America Spreads Her Sails: U.S. Seapower in the 19th Century

From the original painting by Marshall Johnson

Captain John Mad Jack Percival personified the ferocious breed of sea dog who helped fulfill the prophesy made by de Tocqueville in 1835: Americans . . . will one day become the first maritime power of the globe. They are born to rule the seas, as the Romans were to conquer the world.

Naval Institute Press

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© 1973 by the United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland

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First Naval Institute Press paperback edition published in 2015.

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Introduction

In 1801, Thomas Jefferson became the third President of the United States, one hundred years later Theodore Roosevelt became the twenty-sixth. The two men were as dissimilar as the agrarian society Jefferson presided over was unlike the industrialized America Roosevelt straw-bossed a century later. It is interesting to note that half of Jefferson’s eight years in office were marred by war, while none of Roosevelt’s eight years were.

In his first inaugural address, Jefferson vowed that his administration would be a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another. They had, of course, been injuring one another with bestial indifference around the world for a generation. Americans, specifically, had been engaged in the Quasi-War against France for the preceding two years. Now, with that unhappy conflict successfully terminated, the newly-elected Jefferson seemed determined to bring both his wisdom and frugality to bear on the Navy. He must have concluded that something had to be done, and quickly, to stunt the growth of the newly recreated sea arm which threatened to be a permanent drain on the treasury after Congress had, in 1799, authorized the construction of six seventy-four-gun ships-of-the-line and the purchase of land for six navy yards.

Jefferson’s low regard for the Navy was well known—We are running . . . mad, he wrote during the campaign, and commerce and navy mad, which is worst of all. Because the Federalist Congress feared that the incoming Republican President might go so far as to summarily abolish the Navy, it passed the Peace Establishment Act on 3 March 1801—the day before Jefferson’s inauguration. The eleventh hour Act slashed the Navy to the bone. The number of officers was cut to less than 200, of whom 150 would be midshipmen. Of 28 captains, for example, 19 were dismissed. All of the eight masters-commandant were returned to civilian life, and only five of the 15 lieutenants-commandant were retained. All warships, with the exception of eight heavy and five light frigates and the schooner Enterprise, would be disposed of. There was almost nothing left for Jefferson to disband.

As it turned out, disbandment was not what Jefferson had in mind. His practical mind weighed the alternatives. He could bow to public opinion which, while intensely and justifiably proud of its Navy’s recent performance against France, wanted now to turn its thoughts to the land, not to the sea. The population, of which fully ninety percent was engaged in agriculture, was more attuned to thinking about seasons than sea power. Still, there was compelling truth in what Alexander Hamilton had said: A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.

Nothing was more revealing of the nation’s weakness than the tribute the United States had been paying since 1793 to deter the four piratical Barbary states—Tunis, Morocco, Algiers, and Tripoli—of North Africa from preying on American commerce. America was not alone in her shame: Holland, Sweden, and Denmark were among those who had chosen to pay millions in tribute, but not one cent for defense of their commercial vessels.

To 26-year-old Captain William Bainbridge had fallen the dishonor of participating in what ranks with the twentieth century Pueblo incident as among the most mortifying insults ever hurled at America’s flag. In 1800, he had arrived in Algiers in the 24-gun corvette George Washington to pay the annual installment on the million-dollar blackmail extracted by the infamous treaty of 1796. Bainbridge had been brought before the Dey of Algiers who was a huge, shaggy beast, sitting on his rump upon a low bench, with his hind legs gathered up like a tailor or a bear, who extended his fore paw as if to receive something to eat. ‘Kiss the Dey’s hand!’ our guide exclaimed.

With the George Washington lying under the Dey’s seafront batteries, Bainbridge had no course but to comply with the Dey’s subsequent demand that the George Washington hoist the Algerian flag and transport gifts and tribute to the Dey’s overlord, the Sultan of Turkey, in Constantinople. You pay me tribute, by which you become my slaves, the Dey told Bainbridge.

This odious incident, combined with the ever increasing number of Christians rotting in Barbary prisons, could not be ignored and, two months after his inauguration, Jefferson sent the frigates President, Philadelphia, and Essex, and the schooner Enterprise to the Mediterranean. Their orders were to show the flag and, if necessary, commence hostilities with any of the states that might have declared war against America.

