Chapter 5

In 1803 the command of our fleet in the Mediterranean was taken by Commodore Preble, who had just succeeded in forcing satisfaction from Morocco for an attack made upon our merchantmen by a vessel from Tangier. He also proclaimed a blockade of Tripoli and was preparing to enforce it when the news reached him that the frigate Philadelphia, forty-four guns, commanded by Captain Bainbridge, and one of the best ships in our navy, had gone upon a reef in the harbor of Tripoli, while pursuing a vessel there, and had been surrounded and captured, with all her crew, by the Tripolitan gunboats, when she was entirely helpless either to fight or sail. This was a very serious blow to our navy and to our operations against Tripoli. It not only weakened our forces, but it was also a great help to the enemy. The Tripolitans got the Philadelphia off the rocks, towed her into the harbor, and anchored her close under the guns of their forts. They also replaced her batteries, and prepared to make her ready for sea, where she would have been a most formidable danger to our shipping.

Under these circumstances Stephen Decatur, a young lieutenant in command of the Enterprise, offered to Commodore Preble to go into the harbor and destroy the Philadelphia. Some delay ensued, as our squadron was driven by severe gales from the Tripolitan coast; but at last, in January, 1804, Preble gave orders to Decatur to undertake the work for which he had volunteered. A small vessel known as a ketch had been recently captured from the Tripolitans by Decatur, and this prize was now named the Intrepid, and assigned to him for the work he had in hand. He took seventy men from his own ship, the Enterprise, and put them on the Intrepid, and then, accompanied by Lieutenant Stewart in the Siren, who was to support him, he set sail for Tripoli. He and his crew were very much cramped as well as badly fed on the little vessel which had been given to them, but they succeeded, nevertheless, in reaching Tripoli in safety, accompanied by the Siren.

For nearly a week they were unable to approach the harbor, owing to severe gales which threatened the loss of their vessel; but on February 16 the weather moderated and Decatur determined to go in. It is well to recall, briefly, the extreme peril of the attack which he was about to make. The Philadelphia, with forty guns mounted, double-shotted, and ready for firing, and manned by a full complement of men, was moored within half a gunshot of the Bashaw's castle, the mole and crown batteries, and within range of ten other batteries, mounting, altogether, one hundred and fifteen guns. Some Tripolitan cruisers, two galleys, and nineteen gunboats also lay between the Philadelphia and the shore. Into the midst of this powerful armament Decatur had to go with his little vessel of sixty tons, carrying four small guns and having a crew of seventy-five men.

The Americans, however, were entirely undismayed by the odds against them, and at seven o'clock Decatur went into the harbor between the reef and shoal which formed its mouth. He steered on steadily toward the Philadelphia, the breeze getting constantly lighter, and by half-past nine was within two hundred yards of the frigate. As they approached Decatur stood at the helm with the pilot, only two or three men showing on deck and the rest of the crew lying hidden under the bulwarks. In this way he drifted to within nearly twenty yards of the Philadelphia. The suspicions of the Tripolitans, however, were not aroused, and when they hailed the Intrepid, the pilot answered that they had lost their anchors in a gale, and asked that they might run a warp to the frigate and ride by her. While the talk went on the Intrepid's boat shoved off with the rope, and pulling to the fore-chains of the Philadelphia, made the line fast. A few of the crew then began to haul on the lines, and thus the Intrepid was drawn gradually toward the frigate.

The suspicions of the Tripolitans were now at last awakened. They raised the cry of "Americanos!" and ordered off the Intrepid, but it was too late. As the vessels came in contact, Decatur sprang up the main chains of the Philadelphia, calling out the order to board. He was rapidly followed by his officers and men, and as they swarmed over the rails and came upon the deck, the Tripolitan crew gathered, panic-stricken, in a confused mass on the forecastle. Decatur waited a moment until his men were behind him, and then, placing himself at their head, drew his sword and rushed upon the Tripolitans. There was a very short struggle, and the Tripolitans, crowded together, terrified and surprised, were cut down or driven overboard. In five minutes the ship was cleared of the enemy.

