Read Ebook: Open That Door! by Ingersoll R Sturgis Robert Sturgis

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"BOLD AND HARDY MEN WHO HAD FOLLOWED THE SEA SINCE THEY WERE BOYS." 16

"HE SENT COLONEL GLOVER AND MR. PALFREY IN HOT HASTE TO RAISE THE MINUTE-MEN." 21

NICHOLAS BIDDLE. 30

HE TOUCHED AT A SMALL TOWN IN IRELAND FOR SUPPLIES. 40

THE "DRAKE" SURRENDERS TO THE "RANGER." 47

"THE SLOOP WAS SWALLOWED UP IN THE SEETHING WATERS." 73

HEAVING THE LEAD ON BOARD THE FRIGATE. 81

"EVERYWHERE THE SHIP-YARDS WERE BUSY." 91

DAVID PORTER. 95

"IT WAS TWILIGHT BEFORE HE CAME UP WITH HER." 99

THOMAS TRUXTUN,--FROM MEDAL VOTED BY CONGRESS. 102

"CROWDING ON THE RAIL WITH THEIR SCIMITARS." 109

COMMODORE EDWARD PREBLE. 114

"HE CUT AWAY THE ANCHORS, ... BUT STILL THE SHIP HUNG FAST." 117

"THE LIGHTS COULD BE SEEN GLITTERING IN THE HOUSES." 127

"THE 'PHILADELPHIA' LIGHTS THEM ON THEIR WAY." 131

STEPHEN DECATUR. 135

"A SQUALL OF WIND AND RAIN PASSED OVER US." 167

CAPTAIN ISAAC HULL. 171

"SHE LAY A HELPLESS WRECK IN THE TROUGH OF THE SEA." 173

"JACK LANG, A BRAVE AMERICAN BLUE-JACKET, LEAPED FIRST." 179

"THE SHIPS WERE STEERING TO THE EASTWARD ON PARALLEL COURSES." 189

JAMES LAWRENCE. 197

"ALONG THE SHORE, UPON EVERY HILL-TOP AND HEADLAND, PEOPLE HAD GATHERED." 203

"WHEN THE 'ESSEX' ARRIVED OFF THE ISLAND SHE LAY TO." 213

APPROACHING THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS. 222

"'WE SURRENDER,' AND DOWN CAME THE FLAG." 225

"MOSTLY CARRONADES." 239

"A SQUALL STRUCK HER AND CARRIED AWAY HER MAIN-TOPMAST." 241

OLIVER HAZARD PERRY. 247

"A SINGLE GUN BOOMED FROM BARCLAY'S SHIP." 255

"CALLING AWAY HIS BOAT, HE ROWED UNDER THE ENEMY'S FIRE." 259

"THE 'PELICAN' WAS GUIDED TO HER BY THE SMOKE OF THE BURNING MERCHANTMEN." 265

CAPTAIN LEWIS WARRINGTON. 270

"ONE ROUND SHOT ENTERED HER AFTERMOST PORT." 277

"ON THE STOCKS, AND NEARLY FINISHED, THE FINE FRIGATE 'CONFIANCE.'" 283

CAPTAIN CHARLES STEWART. 296

"ACCOMPANIED BY ABDALLAH THE DRAGOMAN, I LEFT THE CANAL." 313

THE BOYS OF 1812, AND OTHER NAVAL HEROES.

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE NAVY.

Simply to defend themselves against the tyrannical encroachments of the mother country was all that the thirteen colonies had in view when, in 1775, they took up arms against Great Britain. At this time the people hoped, and many of them expected, that by making a determined resistance they would induce the King and Parliament to treat them with fairness, and to give them their rights as English citizens. It was only gradually, during the summer and autumn of the first year,--after the battle had been fought at Bunker Hill, and after Washington had been for some time in command of the army which was laying siege to Boston, that they began to feel that they could make a new nation by themselves, and that independence was a thing that was worth fighting for, even though it cost a long and bloody struggle, in which all of them would pass through bitter suffering and many would give up their very lives.

As we look back upon it now, it is wonderful to think what a daring thing it was for this small and scattered people, living in their little towns along the seacoast from Maine to Georgia, or on farms and plantations in the country, without an army or navy, without generals, and above all without money,--for money is needed to carry on war more than almost anything else,--to have thus made up their minds to stand up bravely and manfully against such a power as Great Britain , with all her troops and ships and immense revenues. That we should have come out successfully from a contest so unequal seems little short of marvellous; and we cannot but think that it was the hand of an overruling Destiny that enabled us to succeed, by giving us a general as skilful and prudent as Washington, statesmen as wise as Franklin and Jefferson and Adams, an enemy as indolent as Sir William Howe, and allies as powerful as our good friends the French.

Still, even from the beginning the colonists had some reason to hope for success, at least in the war on land. They had no standing army, it is true, but they were not without experience in the business of fighting. In the Seven Years' War, which had come to an end only twelve years before, they had furnished the soldiers who filled the ranks of the English armies on American soil. These were the men who had fought the bloody battles at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and whom the gallant Wolfe had led on the Plains of Abraham. The veterans of the old war were as ready to shoulder their muskets to protect themselves against the tyranny of the King as against the incursions of their Canadian and Indian neighbors. They knew something, too, of the soldiers who would be sent to subdue them, and what they had seen did not give them much reason to be afraid. They knew how hard it was for an invading army, thousands of miles away from home, marching through a thinly-settled country that was filled with enemies, to protect itself from those incessant and harassing attacks that wear out its strength and destroy little by little all its confidence and pluck. They knew that these gayly-dressed redcoats, who made war according to rule, would find a new kind of work before them among the wooded hills and valleys of America, where every patriot was fighting for his own homestead, where every farmer was a woodsman, and where every woodsman was a crack shot. When that quiet but observant young Virginian, Major Washington, went out with Braddock on his expedition against Fort Duquesne, and saw how the gallant Colonel of the Guards insisted blindly upon following in the backwoods his Old World tactics, and how easily his regulars were defeated in consequence, he learned something that he never afterward forgot; for neither Howe nor Clinton nor Earl Cornwallis himself was the man to teach him a new lesson.