Yes, a navy of sorts was needed. It wouldn’t be the big navy the Federalists had wanted and that these new Barbary troubles seemed to warrant, and it couldn’t be as small as the people seemed to be demanding. The architect/engineer in Jefferson provided an answer. He would build a drydock—a storehouse for the frigates—the like of which had never been seen before. He would build it in Washington, D.C., where there was land enough and water enough—he counted the rivers: the Eastern branch, Tyber, Rock creek & the Potomak itself—to make feasible an enormous, enclosed edifice that could simultaneously accomodate a dozen frigates. In it, the great vessels would be stored like children’s toys in a trunk, safe from the harm of wet and sun.

Delighted with the idea, Jefferson enlarged on it. He would build large numbers of small gunboats which, in conjunction with a mobile land force of flying artillery, would guarantee the defense of the coasts. And these gunboats, too, could be stored in sheds, ready at a moment’s notice to be activated to meet any emergency.

Build them he did. Eventually, there would be more than 170 gunboats. But, as historian Fletcher Pratt wrote, most of them never left their wharves. Those that did hoist sail met with droll accidents; turned turtle in a capful of wind, rolled their gunwhales under every time a cannon was fired, ran ashore, or even, like No. 4, were deposited in cornfields, high and dry, by the first gale of autumn.

They had so little freeboard, Pratt concluded, that a British ship came tearing down full tilt toward one in the Atlantic, under the impression she was rescuing some shipwrecked sailors who had built a raft.

Too busy with his Presidential duties to undertake the drydock design himself, Jefferson selected architect Benjamin H. Latrobe and, in his first letter to him, explained that his plan envisioned The placing of a navy in a state of perfect preservation, so that at the beginning of a subsequent war it shall be as sound as at the end of the preceding one when laid up.

He continued: the lessening the expence of repairs, perpetually necessary while [the frigates] lie in water, are objects of the first importance to a nation which to a certain degree must be maritime. His muted . . . to a certain degree accentuates the gulf between the President and those who considered the new nation to be first, last, and above all else a maritime nation.

Whether such a drydock might have ranked with Monticello as one of Jefferson’s tangible grand designs will never be known. Despite elaborate and impressive architectural renderings by Latrobe, the strong anti-Navy bloc in the House of Representatives strangled it in committee.

But this much can be said with certainty of Jefferson: a stronger President would not have permitted the war against the Barbary states to drag on from 1801 to 1805 and—especially in light of the heroics of Stephen Decatur and the others of Commodore Edward Preble’s Boys—would not have terminated hostilities with a debasing payment of $60,000 ransom for the unlucky Captain William Bainbridge and his crew of the Philadelphia. Moreover, Jefferson had other idiosvncracies: he had a prejudice against manufacturers and artisans; he had a loathing for cities which he called sores upon the body politic; and he favored diplomatic isolation. Considering the age in which he lived, most of these peccadillos seem harmless enough—all save one: his opposition to the maintenance of a strong navy.

His lasting contempt for the nation’s sea arm surfaced again soon after the British Leopard had attacked, boarded, and taken four alleged Royal Navy deserters off the American Chesapeake. In his frustration, he decried not the act, but the ruinous folly of a Navy!

In all of these views, Thomas Jefferson was the antithesis of Teddy Roosevelt.

As an undergraduate at Harvard College, Theodore Roosevelt had written a History of the War of 1812. His research had led to his becoming a lifelong advocate of a strong navy. He would later write, There would have been no war in 1812 if, in the previous decade, America, instead of announcing that peace was her passion, instead of acting on the theory that unpreparedness averts war, had been willing to go to the expense of providing a fleet of a score of ships of the line.

It was Roosevelt who, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, was largely responsible for readying the Navy for the Spanish-American War. Recalling those days in his autobiography, he seems to have put his finger on the essential difference between his and Jefferson’s conception of the causes of war. Like the people, he wrote, the government was for a long time unwilling to prepare for war, because so many honest but misguided men believed that the preparation itself tended to bring on the war. I did not in the least share this feeling, and whenever I was left as Acting Secretary I did everything in my power to put us in readiness.

