Every Man Will Do His Duty (55 page)

“For,” said he, “you will escape and will be caught and flogged through the fleet.”

Nevertheless, I resolved to escape but the guards were so plenty that I had no chance to put my design into execution. Then the fleet sailed for Spain. There were the frigates
Amazon, Dryad, Arathusa
and
Narcissus.
We took on board some Spanish troops whom we carried to St. Antony and landed them there in spite of the French who had possession of the place. However there was later a battle in which the French general was killed with a great many of his men, but for all that, they chased the Spanish troops up into the mountains and forced us back on the ships.

The
Amazon,
a Spanish frigate and our
Narcissus
were ordered to Corunna. The wind was ahead, so we put into Vevarrow Bay for the night. The Spanish frigate anchored ahead of us. In the night a great wind arose and she dragged her anchors. Then she drifted on our bow. Our rigging was tangled and her fore-yards, our fore-mast and main-mast all came down on the deck together. Then she dropped astern of us and ran foul of a Spanish brig, whose cable parted. They both ran ashore and only 18 men from their crews of 750 men were saved. This was Nov. 21st, 1811.

On our ship, two men were killed and eighteen injured by the falling of the masts. In the morning, the crew of the
Amazon
came aboard us to help repair the damage. We worked for four days and then put to sea, to go to Plymouth to refit.

A tremendous storm came up. The wind tore our sails to pieces. With every surf, we expected to go to the bottom, as our stern was shattered by the falling masts. She took in a great deal of water, and for days the wind blew the most violently I have ever experienced in many years service. Through God’s mercy we were spared. So we put into Plymouth dock to repair.

When a ship undergoes a careful repairing, it is customary to take off her deck, pull her down to the keel and build her up with new timbers. In such a case, it takes three to four months to refit. If the captain has any influence with the Admiralty, he is allowed to retain his hands, instead of recruiting anew. To save them for him, they are sent aboard a hulk for quarters until the ship is again ready for sea. This was the case with us. Our stores, guns and supplies were taken out of the
Narcissus,
and we went aboard a hulk while they repaired her.

I had now been three years in the service, and I thought it high time to go on shore. I asked the captain for permission, and he said I might, if I would give him my promise not to make my escape. So I went with the musicians who had orders to watch me, although I did not know it at the time. I stayed on shore for 24 hours, enjoying every kind of diversion I thought proper, and then I returned to the hulk.

At that place, ships are built with great expedition. I saw a 74 gun ship launched from the stocks on June 21, 1812 and the same day hauled from her ways into a dry dock. On the 22nd, carpenters were employed coppering her bottom, on the 23rd, she came out of dock and was beside a sheer hulk where she took in her masts and bowsprit. Next she was hauled to the hulk where she was to be rigged. On the 24th, the shrouds were put over her mast-head and the dead eyes turned in, the lower rigging rattled down, fore and aft, her bowsprit shrouds and bob-stays put on, all three top masts pointed through and made ready for swaying away before 12 o’clock. Hands were then piped to dinner and turned up at 1 o’clock. The top masts were swayed, their rigging set up, the fore-castle men rigged, their jib and flying-jib boom after guard, the spanker boom sent up, the fore and main yard and top-sail yards were sent up.

While some of the men were bending the fore and main sail, the fore, main and mizzen-top sails were bent; main-top-mast and middle and topgallant stay sails bent; jib and spanker bent; mizzen-stay-sail, top sails, top
gallant halyards rove, fore and main braces rove; likewise all the running rigging that was necessary. All this was done by sun set. On the 25th, one-half the ship’s company was employed on one side of the ship taking on guns, while the other half, on the other side, the larboard, were taking in provisions, stores and water.

On the 26th, she was complete and ready for sea and on the 28th, of the same month, she joined the Channel fleet. To explain the manner in which they rig a ship so quickly, the reader will understand that the rigging is already fitted in the dock yard, before the ship is launched. All they have to do is put it in a lighter, bring it alongside and put it in its place.

I must here make mention of our crew which our captain was so loath to part with; he applied to the Admiralty and got a grant to keep them in the temporary hulk for three months, expecting that his ship would be over-hauled and ready to sail at the end of that time. However, the ship carpenters found her hull so rotten that she was obliged to undergo six months repairs. The crew was accordingly drafted.

It is a courtesy that is always extended to captains to allow them to keep their own boat’s crew. When our crew was drafted away, the captain chose to keep the band instead. So we were sent aboard the
St. Salvadore,
a guard ship, to await his pleasure. Now she had been a Spanish ship of 120 guns which the British had captured. She had on board 1,750 men, including prisoners. Here we were to tarry, I mean the band, until our captain was ready for sea. I went on board this ship March 7, 1812, and left her February 19, 1813.

On June 18, 1812, war broke out between the United States and Britain. Durand complained bitterly about the unfair treatment of American sailors serving in the Royal Navy during the war. Against his will, he served through 1815 and even saw service in American waters. In his memoir, he reported that he was threatened with hanging, put in irons, and kept on water and maggoty bread for refusing to take part on the attack on Stonington, Connecticut.

¹
In 1807, Durand was on board an American merchant brig that ran the British blockade of France. As the brig was leaving Belle Isle, France, bound for the West Indies, she was taken by the British frigate Shannon.

²
British Navy officers seemed to hold a high opinion of Americans as fighting men. Frequent comments are made, although sometimes in a sneering tone, of the capabilities of the Yankees as fighters and navigators. But Michael Scott (“Tom Cringle’s Log”—
Blackwood’s Magazine,
1829–1830) gave an estimate which is worth repeating.

