Utmost Gallantry: The U.S. and Royal Navies at Sea in the War of 1812

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1 - Every Appearance of Hastening the Crisis

CHAPTER 2 - ‘A Little Bit of a Dust’ With an English Frigate

CHAPTER 3 - It Is a Thing I Could Not Have Expected

CHAPTER 4 - If We Could Take One or Two of These D—d Frigates

CHAPTER 5 - Cast Away . . . or Taken

CHAPTER 6 - Creating a Powerful Diversion

CHAPTER 7 - A Glorious Retrieval of Our Naval Reputation

CHAPTER 8 - More Than Ordinary Risk

CHAPTER 9 - Pursuing My Own Course

CHAPTER 10 - Some Hard Knocks

CHAPTER 11 - Into Abler Hands

CHAPTER 12 - Repulsed in Every Attempt

CHAPTER 13 - The Current Demands of the Service

EPILOGUE

ABBREVIATIONS

NOTES

GLOSSARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Copyright Page

PREFACE

Driving along a rural road in southwestern Georgia on a clear, crisp February day, I was greeted by fields bounded by woods, often of pine. Towns punctuated the vista from time to time. The name of one—Blakely—caught my eye. The historian in me immediately associated the town with Johnston Blakeley, who figures prominently in the following pages as commander of the Enterprize and later the Wasp. Continuing southeast from Blakely, I entered Decatur County, and then passed through the county seat of Bainbridge. Though a fair distance from salt water where Commodores Stephen Decatur and William Bainbridge defeated British frigates in 1812, the coincidence of Blakely, Georgia, followed by places named for Decatur and Bainbridge demonstrated America’s admiration for its navy. Officers like Blakeley, Decatur, and Bainbridge captured America’s imagination by fighting for the honor of the young United States against the most powerful navy in the world. There is, however, another side to this story. Britain viewed the War of 1812 on the high seas in the context of its ongoing war against Napoleonic France, and saw the United States Navy as a threat to the sea-lines of communication that were essential for the well-being of its economy and its empire.

In the two centuries since that war, writers have spilled a great deal of ink to explain the bloody encounters between the British and American navies on the oceans. Many of these sources, though, contain one or more of the following weaknesses: an overemphasis on the first six months of the war when the British lost the frigates Guerriere, Macedonian, and Java; a failure to link the tactical events of the ship-on-ship battles to a broader understanding of the war; an underutilization of British archival and primary sources; and an overreliance on secondary sources, including some that contain erroneous information or distorting nationalistic perspectives. The following pages offer a balanced appraisal of the war based on British and American archival sources, including public and private letters, ships’ logs, as well as courts martial records. Where this was not possible, I have relied on published documents to place engagements in a broader operational and strategic context so as to understand the intent of the belligerents, how both sides used their warships, and the broader ramifications of the ship-on-ship battles. Naval warfare involves the interaction of multiple actors; looking critically at all sides, both in battle and in more mundane operations, adds to the narrative of how the war unfolded.

Though this work relies heavily on documents, I have consulted scholarly works as starting points for research, but this does require a notice of caution involving the reference notes. General works on the naval war by authors such as William James, Theodore Roosevelt, Alfred T. Mahan, C. S. Forester, and Robert Gardiner describe nearly every naval engagement in the war; rather than repeat them endlessly in the notes, I have only cited these works where they present unique points.

This book adds to the historical debate, but it is not a complete narrative of the naval war. The following pages only address the war for the lakes between the United States and Canada in a tangential manner. Though manpower constraints caused operations on the Lakes to sap oceanic naval strength, the war on the Lakes was unusually isolated for a naval war and has been divorced from this study. This work also does not assess the contributions by privateers in a critical or detailed manner. Though responsible for the capture of the majority of British merchant vessels and even the occasional, bloody fight, a true analysis of their actions would be a book unto itself. Finally, this study does not claim to assess British operations in the littorals, such as those that occurred in the Chesapeake. Instead, this is a history of the war between the British Royal Navy and the United States Navy on the high seas.

In numbers alone, this was an unequal struggle and should have been a short story of British success that swept the little American navy from the seas, but instead U.S. warships operated from the war’s beginning to its end. Why did Britain, with the most powerful navy in the world, find the small American navy so resilient? What does this indicate about well-trained, smaller naval powers with critical asymmetric advantages in geographically expansive and often distant theaters? To the British, it seemed almost ludicrous that the Americans would fight; rather than define victory as defeating the entire British navy, the Americans characterized success as gaining honor while denying it to Britain, and at the same time protracting the war and forcing Britain to expend disproportionate resources to combat the U.S. naval threat. In the end, the Americans proved a nuisance and a nagging threat. Though the British failed to destroy the United States Navy, they largely marginalized it, albeit at high costs in blood, treasure, warships, and time.

