(Editor’s Note.—This is the second of a series of two articles by Fletcher Pratt describing the careers of young naval officers who served under Commodore Preble in the War against Tripoli. Mr. Pratt develops the amazing fact that although only a small percentage of the officers of the U. S. Navy of that day served under Preble, this small percentage completely dominated the naval service for almost the next forty years. Almost •without exception they comprised the victors in all the U. S. Navy’s successful actions of the War of 1812 and the anti-pirate campaigns of the 1820’s and 1830’s, as well as the peacetime leaders of naval progress and development.
In this article Fletcher Pratt gives the life story of one of the most successful of sea raiders, Johnston Blakely of the Wasp.)
In April, 1814, a key point in the War of 1812 had been reached. It had now become reasonably clear that England was in possession of the formula for winning the contest, and would apply her pressures with increasing vigor until the United States chose to accept whatever terms she offered. To be sure, Lake Erie had been the scene of a stunning and quite irretrievable setback during the previous summer, but Erie was the most remote of the contested lakes, and nearly everywhere else the balance of the past fifteen months had swung to the cause of Britain.
Ontario lay across the line of communications to Erie, and on Lake Ontario British skill had come to the support of British valor, by giving Commodore Yeo so considerable a naval superiority that the American fleet was blockaded in Sackett’s Harbor. British soldiers were on their way across the lake to wrest the Niagara frontier from the Americans. The British squadron on Lake Champlain was momentarily inferior, but this would be redressed at an early date by the completion of a splendid new 36-gun frigate, whereupon it would be possible to send an army into the heart of New York State. The destruction of Napoleon’s forces in Spain had made abundant troops available for the purpose, and the army was already en route—14,000 veteran soldiers, more men than the United States had under arms, all told. Another great expedition was already on the seas to chastise the Americans by destroying their capital and laying waste the shipyards of Baltimore, which had sent out so many of those annoying privateers. A smaller force would annex part of the Maine district in order to provide easy overland communications to Quebec; an expedition to capture New Orleans and the outlets of the Mississippi had reached the planning stage. It seemed unlikely that the Americans could make effective resistance to any of these.
On the ocean, the unexpected fighting- power of the American heavy frigates and the utterly unexpected skill with which they were handled, had provided a series of nasty shocks, but these shocks were now over. One of the American frigates, the Chesapeake, had been taken during the 15-month period, after an action that would ever redound to the credit of British arms, and with the capture of the U.S.S. Essex in Valparaiso harbor, the last of the large American cruisers had been driven from the sea.
The two hundred British warships employed in the blockade of American ports made it unlikely that more American warships would get out, or if they did, it would insure their capture. The blockade had become so severe that flour stood at §18 a barrel in Boston, because the normal supply from the Chesapeake Bay region could not be brought in. All the major centers of the country were practically isolated from each other. In the seaport towns—which meant every important place—there was grievous unemployment. The government was in financial difficulties, and could no longer console itself even with the triumph of its lighter vessels. Only the loss of the insignificant brig Boxer marred the British navy’s record for the 15-month period. In return for her they had taken not only the frigates Chesapeake and Essex, but the sloop-of-war Frolic, and the brig Argus.
That last capture was an indicator of the only difficulty that still offered any disturbance to the Lords in Admiralty. To be sure the Argus had been taken in a handsome manner by H.M.S. Pelican, of somewhat greater force (280 pounds weight of broadside metal to 210), after a combat whose fairness was not altered by the facts that the Argus’ powder was bad, most of her crew drunk, and some of them behaving in a cowardly manner. This was the type of performance Britons expected from Americans —above all when pressure was put upon them—the type of performance they had frequently given at sea during the War of the Revolution. The disturbing element of the Argus’ capture lay in the place where it had been made and in the events that preceded and followed it.
For the place was the English Channel, the home of British sea-power, and also the boulevard along which the greatest mass of her commercial traffic moved, whether to the south coast ports, or to the Pool of London. And before she was brought to book, the Argus wrought dreadful havoc in that commercial traffic, having taken no less than twenty-one ships between mid-June and mid-August and burned them all but one, with a damage bill of £600,000. What followed was even worse; for the Argus set up a beacon for those formidable American privateers which were now offering Britain such a problem as she had never yet faced on the sea.