Decatur would have liked to have taken the Philadelphia out of the harbor, but that was impossible. He therefore gave orders to burn the ship, and his men, who had been thoroughly instructed in what they were to do, dispersed into all parts of the frigate with the combustibles which had been prepared, and in a few minutes, so well and quickly was the work done, the flames broke out in all parts of the Philadelphia. As soon as this was effected the order was given to return to the Intrepid. Without confusion the men obeyed. It was a moment of great danger, for fire was breaking out on all sides, and the Intrepid herself, filled as she was with powder and combustibles, was in great peril of sudden destruction. The rapidity of Decatur's movements, however, saved everything. The cables were cut, the sweeps got out, and the Intrepid drew rapidly away from the burning frigate. It was a magnificent sight as the flames burst out over the Philadephia and ran rapidly and fiercely up the masts and rigging. As her guns became heated they were discharged, one battery pouring its shots into the town. Finally the cables parted, and then the Philadelphia, a mass of flames, drifted across the harbor, and blew up. Meantime the batteries of the shipping and the castle had been turned upon the Intrepid, but although the shot struck all around her, she escaped successfully with only one shot through her mainsail, and, joining the Siren, bore away.

This successful attack was carried through by the cool courage of Decatur and the admirable discipline of his men. The hazard was very great, the odds were very heavy, and everything depended on the nerve with which the attack was made and the completeness of the surprise. Nothing miscarried, and no success could have been more complete. Nelson, at that time in the Mediterranean, and the best judge of a naval exploit as well as the greatest naval commander who has ever lived, pronounced it "the most bold and daring act of the age." We meet no single feat exactly like it in our own naval history, brilliant as that has been, until we come to Cushing's destruction of the Albemarle in the war of the rebellion. In the years that have elapsed, and among the great events that have occurred since that time, Decatur's burning of the Philadephia has been well-nigh forgotten; but it is one of those feats of arms which illustrate the high courage of American seamen, and which ought always to be remembered.

THE CRUISE OF THE "WASP"

A crash as when some swollen cloud Cracks o'er the tangled trees! With side to side, and spar to spar, Whose smoking decks are these? I know St. George's blood-red cross, Thou mistress of the seas, But what is she whose streaming bars Roll out before the breeze?

Ah, well her iron ribs are knit, Whose thunders strive to quell The bellowing throats, the blazing lips, That pealed the Armada's knell! The mist was cleared,--a wreath of stars Rose o'er the crimsoned swell, And, wavering from its haughty peak, The cross of England fell! --Holmes.

In the war of 1812 the little American navy, including only a dozen frigates and sloops of war, won a series of victories against the English, the hitherto undoubted masters of the sea, that attracted an attention altogether out of proportion to the force of the combatants or the actual damage done. For one hundred and fifty years the English ships of war had failed to find fit rivals in those of any other European power, although they had been matched against each in turn; and when the unknown navy of the new nation growing up across the Atlantic did what no European navy had ever been able to do, not only the English and Americans, but the people of Continental Europe as well, regarded the feat as important out of all proportion to the material aspects of the case. The Americans first proved that the English could be beaten at their own game on the sea. They did what the huge fleets of France, Spain, and Holland had failed to do, and the great modern writers on naval warfare in Continental Europe--men like Jurien de la Graviere--have paid the same attention to these contests of frigates and sloops that they give to whole fleet actions of other wars.

Among the famous ships of the Americans in this war were two named the Wasp. The first was an eighteen-gun ship-sloop, which at the very outset of the war captured a British brig-sloop of twenty guns, after an engagement in which the British fought with great gallantry, but were knocked to Pieces, while the Americans escaped comparatively unscathed. Immediately afterward a British seventy-four captured the victor. In memory of her the Americans gave the same name to one of the new sloops they were building. These sloops were stoutly made, speedy vessels which in strength and swiftness compared favorably with any ships of their class in any other navy of the day, for the American shipwrights were already as famous as the American gunners and seamen. The new Wasp, like her sister ships, carried twenty-two guns and a crew of one hundred and seventy men, and was ship-rigged. Twenty of her guns were 32-pound carronades, while for bow-chasers she had two "long Toms." It was in the year 1814 that the Wasp sailed from the United States to prey on the navy and commerce of Great Britain. Her commander was a gallant South Carolinian named Captain Johnson Blakeley. Her crew were nearly all native Americans, and were an exceptionally fine set of men. Instead of staying near the American coasts or of sailing the high seas, the Wasp at once headed boldly for the English Channel, to carry the war to the very doors of the enemy.

At that time the English fleets had destroyed the navies of every other power of Europe, and had obtained such complete supremacy over the French that the French fleets were kept in port. Off these ports lay the great squadrons of the English ships of the line, never, in gale or in calm, relaxing their watch upon the rival war-ships of the French emperor. So close was the blockade of the French ports, and so hopeless were the French of making headway in battle with their antagonists, that not only the great French three-deckers and two-deckers, but their frigates and sloops as well, lay harmless in their harbors, and the English ships patroled the seas unchecked in every direction. A few French privateers still slipped out now and then, and the far bolder and more formidable American privateersmen drove hither and thither across the ocean in their swift schooners and brigantines, and harried the English commerce without mercy.