A Note on Warship Armaments

The number and type of cannons mounted on warships during the War of 1812 is a nebulous subject. For example, the U.S. frigates Constitution, President, and United States were sister ships, but the armament of each varied slightly and changed slightly during the war. To make this more confusing, all three of the above frigates were rated for forty-four guns, but all carried more guns.

The incongruence between the rated number of guns for a ship and the actual number that ship mounted was owing to several long-term trends. First was the preference of the ship captain. A second reason dealt with mounting guns on previously unarmed portions of the ship. Another factor dealt with the widespread adoption of the carronade. On many warships carronades replaced traditional shipboard guns on a greater than one-for-one basis. These factors contributed to a net gain of six, eight, ten, or even twelve guns per ship.¹ Since ship armament was a moving target, this author has reconciled the problem using a combination of two systems.

The first involves the use of a ship’s rated strength. This system was based on historical precedent that had not evolved with the proliferation of guns on warships. Though the rating system was becoming out of date, it had the advantage of consistency, meaning it did not generally change during the war. Particularly with regard to British warships, it provides an approximate indication of a warship’s tonnage, broadside weight, and crew strength. Though the three British frigates taken by the Americans in 1812 were all 38-gun frigates and had similar capabilities, each mounted slightly different armaments. Given the very large number of British warships, it is all but impossible to know exact armaments in every case. The British Admiralty in London tried to keep records of ship armaments, but reports from sea at times contradict those records. With the exception of ship-on-ship actions, the rated number is generally accurate enough to provide an approximation of the force. For the United States Navy, several factors have led this author away from the rating system. First, that navy represented a smaller group to track and exact armaments were more often known; in addition, Americans had a tendency to rate warships smaller than similar British ships. For example, the Americans rated the Congress as a 36-gun frigate, but it was closer to a British 38-gun frigate in actual armament.

The second means of reconciling the problem of armament involves stating the exact weapons mounted on a ship. Though more accurate than the rating system, this number is not always known. The one time it generally was known, however, was for ship-on-ship actions; at such points in the narrative, this author has provided the best evidence for exact warship armaments.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people have helped make this book possible. First, the faculty of the Strategy and Policy Department at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, unknowingly served as the book’s catalyst. Particularly, I would be remiss if I did not specifically thank Michael Pavković, Jon Scott Logel, and K. J. Delamar for their comments and suggestions. No one could ask for better support than I have received from my department chair, John Maurer. Sara McCranie (my dearest sister) again demonstrated why she is the artist in the family through her superb maps. I also must thank friends and colleagues whose ears I have bent and who I have burdened as I became increasingly engrossed in a war that began almost two centuries ago.

Over the previous four years, I have visited too many libraries and archives to count, and without exception the librarians, archivists, and staff have bent over backward to assist in my research. Several, however, deserve special praise for the manner in which they tolerated my questions and served to facilitate my research. The Navy History and Heritage Command sits at the top of my list. Particularly, Michael J. Crawford, Charles E. Brodine Jr., and Christine F. Hughes have provided immeasurable assistance. In addition, The National Archives at Kew, Richmond; the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich; the Hull History Centre; the Suffolk Record Office in Ipswich; and the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh deserve special praise.

The positions I am about to express are my own views. I do not represent the Naval War College, Navy, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government, and my views are not necessarily shared by them.

CHAPTER 1

Every Appearance of Hastening the Crisis

The Royal Navy, the United States Navy, and the Background to War

Less than a hundred yards separated the two ships, but darkness obscured their identities. The commander of one, Arthur Bingham, hailed across the water, demanding the name of the other ship. He heard a voice that echoed the same question. Bingham then repeated his demand but received an identical response.

On the other ship, Commodore John Rodgers stood on principle: Having asked the first question, & of course considering myself entitled by the common rules of politeness to the first answer, after a pause . . . I reiterated my first enquiry of ‘What Ship is that’? Both officers refused to answer as a matter of pride; the dilemma was intensified because one party did not realize the other had spoken first.