Privateering was not new to the English, of course; the war on commerce—guerre de course, or running war—had been the backbone of the French system on the sea, ever since Louis XIV had found it too expensive to maintain a navy and had rented his warships to commercial firms who wished to engage in military speculation. The rental system had long since passed and the privateering of the great war of Napoleon was truly a private enterprise—which had started with a rush at the beginning of the war, as always in the contests between France and England, then had been brought under control as the British tightened their blockade and multiplied by four the number of their small cruising ships in service. The French privateers were mostly small and poorly armed; they stayed not far from their home ports and rarely offered resistance when approached by regular warships. Dealing with them was mainly a question of numbers. The French had a few large cruiser-privateers which attempted to waylay the Indiamen, east and west, but these valuable vessels of the British East India Company could be protected by convoy.
The American privateers that hurried to sea at the outbreak of war, however, were of a disturbingly different pattern. Many were small indeed; but all were armed to the teeth and most fought like tigers,1 so that the armaments with which British merchant ships were accustomed to keep French privateers at a distance became utterly inadequate. The Kemp of Baltimore, for instance, attacked a convoy of seven armed Indiamen and took them all after a savage fight. The Saratoga of New York captured the 18-gun mailpacket Morgiana, which had a British Navy crew. The Atlas of Philadelphia fought an action on both broadsides with two heavy packets, each of more than her own force, and captured both. By April, 1814, these unusual privateers had three times attacked ships of the Royal Navy and taken them— in one case after a whirlwind cutlass-and- pistol battle across the decks which saw a higher percentage of casualties than any cruiser fight of the war.
Moreover, these American privateers were manned by such a race of seamen as the world had rarely known. They were accustomed to deep-sea cruising; they knew the West Indies, the River Plate, and the North Atlantic runs, they provisioned themselves for long periods at sea and headed straight for such places. The Benjamin Franklin of New York invaded a fortified harbor in the West Indies and shot things out with the fort, while her boats cut out a valuable prize. The Yankee of Bristol sent landing parties ashore and laid towns under contribution. The governor of Jamaica complained that the privateers had placed his island under blockade.
Seven months after the war began, it was reckoned that the American privateers had taken 500 British merchant ships, which was more than the great power of France had been able to do in a year. The Admiralty’s defense was essentially the same as against France—a tight blockade, valuable ships in convoy, and plenty of small cruisers on patrol. For a time, in the early months of 1813, it seemed probable that this time- honored prescription would reduce American privateering to a mere nuisance. But with the coming of summer and the cruise of the Argus, a flaw began to appear in the syllogism. The British blockade had indeed put an end to American commercial traffic, but in so doing it had left the American sailors with nothing left to do but go privateering. They accepted the only employment open to them, and they approached the project with an emotion in which greed for profits was not the only element. This was their own war. “No Impressement,” “Free trade and sailors’ rights” read the banner over many a tavern where a privateer’s recruiting office was opened.
There were thus plenty of men, and there began to be ships. The British blockade was so close that the warmed-over commercial craft which began the privateering business were no longer valid, and British warships had become so numerous that it was not safe for privateers to operate off the banks of Newfoundland or in the Gulf Stream. To meet the first difficulty, the privateersmen turned to their own shipwrights; there began to slide from the ways those wonderful Baltimore topsail schooners and brigs, with steep-raking masts, some of the most beautiful, and certainly the fastest ships, that ever cruised deep water under sail; of such graceful lines that modern naval architects can do no better in spite of their towing tanks; flimsily built, but they were not expected to last long, and lightness meant more speed; having 5 to 7 carriage guns a side with an 18-pounder Long Tom on a pivot between the masts. Even the earlier privateers had shown some notable turns of speed, but the new ones, designed for the service, were beyond anything the Royal Navy possessed or had seen. They could sift through a blockade like smoke, eat right into the wind’s eye, and outrun anything. During the whole of 1813, not one of them was taken in a straightaway chase.
And after the Argus had shown the way, they began to appear where British ships were thickest—in the waters around the home islands. The Yankee of Bristol approached the coast of Ireland and took seven ships in the wine trade that summer. The Scourge of New York and the Rattlesnake of Philadelphia got into the North Sea, and between them took 18 prizes, to the value of half a million pounds sterling. The Lion of Baltimore cruised the Bay of Biscay; the Sabine of Baltimore attacked the Portugal wine ships and took one of the East India Company’s best vessels, homeward bound from Bombay.
This was hard to bear for a nation weary with the 21-year struggle against France. Yet the key question of the war was not whether England would be willing to support her losses, but whether the United States could stand up under the British counterattack. The privateers, however they might rejoice the men of the seaport towns and provide for their doxies hair-ribbons woven of ten-dollar bills, could do but little to allay the general feeling of futility.
