The Shining Sea (4 page)

His fears appeared to be confirmed on September 4 when he ran into what he thought were British warships off the tail of Georges Bank. After a lookout aboard the
Essex
spotted three suspicious ships, Porter went aloft and observed them for a time, before concluding that they were indeed enemy warships. Two larger ones were to the southward and a brig to the northward. The brig was racing after an American merchantman. Porter set out after the brig, which instantly gave up chasing the merchant and dashed for the protection of the two larger men-of-war. Porter cut her off, however, and forced her to sail northward. He continued to chase her, but had to give up when the wind slackened and the brig got out sweeps (long oars).

Meanwhile, the larger warships, seeing what Porter was up to, went after him. A sudden change of wind allowed them to come up fast. By four in the afternoon they had gained his wake. Porter kept straining to stay beyond their reach, hoping that night would arrive before they got within striking distance, and he could disappear into the darkness. They continued gaining on him, however. The largest was still some distance to windward, but the other was only five miles astern, bearing S by W, working hard to catch up before nightfall. Porter did everything he could to keep beyond her reach, planning to heave about as soon as it was dark and pass right by her in the opposite direction. If he found it impossible to sneak by, he intended to fire a broadside into her and lay her on board. He organized boarding parties, and when he revealed his plan, the crew responded with three cheers.

Porter was able to keep ahead of his closest pursuer until seven when it finally grew dark. At 7:20 he hove about and stood SE by S until 8:30, whereupon he bore away SW, and the British ships miraculously vanished. Porter was dumbfounded. He considered their disappearance remarkable, and all the more so since a pistol was accidentally fired by an officer on the
Essex
at the moment when Porter thought he was but a short distance from the nearest ship. Greatly relieved, he made for the Delaware Capes. He never considered going to New York or Rhode Island, where he imagined British blockaders would be swarming.

As the
Essex
traveled home, Porter felt a deep sense of satisfaction. The accomplishments of his ship and crew on this first cruise of the war were exceptional. He estimated that his captures were worth in excess of $300,000, a handsome figure, made even more impressive by the fact that he had taken 424 prisoners. He also felt vindicated. His promotion to captain (the highest rank in the navy at the time) had been long delayed, and had not actually been granted until July 2, the day before he left New York. His performance during the
Essex
's first cruise was additional proof in his mind that his numerous requests for promotion should have been granted long before they were. One thing he did not feel satisfied with, however, was his triumph over the
Alert
. She was not enough of a challenge. He longed to do battle with a frigate of at least the size of the
Essex
, and he became fixated on accomplishing this goal.

The
Essex
reached the Delaware Capes without further incident. British blockaders were nowhere in sight. Porter was mistaken about there being a blockade. None would be in place for months, although he continued to believe one was. When he dropped anchor off Chester, in the middle of September, he was anxious to repair and resupply the
Essex
and get right back to sea before he got trapped. He was also anxious about the fate of Midshipman McKnight and Lieutenant Wilmer. He need not have been. Both accomplished their difficult missions without mishap and returned to the
Essex
while she was still in the Delaware River preparing for her next cruise. Neither Porter nor any of his crew suspected that they would be getting ready for what would become one of the most famous voyages in American history, an oceangoing saga unsurpassed in the Age of Sail.

CHAPTER

1

P
RESIDENT
M
ADISON'S
W
AR
P
LAN

D
AVID
P
ORTER'S VICTORY OVER THE
A
LERT
CAME AS A
surprise to President James Madison. When Congress had declared war with Britain on June 18, 1812, the president did not think the navy would play a significant part in it. The fleet was so small that almost no one outside the navy's professional officer core expected much from it. The United States had only twenty warships, while Britain had five to six hundred continually at sea, and many more in shipyards being repaired or built. Eighty-three British warships were in bases within striking distance of the American coast at Halifax, Nova Scotia; St. Johns, Newfoundland; Port Royal, Jamaica; and Antigua, West Indies. Although Madison could not say so publicly, he expected that if he allowed the American fleet to venture out of port, the Royal Navy would make quick work of it, capturing, or sinking it, as they had during the War of Independence. He thought it likely that America's men-of-war would be blockaded in their harbors for the entire war.

Instead of counting on his navy, the president was relying on Napoleon Bonaparte, a man he detested, to force Britain into negotiating with the
United States. For months Madison had watched as the French emperor amassed an army of over 600,000, the largest in history to that time, along the Polish border with Russia. Everyone expected Napoleon to launch an all-out attack before the end of June, and he did, on June 24. Everyone assumed he would compel Tsar Alexander I to ask for terms in a matter of weeks, certainly before the end of September. After that, Bonaparte was likely to turn his attention to his longtime nemesis, Great Britain. He had threatened to invade England twice in the past and had pulled back because of the insuperable power of the Royal Navy. But if Napoleon tried again with all of Continental Europe under his control, he would likely be able to amass enough sea power to drive a massive army across the Channel, occupy London, and dictate terms.

Madison had his own terms. He wanted to force London to negotiate an end to three issues that had precipitated his call to arms—the Royal Navy's wholesale impressment of American seamen, London's brazen attempt to control American trade, and its support of the Indian nations fighting to preserve their territory. The president was convinced that the British would not want to be fighting America at the same time they were facing a Napoleonic invasion.