At this point one side fired, and in the confused moments that followed, a deluge of iron spewed from both ships. Some minutes later, Rodgers again hailed, What Ship is that? A voice responded, His Britannic Majesty, but the wind swallowed the ship’s name. For Rodgers, this answer was enough to discontinue the engagement.

As day broke some fifty miles outside the entrance to Chesapeake Bay on 17 May 1811, the two warships remained in sight. Rodgers sent over a boat with an officer. Bingham identified himself as commander of the British sloop Little Belt, and Rodgers’ officer stated that he belonged to the U.S. frigate President. When Bingham asked why the President had fired, the American officer claimed the British had fired first. Bingham railed that this was positively not the case. To make matters worse, the much larger President had completely shattered the Little Belt, killing or wounding thirty-two of her crew. Rodgers asserted that such bloodshed would cause me the most acute pain during the remainder of my life, had I not the consolation to know that there was no alternative left me, between such a sacrifice & one which would have been still greater; namely to have remained a passive spectator of insult to the Flag of my Country, whilst it was confided to my protection.¹

"The affair of the President and Little Belt, so contested on the point of fact, but which I believe was unpremeditated at least by the governments on both sides, has every appearance of hastening the crisis," concluded the U.S. ambassador to Russia.² The bloody affair was indicative of larger problems involving issues of honor and misunderstandings leading up to the War of 1812.

The heart of the issue was much broader and signaled that the established rules of maritime commerce had deteriorated in an international environment dominated by a series of wars between Britain and France, and at times with Spain or with other European states. In these conflicts spanning the eighteenth century, Britain’s survival rested on financial strength, global commerce, and naval power. Victory generally resulted from something more, be it victories on the European continent by British and allied armies or the conquest of colonies. Britain entered the longest, most expensive, and most unlimited of these European wars in 1793. Over the next two decades, Britain fought successive French revolutionary regimes followed by Napoleon and his European allies with only a short pause resulting from the Peace of Amiens. Throughout the conflict, British commercial and naval power grew relentlessly. Britain swept French merchant vessels from the sea and attempted to impose its will on neutrals, including the United States. Concurrently, France obtained stunning land victories over continental challengers. However, the asymmetry between French land power and British sea power meant that neither could strike a decisive blow.

By 1812 Britain possessed half the world’s warship tonnage, an unprecedented figure for any state between 1500 and 1850, and its navy arguably stood at the height of its power, having emerged victorious in all its fleet battles since 1793. In smaller actions the British navy looked nearly as impressive. In 1811 no British warship larger than an 18-gun sloop had struck her colors because of combat.³ Moreover, the missions the Royal Navy undertook were more expansive than any contemporary navy and included policing the oceans, controlling maritime trade, blockading French warships, and supporting land forces.

Though impressive in record and capability, the Royal Navy suffered from a serious flaw. In May 1813 a letter published in an influential British naval journal complained, "Look at our ships, how they are manned at the breaking out of a war, and compare them with the generality of ships now commissioned, and the difference will be most striking: it cannot be otherwise, on account of the vast number of ships at this time in commission, which are now manned by a very small proportion of able seamen, and the remainder filled up with good, bad, and indifferent, viz. ordinary seamen, landsmen, foreigners, the sweepings of Newgate, from the hulks, and almost all the prisons in the country."⁴

Naval officers also complained about the manning of their warships. In December 1811 one captain described his crew as not at all what I would wish them to be, or what they ought to be. The next month, another explained that such a miserable Crew, I have never before, had the misfortune to command. A third captain wrote in June 1814, We have not a bad Ships company, tho’ a very weak one, as the last supplies of men, . . . were lads much too slight for working Guns of the calibre, this ship is armed with.⁵

Inadequate in quality and quantity, manning the British navy has been described as its most intractable problem.⁶ Skilled seamen took years to train, and without them the wooden warships of the Royal Navy were frankly useless. Attrition suffered in two decades of warfare against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France—and at times Spain, Denmark, and a number of other countries—meant that finding seamen for Britain’s warships became ever more difficult, especially since the Royal Navy competed for manpower against more-attractive employment opportunities in merchant ships. Volunteers for the naval service did not prove sufficient, and the navy’s leadership resorted to forcible recruitment or impressment. Used in every war of the eighteenth century, it was extraordinarily unpopular in Britain, but the strategic imperative of keeping the Royal Navy operational provided naval leaders with a justification for the questionable practice of impressment.⁷