By April, 1914, the U. S. Army had suffered a series of peculiarly galling defeats on the northern frontier. From the force of the British effort, it seemed that more might be in store during the coming summer. And now the U.S. Navy had apparently reached its limits. With the public cruisers destroyed or locked in harbor, it could not be long before the British hit upon some extension of the devices successful against privateering in the past.
This, then was the overall picture of the war in that fateful month. But on May 1, 1814, the U.S.S. Wasp, 20 guns, broke through the blockade from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the situation exploded.
II
This Wasp was the second of the name, one of William Doughty’s new ship-sloops, and her commander was Master Commandant Johnston Blakely. At this time he was a small man of 32 with once-black hair that had become very nearly white; black, darting eyes; a man who walked like a cat, with an appearance of always being on tiptoe. He was Irish by birth, from Seaford in County Down, and Scotch-Irish Protestant by race, his first name being that of one of the local great families. At the close of the American Revolution, when his father decided to migrate to the new lands beyond the sea, he was only two years old.
At this time the Scotch-Irish already had a strong foothold in the Carolinas, and the elder Blakely chose to join his compatriots in Charleston. It was an unfortunate selection since he was hardly ashore before his wife died of a fever, and with her an infant son, younger than Johnston. Conceiving a dislike for the city that had cost him so much, John Blakely removed to Wilmington, North Carolina, where he had an acquaintance named Edward Jones, who had come out from Seaford earlier, and had done well in the legal profession. Jones met father and son at the dock, carrying young Johnston to his house. The senior Blakely had some money, with which he engaged in trade, investing his gains in buildings. But he found the climate insalubrious and decided to take no risks with his remaining child. When the boy was five or six, Blakely sent him to be placed in a well-known school at Flatbush, Long Island, a corresponding merchant named Mr. Hoope having agreed to watch over the lad.
Young Blakely made not infrequent visits to Wilmington, during which he spent most of his time with the Jones family at their country seat. There was a good deal of intellect among the Joneses. The father was to become solicitor-general of the state and all the children had brilliant careers. Conversations and amusements were on a fairly high plane during the visits, and young Blakely held up his end well. He had a reputation for high spirits and a remarkably melodious singing voice, but quite unlike most of the young bucks around him, he preferred books to outdoor sports, drank no more than his position as a gentleman required, and gambled not at all. In 1796 his father died, and he entered the University of North Carolina, where Jones (now his guardian) wished him to study for the law. Johnston Blakely’s own bent was toward the sea, and so far as he was allowed the election of his courses, he specialized in such subjects as mathematics applied to navigation, astronomy, and surveying.
The University of North Carolina was a fairly turbulent place in those days, with a long series of student riots, which eventually became so uncontrollable that Principal Professor Gillespie was forced to resign. Blakely took no part in the disturbances— it is related that he assembled some of his fellow-students and told them it was a matter of principle—and he was an honor student. But he had fallen under suspicion of “French doctrines,” such as radicalism and atheism, because he read and quoted from Tom Paine’s Age of Reason. (In later years he used to say the book had done permanent injury to his mind.) Thus it came about that one evening Presiding Professor Caldwell appeared in Blakely’s room to demand some information about a recent row. The young man denied any knowledge of it; Caldwell called him a liar, which remark was resented in terms that led the professor to suggest he might throw the student out the window.
“I beg, sir, that you will not attempt it,” said young Blakely, “as it will necessitate my putting you out instead.”
There was a momentary battle of wills; then the professor turned and stamped from the room without another word. Long later, when Blakely had become an officer in the Navy, he journeyed back to the university to tell Professor Caldwell that he had learned what respect a junior owed to a senior, and that he wished to offer an apology. The two were afterwards good friends, and wrote to each other frequently.
One must not think of such clashes as anything but unusual in that slightly per- fervid atmosphere of an educational institution of the post-frontier, where learning was so greatly valued and so difficult to attain. As a student Blakely complains bitterly that the available books are inadequate, both qualitatively and quantitatively. He joins the Philosophical Society, which conducts debates on such subjects as “Is Luxury Always the' Cause of the Downfall of Nations?” and is a leading debater in it, but is three times fined fifteen cents for laughing immoderately at the character of the questions propounded and the arguments advanced. Yet upon-the whole Blakely’s college career must have been an existence rather bright with intellectual excitements, a springtime of the world.
But it could no more last than any other springtime. In 1799 there was a big fire in Wilmington. The buildings left to Johnston Blakely by his father all went, and as they were uninsured and the rents from them were the young man’s only income, he was left penniless.