Rear Admirals Willard H. Brownson (see page 138), Charles H. Davis, and Robley D. Evans reviewed the Atlantic Fleet with President Roosevelt

But, apparently, the charge of Warmonger! continued to bother Roosevelt long after he left the Presidency, and he wanted to set the record straight: I abhor violence and bloodshed. I advocate preparation for war in order to avert war; and I should never advocate war unless it were the only alternative to dishonor. . . . We did not at the time of which I write take our foreign duties seriously. . . . Gradually a slight change for the better occurred, the writings of Captain [Alfred Thayer] Mahan [of whom more will be said later on these pages] played no small part therein.

When he became convinced that war with Spain was inevitable, Roosevelt redoubled his efforts to assist my natural friends and allies, the Navy’s Bureau Chiefs—Evans, Brownson, Sampson, Wainwright—in getting the material ready. He also tried to gather from every source information as to who the best men were to assign to the fighting commands. Of all the names, one man—Commodore George Dewey—emerged as the Navy’s own leading candidate to command one of the squadrons. This came as no surprise to Roosevelt who, earlier, had been impressed by the way Dewey had acted decisively, when he could have vacillated in the absence of specific orders, during troubles between the United States and Chile.

By means not quite official, Roosevelt managed Dewey’s assignment to command of the Asiatic Squadron, that far-off station that demanded the utmost in initiative from its commander. In the event of war, Roosevelt wrote, Dewey could be slipped like a wolf-hound from a leash; I was sure that if he were given half a chance he would strike instantly and with telling effect; and I made up my mind that all I could do to give him that half-chance should be done.

In his own autobiography, Admiral Dewey recalled Roosevelt’s message of 25 February—two months to the day before Congress declared war—to the Asiatic, European, and South Atlantic squadrons. The message directed each squadron to rendezvous at certain points where, should war break out, they would be in a position to make their presence felt. Dewey noted: As Mr. Roosevelt reasoned, precautions for readiness would cost little in time of peace, and yet would be invaluable in case of war.

Not all of Roosevelt’s actions were appreciated at the time by his boss, the usually genial Secretary of the Navy John D. Long, who wrote:

He is full of suggestions, many of which are of great value, and his spirit and forceful habit is a good tonic; but the very devil seems to possess him—distributing ships, ordering ammunition which there is no means to move to places where there is no means to store it; sending messages to Congress for immediate legislation authorizing the enlistment number of seamen.

A full ten years would have to pass before Long would concede that Roosevelt was right and I wrong.

As President, Roosevelt was no less a man of decisive action, and the big stick he brandished was quite often a wet one. When, anxious to impress Japan in particular with growing U.S. naval power, he ordered 16 U.S. battleships—The Great White Fleet—to make an unprecedented, 16-month, 40,000-mile voyage around the world. Yokohama was one of the ports of call.

Despite the fact that he had earlier been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in settling the Russo-Japanese War, he considered this voyage his most important contribution to peace. I had become convinced, he stated, that our fleet should from time to time be gathered in the Pacific, just as from time to time it was gathered in the Atlantic, and that its presence in one ocean was no more to be accepted as a mark of hostility to any Asiatic power than its presence in the Atlantic was to be accepted as a mark of hostility to any European power. I determined on the move without consulting the Cabinet, precisely as I took Panama without consulting the Cabinet . . . the duty of a leader is to lead and not to take refuge behind the generally timid wisdom of a mulitude of councillors.

Japan—and China—were never much out of his thoughts during most of his Presidency, but for different reasons. In the difference between the two, he saw a valuable lesson for America: China has neither a fleet nor an efficient army. It is a huge civilized empire . . . and it has been the helpless prey of outsiders because it does not possess the power to fight. Japan stands on a footing of equality with European and American nations because it does possess this power. China now sees Japan, Russia, Germany, England, and France in possession of fragments of her empire, and has twice within the lifetime of the present generation seen her capital in the hands of allied invaders, because she in very fact realizes the ideals of the persons who wish the United States to disarm, and then trust that our helplessness will secure us a contemptuous immunity from attack by outside nations.

Roosevelt had one other distinction. He was the first President to venture outside the country while in office and, characteristically, he made the journey to Panama in a battleship!

Thus, at the outset of the nineteenth century, the nation was guided by an isolationist President, whose timid foreign policy has been generously described as excessively optimistic, and, one hundred years later, an unabashed militarist prowled the White House corridors.