Manpower deficiencies and the inability to replace human attrition contributed to a decline in the Royal Navy’s strength by the time of the War of 1812. The number of ships in operational commands fell from 596 in July 1809 to 515 in July 1812, even though the navy’s commitments had not declined proportionately. The 515 ships of July 1812 resulted in a savings of 12,070 men over what was necessary for the 596 ships of 1809.⁸ These manpower figures were based on authorized complements, but ships were not always manned to this level.⁹ To keep more warships at sea, their authorized complements were reduced to less than optimal numbers, leading one contemporary to write, "The matériel and personnel were more than ever out of their due proportions."¹⁰

The British navy consistently had more ships than could be manned, but one should be careful in counting ships. Several studies cite British naval strength at approximately one thousand warships.¹¹ Though true on paper, this figure included everything from stationary ships to prison hulks; instead, the number of operational ships by the late Napoleonic period varied over time between five hundred and six hundred. In a comparative framework, this was still quite impressive, since the American navy during the War of 1812 had but fifteen to twenty ocean-going warships, and only briefly in July 1812 were even ten at sea simultaneously.¹²

One common assumption is that Britain handily defeated its opponents and recommissioned the captured warships, but the role of captures can be overstated.¹³ In July 1812 the British navy had 515 ships in operational commands, 78 percent of them of British construction. Longevity proved more important than commissioning captures. In mid-1812 the average time since the launch date for a deployed frigate was 12.4 years. Ships of the line were even older, with an average launch date of mid-1798.¹⁴ Keeping older ships operational proved key to Britain’s naval power. Sustaining such a large and aged fleet demanded superb management, tremendous financial outlays, and harnessing increasing levels of industrialization. In these areas, Britain’s early-nineteenth-century capabilities dwarfed its rivals.¹⁵ Ship production and maintenance certainly posed less of a problem than manning them, and, in some respects, Britain’s material advantages offset manpower deficiencies.

The Royal Navy had three basic types of warships—ships of the line, frigates, and smaller vessels (see Table 1.1). Ships of the line, sometimes called battleships, were the navy’s most imposing ships, designed to stand in a line of battle and trade broadsides in fleet-on-fleet engagements. The largest ships of the line comprised the first and second rates with three full gun decks, rated for ninety or more guns. By late in the Napoleonic period their number had declined, and they played little role in the War of 1812 since the stoutest U.S. warships in 1812 were very large frigates like the President.¹⁶ Increasingly, the 74-gun third rate with two full gun decks, possessing a superior ratio between cost, seaworthiness, firepower, speed, and crew size, dominated British ships of the line.¹⁷

Frigates were capable of nearly everything except standing in a line of battle. Particularly, they could undertake independent missions, and they were excellent for patrol, scouting, and convoy escorts. Frigates required a third to half the men of a ship of the line, and by 1812 British frigates were normally rated for thirty-six or thirty-eight guns. Thirty-six-gun frigates displaced slightly less than one thousand tons, and the 38-gun variety displaced slightly more. Both types generally had a principal armament of 18-pound long guns mounted on a single continuous gun deck running the length of the frigate. Additional lighter cannons and carronades were mounted one deck higher. This was not a continuous gun deck; instead, several guns were placed on the forecastle at the bow of the ship, while a larger number of guns were arranged on the quarterdeck toward the stern. There were no guns placed in the middle of the ship in the area known as the waist.¹⁸

Table 1.1. Total Number of Deployed Warships in the Royal Navy, 1 July 1812

Smaller warships served as the catchall category. At its upper limit, these vessels were used in a manner similar to small frigates, yet each was manned by a third to half as many men and cost significantly less. The largest vessels in this category were the sixth rates; these were ship-rigged with three masts (foremast, mainmast, and mizzenmast), and often looked like miniature frigates, having a quarterdeck and forecastle. More numerous were the two-masted brig sloops. Flush-decked—meaning they did not have a true forecastle or quarterdeck—they were designed as instruments of sea control, to project British sea power. They were generally adequate for patrolling, escorting convoys, and working in the littorals. The most common warship of this type was the Cruizer class that displaced just less than four hundred tons with a standard armament of 2 x long 6-pound guns and 16 x 32-pound carronades.¹⁹ Britain also possessed a significant number of gunbrigs, or large gunboats mounting approximately twelve guns. They lacked the endurance of the sloops and were generally used close to bases as well as in the littorals and constricted waters. Not surprisingly many gunbrigs served around the British Isles and in the Baltic. The Royal Navy also had a few cutters and schooners that were used primarily for dispatch and patrol work.²⁰