III
Counsellor Jones, as he could well afford to do, offered young Blakely a loan to continue his education. As one might expect, it was refused, but the student sought his patron’s good offices in obtaining a midshipmen’s warrant in the new Navy, of which such glowing accounts were beginning to come from the Caribbean. Of course, nobody dreamed of denying so prominent a man so small a request, but the pace of the age did not lend itself to speed; it was March of 1800 before news of his appointment reached Blakely. As Wilmington was not a naval port, it was nearly another year before the Department could make up its mind to keep him on the rolls of the peace establishment and assign him to a ship fitting for sea.
She was the President, 44 guns, Captain Richard Dale, bound for the Mediterranean on the first cruise against the Barbary pirates. Blakely later called his first captain “an excellent instructor of aspiring youth,” but in view of the records of the two men, it is not unreasonable to attribute the excellence of the instruction to the capacity of the student for absorbing whatever he got. Blakely certainly found himself in a very peculiar position aboard the President. Probably he was the best-educated man in the ship, and something of an intellectual leader, as he could not help being because of the quality of his mind; yet he was completely ignorant of the practical details of his profession. In addition, he was probably looked upon as a political pet, since all the other officers were veterans of the French War who had survived the wave of dismissals on the basis of meritorious service, while Blakely’s service had been at Mr. Jones’ country seat.
However, if any feeling against him survived personal contact, the fact is not recorded in existing documents. Blakely’s gaiety on social occasions doubtless had something to do with this; and so did the fact that the honor student of U.N.C. remained a student still, quickly respected for the assiduous humility with which he applied himself to his profession. To the young man himself this seemed the normal and natural way of becoming a naval officer. His letters do not even comment on the work; he is concerned with questions of valor, family, and good name. “I hope the last Blakely who exists,” he writes, “will lay down his life ere he tarnish the reputation of those who have gone before him. My father’s memory is very dear to me, and I trust his son will never cast a reproach on it.”
The President's cruise was uneventful, save for the accident in December, 1801, when she ran on a rock at the entrance to Port Mahon, tearing off her forefoot and so damaging her keel that a quick run for Toulon and a dockyard was necessary. There it was found that her crew owed their lives to the skill of the frigate’s builders, William Doughty and Christopher Bergh. Instead of carrying the planks at the bow into a groove cut in the stem, as was the custom, they had led this planking into a joint formed by the junction of the stem itself with the apron- piece that braces its after end. The result was that when the stem went in the crash, the planking remained tight.
The French naval architects greatly praised the ingenuity of this device, and at the same time besought Commodore Dale’s permission to take off the lines of his frigate, since the First Consul was building a large number of new warships, and this was the finest model they had ever seen. The American officers were proud of the speed and grace of their ship, as true seamen always are; but the French request astounded them hugely, for French shipbuilders were considered the best in the world, and even at home and among Americans it was the custom to attribute President’s signal qualities to the “French moddle” to which most people thought she had been built.
Midshipman Johnston Blakely certainly listened to as much as he could of these discussions. The question of what makes a ship perform well was one of those scientific aspects of the naval business which interested him most deeply, and it is probable that he learned a good deal about it at Toulon. Almost as soon as he returned to the United States, he was sent to sea again in the John Adams, 28 guns, Captain John Rodgers. This was in the cruise of Commodore Richard V. Morris, which accomplished so little and ended so badly, but Blakely did see one little spurt of fighting, during the operation when the Enterprise, 12, drove the Tripolitan Meshouda into a bay and, with the John Adams' help, cannonaded her till she blew up.
Rodgers liked the studious midshipman, and when both were back in the States, asked for him aboard the Congress, 38, which was fitting for the cruise of 1804-05, that following Preble’s. Blakely was duly gazetted to the ship and did some recruiting duty for her, but was pulled out of it because the news of the loss of the Philadelphia made it necessary to support Preble without delay. The John Adams was to return to the Mediterranean at once, with a load of stores, ammunition, and other necessities. Isaac Chauncey was her captain; she arrived off Tripoli in the peak of the fighting, and Blakely had an opportunity to see how a great commander led his men in action, as well as to learn from the old man’s lips something of his method.
When Rodgers arrived on the station with the Congress, he took Blakely aboard that ship and kept him there till 1805. Back in the United States again, he had a short period of service in the Hornet, 18 gun sloop, on her trial cruise; then a billet at Norfolk Navy Yard until February 10,1807, when he received his lieutenant’s commission. The Leopard-Chesapeake affair had been followed by an embargo on all American shipping, by which means President Jefferson conceived he could bring Britain to terms, through shortages in the supplies she normally obtained on this side of the Atlantic.
