American Merchant Ships and Sailors by Willis J. Abbot

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[Illustration: NEARLY EVERY MAN ON THE QUARTERDECK OF THE "ARGO" WAS
KILLED OR WOUNDED.]

The "Jersey" prison-ship was not an uncommon lot for the bold
privateersman, who, when once consigned to it, found that the reward of a
sea-rover was not always wealth and pleasure. A Massachusetts
privateersman left on record a contemporary account of the sufferings of
himself and his comrades in this pestilential hulk, which may well be
condensed here to show some of the perils that the adventurers dared when
they took to the sea.

[Illustration: THE PRISON SHIP "JERSEY".]

After about one-third of the captives made with this writer had been
seized and carried away to serve against their country on British
war-ships, the rest were conveyed to the "Jersey," which had been
originally a 74-gun ship, then cut down to a hulk and moored at the
Wallabout, at that time a lonely and deserted place on the Long Island
shore, now about the center of the Brooklyn river front. "I found myself,"
writes the captive, "in a loathsome prison among a collection of the most
wretched and disgusting objects I ever beheld in human form. Here was a
motley crew covered with rags and filth, visages pallid with disease,
emaciated with hunger and anxiety, and retaining hardly a trace of their
original appearance.... The first day we could obtain no food, and seldom
on the second could prisoners secure it in season for cooking it. Each
prisoner received one-third as much as was allotted to a tar in the
British navy. Our bill of fare was as follows: On Sunday, one pound of
biscuit, one pound of pork, and half a pint of peas; Monday, one pound of
biscuit, one pint of oatmeal, and two ounces of butter; Tuesday, one pound
of biscuit and two pounds of salt beef, etc., etc. If this food had been
of good quality and properly cooked, as we had no labor to perform, it
would have kept us comfortable; but all our food appeared to be damaged.
As for the pork, we were cheated out of more than half of it, and when it
was obtained one would have judged from its motley hues, exhibiting the
consistency and appearance of variegated fancy soap, that it was the flesh
of the porpoise or sea-hog, and had been an inhabitant of the ocean rather
than the sty. The peas were about as digestible as grape-shot; and the
butter--had it not been for its adhesive properties to retain together the
particles of biscuit that had been so riddled by the worms as to lose all
their attraction of cohesion, we should not have considered it a desirable
addition to our viands. The flour and oatmeal were sour, and the suet
might have been nosed the whole length of our ship. Many times since, when
I have seen in the country a large kettle of potatoes and pumpkins
steaming over the fire to satisfy the appetite of some farmer's swine, I
have thought of our destitute and starved condition, and what a luxury we
should have considered the contents of that kettle aboard the 'Jersey.'...
About two hours before sunset orders were given the prisoners to carry all
their things below; but we were permitted to remain above until we retired
for the night into our unhealthy and crowded dungeons. At sunset our ears
were saluted with the insulting and hateful sound from our keepers of
'Down, rebels, down,' and we were hurried below, the hatchways fastened
over us, and we were left to pass the night amid the accumulated horrors
of sighs and groans, of foul vapor, a nauseous and putrid atmosphere, in a
stifled and almost suffocating heat.... When any of the prisoners had
died during the night, their bodies were brought to the upper deck in the
morning and placed upon the gratings. If the deceased had owned a blanket,
any prisoner might sew it around the corpse; and then it was lowered, with
a rope tied round the middle, down the side of the ship into a boat. Some
of the prisoners were allowed to go on shore under a guard to perform the
labor of interment. In a bank near the Wallabout, a hole was excavated in
the sand, in which the body was put, then slightly covered. Many bodies
would, in a few days after this mockery of a burial, be exposed nearly
bare by the action of the elements."