The Wasp proceeded at once to cruise in the English Channel and off the coasts of England, France, and Spain. Here the water was traversed continually by English fleets and squadrons and single ships of war, which were sometimes covoying detachments of troops for Wellington's Peninsular army, sometimes guarding fleets of merchant vessels bound homeward, and sometimes merely cruising for foes. It was this spot, right in the teeth of the British naval power, that the Wasp chose for her cruising ground. Hither and thither she sailed through the narrow seas, capturing and destroying the merchantmen, and by the seamanship of her crew and the skill and vigilance of her commander, escaping the pursuit of frigate and ship of the line. Before she had been long on the ground, one June morning, while in chase of a couple of merchant ships, she spied a sloop of war, the British brig Reindeer, of eighteen guns and a hundred and twenty men. The Reindeer was a weaker ship than the Wasp, her guns were lighter, and her men fewer; but her commander, Captain Manners, was one of the most gallant men in the splendid British navy, and he promptly took up the gage of battle which the Wasp threw down.

The day was calm and nearly still; only a light wind stirred across the sea. At one o'clock the Wasp's drum beat to quarters, and the sailors and marines gathered at their appointed posts. The drum of the Reindeer responded to the challenge, and with her sails reduced to fighting trim, her guns run out, and every man ready, she came down upon the Yankee ship. On her forecastle she had rigged a light carronade, and coming up from behind, she five times discharged this pointblank into the American sloop; then in the light air the latter luffed round, firing her guns as they bore, and the two ships engaged yard-arm to yard-arm. The guns leaped and thundered as the grimy gunners hurled them out to fire and back again to load, working like demons. For a few minutes the cannonade was tremendous, and the men in the tops could hardly see the decks for the wreck of flying splinters. Then the vessels ground together, and through the open ports the rival gunners hewed, hacked, and thrust at one another, while the black smoke curled up from between the hulls. The English were suffering terribly. Captain Manners himself was wounded, and realizing that he was doomed to defeat unless by some desperate effort he could avert it, he gave the signal to board. At the call the boarders gathered, naked to the waist, black with powder and spattered with blood, cutlas and pistol in hand. But the Americans were ready. Their marines were drawn up on deck, the pikemen stood behind the bulwarks, and the officers watched, cool and alert, every movement of the foe. Then the British sea-dogs tumbled aboard, only to perish by shot or steel. The combatants slashed and stabbed with savage fury, and the assailants were driven back. Manners sprang to their head to lead them again himself, when a ball fired by one of the sailors in the American tops crashed through his skull, and he fell, sword in hand, with his face to the foe, dying as honorable a death as ever a brave man died in fighting against odds for the flag of his country. As he fell the American officers passed the word to board. With wild cheers the fighting sailormen sprang forward, sweeping the wreck of the British force before them, and in a minute the Reindeer was in their possession. All of her officers, and nearly two thirds of the crew, were killed or wounded; but they had proved themselves as skilful as they were brave, and twenty-six of the Americans had been killed or wounded.

The Wasp set fire to her prize, and after retiring to a French port to refit, came out again to cruise. For some time she met no antagonist of her own size with which to wage war, and she had to exercise the sharpest vigilance to escape capture. Late one September afternoon, when she could see ships of war all around her, she selected one which was isolated from the others, and decided to run alongside her and try to sink her after nightfall. Accordingly she set her sails in pursuit, and drew steadily toward her antagonist, a big eighteen-gun brig, the Avon, a ship more powerful than the Reindeer. The Avon kept signaling to two other British war vessels which were in sight--one an eighteen-gun brig and the other a twenty-gun ship; they were so close that the Wasp was afraid they would interfere before the combat could be ended. Nevertheless, Blakeley persevered, and made his attack with equal skill and daring. It was after dark when he ran alongside his opponent, and they began forthwith to exchange furious broadsides. As the ships plunged and wallowed in the seas, the Americans could see the clusters of topmen in the rigging of their opponent, but they knew nothing of the vessel's name or of her force, save only so far as they felt it. The firing was fast and furious, but the British shot with bad aim, while the skilled American gunners hulled their opponent at almost every discharge. In a very few minutes the Avon was in a sinking condition, and she struck her flag and cried for quarter, having lost forty or fifty men, while but three of the Americans had fallen. Before the Wasp could take possession of her opponent, however, the two war vessels to which the Avon had been signaling came up. One of them fired at the Wasp, and as the latter could not fight two new foes, she ran off easily before the wind. Neither of her new antagonists followed her, devoting themselves to picking up the crew of the sinking Avon.