Scott, born in Glasgow in 1789, lived in Jamaica, the West Indies, for many years. He was a careful observer and shrewd commentator upon men and events between 1806 and 1817. “More of contemporary life can be learned from Scott than from all the official papers and documents of the time” (Adams).

“I don’t like Americans,” Scott said. “I never did and I never shall. I have seldom met an American gentleman, in the large and complete sense of the term. I have no wish to eat with them, drink with them, deal or consort with them in any way. But let me tell the whole truth—
nor to fight with them,
were it not for the laurels to be acquired by overcoming an enemy so brave, determined, alert and in every way so worthy of one’s steel as they have always proved.

“In the field, or grappling in mortal combat on the blood-slippery quarter deck of an enemy’s vessel, a British soldier or sailor is the bravest of the brave. No soldier or sailor of any country,
saving and excepting always those damned Yankees,
can stand against them.”

(The italics and punctuation do not appear in the original.)

³
Durand was not the only American prisoner who was found “too good to be discharged.”

“The British were keen to impress American sailors, who proved themselves the best seamen in the King’s Navy. For that reason the British were loath to abandon their practice of search and seizure” (Lossing).

T
HE WAR BETWEEN
B
RITAIN
and the United States was not one of great fleet actions. In fact, the fledgling U.S. Navy had no fleet of line-of-battle ships. In that sense, King George III’s Royal Navy, perhaps the most dominant naval force in history, was forced to fight down a level and on relatively equal terms. While the big ships of the Royal Navy blockaded the U.S. coast unchallenged, it was Britain’s frigates that would do the high-profile fighting. The U.S. Navy did have powerfully built, heavy frigates. At first, the proud, fighting frigate captains of the British Navy did not realize or would not acknowledge that they were simply outgunned by the large U.S. frigates.

Samuel Leech, R.N., fought in the brutal October 25, 1812, battle between the 38-gun HMS
Macedonian,
commanded by Captain John Surman Garden, and the 44-gun USS
United States,
Commodore Stephen Decatur. Leech’s valuable account of this classic mismatch is one of the most telling of a naval action of the time. It lacks the characteristic reserve of the period. His honest introspection and grim detail paint a darker, more realistic picture than is normally the case.

AT PLYMOUTH
we heard some vague rumors of a declaration of war against America. More than this, we could not learn, since the utmost care was taken to prevent our being fully informed. The reason of this secrecy was, probably, because we had several Americans in our crew, most of whom were pressed men, as before stated. These men, had they been
certain that war had broken out, would have given themselves up as prisoners of war, and claimed exemption from that unjust service, which compelled them to act with the enemies of their country. This was a privilege which the magnanimity of our officers ought to have offered them. They had already perpetrated a grievous wrong upon them in impressing them; it was adding cruelty to injustice to compel their service in a war against their own nation. But the difficulty with naval officers is, that they do not treat with a sailor as with a
man.
They know what is fitting between each other as officers; but they treat their crews on another principle; they are apt to look at them as pieces of living mechanism, born to serve, to obey their orders, and administer to their wishes without complaint. This is alike a bad morality and a bad philosophy. There is often more real manhood in the forecastle than in the ward-room; and until the common sailor is treated
as a man,
until every feeling of human nature is conceded to him in naval discipline—perfect, rational subordination will never be attained in ships of war, or in merchant vessels. It is needless to tell of the intellectual degradation of the mass of seamen. “A man’s a man for a’ that;” and it is this very system of discipline, this treating them as automatons, which keeps them degraded. When will human nature put more confidence in itself?

Leaving Plymouth, we next anchored, for a brief space, at Torbay, a small port in the British Channel. We were ordered thence to convoy a huge East India merchant vessel, much larger than our frigate and having five hundred troops on board, bound to the East Indies with money to pay the troops stationed there. We set sail in a tremendous gale of wind. Both ships stopped two days at Madeira to take in wine and a few other articles. After leaving this island, we kept her company two days more; and then, according to orders, having wished her success, we left her to pursue her voyage, while we returned to finish our cruise.

Though without any positive information, we now felt pretty certain that our government was at war with America. Among other things, our captain appeared more anxious than usual; he was on deck almost all the time; the “look-out” aloft was more rigidly observed; and every little while the cry of “Mast-head there!” arrested our attention.

It is customary in men of war to keep men at the fore and main mastheads, whose duty it is to give notice of every new object that may appear. They are stationed in the royal yards, if they are up, but if not, on the topgallant yards: at night a look-out is kept on the fore yard only.

Thus we passed several days; the captain running up and down and constantly hailing the man at the mast-head: early in the morning he began his charge “to keep a good look-out,” and continued to repeat it until night.
Indeed, he seemed almost crazy with some pressing anxiety. The men felt there was something anticipated, of which they were ignorant; and had the captain heard all their remarks upon his conduct, he would not have felt very highly flattered. Still, everything went on as usual; the day was spent in the ordinary duties of man-of-war life, and the evening in telling stories of things most rare and wonderful; for your genuine old tar is an adept in spinning yarns, and some of them, in respect to variety and length, might safely aspire to a place beside the great magician of the north, Sir Walter Scott, or any of those prolific heads that now bring forth such abundance of fiction to feed a greedy public, who read as eagerly as our men used to listen. To this yarn-spinning was added the most humorous singing, sometimes dashed with a streak of the pathetic, which I assure my readers was most touching; especially one very plaintive melody, with a chorus beginning with,