Such was, indeed, the end of many of the most gallant of the Revolutionary
privateersmen; but squalid and cruel as was the fate of these
unfortunates, it had no effect in deterring others from seeking fortune in
the same calling. In 1775-76 there were commissioned 136 vessels, with
1360 guns; in 1777, 73 vessels, with 730 guns; in 1778, 115 privateers,
with a total of 1150 guns; in 1779, 167 vessels, with 2505 guns; in 1780,
228 vessels, with 3420 guns; in 1781, 449 vessels, with 6735 (the
high-water mark): and in 1782, 323 vessels, with 4845 guns. Moreover, the
vessels grew in size and efficiency, until toward the latter end of the
war they were in fact well-equipped war-vessels, ready to give a good
account of themselves in a fight with a British frigate, or even to engage
a shore battery and cut out prizes from a hostile harbor. It is, in fact,
a striking evidence of the gallantry and the patriotism of the
privateersmen that they did not seek to evade battle with the enemy's
armed forces. Their business was, of course, to earn profits for the
merchants who had fitted them out, and profits were most easily earned by
preying upon inferior or defenseless vessels. But the spirit of the war
was strong upon many of them, and it is not too much to say that the
privateers were handled as gallantly and accepted unfavorable odds in
battle as readily as could any men-of-war. Their ravages upon British
commerce plunged all commercial England into woe. The war had hardly
proceeded two years when it was formally declared in the House of Commons
that the losses to American privateers amounted to seven hundred and
thirty-three ships, of a value of over $11,000,000. Mr. Maclay estimates
from this that "our amateur man-of-war's men averaged more than four
prizes each," while some took twenty and one ship twenty-eight in a single
cruise. Nearly eleven hundred prisoners were taken with the captured
ships. While there are no complete figures for the whole period of the war
obtainable, it is not to be believed that quite so high a record was
maintained, for dread of privateers soon drove British shipping into their
harbors, whence they put forth, if at all, under the protection of naval
convoys. Nevertheless, the number of captures must have continued great
for some years; for, as is shown by the foregoing figures, the spoils were
sufficiently attractive to cause a steady increase in the number of
privateers until the last year of the war.

There followed dull times for the privateersmen. Most of them returned to
their ordinary avocations of sea or shore--became peaceful sailors, or
fishermen, or ship-builders, or farmers once again. But in so great a body
of men who had lived sword in hand for years, and had fattened on the
spoils of the commerce of a great nation, it was inevitable that there
should be many utterly unable to return to the humdrum life of honest
industry. Many drifted down to that region of romance and outlawry, dear
to the heart of the romantic boy, the Spanish Main, and there, as pirates
in a small way and as buccaneers, pursued the predatory life. For a time
the war which sprung up between England and France seemed to promise these
turbulent spirits congenial and lawful occupation. France, it will be
remembered, sent the Citizen Genet over to the United States to take
advantage of the supposed gratitude of the American people for aid during
the Revolution to fit out privateers and to make our ports bases of
operation against the British. It must be admitted that Genet would have
had an easy task, had he had but the people to reckon with. He found
privateering veterans by the thousand eager to take up that manner of life
once more. In all the seacoast towns were merchants quite as ready for
profitable ventures in privateering under the French flag as under their
own, provided they could be assured of immunity from governmental
prosecution. And, finally, he found the masses of the people fired with
enthusiasm for the principles of the French Revolution, and eager to show
sympathy for a people who, like themselves, had thrown off the yoke of
kings. The few privateers that Minister Genet fitted out before President
Washington became aroused to his infraction of the principles of
neutrality were quickly manned, and began sending in prizes almost before
they were out of sight of the American shore. The crisis came, however,
when one of these ships actually captured a British merchantman in
Delaware Bay. Then the administration made a vigorous protest, demanded
the release of the vessels taken, arrested two American sailors who had
shipped on the privateer, and broke up at once the whole project of the
Frenchman. It was a critical moment in our national history, for, between
France and England abroad, the Federalist and Republican at home, the
President had to steer a course beset with reefs. The maritime community
was not greatly in sympathy with his suppression of the French minister's
plans, and with some reason, for British privateers had been molesting our
vessels all along our coasts and distant waters. It was a time when no
merchant could tell whether the stout ship he had sent out was even then
discharging her cargo at her destination, or tied up as a prize in some
British port. We Americans are apt to regard with some pride Washington's
stout adherence to the most rigid letter of the law of neutrality in those
troublous times, and our historians have been at some pains to impress us
with the impropriety of Jefferson's scarcely concealed liking for France;
but the fact is that no violation of the neutrality law which Genet sought
was more glaring than those continually committed by Great Britain, and
which our Government failed to resent. In time France, moved partly by
pique because of our refusal to aid her, and partly by contempt for a
nation that failed to protect its ships against British aggression, began
itself to prey upon our commerce. Then the state of our maritime trade was
a dismal one. Our ships were the prey of both France and England; but
since we were neutral, the right of fitting out privateers of our own was
denied our shipping interests. We were ground between the upper and nether
millstones.