It would be hard to find a braver feat more skilfully performed than this; for Captain Blakeley, with hostile foes all round him, had closed with and sunk one antagonist not greatly his inferior in force, suffering hardly any loss himself, while two of her friends were coming to her help.

Both before and after this the Wasp cruised hither and thither making prizes. Once she came across a convoy of ships bearing arms and munitions to Wellington's army, under the care of a great two-decker. Hovering about, the swift sloop evaded the two-decker's movements, and actually cut out and captured one of the transports she was guarding, making her escape unharmed. Then she sailed for the high seas. She made several other prizes, and on October 9 spoke a Swedish brig.

This was the last that was ever heard of the gallant Wasp. She never again appeared, and no trace of any of those aboard her was ever found. Whether she was wrecked on some desert coast, whether she foundered in some furious gale, or what befell her none ever knew. All that is certain is that she perished, and that all on board her met death in some one of the myriad forms in which it must always be faced by those who go down to the sea in ships; and when she sank there sank one of the most gallant ships of the American navy, with as brave a captain and crew as ever sailed from any port of the New World.

THE "GENERAL ARMSTRONG" PRIVATEER

We have fought such a fight for a day and a night As may never be fought again! We have won great glory, my men! And a day less or more At sea or ashore, We die--does it matter when? --Tennyson.

In the revolution, and again in the war of 1812, the seas were covered by swift-sailing American privateers, which preyed on the British trade. The hardy seamen of the New England coast, and of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, turned readily from their adventurous careers in the whalers that followed the giants of the ocean in every sea and every clime, and from trading voyages to the uttermost parts of the earth, to go into the business of privateering, which was more remunerative, and not so very much more dangerous, than their ordinary pursuits. By the end of the war of 1812, in particular, the American privateers had won for themselves a formidable position on the ocean. The schooners, brigs, and brigantines in which the privateersmen sailed were beautifully modeled, and were among the fastest craft afloat. They were usually armed with one heavy gun, the "long Tom," as it was called, arranged on a pivot forward or amidships, and with a few lighter pieces of cannon. They carried strong crews of well-armed men, and their commanders were veteran seamen, used to brave every danger from the elements or from man. So boldly did they prey on the British commerce, that they infested even the Irish Sea and the British Channel, and increased many times the rate of insurance on vessels passing across those waters. They also often did battle with the regular men-of-war of the British, being favorite objects for attack by cutting-out parties from the British frigates and ships of the line, and also frequently encountering in fight the smaller sloops-of-war. Usually, in these contests, the privateersmen were worsted, for they had not the training which is obtained only in a regular service, and they were in no way to be compared to the little fleet of regular vessels which in this same war so gloriously upheld the honor of the American flag. Nevertheless, here and there a privateer commanded by an exceptionally brave and able captain, and manned by an unusually well-trained crew, performed some feat of arms which deserves to rank with anything ever performed by the regular navy. Such a feat was the defense of the brig General Armstrong, in the Portuguese port of Fayal, of the Azores, against an overwhelming British force.

The General Armstrong hailed from New York, and her captain was named Reid. She had a crew of ninety men, and was armed with one heavy 32 pounder and six lighter guns. In December, 1814, she was lying in Fayal, a neutral port, when four British war-vessels, a ship of the line, a frigate and two brigs, hove into sight, and anchored off the mouth of the harbor. The port was neutral, but Portugal was friendly to England, and Reid knew well that the British would pay no respect to the neutrality laws if they thought that at the cost of their violation they could destroy the privateer. He immediately made every preparation to resist an attack, The privateer was anchored close to the shore. The boarding-nettings were got ready, and were stretched to booms thrust outward from the brig's side, so as to check the boarders as they tried to climb over the bulwarks. The guns were loaded and cast loose, and the men went to quarters armed with muskets, boarding-pikes, and cutlases.

On their side the British made ready to carry the privateer by boarding. The shoals rendered it impossible for the heavy ships to approach, and the lack of wind and the baffling currents also interfered for the moment with the movements of the sloops-of-war. Accordingly recourse was had to a cutting-out party, always a favorite device with the British seamen of that age, who were accustomed to carry French frigates by boarding, and to capture in their boats the heavy privateers and armed merchantmen, as well as the lighter war-vessels of France and Spain.

The British first attempted to get possession of the brig by surprise, sending out but four boats. These worked down near to the brig, under pretense of sounding, trying to get close enough to make a rush and board her. The privateersmen were on their guard, and warned the boats off, and after the warning had been repeated once or twice unheeded, they fired into them, killing and wounding several men. Upon this the boats promptly returned to the ships.