By the War of 1812, the majority of the guns on smaller vessels were carronades. Much lighter than standard guns, they threw a heavy weight of metal, albeit for short distances. The carronade allowed small warships to have the highest broadside-to-tonnage ratio of any type of warship in the Royal Navy. For example, the British originally intended that the lead ship of what became the numerous Cruizer class have an armament of 18 x 6-pound long guns, but by substituting carronades, her broadside weight increased from 54 to 262 pounds.²¹

Though this change increased lethality, British carronades had certain design faults, according to William James. As a historian of the Royal Navy and a contemporary of the period, James learned from naval officers that British carronades were lighter than their American counterparts, making them unsteady in action. British carronades also had shorter muzzles and longer breeches, meaning the weapons heated more rapidly with firing; in addition, British rounds did not carry as far as those shot from American carronades. James asserted that design faults were found in all sizes of British carronades but were particularly pronounced in the 18-pound type.²²

Of the major navies, Britain’s made the greatest use of frigates and smaller vessels. This was particularly true after Trafalgar. Though the British took the possibility of a large fleet engagement seriously, the French navy rarely put to sea in numbers, and Britain had to devote increasing attention to policing the seas and attempting to control maritime communications.²³ As the dominant naval power, Britain had to be prepared for potential and developing threats and sustain a presence, especially in strategically important areas. This entailed the need to patrol ever-larger geographic areas and resulted in new commands, including distinct commands off the east coast of South America and at the Cape of Good Hope. Even after the British captured the last French base at Mauritius in 1810 and the last Dutch base at Java in 1811, the British kept eighteen warships, of which ten were frigates, in the Indian Ocean through 1813.²⁴ Moreover, these were difficult commands to sustain, given their distance from the British Isles. Smaller warships provided Britain an effective means of exercising command of the sea with fewer seamen; however, the use of smaller warships meant they might be lost if the situation in a region deteriorated. In such cases the British attempted to surge reinforcements to reestablish their naval presence. This certainly occurred in several regions during the War of 1812. The complexity of managing near-global deployments and assessing risk made exercising command a far more nuanced and potentially a more difficult aim than gaining command. Moreover, exercising command was an indefinite object that did not end with the war.

Tracking fleet deployments in the first half of 1812 sheds light on Britain’s wartime priorities. The principal battle fleets operated in the Mediterranean Sea, the North Sea, and the southern approaches to the English Channel so as to blockade the French naval bases such as Toulon, Antwerp, and Brest. These British battle fleets were needed to confront Napoleon’s expansive naval-building program after Trafalgar that emphasized the construction of ships of the line with the object of creating a quantitatively superior fleet. As long as Napoleon sustained a naval-building program, the British had to maintain its blockade squadrons. This imperative drained approximately 70 percent of the Royal Navy’s ships of the line and involved defensive deployments where the initiative rested with the French: they could pick the time to sail, whereas the Royal Navy had to maintain a constant presence off French naval ports in all weather conditions. But, as one British admiral put it, stopping the Enemy’s ships in port where they can be so easily confined was the purpose of the blockading squadrons.²⁵ However, the British Admiralty worried about the great and daily increasing force of the Enemy in all their different ports. In June 1812 directions went out to fleet commanders to maintain an ever-more-vigilant blockade. Assessments of long-term trends were even more discouraging, with one Admiralty official questioning how it will even be possible to keep up the system of Blockade as he increases his force is beyond my comprehension for it is totally impossible to increase our navy in that ratio.²⁶

Deploying adequate forces to confront French naval construction had begun to stress the Royal Navy on the eve of the War of 1812, especially since other strategic imperatives also required the precious warships. Deployments in the Baltic during the latter years of the Napoleonic Wars served a two-fold purpose of protecting convoys carrying naval stores essential to Britain’s naval survival, and attempting to prevent the Baltic from becoming a lake dominated by France and especially its allies. Off the Spanish and Portuguese coasts, additional deployments supported the land campaign on the Iberian Peninsula being orchestrated by the future Duke of Wellington.²⁷

Outside Europe prior to 1812, the British had slowly eliminated all colonies belonging to France and its associates; once these colonies were in British hands, the Admiralty did not recall its naval squadrons. Instead, the British continued to exercise command of the sea since its economic system demanded the maintenance of deployments to protect Britain’s colonies and trade routes. Britain’s imports more than doubled between 1796 and 1814, while exports increased by a third and re-exports nearly tripled.²⁸ To safeguard expanding trade, naval squadrons were retooled to reflect threats in their areas of operation. Rather than battle fleets, squadrons on foreign stations served as reminders of British power with limited capabilities to deal with emerging threats. Without exception, the Royal Navy’s foreign squadrons were situated along or at the terminus of her sea-lines of communications, inextricably linking trade routes with naval deployments.