But, as so often happens, persecution bred the spirit and created the
weapons for its correction. When it was found that every American vessel
was the possible spoil of any French or English cruiser or privateer that
she might encounter; that our Government was impotent to protect its
seamen; that neither our neutrality rights nor the neutrality of ports in
which our vessels lay commanded the respect of the two great belligerents,
the Yankee shipping merchants set about meeting the situation as best they
might. They did not give up their effort to secure the world's trade--that
was never an American method of procedure. But they built their ships so
as to be able to run away from anything they might meet; and they manned
and armed them so as to fight if fighting became necessary. So the
American merchantman became a long, sharp, clipper-built craft that could
show her heels to almost anything afloat; moderate of draft, so that she
could run into lagoons and bays where no warship could follow. They
mounted from four to twelve guns, and carried an armory of rifles and
cutlasses which their men were well trained to handle. Accordingly, when
the depredations of foreign nations became such as could not longer be
borne, and after President Jefferson's plan of punishing Europe for
interfering with our commerce by laying an embargo which kept our ships at
home had failed, war was declared with England; and from every port on the
Atlantic seaboard privateers--ships as fit for their purpose as though
specially built for it--swarmed forth seeking revenge and spoils. Their
very names told of the reasons of the American merchantmen for
complaint--the reasons why they rejoiced that they were now to have their
turn. There were the "Orders-in-Council," the "Right-of-Search," the
"Fair-trader," the "Revenge." Some were mere pilot-boats, with a Long Tom
amidships and a crew of sixty men; others were vessels of 300 tons, with
an armament and crew like a man-of-war. Before the middle of July, 1812,
sixty-five such privateers had sailed, and the British merchantmen were
scudding for cover like a covey of frightened quail.

The War of 1812 was won, so far as it was won at all, on the ocean. In the
land operations from the very beginning the Americans came off second
best; and the one battle of importance in which they were the victors--the
battle of New Orleans--was without influence upon the result, having been
fought after the treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent. But on the
ocean the honors were all taken by the Americans, and no small share of
these honors fell to the private armed navy of privateers. As the war
progressed these vessels became in type more like the regular
sloop-of-war, for the earlier craft, while useful before the British began
sending out their merchantmen under convoy, proved to be too small to
fight and too light to escape destruction from one well-aimed broadside.
The privateer of 1813 was usually about 115 to 120 feet long on the
spar-deck, 31 feet beam, and rigged as a brig or ship. They were always
fast sailers, and notable for sailing close to the wind. While armed to
fight, if need be, that was not their purpose, and a privateersman who
gained the reputation among owners of being a fighting captain was likely
to go long without a command. Accordingly, these vessels were lightly
built and over-rigged (according to the ideas of British naval
construction), for speed was the great desideratum. They were at once the
admiration and the envy of the British, who imitated their models without
success and tried to utilize them for cruisers when captured, but
destroyed their sailing qualities by altering their rig and strengthening
their hulls at the expense of lightness and symmetry.

I have already referred to Michael Scott's famous story of sea life, "Tom
Cringle's Log," which, though in form a work of fiction, contains so many
accounts of actual happenings, and expresses so fully the ideas of the
British naval officer of that time, that it may well be quoted in a work
of historical character. Tom Cringle, after detailing with a lively
description the capture of a Yankee privateer, says that she was assigned
to him for his next command. He had seen her under weigh, had admired her
trim model, her tapering spars, her taut cordage, and the swiftness with
which she came about and reached to windward. He thus describes the change
the British outfitters made in her:

"When I had last seen her she was the most beautiful little
craft, both in hull and rigging, that ever delighted the eyes of
a sailor; but the dock yard riggers and carpenters had fairly
bedeviled her at least so far as appearances went. First, they
had replaced the light rail on her gunwale by heavy, solid
bulwarks four feet high, surmounted by hammock nettings at least
another foot; so that the symmetrical little vessel, that
formerly floated on the foam light as a seagull, now looked like
a clumsy, dish-shaped Dutch dogger. Her long, slender wands of
masts, which used to swing about as if there were neither
shrouds nor stays to support them, were now as taut and stiff as
church-steeples, with four heavy shrouds of a side, and stays,
and back-stays, and the devil knows what all."

It is a curious fact that no nation ever succeeded in imitating these
craft. The French went into privateering without in the least disturbing
the equanimity of the British shipowner; but the day the Yankee privateers
took the sea a cry went up from the docks and warehouses of Liverpool and
London that reverberated among the arches of Westminster Hall. The
newspapers were loud in their attacks upon the admiralty authorities. Said
the _Morning Chronicle_ in 1814:

"That the whole coast of Ireland, from Wexford round by Cape
Clear to Carrickfergus, should have been for above a month under
the unresisted domination of a few petty fly-by-nights from the
blockaded ports of the United States is a grievance equally
intolerable and disgraceful."

