THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA

A CHRONICLE OF THE WAR OF 1812

BY RALPH D. PAINE

VOLUME 17

THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES

ALLEN JOHNSON, EDITOR

1920

CONTENTS

I. "ON TO CANADA!"

II. LOST GROUND REGAINED

III. PERRY AND LAKE ERIE

IV. EBB AND FLOW ON THE NORTHERN FRONT

V. THE NAVY ON BLUE WATER

VI. MATCHLESS FRIGATES AND THEIR DUELS

VII. "DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP!"

VIII. THE LAST CRUISE OF THE ESSEX

IX. VICTORY ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN

X. PEACE WITH HONOR

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

INDEX

ILLUSTRATIONS

"OLD IRONSIDES"

The old frigate Constitution as she appears today in her snug berth at the Boston Navy Yard where she is preserved as an historical relic. Photograph by N. L. Stebbins, Boston.

THE THEATRE OF OPERATIONS IN THE WAR OF 1812

Map by W. L. G. Joerg, American Geographical Society.

OLIVER HAZARD PERRY AT THE BATTLE OF LAKE ERIE

Painting by J. W. Jarvis. In the City Hall, New York, owned by the Corporation. Reproduced by courtesy of the Municipal Art Commission of the City of New York.

ISAAC CHAUNCEY

Painting in the Comptroller's Office, City Hall, New York, owned by the Corporation. Reproduced by courtesy of the Municipal Art Commission of the City of New York.

COMMODORE STEPHEN DECATUR

Painting by Thomas Sully, 1811. In the Comptroller's Office, owned by the City of New York. Reproduced by courtesy of the Art Commission of the City of New York.

CONSTITUTION AND GUERRIÈRE

An old print, illustrating the moment in the action at which the mainmast of the Guerrière, shattered by the terrific fire of the American frigate, fell overside, transforming the former vessel into a floating wreck and terminating the action. The picture represents accurately the surprisingly slight damage done the Constitution: note the broken spanker gaff and the shot holes in her topsails.

ISAAC HULL

Painting by J. W. Jarvis. In the City Hall, New York, owned by the Corporation.

WILLIAM BAINBRIDGE

Painting by J. W. Jarvis. In the City Hall, New York, owned by the Corporation. Reproduced by courtesy of the Municipal Art Commission of the City of New York.

A FRIGATE OF 1812 UNDER SAIL

The Constellation, of which this is a photograph, is somewhat smaller than the Constitution, being rated at 38 guns as against 44 for the latter. In general appearance, however, and particularly in rig, the two types are very similar. Although the Constellation did not herself see action in the War of 1812, she is a good example of the heavily armed American frigate of that day—and the only one of them still to be seen at sea under sail within recent years. At the present time the Constellation lies moored at the pier of the Naval Training Station, Newport, R. I. Photograph by E. Müller, Jr., Inc., New York.

JACOB BROWN

Painting by J. W. Jarvis. In the City Hall, New York, owned by the Corporation.

THOMAS MACDONOUGH

Painting by J. W. Jarvis. In the City Hall, New York, owned by the Corporation.

CHAPTER I

"ON TO CANADA!"

The American people of today, weighed in the balances of the greatest armed conflict of all time and found not wanting, can afford to survey, in a spirit of candid scrutiny and without reviving an ancient grudge, that turbulent episode in the welding of their nation which is called the War of 1812. In spite of defeats and disappointments this war was, in the large, enduring sense, a victory. It was in this renewed defiance of England that the dream of the founders of the Republic and the ideals of the embattled farmers of Bunker Hill and Saratoga achieved their goal. Henceforth the world was to respect these States, not as so many colonies bitterly wrangling among themselves, but as a sovereign and independent nation.

The War of 1812, like the American Revolution, was a valiant contest for survival on the part of the spirit of freedom. It was essentially akin to the world-wide struggle of a century later, when sons of the old foemen of 1812—sons of the painted Indians and of the Kentucky pioneers in fringed buckskins, sons of the New Hampshire ploughboys clad in homespun, sons of the Canadian militia and the red-coated regulars of the British line, sons of the tarry seamen of the Constitution and the Guerrière—stood side by side as brothers in arms to save from brutal obliteration the same spirit of freedom. And so it is that in Flanders fields today the poppies blow above the graves of the sons of the men who fought each other a century ago in the Michigan wilderness and at Lundy's Lane.

The causes and the background of the War of 1812 are presented elsewhere in this series of Chronicles.^[1] Great Britain, at death grips with Napoleon, paid small heed to the rights and dignities of neutral nations. The harsh and selfish maritime policy of the age, expressed in the British Navigation Acts and intensified by the struggle with Napoleon, led the Mistress of the Seas to perpetrate indignity after indignity on the ships and sailors which were carrying American commerce around the world. The United States demanded a free sea, which Great Britain would not grant.