The interaction between North Atlantic trade routes and British naval deployments does much to explain the nature of the War of 1812 on the oceans. Wind and currents both impeded and dictated the movement of sailing ships to create a high level of predictability in the path and timing of maritime commerce. Predictability led to vulnerability and the potential for interdiction. To minimize maritime risk, Britain created a convoy system that became increasingly pervasive and sophisticated during the Napoleonic Period.²⁹

Map 1.1 The North Atlantic Trade Routes

In the Atlantic, currents and winds move in a clockwise pattern. Convoys leaving the United Kingdom stretched south and west toward Madeira. This island could be seen from far off, given its mountainous topography, so it served as a rendezvous for scattered British convoys. Ships continuing toward South America and the East Indies pressed south of Madeira, while ships headed for the Caribbean and North America followed the current and the wind west across the Atlantic, with convoys occasionally fragmenting as ships broke off for Bermuda and the United States. As convoys approached the Windward Islands, ships for ports in present-day Guyana and Suriname parted company with the convoy, while the convoy continued to the Windward Islands. The remaining ships usually attempted to make Barbados, the most windward of the Windward Islands.³⁰ On this island the British based its paradoxically named Leeward Islands Station. By 1812 its missions involved patrolling the waters around the Windward and Leeward Islands, as well as the northern coast of South America.³¹

From Barbados, convoys often sailed for Jamaica. Given prevailing conditions, this was an easy voyage, but the same prevailing conditions made the reverse impossible. The inability to sail directly from Jamaica to Barbados led the Admiralty to set up an independent command at Jamaica. In 1812 the tasks of this station included protecting Jamaica and maintaining good order in the Gulf of Mexico, which led to patrols off the mouth of the Mississippi River. Given the currents, the station also included the seas around Cuba, Florida, and the Bahamas. Outbound Jamaica convoys used a favorable current to pass between Florida and Cuba and then between Florida and the Bahamas, picking up the Gulf Stream and rejoining the clockwise wind and currents of the Atlantic.³²

By 1812 the great majority of the British warships in the Leeward Islands and Jamaica Stations consisted of sloops and other small vessels, reflecting the British Admiralty’s assessment of a lack of an imminent naval threat (see Table 1.2). A British government memorandum explained that, in 1811, "nothing occurred to induce the Admiralty to increase this branch of the naval force. The French showed no disposition to push out to the West Indies; both the Haytian [sic] Chiefs professed friendship for England; the reception of French privateers in Spanish ports became more improbable; and, though the consideration of possible danger did not cease . . . the Admiralty . . . thought themselves justified in reducing in a small degree the West India force."³³

Table 1.2. Comparative Strength of British Naval Stations in Total Warships

Source: British Navy in North America, 1810–13, Castlereagh, 8:286–87.

Commerce returning to Britain from the Leeward Islands and Jamaica Stations sailed north, paralleling the eastern seaboard of the United States and British Canada before arching eastward into the Atlantic, passing northwest of the Azores, and continuing on toward the southern coasts of England and Ireland.³⁴ Using the Azores as a waypoint certainly added to the vulnerability of the route, but it also served as an effective rendezvous, similar to Madeira on the way out. To minimize the risk of paralleling the U.S. coast, the British deployed a squadron based out of Halifax and Bermuda. Its assignments were numerous and included the protection of trade, the maritime defense of British Canada and Bermuda, and interactions with the United States. The latter became increasingly significant as American merchant commerce grew, propelled by U.S. neutrality in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

The final British squadron in North America, the Newfoundland Station, was primarily a seasonal deployment. Warships sailed from Britain between March and June to protect the Newfoundland fisheries and commerce passing the Grand Banks. Most of the station’s warships wintered in the United Kingdom. Overall, this was the smallest of the North American stations, containing approximately twelve warships during the summer.³⁵