This wail may have resulted from the pleasantry of one Captain Boyle, of
the privateer "Chasseur," a famous Baltimore clipper, mounting sixteen
guns, with a complement of one hundred officers, seamen, and marines.
Captain Boyle, after exhausting, as it seemed to him, the possibilities of
the West Indies for excitement and profit, took up the English channel for
his favorite cruising-ground. One of the British devices of that day for
the embarrassment of an enemy was what is called a "paper blockade." That
is to say, when it appeared that the blockading fleet had too few vessels
to make the blockade really effective by watching each port, the admiral
commanding would issue a proclamation that such and such ports were in a
state of blockade, and then withdraw his vessels from those ports; but
still claim the right to capture any neutral vessels which he might
encounter bound thither. This practise is now universally interdicted by
international law, which declares that a blockade, to be binding upon
neutrals, must be effective. But in those days England made her own
international law--for the sea, at any rate--and the paper blockade was
one of her pet weapons. Captain Boyle satirized this practise by drawing
up a formal proclamation of blockade of all the ports of Great Britain and
Ireland, and sending it to Lloyds, where it was actually posted. His
action was not wholly a jest, either, for he did blockade the port of St.
Vincent so effectively for five days that the inhabitants sent off a
pitiful appeal to Admiral Durham to send a frigate to their relief.

It was at this time, too, that the _Annual Register_ recorded as "a most
mortifying reflection" that, with a navy of more than one thousand ships
in commission, "it was not safe for a British vessel to sail without
convoy from one part of the English or Irish Channel to another."
Merchants held meetings, insurance corporations and boards of trade
memorialized the government on the subject; the shipowners and merchants
of Glasgow, in formal resolutions, called the attention of the admiralty
to the fact that "in the short space of twenty-four months above eight
hundred vessels have been captured by the power whose maritime strength we
have hitherto impolitically held in contempt." It was, indeed, a real
blockade of the British Isles that was effected by these irregular and
pigmy vessels manned by the sailors of a nation that the British had long
held in high scorn. The historian Henry Adams, without attempting to give
any complete list of captures made on the British coasts in 1814, cites
these facts:

"The 'Siren,' a schooner of less than 200 tons, with seven guns
and seventy-five men, had an engagement with His Majesty's
cutter 'Landrail,' of four guns, as the cutter was crossing the
Irish sea with dispatches. The 'Landrail' was captured, after a
somewhat smart action, and was sent to America, but was
recaptured on the way. The victory was not remarkable, but the
place of capture was very significant, and it happened July 12
only a fortnight after Blakely captured the 'Reindeer' farther
westward. The 'Siren' was but one of many privateers in those
waters. The 'Governor Tompkins' burned fourteen vessels
successively in the British Channel. The 'Young Wasp,' of
Philadelphia, cruised nearly six months about the coasts of
England and Spain, and in the course of West India commerce. The
'Harpy,' of Baltimore, another large vessel of some 350 tons and
fourteen guns, cruised nearly three months off the coast of
Ireland, in the British Channel, and in the Bay of Biscay, and
returned safely to Boston filled with plunder, including, as was
said, upward of L100,000 in British treasury notes and bills of
exchange. The 'Leo,' a Boston schooner of about 200 tons, was
famous for its exploits in these waters, but was captured at
last by the frigate 'Tiber,' after a chase of about eleven
hours. The 'Mammoth,' a Baltimore schooner of nearly 400 tons,
was seventeen days off Cape Clear, the southernmost point of
Ireland. The most mischievous of all was the 'Prince of
Neufchatel,' New York, which chose the Irish Channel as its
favorite haunt, where during the summer it made ordinary
coasting traffic impossible."

The vessels enumerated by Mr. Adams were by no means among the more famous
of the privateers of the War of 1812; yet when we come to examine their
records we find something notable or something romantic in the career of
each--a fact full of suggestion of the excitement of the privateersman's
life. The "Leo," for example, at this time was under command of Captain
George Coggeshall, the foremost of all the privateers, and a man who so
loved his calling that he wrote an excellent book about it. Under an
earlier commander she made several most profitable cruises, and when
purchased by Coggeshall's associates was lying in a French port. France
and England were then at peace, and it may be that the French remembered
the way in which we had suppressed the Citizen Genet. At any rate, they
refused to let Coggeshall take his ship out of the harbor with more than
one gun--a Long Tom--aboard. Nothing daunted, he started out with this
armament, to which some twenty muskets were added, on a privateering
cruise in the channel, which was full of British cruisers. Even the Long
Tom proved untrustworthy, so recourse was finally had to carrying the
enemy by boarding; and in this way four valuable prizes were taken, of
which three were sent home with prize crews. But a gale carried away the
"Leo's" foremast, and she fell a prey to an English frigate which happened
along untimely.