To bring added pressure on London, Madison planned to attack Canada as soon as war was declared. Although he had an inexperienced, poorly led regular army of a mere seven thousand, he intended to augment it with enough militiamen to seize at least part of Canada during the summer of 1812. He thought the British would be so preoccupied with Europe they would be unable to defend Canada. Only a small contingent of His Majesty's regulars were stationed there. Madison assumed they would be inadequate, and that Canadian militiamen would be of little practical value. In addition, Madison believed that the many Americans who had emigrated to Canada—lured by land grants and promises of low taxes—would not oppose an American invasion. He thought that if he acquired even a portion of Canada he would have a strong lever to use in any negotiation with London.

Madison intended to bring even more pressure on Britain. He would unleash hundreds of privateers to attack her commerce, as the patriots had done so successfully during the Revolutionary War. Instead of relying
on the navy, he thought privateers would provide America's muscle on the high seas. During the War of Independence, the Continental Navy had contributed almost nothing to America's victory, whereas privateers had been of great service. As the Revolutionary War progressed, shipbuilding centers like Salem, Massachusetts, had increased the size and quality of their privateers, until by the early 1780s some of them were carrying twenty guns—the equivalent of Britain's powerful sloops of war. Hundreds of American privateers (the exact number has always been in dispute) set out during the Revolution and ravaged enemy merchantmen, contributing to the war weariness in Britain that eventually forced a reluctant king to accept American independence. The president anticipated that privateers would perform the same service during this war, which many believed was
America's second War of Independence.

Madison much preferred negotiating to fighting. He had been extremely reluctant to go to war, but he felt that he had no choice. London had pushed him beyond the breaking point. The issues in dispute had been souring relations for years, and despite Madison's determined attempts to resolve them peacefully, the reactionary Tory government of Spencer Perceval refused to seriously negotiate. Perceval was confident that he could keep impressing whomever he pleased, interfering with American trade, and supporting the Indians without suffering any consequences. America's pitifully small army and navy, and deep political divisions between the Federalist Party (which remained pro-British) and Madison's own Republican Party, elicited Perceval's contempt.

Right up until Congress declared war, London believed that Madison would never actually issue a call to arms, no matter how often he threatened to. The president became so frustrated with Britain's unwillingness to take America's complaints seriously that he decided the only way to bring Perceval to the negotiating table was to actually declare war. Thus, on June 1, 1812, an exasperated president urged Congress to vote for war, and after a bitter eighteen-day-long debate it did.

Commander in chief was a role Madison was ill-prepared for. He had done everything he could to avoid a war, and now he had to lead the republic in the most perilous undertaking in its short history. He was not
counting on the navy in any way. His lack of interest in the fleet was due in part to his expectation that the war would be over quickly. He even entertained the idea that actual combat might not be necessary. He hoped that the threat from Napoleon, the potential loss of Canada, and massive privateer attacks, would force Britain to come to terms before the war had progressed very far. It would not matter, in his view, whether America had a strong navy or not.

I
RONICALLY, THE NAVY'S WEAKNESS WAS A DIRECT RESULT OF
Madison's own policies and those of his mentor, Thomas Jefferson. They had always opposed building a respectable fleet. When President George Washington proposed creating a new federal navy in 1794, Jefferson (even though he was Washington's secretary of state) and Madison (the leader of the House of Representatives) opposed him. America had not had a navy since the end of the Revolutionary War, and by 1794 President Washington thought it was time the country built one. America was strong enough financially, in his view, and international conditions made it imperative. The Barbary pirate state of Algeria was seizing American merchantmen with impunity; Britain was impressing American seamen and interfering with her trade, while revolutionary France was aggressively trying to involve the United States in her war against monarchical Europe. Washington planned to use the new navy to force all three nations to respect American rights on the high seas, and her neutrality in the French Revolutionary Wars then consuming Europe.

Jefferson, Madison, and their supporters fought Washington every step of the way. They could not prevent him from starting a navy, but they did succeeded in keeping the number of ships to a bare minimum. President John Adams also ran into stiff opposition from the same quarter in 1798 when he tried to expand and strengthen the navy to fight the Quasi-War with France. Adams was temporarily successful, but once the war was over in 1800, he drastically reduced the fleet, hoping that Jefferson, his successor, would not confiscate it altogether.

When Jefferson took office in 1801, he could not do away with the navy, as he might have liked. Tripoli had declared war on the United States, and he had to use the warships the country still had to fight the pirate state. Nonetheless, he, and then Madison (his hand-picked successor),
had, with the support of most Republican congressmen, deliberately kept the navy small. They were afraid that a larger fleet would never be large enough to stand up to a European navy, particularly the Royal Navy. They felt it would be too expensive, embroil the country in unnecessary wars, be a powerful instrument in the hands of an ambitious executive, and, in short, be a threat to the Constitution. Thus, when the War of 1812 began, the United States had practically no navy. The largest of her twenty warships were old frigates, every one of them built in the 1790s prior to Jefferson taking office. No frigates, or much of anything else—except tiny gunboats of limited use and a few small warships—had been built in American yards since 1801.