USA > Massachusetts > The maritime history of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 > Part 15
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Reviewing the diplomatic ineptitude of Madison's administration, the opposition of Massachusetts is not surprising. Napoleon's pretended revocation of his de- crees had been exposed by Adams at St. Petersburg
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as "a trap to catch us into a war with England." Every shipmaster knew that the French confiscations and sequestrations had continued. Secretary Monroe admitted as much in 1812, after war had been declared. By his own figures, the Napoleonic system had done more damage to American commerce than had British navalism. Yet the administration, on the ground that the "national faith was pledged to France," 1 adopted successively non-intercourse, embargo, and war against Great Britain. When the administration heard that England had repealed her orders in council, two days after our declaration of war, it decided to continue the war on the ground of impressment alone.
It was difficult to discover the true extent of im- pressment in 1812, and impossible now. Certain it is, however, that those seaboard communities of New England, which furnished the bulk of her merchant seamen, showed repeatedly by vote and deed their opposition to a war waged ostensibly in their behalf. Monroe's report of 1812, giving over six thousand cases of American seamen impressed into the English navy, was shot full of holes by a committee of the Gen- eral Court of Massachusetts. Fifty-one of the lead- ing shipowners of Massachusetts, who had employed annually over fifteen hundred seamen for the last twelve years, could remember but twelve cases of Americans being impressed from their vessels. Nor were all these witnesses Federalists. William Gray gave witness against his party, when he was able to recall but two cases of impressment from his great fleet in the last decade.
The truth probably lies somewhere between these
1 By the Macon Act of 1810, which proposed that whenever either England or France should repeal their objectionable measures against the United States, non-intercourse should be adopted against the other.
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Ships of the LINE !- No Shaving Mills.
Succes to
Agriculture!
Union
of the
States !
The Washingtor Policy
Sailors*
Peace, Honor,
Rights !
Prosperity !
Landsmen's
War !
Conscription !
Direct Taxes !
Embargo !
WE WILL NOT GIVE UP THE SHIP
THE
MASSACHUSETTS !
This Excellency Caleb, Strong for Governos This Honor William Phillips for Lt Low Front the For Sen ators John Phillips horas Ht Porking Josiah Quincy, Israel Thorndike Harrifon & Otis. Daniel Sargent Esque
FEDERALIST BALLOT FOR THE ELECTION OF 1814
CALEB STRONG forever!
Commerce and
EMBARGO AND WAR
extremes. A large number of impressed Massachusetts seamen spent the period of hostilities in Dartmoor Prison, rather than fight against their country. Con- temporary newspapers, sailors' narratives and deposi- tions, contain numerous and outrageous cases; none worse, however, than an instance of which Adams in- formed the Secretary of State, when twenty-two Amer- ican seamen were seized by Napoleon's agents at Danzig, marched to Antwerp, and impressed into the French navy. Impressment gave sufficient cause for war, by modern standards. But war was no remedy, as the Peace of Ghent proved. A powerful navy was the only language England understood.
"Sir, if we are going to war with Great Britain," said Senator Lloyd, of Massachusetts, "let it be a real, effectual, vigorous war. Give us a naval force ... give us thirty swift-sailing, well appointed frigates ... and in a few weeks, perhaps days, I would engage com- pletely to officer your whole fleet from New England alone." Yet the war congress adjourned without pro- viding any increase of the weakened navy; without even proper appropriation for the vessels in commis- sion. The navy department could not even afford to send the frigate Constitution to sea, after her escape from the British fleet; and had not William Gray dug into his own pocket for her supplies, she would not have met and defeated the Guerrière. Yet on the eve of war, Madison and Monroe squandered fifty thousand dollars of the nation's money on a worthless Irish adventurer, in the hope he would furnish proof of New England Fed- eralist disloyalty. Is it surprising that the Federalist leaders cried out at this war for "free trade and sailors' rights," declared by "men who rarely ever saw a ship or sailor"; and that maritime Massachusetts followed Chief Justice Marshall rather than President Madison?
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
"The declaration of war has appeared to me," wrote John Marshall, "to be one of those portentous acts which ought to concentrate on itself the efforts of all those who can take an active part in rescuing their country from the ruin it threatens." Massachusetts agreed. "Organize a peace party throughout your Country," resolved her House of Representatives, after the declaration; and " let the sound of your dis- approbation of this war be loud and deep, . . . let there be no volunteers except for defensive war." The Barn- stable County peace convention, uniting many ship- masters sent by Cape Cod town meetings, declared the war to have "originated in hatred to New England and to commerce; in subservience to the mandate of the Tyrant of France." To sabotage the war, in the interest of an early peace, became the declared policy of maritime Massachusetts.