Merchant shipping for the Newfoundland fisheries, often Canada, and even the northern United States departed the British Isles and then sailed west along the approximate latitude of 45° N. This was slightly north of the prevailing winds that brought the Jamaica and West Indies trade to Britain. Following the 45° latitude carried ships directly to Newfoundland; taking advantage of favorable currents and winds, ships could make the Gulf of St. Lawrence for the voyage into Quebec, Halifax, and even Boston. The return route tapped into the same prevailing winds and currents that allowed ships returning from the Caribbean to proceed via the Azores.³⁶

The sea-lanes that converged on the British Isles concentrated commerce in a finite space, making it vulnerable. Moreover, convoys often scattered as they reached Britain so merchants could gain their respective ports. As a result, the British set up a station at Cork in Ireland to cover the arrival of East and West India convoys. Naval stations dotted England’s east coast at Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Yarmouth, while commands at the Downes and Sheerness protected London and the Thames Estuary. A final squadron operated out of Leith (port for Edinburgh) to support trade to the north.³⁷

Table 1.3 indicates that the British navy had 515 warships in operational deployments as of 1 July 1812. Of these, a far from insignificant 21 percent were stationed around the British Isles. About half of the navy operated on foreign stations, including those in the Mediterranean and Portugal. The ability to keep 260-plus warships deployed on foreign stations, some as far away as China, demonstrated the complexity of the logistic and administrative systems developed by Britain, especially considering that no other single contemporary navy had so many ocean-going warships in its inventory.³⁸

Table 1.3. British Naval Deployments, 1 July 1812

Even with its comparatively large size, Britain’s commitments meant that its navy was stretched thin when the United States declared war in June 1812. The Royal Navy continued to fight the existential threat of Napoleonic France. At the same time, the British navy enforced good order at sea on a near-global basis, while the Royal Navy’s size had declined from 596 deployed ships in 1809 to 515 in July 1812. Moreover, the United States was a potentially dangerous opponent with many trained sailors and a small navy. In addition, North America was far from the British Isles, presenting logistical and deployment problems. Experience from the American Revolution and an understanding of geography foretold that the war would have a significant naval component. However, Britain’s naval leadership lacked the ability to rapidly surge forces to the North American area of operations. Only six ships of the line, six frigates, and eleven smaller warships were in reserve on 1 July 1812, but some were not in a condition for distant deployments and the manning level of these ships varied.³⁹ Reallocating ships from other commands was an option, but few commands had underutilized assets. Taken together, these factors meant that British leadership faced a high level of uncertainty at the outbreak of hostilities, and the Admiralty lacked the means to rapidly reinforce the commands most affected by the War of 1812.

Whereas Britain dominated the seas in the years before the War of 1812, the United States leveraged its neutral status to facilitate trade with all belligerents. In the process, American exports more than quadrupled between 1793 and 1807. The rising trade led to the merchant marine growing from 558,000 tons in 1802 to 981,000 in 1810, making the United States the largest neutral trading state of the time.⁴⁰

For the United States, the protection of commerce spurred the development of a small navy and led to combat deployments. Between 1798 and 1800 the United States waged an undeclared naval war against France to defend American commercial rights. Known as the Quasi-War, the American navy gained its first victories. ⁴¹ Soon after, American warships deployed to the Mediterranean to confront several North African states. Often called the Barbary pirates, the North Africans used the dislocation of the European conflict to reassert their historical position by preying on the Mediterranean commerce of countries refusing to provide tribute. Rather than pay, the United States sent its navy.⁴² Neither the Quasi-War nor problems with the North African states would have occurred as they did if American merchant ships had not plied the oceans, and if the dislocation of the European war had not created maritime instability that led to the harassment of U.S. maritime commerce.

In addition to the above problems, a maritime conflict slowly festered between Britain and the United States over the following three, often overlapping, issues: the impressment of U.S. citizens into the British navy, the free passage of U.S. merchant shipping, and rising naval antagonism between the British Royal Navy and the United States Navy.

