. Usually Cockburn and his followers refrained from maltreating the people personally, and most of the destruction they caused was at places where the militia made some resistance ; but, when plundering once began, it was quite impossible for the officers fo restrain some of the very men who most needed restraint. The people were of course greatly exasperated at the marauding, and the American newspapers far and near, and most American writers then and afterwards, wrere loud in their denunciation of the Bear-Admiral and his methods. Exactly how far these were or were not defensible, it is difficult to say. It is of course a mere matter of convention to discriminate between the destruction of private property on sea and on land. Armed vessels, British and American, destroyed or captured any private property of the enemy which they could find afloat; and if there were sufficient cause, or if there were an object of sufficient importance to be attained, the combatants were certainly warranted in destroying such property ashore. Cockburn’s course was in many respects the same as that of Sheridan’s atone crisis in the Civil War; and there was certainly little in it to warrant the warmth of the execrations heaped upon him by his foes—which were indeed somewhat in the nature of a tribute to his efficiency. At the same time it may be admitted that
    his work was not of the kind in which the best type of fighting man would find any pleasure, or which he would carry on longer than was absolutely necessary; and for some of the revolting details there was small excuse. There is room for question as to whether the comparatively trifling loss inflicted on the Americans did much beyond irritating them. It certainly failed to cow them, though equally certainly it failed to rouse them to effective resistance. In short, it may be doubted whether the course followed by Cockburn reflected any particular credit upon, or caused much, if any, benefit to, the British side. There can be no doubt, however, of the discredit attaching to the Americans for their conduct. A people which lets its shores be insulted with impunity incurs, if not greater blame, at least greater contempt, than the people which does the plundering. If here and there Cockburn burned a hamlet or two which he ought to have spared, his offence was really small when compared with the disgrace brought on the American name by the supineness shown by the people of the threatened neighbour- hoods. They did nothing effectively of any kind for their own defence. Indeed, for the most part they did nothing at all, except gather bodies of militia whenever there was an alarm, and so keep the inhabitants constantly worried and harassed by always calling them to arms, and yet merely providing almost worthless defenders. And the nation as a whole was as much to blame as the States directly menaced. The retaliation of the Americans took the form of privateering. By the time the blockade began to be effective, the American privateers had developed into a well-recognised type. Small vessels had been abandoned. Brigs and ships were common, and so were schooners of large size. Everything was sacrificed to speed; and the chief feature of the armament was the single long-range gun, fitted to bring-to a fleeing merchantman at a considerable distance. The privateers thus had neither the armament nor the build, not to speak of the discipline, which would have enabled them to with- stand regular men-of-war of the same size in close action, although the crews were large, the better to man the prizes. In other words, the privateer was a commerce destroyer pure and simple, built to run and not to fight; although, even as a commerce destroyer, she was less effective than a government vessel would be, because she was built to make money in a particularly risky species of
    gambling; and so, instead of destroying prizes, she sought to send them in, with the result that nearly half were recaptured when once the British began to make their blockade effective. A good many privateers went out from the ports of the Southern States, and Baltimore was a famous centre for them ; but the great majority sailed from the Newr England and Middle States. The ravages of these privateers were very serious.1 The British trade suffered heavily from them, much more than from the closing of the American ports—the argument upon which Jefferson had placed so much reliance in his vain effort to bring Britain to terms. In fact, the closing of the American ports by the war made com- paratively little difference to England, because it wras almost im mediately accompanied by the opening of the trade with continental Europe. The crushing disasters that befell Napoleon’s great army in Russia meant the immediate relaxation of his system in the Baltic; and after he was driven out of Germany, toward the close of 1813, all the German ports were again thrown open to the British merchants, so that their trade grew by leaps and bounds, and the loss of the American market was far more than made good by the gain of markets elsewhere. After the overthrow of France, in the spring of 1814, England was left without an enemy, except- ing the United States, and her commerce went where it pleased, unharmed except by the American privateers. When she was thus left free to use her vast strength solely against America, it seemed inevitable that the latter should be over- thrown. But, in the war of 1812, what seemed probable rarely came to pass; and the failures on both sides caused the utmost astonish- ment at the time, and are difficult to fully explain now. At the outbreak of the war the general opinion in America was that Canada would speedily be conquered; and the general opinion in Europe was that the United States’ navy would be brushed from the sea, and that the American privateers would be got under just as those of France had been got under. Neither expectation was fulfilled. During the first two years the Americans made no head- way in the effort to conquer feebly-held Canada. When, in 1814, Britain turned her undivided attention to an enemy which with one hand she had held at bay for two years, the inevitable out- ! Adams, in his ‘History,’ gives the best account both of the blockade and the privateers. The details of some of the voyages of the latter are preserved in Coggeshall’s ■ History of American Privateers.’
    come seemed to be her triumph; yet she in her turn failed in her aggressive movements against the United States just as America had failed in her aggressive movements against Canada, and her giant Navy proved unequal to the task of scourging from the seas the American men-of-war and privateers. Contrary to her ex- perience in all former wars with European powers, she found that the American privateers were able to operate far from their base, and to do great damage without any great fighting navy to back them up; and as the war progressed they grew ever bolder in their ravages round the coasts of the British Isles themselves. There are two lessons, which at first sight seem contradictory, to be learned from the history of the privateers in this war. In the first place, their history does teach that very much can be accomplished by commerce destroying, if more directly efficient methods cannot be used. The American privateers rendered in- valuable service to their country by their daring, and the severity of their ravages. In those days sailing vessels were not hampered as vessels would be hampered under like conditions in the days of steam; they did not need coaling stations, and there was much less danger of their getting out of repair. The American privateer was a faster ship than any previously seen on the waters, and she was more daringly and skilfully handled than any ships of her kind had ever been handled by Europeans. She could usually overtake any merchantmen, and usually escape any man- of-war. Of course, in the end she was almost certain to encounter some man-of-war from whom she could not escape; but this might not be until after several profitable voyages ; and though, on the average, privateering was a business in which the losses equalled the gains, yet the chances of success were as great as the risks, and it was a kind of gambling which appealed peculiarly to adven- turous spirits. The commerce destroying put a severe strain on the British mercantile and seafaring communities. Nevertheless, admitting and emphasising all this does not mean the admission that privateering was the way in which America could best have used her strength. The privateers did great and real damage to England, and though at first they caused more irritation than alarm, they inflicted such punishment upon the merchants and the seamen as materially to increase the disposition of the British for peace. But what they accomplished cannot be compared with what was accomplished by the British Navy. The