The community could not wholly refrain from en- thusiasm at naval victories, especially when Boston's favorite frigate, the Constitution, was the victor. Hull and Bainbridge were banqueted by Boston merchants, and Perry presented with a service of plate. The Fed- eralists even attempted to capitalize naval success, as the appended Boston ballot for the spring election of 1814 indicates.1 But the State Senate, on motion of Josiah Quincy, refused a vote of thanks to Captain Lawrence for his capture of the Peacock, on the ground that "in a war like the present" it was "not becoming a moral and religious people to express any approba- tion of military and naval exploits." When Law- rence's body, after his glorious death aboard the Chesa- peake, was brought back to Salem for burial, the North
1 Ballots in these days were prepared by each party, and distributed at the polls. By law, they had to be written, not printed. A 'shaving- mill' meant a Jeffersonian gunboat.
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Meeting-House was refused for the funeral ceremony, and its bell hung silent when the procession passed. The East-India Marine Society only by a vote of 32 to 19 decided to attend. A local militia company refused to do escort duty, and not a single representative of the state government attended in his official capacity.
Political sentiment being such, it is not surprising that Massachusetts did not show her former preëmi- nence in privateering. As against fifty-eight privateers from Baltimore and fifty-five from New York, Boston only fitted out thirty-one, Salem forty-one,1 and the smaller ports, probably not more than fifteen alto- gether. "Federalist ideas were so prominent" in New- buryport "that the fitting of privateers was opposed strongly," stated a contemporary. New Bedford, not only Federalist but Quaker, declared in town meet- ing on July 21, 1814, "we have scrupulously abstained from all interest and concern in sending out private armed vessels"; and resolved to quarantine for forty days any American privateer that polluted her har- bor. The efforts of Salem's Republican minority, de- spite Federalists like Captain Ichabod Nichols, who read Marshall's "Life of Washington" through annu- ally, explain her activity. Privateering was much the most popular form of service in maritime Massachu- setts; it paid better wages, was safer, and more fun than the army or navy. Marblehead, which supported the war, provided 726 privateersmen, 120 naval sea- men, and only 57 soldiers, not including the local militia.
1 Rear-Admiral Emmons in 1853 estimated that 526 privateers were fitted out from the United States during the war; but this doubtless includes letter-of-marque vessels which were primarily traders, not commerce destroyers. Five of Salem's privateers were small open boats armed only with muskets, and only twelve were over one hundred tons burthen.
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
The first privateer to fit out from Salem was the new Gloucester-built Chebacco boat Fame, thirty tons, owned jointly by her master William Webb, and crew of twenty-four ex-shipmasters.1 She put to sea on July I, 1812, and returned eight days later with two prizes, a three-hundred-ton ship and a two-hundred-ton brig, taken off Grand Manan without firing a shot. George Crowninshield, Jr., decked over his thirty-six-foot yacht Jefferson, armed her with a gun or two, and sent her out with thirty men. "When I saw you landing, I could think of nothing else than so many goslins in a bread tray," said a Maine woman to the Jefferson's crew; but they sent in the second lot of prizes to Salem. There were rich pickings to be had on the Western Ocean that summer, before John Bull was fairly aroused. By the end of the year eighteen Salem privateers had captured eighty-seven prizes, of which fifty-eight, worth with their cargoes half a million dol- lars, were safely sent in. The local Federalist paper remarked that Salem property to the value of nine hundred thousand dollars had in the meantime been taken by the enemy. Perhaps the name of a new Salem privateer, the Grumbler and Growler, was a compliment to this unpatriotic sheet!
Most Salem privateering was done near the Ameri- can coasts. But French ports offered a convenient base and refuge, as in the Revolution; especially in the latter year of the war, when the United States was blockaded. The schooner Brutus slipped out of Salem early in November, 1814. According to the log kept by her Nantucket sailing-master, Henry Ingraham De- frees, she took six prizes in six weeks' time; and near the coast of France, after a long stern chase, came up
1 Maclay (American Privateers, 239) is in error in identifying this vessel with a Revolutionary privateer of the same name.