Lieutenant Blakely was given the division of gunboats stationed off the Chesapeake capes to enforce the edict—one of the most important posts of all, in view of the width of the waters and the variety of the normal traffic. The duty was unpleasant and he considered it degrading that the. weakness of the government with regard to British aggression should be visited on its own citizens, but he handled the unwieldy gun-boats so well as to be spoken of as one of the coming men in the service.
With Madison as President and the Navy ships cruising again, Blakely went to the Essex, 32 gun frigate. He did so good a job there that when the commands were generally shifted in 1811, Secretary Hamilton gave him a ship of his own, the little brig Enterprise, 12 guns, then lying at New Orleans. She bore the name of the luckiest vessel in the Navy, but had long been laid up, her guns were ashore, and men for her crew were very difficult to find, so Blakely had everything to do. Nor was his task lightened by the unfortunate series of alterations that had turned the beautiful little warship into one peculiarly crank and sluggish. Blakely spent months trying to bring her up to the mark, altering the arrangement of her guns —which was easy enough to do since all these small cruisers were pierced for more cannon than they actually carried. The new captain also checked such details of her rigging as the hang of the topgallant yards. All this time he was training her crew in the last details of handling ropes and artillery, till the men could go through their evolutions like so many watchworks. He expressed himself as very dissatisfied with the conduct of the government toward Britain, and discussed resigning his commission, an act from which he was withheld partly by his interest in the exacting task before him, partly by the evident growth of the war party in Congress.
The declaration of war found him with a ready ship. He cruised with the Enterprise in the Gulf until toward the close of 1812, when he received orders to bring her around into the Atlantic, and sailed January 2,1813. The new station was off the southern coast. The ship cruised out of St. Mary’s and Savannah during most of the spring, but had no luck at all in making captures, the chases proving fruitless by reason of the vessel’s poor speed.
The blockade was now very tight on all the northern ports, but Blakely turned toward New England, in the hope of winning some distinction at the mouth of danger, and he did have the satisfaction of making a couple of prizes before reaching Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in June. His ship was rather too small and handy inshore to be kept in port by the blockaders along so incidented a coast, therefore she was employed in protecting the local trade against Canadian privateers. On August 20, Blakely decoyed a good-sized one under his guns and took her, reaching port to find a letter from the Department announcing that he had been promoted to master commandant. He was offered command of the new sloop-of-war Wasp, which was building at Newburyport; the Enterprise could easily be turned over to Lieutenant Burrows, for he had gained adequate experience for command while he was her executive officer.
IV
Blakely accepted with no attempt whatever to disguise his pleasure in escaping from the ship he had made into a wonderfully efficient little fighting machine, but one which was outclassed by almost every vessel she was likely to encounter, and which besides was too lacking in storage space for long- range cruising. He wanted distant raids and hot battle; close student as he was, he had by no means missed the lesson of the Argus’ cruise as to where both could be obtained. Convoys have to break up somewhere so that the ships which compose them can be distributed to various ports, and the most important of the enemy’s distribution areas was the Channel of England.
That it was heavily patrolled against privateers by the British brig-sloops only increased Johnston Blakely’s appetite as he contemplated the lines of the cruiser growing under the builder’s hands. She was an improvement on the original Wasp class— longer, with slightly more drag to her keel; a full fish-head entrance that would let her stand hard driving; low bilges which would stiffen her for carrying sail in a seaway; a tremendous run to where the deadwood was cut away around the steeply-raking rudder. Doughty had improved on the President design; this new ship should be fast as a witch. Her twenty 32-pounder carronades and two long 12’s would make her almost as much superior to the lighter type of British brig- sloops as our 44-gun frigates were to their 38’s. And as for the larger British sloops— dealing with those would depend on Johnston Blakely.
He began enlisting and training his crew as soon as the ship was in the water; mainly New Hampshire men. But there were to be two disappointments before the spring night when he tore out on the wings of a gale. Blakely would be far from grudging anything to anyone, but it was hard that only 16 days after he had given up command of the Enterprise, she should meet and take a vessel of her own class. He found it harder still that canvas, cables, anchors, the whole equipment of his warship, did not arrive. The situation was difficult, no doubt, what with normal water traffic halted by the blockade, and the overland routes so heavy after the beginning of the autumn rains. But it seemed to Blakely that there were quite inexcusable delays piled on the natural ones. In December, he went down to New York to marry the daughter of his old school-day guardian, Mr. Hoope (now that he had a master commandant’s pay instead of a lieutenant’s), and tried to get at the root of the trouble, without success.