That America was to change so fundamentally during this period has been attributed to many things, not the least of which were the revolutions that forever altered, for example, the hitherto related realms of transport and communication. The horse and the sailing ship, on which all long-distance communication had depended for centuries, now gave way to automobiles, trains, steamships, and airplanes; and the hand-written letter was supplemented by the telephone, telegraph, submarine cable, and wireless telegraphy. And what wonders would spring from Michael Faraday’s discovery of electromagnetic induction in 1831! Mathematics, McAdam roads, medicine, and a growing middle class all would have a profound impact on the century.

Yet, had none of the century’s cataclysmic social and technological changes occurred, historians’ opinions probably would not have altered in one respect. There would still be almost universal disdain for Jefferson’s naval policies and almost total approval of Teddy Roosevelt’s.

Part of the evidence that led to this verdict is contained in the following fourteen chapters. Each deals with an isolated event, many of them obscure at the time, virtually all of them now forgotten.

Viewed in isolation, a young Yankee sealer’s adventures in Antarctica seem to have little to do with the harsh justice meted out by Commodore Matthew Perry in West Africa. Yet, as we read about Lieutenant Charles Henry Bromedge Caldwell, the Great Republic, and all the other strong men and stout ships that enliven these pages, we may conclude that, whatever else the century was, it is likely to stand for all time as conclusive proof of the wonderful silence and sureness with which sea power attains its ends.

Clayton R. Barrow, Jr.

Contents

. . . the Ruinous Folly of a Navy

Robert J. Hanks, Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy

Lands Below the Horn

Robert E. Morsberger and W. Patrick Strauss

Sandalwood Bonanza

John P. Wagner

The USS Potomac and the Pepper Pirates

Celia Woodworth

Profit and Adventure in Paraguay

Oscar P. Fitzgerald

Matthew Perry and the African Squadron

Donald R. Wright

The Ringgold Incident: A Matter of Judgment

Gordon K. Harrington

Come, Papillangi, Our Fires Are Lighted

Francis X. Holbrook

The Queen Who Never Reigned

C. Bradford Mitchell

The Pirate Ship Forward

Willard H. Brownson, Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy (Preface and postscript by Caroline Brownson Hart)

Showing the Flag in the Indian Ocean

Kenneth J. Hagan

Peary and the Meteorites

Edward Peary Stafford, Commander, U.S. Navy (R)

Four Fighting Ladies

William H. Flayhart, III

The Fellowship of the Craft

C. F. Burgess

Authors

Index

Lieutenant Thomas ap Catesby Jones

...the Ruinous Folly of a Navy

By Rear Admiral Robert J. Hanks, U.S. Navy

The War of 1812 had become the War of 1814 and, admist a chill, mid-December dawn, Lieutenant Thomas ap Catesby Jones must have braced his feet against the gently swaying deck of his gunboat flagship as he surveyed his nutshell command—four other tiny gunboats and one miniature tender—which he had just deployed across the entrance to Louisiana’s Lake Borgne.

In the distance, a swarm of ship’s boats, gigs, barges, and pinnaces inched toward his own miniscule flotilla. Obviously British, they were patently bent on doing the American formation grievous harm, and young Tom Jones had served in the gunboat navy far too long to have been anything but apprehensive about the outcome of the impending battle. Moreover, he had only to reread his orders to remind himself that Commodore Daniel T. Patterson—U.S. naval commander at New Orleans and Jones’ immediate superior—didn’t think much of his chances either.

Those orders had told Jones to notify General Andrew Jackson promptly of the enemy’s approach. Then, if threatened by attack, Jones was to retire to the Rigolets, the narrow channel that connects Lake Borgne and Lake Pontchartrain, where he was to engage the enemy and fight him to the last extremity.

Through a raised long glass, Jones could clearly see his oncoming foe: a broad line of boats, now not more than six miles distant, at least 40 of them, strung out from north to south in a rough line abreast. Such a force would pit perhaps half a hundred British guns and a thousand men against his own 23 guns and 182 men. Moreover, a fickle wind and contrary current had already played havoc with his chances.

His squadron was anchored, all right, and he was prepared to fight to that last, painful extremity—but Jones and his men were not off the Rigolets. Wind and tide had conspired to select quite a different battle site, much further to the east—the entrance to Lake Borgne. There, unable to retreat further when the unpredictable wind gave way to a flat calm, a trapped and angry Jones had stationed his little gunboats to await the impending attack.