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with the armed British ship Albion. At 3 P.M. "Bore down on the enemys Larboard quarter within pistol shot & gave him 2 broadsides, wore across his sterne & from thence under his Starboard quarter, gave her several broadsides, & musketry. At 3:30 she struck." Three days later, the captor put in at Quimper, Britanny, where one of her crew "was put in Irons for strikeing the Ist Seargent of Marines, he then insulted all the officers & to Prevent further insolence he was gagged for two hours with a pump bolt."
The most artistic ship picture in the Peabody Mu- seum is Antoine Roux's portrait of the privateer brig Grand Turk 1 saluting Marseilles on her last cruise of the war. Her records give all the business details of commerce-destroying. The owners pay all expenses, and receive half the net proceeds of prizes. The re- mainder is divided into about one hundred and fifty shares, of which Captain Nathan Green gets ten, the first lieutenant, seven and a half; second lieutenant, sailing master, and surgeon, each six; secretary, pay- master, and pilot, each three; gunners and petty offi- cers, each two or two and a half; and ninety-five sea- men, each one. In addition, there is twenty dollars for whomever first sights a prize, and half a share extra for the first to board one. No seaman may sell more than half his share in advance.
Chesapeake-built clipper schooners, with their sharp ends, shoal draft, and cloud of canvas, were the most popular privateers in the War of 1812. Salem owned several of them; but a greater proportion were cap- tured than of the home-built sort. During the war,
1 Built at Wiscasset, Maine, 18 guns, 309 tons burthen. Maclay is again in error in identifying this vessel with the Grand Turk which made an early voyage to Canton. She was owned in Boston, but manned largely by Salem men.
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
Massachusetts builders probably began that process of drawing out the length of vessels and sweetening their lines, which in another fifteen years' time pro- duced a much faster and handier type of merchant- man than the Federalist period ever knew.1
Although the brig Grand Turk, according to Dr. Bentley, was considered the best sailer out of Salem, the Crowninshields' ship America was the most suc- cessful, as indeed she had been as a merchantman. Her new rig was enormous in comparison with her hull. Her main truck was 136 feet from the deck; her bow- sprit, lengthened by jibboom and flying jibboom, 107 feet long; she had a 67-foot mainyard, and the total spread of her sail, from studdingsail boom-end to boom-end, was 104 feet.2 Yet her length was only 108 feet, 7 inches, and breadth 30 feet, 8 inches. With her twenty-four guns and one hundred and fifty men she netted twenty-six prizes, which sold for over a million dollars. One of them was a Liverpool ship, by which the Irving family of New York was trying to smuggle English goods after hostilities had com- menced. This explains why Tom Walker, in Wash- ington Irving's story, on observing the name of Crowninshield, "recollected a mighty rich man of that name, who made a vulgar display of wealth, which it was whispered he had acquired by buccaneering." -
.
1 J. & T. H. Perkins to Perkins & Co., Canton, November 17, 1814, about their ship Jacob Jones, "Some insurance has been done on her, owing to her being a war built vessel, and having the reputation of a swift sailor, at fifty per cent ... Vessels built before the war cannot be insured at seventy-five per cent." ··
2 The picture of her in chapter VII shows her merchantman rig. There is a full-rigged model of her as a privateer in the Peabody Museum, and a reconstructed sail-plan in the Essex Historical Collections, XXXVII, 7. During her three last cruises she was commanded by James Chever, Jr., of Salem, who had started as her cabin boy in 1804, and had had a brother impressed into the British navy.
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The Letter of Marque Brig Grand Turk, of IA Sans. M .- Justin Com", Saluting Marseilles. 1815
PRIVATEER BRIG GRAND TURK
EMBARGO AND WAR
"Mr. Madison's war" interrupted the Pacific com- merce of Massachusetts, to the profit of Great Britain. English letter-of-marque whalers, some manned by renegade Nantucketers, played havoc with our Pacific whaling fleet until Captain David Porter turned the tables with the frigate Essex. The salty narrative of her cruise, by this young Boston commander, is the best bit of sea literature of the period. Captain Porter gave his scorbutic seamen six months of heaven in Nukahiva Island, of which he formally took possession in the name of the United States, and rechristened the principal harbor Massachusetts Bay. Although Cap- tain Ingraham of the Hope had discovered the island, the United States did not see fit to confirm Captain Porter's occupation; and the Marquesas fell to France.