The "Mammoth" was emphatically a lucky ship. In seven weeks she took
seventeen merchantmen, paying for herself several times over. Once she
fought a lively battle with a British transport carrying four hundred men,
but prudently drew off. True, the Government was paying a bonus of
twenty-five dollars a head for prisoners; but cargoes were more valuable.
Few of the privateers troubled to send in their prisoners, if they could
parole and release them. In all, the "Mammoth" captured twenty-one
vessels, and released on parole three hundred prisoners.

Of all the foregoing vessels, the "Prince de Neufchatel" was the most
famous. She was an hermaphrodite brig of 310 tons, mounting 17 guns. She
was a "lucky" vessel, several times escaping a vastly superior force and
bringing into port, for the profit of her owners, goods valued at
$3,000,000, besides large quantities of specie. Her historic achievement,
however, was beating off the British frigate "Endymion," off Nantucket,
one dark night, after a battle concerning which a British naval historian,
none too friendly to Americans, wrote: "So determined and effective a
resistance did great credit to the American captain and his crew." The
privateer had a prize in tow, by which, of course, her movements were
much hampered, for her captain was not inclined to save himself at the
expense of his booty. But, more than this, she had thirty-seven prisoners
aboard, while her own crew was sorely reduced by manning prizes. The night
being calm, the British attempted to take the ship by boarding from small
boats, for what reason does not readily appear, since the vessels were
within range of each other, and the frigate's superior metal could
probably have reduced the Americans to subjection. Instead, however, of
opening fire with his broadside, the enemy sent out boarding parties in
five boats. Their approach was detected on the American vessel, and a
rapid fire with small arms and cannon opened upon them, to which they paid
no attention, but pressed doggedly on. In a moment the boats surrounded
the privateer--one on each bow, one on each side, and one under the
stern--and the boarders began to swarm up the sides like cats. It was a
bloody hand-to-hand contest that followed, in which every weapon, from
cutlass and clubbed musket down to bare hands, was employed. Heavy shot,
which had been piled up in readiness on deck, were thrown into the boats
in an effort to sink them. Hundreds of loaded muskets were ranged along
the rail, so that the firing was not interrupted to reload. Time and again
the British renewed their efforts to board, but were hurled back by the
American defenders. A few who succeeded in reaching the decks were cut
down before they had time to profit by their brief advantage. Once only
did it seem that the ship was in danger. Then the assailants, who
outnumbered the Americans four to one, had reached the deck over the bows
in such numbers that they were gradually driving the defenders aft. Every
moment more men came swarming over the side; and as the Americans ran from
all parts of the ship to meet and overpower those who had already reached
the deck, new ways were opened for others to clamber aboard. The situation
was critical; but was saved by Captain Ordronaux by a desperate expedient,
and one which it is clear would have availed nothing had not his men known
him for a man of fierce determination, ready to fulfil any desperate
threat. Seizing a lighted match from one of the gunners, he ran to the
hatch immediately over the magazine, and called out to his men that if
they retreated farther he would blow up the ship, its defenders, and its
assailants. The men rallied. They swung a cannon in board so that it
commanded the deck, and swept away the invaders with a storm of grape. In
a few minutes the remaining British were driven back to their boats. The
battle had lasted less than half an hour when the British called for
quarter, the smoke cleared away, the cries of combat ceased, and both
parties were able to count their losses. The crew of the privateer had
numbered thirty-seven, of whom seven were killed and twenty-four wounded.
The British had advanced to the attack with a force of one hundred and
twenty-eight, in five boats. Three of the boats drifted away empty, one
was sunk, and one was captured. Of the attacking force not one escaped;
thirty were made prisoners, many of them sorely wounded, and the rest were
either killed or swept away by the tide and drowned. The privateers
actually had more prisoners than they had men of their own. Some of the
prisoners were kept towing in a launch at the stern, and, by way of
strategy, Captain Ordronaux set two boys to playing a fife and drum and
stamping about in a sequestered part of his decks as though he had a heavy
force aboard. Only by sending the prisoners ashore under parole was the
danger of an uprising among the captives averted.

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