Impressment, or forcible recruitment, proved integral for manning the British navy. The Royal Navy asserted its right to stop British and foreign-flagged ships and remove any British subjects for service in the navy. Though British law made it illegal to impress foreigners, those claiming U.S. citizenship caused tremendous difficulties. Augustus Foster, the British minister to Washington immediately prior to the War of 1812, explained, The inconvenience necessarily resulting from the similarity of habits, language, and manner, between the Inhabitants of the two Countries is productive of Subjects of Complaint and regret.⁴³ A related problem involved the transfer of citizenship or naturalization. American officials allowed individuals to obtain citizenship after two years of residence in the United States or two years of service on board a ship sailing under the American flag. But, an English official maintained, If no distinction can be made by the government of the United States, between native and naturalized Citizens; and if every British Seaman who escapes to America may, if he pleases, become a naturalized Subject, it seems to be useless to enter into any discussion or arrangement . . . as it is presumed that we shall never abandon that universally acknowledged maxim in the Law of Nations, that a Subject cannot throw off his allegiance which follows him wherever he goes.⁴⁴ The British and American views of naturalization differed; the British only considered those born in the United States or residing there before 1783 as legitimate U.S. citizens. Rudimentary records and documentation further complicated the issue by making it easy to create fraudulent records. Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty lamented in 1801, Thus it becomes a very difficult point to draw the line, and I have always considered this as the greatest evil arising from the separation.⁴⁵

As with most divisive issues, there were two perspectives. On the one hand, the United States justly demanded respect for its citizens’ rights, and to be sure, legitimate U.S. citizens were forced to serve on board British warships. On the other hand, British and American law defined citizenship differently; seamen made pervasive use of fraudulent proofs of U.S. citizenship; and perhaps most important, Britain’s war with France demanded a powerful navy for self-preservation. To support the vital interest of British sea power, Royal Navy leadership had no recourse within its existing system but to rely on impressment. Those falsely impressed used diplomatic and other channels to obtain release. British leaders believed they acted liberally, and one Royal Navy officer was probably not far off when he complained in 1806, Be assured half the men we discharge as Americans are English seamen.⁴⁶

Another vital British national interest involved maintaining the free flow of its commerce while restricting French commercial activities. Whereas the United States supported the free flow of commerce, restrictions on trade contradicted American economic interests. To make the issue more contentious, the French government promoted neutral commerce as a way to work around British naval dominance. Moreover, French regulations made it illegal for American merchants to trade with Britain. In other words, if the United States followed British regulations, the French felt cheated, while the British cried foul when American merchants followed French commercial dictates. American merchants were not innocent, as they parlayed neutrality into economic gain by attempting to trade with both belligerents.⁴⁷

Such shifty maneuvering proved difficult to monitor, but both France and Britain deemed it important to exercise some control over foreign trade. This was particularly true following Trafalgar. Between 1805 and 1807, British naval dominance grew, while France won land victories at Austerlitz, Jena, Auerstädt, and Friedland. The result was a stalemate between the world’s greatest land and sea powers. To break the deadlock, both Britain and France turned to economic warfare. Most notably, Napoleon tried the Continental System and the British the Orders in Council. Napoleon’s system, an attempt to control maritime commerce without naval power, emerged in late 1806 and was refined during the subsequent years. Napoleon leveraged his land power by forcing most areas of continental Europe to exclude or confiscate trade from Britain, or trade that had passed through the British Isles, or commerce on board merchant vessels visited by British warships. The British Orders in Council demanded that merchant vessels trading with continental Europe obtain an English license. Following British dictates resulted in French confiscation, and following French dictates resulted in capture by British warships.⁴⁸

Since the United States was the largest neutral trading power, the depredations resulting from the French Continental System and the British Orders in Council were keenly felt. Though the actions of both Britain and France economically damaged the United States, President Thomas Jefferson aptly wrote, We resist the enterprises of England first, because they first come vitally home to us.⁴⁹ In this, he referred to the reach of the Royal Navy that allowed greater power of enforcement and created a constant source of friction at sea that proved impossible to ameliorate. One member of the U.S. Congress put it like this: Not only the safety of her [Britain’s] colonies abroad, but that of her very existence as an independent nation depends upon her naval superiority.⁵⁰

Commercial and impressment issues spilled over into a developing naval conflict between Britain and the United States. One example occurred in 1805 when John Rodgers, then commanding the U.S. Mediterranean Squadron, wrote to Captain Thomas Bladen Capel of the 36-gun British frigate Phoebe that there were two Americans on board his ship. In response, Capel explained, "The Master of the Vessel they were impressed from, only assured me that one was an American, but as their Certificates were not Regular or Clear I had strong grounds for Supposing them English Seamen, but upon any assurance from you that they are really American Subjects I shall immediately give them up. Capel ended his letter by asking for five British deserters then serving on board the American squadron. This demand incited Rodgers who replied, Your Letter . . . if impartially dissected will prove that the Flag of the U. States is insulted." Particularly, the British captain had asked for five deserters at the same time Capel had several American deserters on board