The Essex never cruised far enough to protect our China and East-India traders. A number of them reached home safely during the first year of the war, giving small harbors their first and last contact with the Far East. Late in 1812 the ship American Hero from India put in at Barnstable. Early in April, 1813, the ship Sally from Canton learned from a fishing boat off Cape Cod that war had been declared the previous June. She also learned that two British frigates were waiting for her outside Boston Light. A favorable slant enabled her to slip into Plymouth Bay, and to give the Pilgrim capital its greatest sensation since the Mayflower landed. For not only did the Sally's rich cargo pay $133,731.47 in duties - more than that customs district had taken in since Jefferson's em- bargo - but she landed a Chinese passenger, who in full mandarin costume attended 'meeting' the follow- ing Sabbath. The collector of the port of Boston did his best to deprive Plymouth of the duties; but posses- sion proved nine points of the law, and the Sally's
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
Canton goods were forwarded to her Boston owners in a fleet of wagons.
At Honolulu, early in 1812, the Winships of Bos- ton had obtained a sandalwood monopoly from King Kamehameha I, in return for a percentage of the profits. Arrival of the first fragrant cargo at Canton was closely followed by news of the war, so that the Winships' agents, for fear of capture by English cruis- ers, had to ship the king's share of silk and specie in a slow Portuguese vessel. By the time she arrived at Honolulu, some British residents had so prejudiced Hawaiian royalty against Americans that the king showed signs of breaking the contract. To prevent this, Jonathan Winship, Jr. instructed the Portuguese captain to hold the specie until a new lot of sandal- wood forthcame; unless indeed a British cruiser ap- proached. In that event, the silver should be landed on the royal wharf, to avoid the possibility of seizure. A Hawaiian princess, overhearing the conversation, played a neat Yankee trick on the Yankee traders. At the lookout on Diamond Head, where the government maintained a signal station, her royal highness cor- rupted the human semaphore, who signaled to the inner harbor, "Big British warship coming!" The Portuguese captain hurriedly landed his cargo; and before the ship- ping intelligence proved false, Kamehameha had the specie, and snapped his fat fingers at Messrs. Winship, Winship & Davis. Not until another reign did Amer- icans recover their influence at the Islands.
In order to send instructions to their blockaded vessels at Whampoa, the Boston China merchants dispatched three letters-of-marque, the brig Rambler, sixteen guns and fifty men, ship Jacob Jones, and schooner Tamaamaah. 1 All three reached Canton
1 The common spelling at that time of Kamehameha.
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EMBARGO AND WAR
safely, and took a few prizes off Lintin. Ordering the merchant vessels to remain until peace was announced, the three letters-of-marque, loaded deep with China goods, dropped down-river from Whampoa on the night of January 18, 1815, passing in the darkness two British men-of-war, and about twenty armed East- Indiamen, which fired guns and burned blue lights to no purpose. Keeping company through the homeward passage, they arrived at Boston on May 3 and 4, 1815, 108 and 109 days out from Whampoa, in time to get the high prices that prevailed just after the war.
During the first six months of the war, every Atlan- tic port of the United States traded with England, under license from the British blockading squadron. The ship Ariadne of Boston, owned by Amorys, Per- kinses, Parsons, and Nathaniel Goddard, was a case in point. Obtaining informal permission from the Attor- ney-General and the Secretary of the Treasury, she took a cargo of provisions to Cadiz, under British license. It was currently believed in Massachusetts that tobacco from President Madison's own plantation went to England by this system, which Congress made no effort to restrain until the crops of 1812 had found profitable market. Much contraband trade went on over the New Brunswick and Florida frontiers, and part of the Massachusetts fleet took out Portuguese papers. Boston merchants made large profits from the enhanced price of foreign goods. John McLane cleared $100,000 by a corner in molasses soon after the decla- ration of war. Later, he established the McLane pro- fessorship of modern history at Harvard.
By 1813 conditions had changed. Only five Ameri- can and thirty-nine neutral vessels cleared that year from Boston for foreign ports. On September 8 there lay idle in Boston Harbor, with topmasts housed and
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mastheads covered by inverted tar-barrels or canvas bags ("Madison's night-caps") to prevent rotting; ninety-one ships, one hundred and eleven barques and brigs, and forty-five schooners. And in December, 1813, Congress passed a new embargo act, which for- bade all coastwise as well as foreign traffic, and was rigorously enforced. It is said that a man from the Elizabeth Islands, who brought corn to the New Bed- ford grist-mill, was refused clearance home for his bag of meal. Such a clamor arose against "Madison's embargo" that Congress repealed it in the spring of 1814; but no sooner was this done than the British blockade was extended from Long Island Sound to the Penobscot.