“I shall ever view as one of the most unfortunate events of my life,” he wrote, “having quitted the Enterprise when I did. Had I remained a fortnight longer, my name might be classed with those who stand so high. I cannot but consider it a mortifying circumstance that I left her but a few days before she fell in with the only enemy on this station with which she could have creditably contended. The Peacock has ere this spread her plumage to the winds and the Frolic will soon take her revels on the ocean, but the Wasp will, I fear, remain for some time a dull, harmless drone in the waters of her own country. Why this is, I am not permitted to inquire.”
But at last came the night when the Wasp burst free beneath a starless sky, and as Blakely had said he would, he turned her straight for the Channel. If ever a ship had a hand-picked crew it was this one—175 New England men, not a foreigner on board, nor a landsman, a crew who knew when to do without orders, and when to wait. By the end of the first month they were on station and examining neutrals; on June 2, they took the brig Neptune and burned her, then in the next three weeks four more ships, one of them an Indiaman larger than Wasp herself, which was cut out of a convoy with a British ship-of-the-line in plain sight, yet quite unable to come up with the American cruiser. All the prizes were burned or scuttled, for Blakely would risk no recaptures by trying to send ships in. He provisioned himself from the prizes.
Raiding work of this kind is about the sharpest test a crew can have, for whatever it is desirable to save from the flames and waters can obviously be looted. The consequence of this was clear in the case of the Argus, which had taken a Portuguese wine-brig on the night before her last battle. The Wasp’s crew looted, certainly; the lieutenants were wrapped in shawls of the finest cashmere as they stood their watches, every midshipman had a pair of gold horologues, and ordinary seamen slept under brocade. But with the sharp Blakely to lead them, there was no relaxation in discipline or vigilance—as was made evident on the 28th of June, when the first light of a quarter after four in the morning showed two sails off the lee beam. The weather presented an aspect unusual for the Channel, overcast and warm, with a light wind and smooth sea. The Wasp bore away in chase of the pair, but had hardly done so before another stranger came slanting down from windward.
In this region there was an excellent chance that any stranger might prove a man-o’-war; therefore to gain sea-room Blakely bore up for the latecomer, and at ten in the morning made her out clearly as a brig bearing British colors and showing a disposition to engage. She was H.M.S. Reindeer, a rated 18, actually mounting twenty 24-pounder carronades instead of the 32’s more normal to her class, with a shifting 12-pounder chase-gun forward. Her captain was William Manners, a younger son of the ducal house of Rutland; he had made his ship to be called “the pride of Portsmouth”; no officer in the Royal Navy was better beloved by his crew, and not even Broke of the Shannon had spent more time in drilling them. He soon showed his own quality and theirs; for as the fast and weatherly Wasp came toward him, tacking rapidly to gain the windward position, he sheeted home his own tacks so sharp as to beat her at the maneuver.
The breeze was so light that the ships hardly heeled to it at all. At half-past one the Wasp’s crew was beat to quarters; Captain Blakely ordered the cook to bring up a tub of grog and serve it to the men at the guns. They drank mock toasts to Johnny Bull’s pain when he felt the sting of the Wasp, swearing and peering through the portholes to estimate the strength of the enemy ship. Blakely set his light sails to close, still trying to jockey himself into the weather position. In vain; at half-past two the Reindeer made another tack, took in her staysails and stood for the American. It was now clear to Blakely that he must be weathered; he furled his own kites and trotted off slowly on a reach, with the enemy coming up on his port quarter. At 17 minutes past 3, the ships were only 60 yards apart; the Reindeer opened with grape and cannister from her shifting chase gun. One—two—three—four—five times she fired it, with the utmost deliberation, a hard ordeal for the Wasps, who had not a gun that would hear to make a reply. There was blood on the sand along the American cruiser’s deck, men set their teeth and muttered grimly, the gun captains fondling their lanyards. At the fifth shot, Blakely luffed his ship sharply, the guns opening fire from aft forward as they bore. The Reindeer luffed with him, the ships ran side by side, firing into each other from 20 yards’ distance in one continuous explosion. At maybe the third broadside a grapeshot went through both Manners’ legs; he scrambled to his feet and, perceiving that the Wasp’s metal was far too heavy and too accurately used to be borne at this game of cannonade, put up his helm and ran her aboard on the quarter, calling for boarders.
They came storming forward valorously and there was a desperate hand-to-hand struggle through wreaths of smoke where the ships touched; but the Wasp’s men were as well-trained as the Reindeer’s, and the English could not win an inch onto the American deck. A bullet through the body knocked Manners down again; he hauled himself into the rigging and, sword in hand, was cheering his men on, when still another bullet from an American Marine went through his head. It was the moment; “Board!” cried Blakely, and with their bugles shouting them on, the Wasps poured across the bulwarks in a wave tipped with steel and fire, and swept the enemy’s deck from end to end.
