Matthew Calbraith Perry: A Typical American Naval Officer. William Elliot Griffis

sail April 22 for Annapolis, casting anchor opposite Fort Severn, May 2. Here the vessel lay for ten days. As everything was quiet along the coast, Commodore Rodgers went to his home at Havre de Grace, seventy miles distant, to visit his family. The purser and chaplain took a trip to Washington, and on board all was as quiet as a city church aisle in summer.

      Late at night, May 6, there came dispatches from the Navy Department. Two men had been taken from the merchant brig, Spitfire, within eighteen miles of New York. One of the young men impressed, John Deguys, was known to the captain to be a native of Maine. The Guerriere, Captain Dacres, was, as usual, suspected.

      The news created great excitement, for the constant search of American ships and the impressment of such men, as the arrogant English captains chose to call British “subjects,” had roused our sailors’ ire. They burned to change this disgraceful state of things and to avenge the Chesapeake affair. The officers of the Guerriere, painting the name of their frigate on her topsails, in large white letters, had been conspicuous for their bravado in insulting American merchant captains.

      This was the age of British boasting on the sea, of huge canvas and enormous flags. For during nigh two score years, the British sailors, “lords of the main,” had ruled the waves, rarely losing a ship, and never a squadron, in their numerous battles. Uninterrupted success had bred many bullies. The trade of New York had been injured by these annoying searches and delays. The orders to Commodore Rodgers were to proceed at once to stop the outrageous proceedings. The vexed question of impressment had, since 1790, caused an incredible amount of negotiation. It was now to pass out of the hands of secretaries into the control of our naval captains, with power to solve the problem.

      To get the dispatches to the commodore was the duty in hand. Neither steamer nor telegraph could then help to perform it; but hearts and hands were true, and Matthew Perry was ready to show the stuff of which he was made. Captain Ludlow at once entrusted the delicate matter to the commodore’s aide.

      Matthew Perry set out before daylight in the commodore’s gig. The pull of seventy miles was made against a head wind. Taking his seat at the helm, he cheered on his men, but it was a long and hard day’s work. It was nearly dark when the lights of the village danced in the distance. At this moment one of the men dropped his oar, and sank back with the blood gushing from his mouth and nostrils. In his over-strain he had burst a blood vessel.

      Rodgers at once took the boat, and with the wind in his favor hoisted sail. At 3 p. m., May 7, as Captain Ludlow was dining on the sloop Argus, near the President, the gig was descried five miles distant bearing the broad pennant. Perry, in his journal, modestly omits, as is customary with him, all reference to this exploit of bringing back the commodore. But under the entry of May 10, he writes: “At 10 hoisted out the launch, carried out a kedge and warped the ship out of the roads.”

      The President put to sea with her name boldly blazoned on her three topsails like the Guerriere’s. All on board were ready and eager for an opportunity to wipe out this last disgrace. Perry writes, on the 13th: “At 3 spoke the brig … from Trinidad—informed us that the day before she was boarded by an English sloop-of-war.” “At 7 the Argus hove to alongside of us. Captain Lawrence came on board—at 8 Captain L. left the ship.” Next day “at 3 exercised great guns”; “at half-past 8 passed New Point Comfort. At 10 opened the magazine and took out thirty-two twenty-four pound and twenty-four forty-two pound cartridges.”

      At 1 o’clock in the afternoon of the 17th, a strange sail was noticed—the ensign and pennant were raised, the ship was cleared for action and the crew beat to quarters. The signals of the strange ship were not answered. The two ships were at this time but a few leagues south of Sandy Hook.

      The stranger ship was none other than the British sloop-of-war Little Belt, carrying twenty-two guns. As what took place really precipitated the war of 1812, we give the record from Perry’s diary without alteration.

      “At 7 p. m. the chase took in her studding-sails, distant about eight miles. At ten or twelve minutes past 7 she rounded to on the starboard-tack. At half-past 7 shortened sail. At half-past 8 rounded to on her weather beam, within half a cable’s length of her; hailed and asked ‘what ship is that’? to which she replied, ‘what ship is that’? and on the commodore’s asking the second time ‘what ship is that’? received a shot from her which was immediately returned from our gun-deck, but was scarcely fired before she fired three other guns accompanied with musquetry. We then commenced a general fire which lasted about fifteen minutes, when the order was given to cease firing, our adversary being silent and apparently in much distress. At 9 hauled on a wind on the starboard-tack, the strange ship having dropped astern so far that the commodore did not choose to follow, supposing that he had sufficiently chastised her for her insolence in firing into an American frigate. Kept our battle-lanthorns burning. After having examined the damage, found that the ship had her foremast and mainmast wounded and some rigging shot away—one boy only wounded—before daylight the masts were fished, moulded and painted, and everything taut.

      “At 5 a. m. discovered the strange sail and bore down for her. At 8 came alongside and sent a boat aboard her. She was lying in a very shattered situation; no sail bent except her maintopsail; her rigging all shot away; three or four shots through her masts; several between wind and water; her gaft shot away, etc. At 9 the boat returned; she proved to be the British ship-of-war Little Belt, Captain Bingham; permitted her to proceed on her course, hoisted the boat up and hauled by the wind on the larboard tack; ends clear and pleasant.”

      In this battle the young midshipman first heard a hostile shot and received his initial “baptism of fire.” The accounts of this affair given by the two commanders, Rodgers and Bingham, cannot be reconciled. Captain Bingham, acquitted of blame, was promoted February 7, 1812, to post-rank in the British navy. The event widened the breach between the two nations, and was the foreshadowing of coming events not long to be postponed. Probably Rodgers’ chief regret was that the punished vessel had not been the Guerriere.

      The rest of the year, 1811, was spent by our sailors in constant readiness and unremitting discipline in order to secure the highest state of naval efficiency. Exercise at the carronades and long guns was a daily task. The coming war on the ocean was to be a contest in gunnery, and to be won by tactical skill, long guns, and superiority in artillery practice. Nothing was left to chance on the American ships. Congress had neglected the navy since the Tripolitan war, and with embargoes, non-intercourse acts, and a puerile gun-boat system, practically attempted to paralyze this arm of defence. Commodore Rodgers’ squadron was an exception to the general system, and his was the sole squadron serviceable when the declaration of hostilities came.

      Rodgers hoped by speedy victories to demonstrate the power of the American heavy frigate to blow to atoms “the gun-boat system,” and change British insolence into respect. Lack of opportunity caused him personal disappointment; but his faith and creed were fully justified by the naval campaign of 1812.

CHAPTER IV.

       MEN, SHIPS AND GUNS IN 1812.

       Table of Contents

      Commodore John Rodgers was a man of the time, a typical naval officer of the period. He was minutely careful about the food and habits of his men, and made the President as homelike as a ship could be. He was not precisely a man of science, as was the case with his son in the monitor Weehawken, for this was the pre-scientific age of naval warfare. Indeed, it can scarcely be said with truth that he had either patience with or appreciation of Robert Fulton, the Pennsylvanian whose inventions were destined to revolutionize the methods of naval warfare. This mechanical genius who anticipated steam frigates, iron armor, torpedoes and rams, rather amused than interested Rodgers. To the commodore, who expected no miracles, he seemed to possess “Continuity but not ingenuity.” Fulton had not yet perfected his apparatus, though he had in 1804 blown up a Danish frigate off Copenhagen, and in 1810 had published in New York his “Torpedo War and Submarine Explosion.” This book is full of illustrations so clear, that to look at them now provokes the wonder that his schemes found so little encouragement. Five thousand dollars were