So completely did embargo and blockade stop coasting that a wagon traffic began between maritime Massachusetts and the South. Federalist wits ex- pended their energy on this new form of commerce. Pungs and wagons were christened the Jefferson's Pride of Salem, and Mud-clipper of Boston. News- papers reported, under "Horse-marine Intelligence," the entrance of fast-sailing wagons from New York and Albany, with news of vessels spoken en route, to- gether with sundry searchings by customs officials and boardings by tithing-men, who vainly invoked blue laws against the deep-sea slogan of "No Sundays off soundings." Chanties were composed for the land navy:
Ye waggoners of Freedom, Whose chargers chew the cud; Whose wheels have braved a dozen years The gravel and the mud.
Much commerce was also done in whaleboats which sneaked along the South Shore to Sandwich, and were then transferred overland with their cargoes to Buz- 206
EMBARGO AND WAR
zard's Bay, along the present route of the Cape Cod Canal. An adept at this trade was Captain John Col- lins, of Truro, who later became a famous packet-ship commander, and an organizer of the Collins line of ocean steamers.
The British fleet made life very stimulating along the Massachusetts coast, during the summer and au- tumn of 1814. Two frigates made their headquarters at Provincetown, which the government had neglected to fortify, and cruised constantly between Cape Cod and Cape Ann. In August another British base was established at Castine on the Penobscot. South of the Cape, H.M.S. Nimrod ruled the waters of Nantucket and Vineyard Sounds, and Buzzard's Bay. These vessels captured, and often ransomed, such coasting and fishing vessels as ventured out; their armed barges made frequent forays and landings on the coast, to destroy shipping and obtain fresh provisions. For de- fense, the Navy Department provided four Jeffersonian gunboats, two at Newburyport and two at New Bed- ford, which were perfectly useless. The southern pair spent most of its time safely hidden in the Acushnet River, and even dared not attack the Nimrod when she stranded on Great Ledge near New Bedford. When the frigates raided Wareham, destroying buildings and shipping to the value of many thousand dollars, the gunboats bravely issued forth when it was all over - and Wareham stopped counting her losses to laugh. Otherwise, Massachusetts depended for defense on her regular militia, stationed in small forts at most of the larger seaports; and on volunteer companies of 'sea- fencibles.'
No part of the long coastline was unvisited by the British frigates or barges. They landed a crew at Thatcher's Island off Cape Ann, and dug potatoes; cut
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fishing boats out of Kettle Cove; drove a schooner ashore on Mingo Beach, Beverly; took vessels from under the guns of Fort Sewall, Marblehead, and cap- tured six coasters close by the Neck. In general, Brit- ish landing parties had their will of Federalist towns, and were driven off by Democratic towns. "Province- town received no small benefit from the English ves- sels, and some of the fortunes since acquired, had their beginning from this source," says the historian of Truro. Duxbury and Plymouth informed the com- mander of H.M.S. Leander that they considered the war none of their business; the Old Colony had not been consulted. But for the Gurnet garrison's per- verse belligerency, Pilgrim neutrality might have been respected. Nantucket declared her neutrality in Au- gust, in order to procure food through the blockade. So near starving was the island, that a local wag asked his rich neighbor for a hammer to knock his teeth out - "he had no need of them, because he could n't get anything to eat!"
Captain Mathew H. Mayo, of Eastham, impressed as pilot on board a captured pinkie, managed by a series of clever stratagems to run her ashore within a mile of his own house. For this exploit the town of Eastham paid twelve hundred dollars to the British authorities, under threat of bombardment. Brewster was an easier mark. In September, 1814, Commodore Ragget, of H.M.S. Spencer, demanded four thousand dollars, to spare the village and the salt-works. Brew- ster had a company of artillery, with two field pieces; but the town meeting (whose moderator was Captain Elijah Cobb, that young shipmaster who had bearded Robespierre) calmly paid the money. Such non-re- sistance was quite unnecessary, for the British war- ships could not get within range of the bay-side Cape
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cottages, and a good demonstration of militia usually frightened away landing parties. Democratic Orleans "promptly and indignantly rejected" a demand for ransom, and was not molested. Two girls, left in charge of the Scituate Lighthouse, frightened off a British barge by retiring behind a hillock and playing furiously on fife and drum.
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