The senior surviving officer made the formal surrender, and he was the captain’s clerk; for the Reindeer had been more desperately and skilfully fought than any other British vessel of the war. She had 33 killed and 34 wounded, nearly all of the latter severely, out of a complement of only 118, and was smashed to pieces in a line with her ports, spare spars and boats all gone, guns dismounted, ports themselves knocked into one yawning hole. Her foremast came down after the battle; there was nothing to do but take the shifting 12-pounder out and burn the hulk. The Wasp herself hail 5 killed and 22 wounded, and a good many shot in her hull; she was simply too heavy for an opponent who in training and leadership was not far from her equal, the odds in weight of metal being 315 to 210 in favor of the American.
Now the damages must be repaired. Blakely made for L’Orient in friendly France, catching two more sail of British merchants on the way in. The Bourbons had just returned to their rule there, and although the Americans found themselves very popular as enemies of detested Albion, everything was so much at sixes and sevens that the repairs took a long time. Blakely growled about it in letters home, but he got to sea again on August 27, and three days later was back at his old haunt in the English Channel, taking a brig loaded with barley, which was scuttled. On the day following there was another prize, which had spoken of a big convoy farther to the westward. Blakely turned in that direction and on September 1 came up with them—ten sail of merchantmen and transports under guard of the Armada, 74 guns. The ship-of- line gave chase; Blakely found the Wasp could easily outrun her on any point of sailing, and managed to lead her far enough out so that he could circle back to the convoy first, taking a ship loaded with brass cannon and valuable military stores, which he put to the torch under the very eyes of the indignant escort.
The second pursuit drove the Wasp so far to the south and west that the convoy was out of sight astern by early afternoon, and being now in the normal trade lane between England and Gibraltar, Blakely merely held his course, running free. At half-past six, four sail were made out ahead, two on the starboard bow, two to port. The thought that one or more of them might be men-o’-war occurred to Blakely, but he did not care. He clapped on sail and ran for the starboard-most of the four, she being nearest the weather; by 7:00 she was visible as a man- o’-war brig, now making feverish signals with guns, lanterns, and rockets.
At twenty past nine, the enemy was on the Wasp’s lee how. Blakely fired into her with the shifting 12-pounder, put his helm hard up, ran under her lee “to prevent her escaping,” and opened fire. It had grown very dark, with a strong wind that sent the ships rocking along at 10 knots, and a high sea, across which one could only make out the winking gleam of the enemy’s battle- lights and the foam along her run. Against this boil the Wasp’s gunners aimed, and the action was close enough so they could tell they were hitting her hard by the crash of shot against her wood and the occasional scream that followed. Just before the clock touched ten, one of the enemy brig’s masts was missing from its place against the sky and her firing ceased. Blakely hailed to know if she had struck, but she replied with a couple of shot, so he fired into her again until a cry came across the heaving water to say stop it for God’s sake, they had struck and were sinking.
Just as a boat was being lowered to take possession, another brig came into sight, coming up rapidly. The Wasp had only 2 killed and 1 wounded, but her control-ropes were a good deal cut. Blakely let her run free with working parties in the rigging, while his drums rolled to quarters for the second battle in an hour, as the Britisher charged after him. But now in the background still a third warship appeared, letting off gun and rocket signals in a perfect passion of activity, and the second antagonist, after throwing a few futile shot, turned back to join her beside Blakely’s prize.
The whipped brig was H.M.S. Avon, of eighteen 32-pounder carronades, 280 pounds weight of broadside, Captain the Honorable James Arbuthnot (Blakely had a strange penchant for contests with the sons of noble houses)—or rather she had been H.M.S. Avon, for she was now a wreck, with 10 killed, 32 wounded; with tiller, foreyard, mainboom, and all her shrouds shot away, 5 guns dismounted, magazine drowned, seven feet of water in her hold, and leaks gaining so rapidly that the rescue ships barely got her people out before she went down. The newcomers were H.M.S. Castilian, 18, and Tartatus, 20, and one of them could have done all the work necessary, but they had seen what Wasp’s guns did to their consort, and neither quite cared to follow.
The Castilian’s commander sent in a self- congratulatory report to the Admiralty saying the Wasp had run away from him, but he could have easily taken her. The shots he fired at the American sloop all missed.