One can safely assume that, as he paced the deck of his flagship, Jones cursed the fast-moving current tearing at the moorings of his little fleet. Under its influence, two gunboats—his flagship included—had dragged their anchors some distance across the Lake’s silted bottom before finally fetching up in decent holding ground. Set well to the eastward, both boats were now far out ahead of the planned north-south line. Jones found himself furthest east and, therefore, in the most exposed and dangerous position.

A glance off to the southeast was all that was necessary to follow the movements of his tender Alligator. Really nothing more than a fishing smack, the tiny ship carried but one ineffective four-pounder and a crew of only eight. She was obviously straining to rejoin Jones’ flotilla and, just as obviously, the squadron of barges despatched by Captain Nicholas Lockyer—HMS Sophia’s commanding officer was leading the British attack force—would succeed in cutting her off.

Smoke from the Alligator’s gun blossomed in the still and humid air, the shots falling harmlessly clear of the hard-rowing British. Unscathed, they pressed relentlessly on, rapidly closing the distance to the little tender. Easily visible from Jones’ vantage point, they drew nearer and nearer. Then they were alongside and, quite suddenly, it was all over.

Sailing Master Richard Sheppard, his command surrounded by half a dozen well-armed and heavily manned barges—some almost as large as the Alligator herself—bowed to the inevitable and struck his colors. Jones could only watch in helpless frustration as the American flag fluttered down, the British swarmed aboard, and the victorious division of English small boats headed back to rejoin the waiting main force. As soon as the Alligator’s conquerors took up their stations again, the long line resumed its slow, laborious approach.

If Jones continued to stare at the Alligator—the little ex-fisherman had won momentary fame when she carried Jones’ warning of the enemy arrival to Jackson—despair surely must have engulfed him as she hoisted the Union Jack and became the second American ship to be forcibly separated from his command.

With the small schooner Sea Horse already a charred skeleton at Bay St. Louis—fired and scuttled by her own crew to prevent capture—and the Alligator now in British hands, Jones found his squadron reduced to five small gunboats, moored in an irregular line across the entrance to Lake Borgne. At this point, his watch read just 9:30 and the odds against him, long from the outset, were growing longer with each passing minute.

He could be forgiven if, once again, he cursed the racing current. His only small comfort was in knowing that it was bedeviling the oncoming British as well as his own waiting sailors. And bedevil them it did.

Across the open stretch of water, weary and sweating English tars pulled at long ash sweeps, heavy as lead now after 36 hours of backbreaking progress over the 60 miles of Mississippi Sound which separated Jones from the anchored British fleet. With the Americans in clear view at last, the miserable current cancelled one stroke in every three as the English struggled to close the Yankee cockleshells. Always impartial, the elements played out their decisive role in the battle.

Then, surprisingly, the line of small boats rippled to a halt, grapnels arcing overboard to splash into the blue-green water, dripping oars flashing in the mid-morning sun as they were boated. Anchored just beyond gunshot, the methodical British were taking time out for a pre-battle breakfast and a much needed rest.

While the English sailors paused to recoup their strength, Lieutenant Jones had time to recall the events leading up to his predicament, including his own role in readying the fleet of gunboats with which he must now defend the maritime approaches to New Orleans.

The appearance of the British small-boat flotilla in Mississippi Sound came as no great surprise to him. News that an invasion fleet was in the Sound had reached him four days earlier, when two gunboats he had sent out as scouts returned to report many British sail in Ship Island Pass just south of Old Biloxi. That report ended weeks of uncertainty over where the English would strike following their devastating foray up and down Chesapeake Bay.

When the British—following their burning of Washington in August and after being repulsed at Fort McHenry in September—left the Virginia Capes astern and pointed their ships southeastwards toward the Caribbean, speculation spread like an angry rash along the length of the American coast. Rumor put them in a dozen different places at once. From a hundred separate sources, conflicting intelligence reports poured in and, as they accumulated, it gradually became clear that the Gulf Coast would be the next British objective.

Certainly, almost everyone who lived in the area sensed that the blow would fall somewhere along their 500 miles of exposed Gulf coastline. In particular, most of the 20,000 inhabitants of New Orleans accepted their city as the prime target. Indolent French creoles, aristocratic Spaniards, adventurous Americans, rascals of all nations, milled around and argued about when, not where, the attack would take place.

There was, however, one vitally important doubter.