Now the Wasp cruised southward, taking a prize on the 12th of September, another on the 14th, and on the 21st an American-built brig, so valuable both for herself and her cargo that Blakely varied his procedure by putting a midshipman and some men in her and ordering her home. On October 9, near the Azores, the Wasp spoke the Swedish brig Adonis, and took out of her a lieutenant and a master’s mate who had been aboard the Essex and had escaped from the British.
After that neither the Captain nor his ship were ever heard of again.
V
All sorts of rumors and wild stories cropped up to explain the disappearance of the most effective light cruiser that ever flew the American flag. There is no substance to any of them; she simply was, and then was not. The State of North Carolina voted to pay for the upbringing of Blakely’s posthumous daughter, and Congress sent her a sword of honor and a gold medal; but the really important point was that the studious little North Carolina captain and his ship had posed for the Royal Navy a problem quite insoluble in terms of this war. The close blockade of the American coast, though very expensive, did keep the American frigates from making trouble. But the blockade had demonstrated that it was incompetent to deal with vessels of the speed and handiness of the Doughty sloops-of-war.
After the Wasp-Frolic and Hornet-Peacock affairs, the British had, indeed, hastily knocked together a class of 18 vessels, especially intended to blockade the American sloops or deal with them on the ocean. They were heavy brigs, mounting twenty 32- pounder carronades and two long 9’s—an armament not even as good as that of the Doughty sloops—and the British design proved to be so bad that some of the forward guns had to be landed to give the brigs stability, and it was found the tiller could not be used while the after guns were in their ports. The result was a vessel both clumsier and with less fire-power than the standard 18-gun British brig.
The strategic solution as against the American privateers rested on the convoy system, combined with patrols by light warships along the trade lanes. The Wasp’s raid had furnished destructive criticism of both; she took ships right out of convoy, and sank one vessel of the patrol that was supposed to deal with her. When a vessel of her speed and hitting power was loose, the British must necessarily concentrate their fighting ships in larger units of force and some shipping would necessarily be abandoned to the privateers.
This was made clear in no uncertain manner when, on the heels of Blakely’s campaign, it began to rain American privateers in the regions sacred to British shipping. The Prince de Neufchâtel of New York took 18 prizes in Biscay; the Harpy of Baltimore hung between Liverpool and Dublin for weeks, cutting off all mail service between John Bull’s two islands. The Mammoth of Baltimore spent 17 days off Cape Clear, taking a ship a day. And a British captain out of Bristol for Spain sighted no less than ten sail of privateers during the voyage.
The worst was yet to come; for while this was going on, the Globe of Baltimore captured Levanters in the eastern Mediterranean, and the Rambler and the Jacob Jones, both of Boston, turned up in the China seas and sent prizes loaded with gold dust and opium into Canton and Macao. The Leo of Baltimore took a transport with the Duke of Wellington’s paymaster and uniforms for his army off Lisbon Rock, while the America of New Haven, built, armed, and manned like a sloop-of-war, took no less than 24 ships, all the way from the West Indies to the coasts of Norway. That fall appeared the most dangerous of all—the Chasseur of Baltimore, which captured 30 ships, with a bulk value of over a million pounds, and sent in a proclamation to be posted at Lloyd’s to say that she had placed the British Isles under blockade. Half a dozen warships were sent out to look for her, and one of them, the St. Lawrence, 18 guns, found her—with results dismaying from the Admiralty’s point of view, for after a twenty-minute fight, the Chasseur captured the British cruiser by boarding.
Tom Boyle, the privateer’s captain, produced something more than a joke with his proclamation; for by an incredible reversal, the privateers of blockaded America had actually placed Britain under blockade. The price of delicacies like sugar and coffee jumped 200 per cent; and when insurance on the short voyage from Liverpool to Dublin could be had at all, it was at rates between 13 and 15 per cent. Allowing for the profit the underwriters must have on the transaction, this means that at least one ship in ten would be lost on the trip; and it is very difficult to conduct any business in which 10 per cent both of goods and conveyance goes down the drain.
Mr. Croker of the Admiralty advised that it was not safe for ships even to run from Bristol to Plymouth without convoy.
The Wasp, lost at sea without a trace, nevertheless left a reminder in her record that the British Navy would be a long time forgetting.
*From the forthcoming book Preble’s Boys: Commodore Preble and the Birth of American Sea Power, by Fletcher Pratt, to be published by William Sloane Associates, Inc. The material in this article is printed in the Proceedings in advance by special permission of the book’s author and publisher.
1. Not always, to be sure. Mahan and Roosevelt cite instances of tame surrender. But both these writers were concerned with demolishing a legend which had magnified a real achievement into something superhuman, and neither took the trouble to compare the performance of the American privateers with the French.