But all this was fighting on land. At sea, the colonists had had no such training. The mother country, with her great fleets, had needed no help from them in her sea-fights, and indeed was rather jealous of any attempts that they might make toward a colonial navy. The colonists in the old wars had fitted out a few privateers that harried the enemy's commerce, but real naval warfare was wholly unknown to them. They had had no ships-of-war of their own to serve in, and such of them as had been admitted into the Royal Navy under the King's commission remained in it almost to a man.

On the ocean, therefore, the colonists were badly off, for Great Britain was here the worst enemy they could have. Her wooden walls had always been her chief reliance, and from the days when Drake and Howard and Raleigh defeated the Great Armada of Spain, they had asserted and maintained British supremacy at sea. During this long period of two hundred years the names of England's great naval captains had been a terror to all her enemies. There was Robert Blake, who beat off the Dutch, when Tromp sailed across the channel with a broom at his masthead as a sign that he would sweep the English from the seas. There were Sir Cloudesley Shovel and Sir George Rooke, who worsted the French in the great battle of Cape La Hogue; there was the doughty old Benbow, who, deserted by his captains, with his single ship kept at bay the squadron of M. Ducasse in the West Indies; there was Boscawen, who captured the fortress at Louisburg; Hawke and Anson, and finally Rodney and Howe, already famous, and destined to become yet more so in the war that was just begun.

The fleets that these famous admirals led into action were composed of line-of-battle ships,--immense structures, with two, three, or even four gun-decks, some of them carrying as many as one hundred guns, and the smallest of them rated at sixty-four. After these came the frigates, which had only one gun-deck, but which carried a battery on the spar-deck also. These were not thought of sufficient strength to be really counted as a part of the fighting force, although the largest size, the 50-gun frigates, were sometimes taken into the line of battle. But generally they served as scouts or outposts for the great fleets, or they cruised by twos and threes in light squadrons, or even singly, to attack privateers or unarmed merchantmen, or to make a raid on unprotected coasts and seaports, or to carry orders to the different stations. For all these uses they were of great service, being generally faster than the line-of-battle ships, and yet carrying guns enough to make them formidable to all the lesser craft. After the frigates came the sloops-of-war, ship-sloops, and brig-sloops, as the English called them; not the little boats with one mast that we are accustomed to call sloops, but square-rigged vessels with three or two masts, as the case might be, and carrying twenty guns or so. With all these three classes of vessels the British were well supplied, and the larger ships carried what at that day were heavy guns, 18-pounders and 24-pounders. In 1775, when the war broke out, the Royal Navy numbered one hundred line-of-battle ships, one hundred and fifty frigates, and three hundred of the smaller vessels, and before the war ended it had two hundred and fifty thousand seamen in its service.

The colonies, on the other hand, began the struggle without a single armed vessel afloat. They had merchantmen which they could fit out as privateers to cruise against the British merchantmen, but they had nothing that could stand up against a ship-of-war. Even in guns they were sadly deficient; for though there were scattered here and there in the colonies a few 12-pounders and 9-pounders, they had to depend largely upon sixes and fours, which were not much better than popguns; while of eighteens and twenty-fours they had scarcely any for naval use. Sailors they had, to be sure, all along the coast from New England down; and especially in the northern part there were numbers of bold and hardy men who had followed the sea since they were boys, some in fishing-smacks that made long voyages to the Banks, some in coasters, and some in the large merchant-ships that traded at ports beyond the sea. But of what use are sailors without ships or guns? Besides, as the Continental Navy was slow in forming, many of the best men went into the army, which promised an easier life, or into the privateer service, which held out greater prospects of reward; and when the navy finally got to work, it was very hard to man the vessels.

In spite of all these discouragements, the leaders in the country boldly resolved that they would face Great Britain on the sea as well as on the land. They bought or built their little ships, fitted them out with guns and stores that were partly captured from the British, manned them with crews from the sturdy mariners along the coast, and sent them forth to war upon the enemy as best they might,--by capturing his transports and storeships, by fighting his smaller cruisers when they could be found alone, and sometimes even by daring raids upon his very coasts. Their officers were volunteers from the merchant service; and though hardly any had ever served in ships-of-war, there were some among them whose name and fame have lived to our own day, and will live forever,--Biddle and Manley, Paul Jones and Conyngham, Barry and Barney, and Wickes and Dale,--the first men to show that American naval officers can hold their own against any others in the world.

The beginnings of the Continental Navy were made by Washington. When on July 3, 1775, he took command of the army under the old elm-tree at Cambridge in Massachusetts, he had a discouraging task before him. Not only was it necessary for him to organize the troops and train them in the art of war, but they had to be supplied with arms and ammunition and all kinds of equipments. Not only was there a scarcity of money to buy these things, but the things themselves were hardly to be got in the colonies either for love or money. At the battle of Bunker Hill the patriots had retired, not because they were beaten, but because their ammunition was exhausted. During the whole summer Washington was writing to the governors of the neighboring colonies, entreating them to send him a little powder and lead. "No quantity," he said, "however small, is beneath notice."

All this time the British, securely established in Boston, were receiving supplies of all kinds from England. Though they were three thousand miles away from home, they could get what they needed with more certainty than the colonists, who were fighting in their own country: of such importance is it in war to have the control of the sea. Washington himself saw this, and he determined to dispute the control with the enemy by sending out little vessels, just strong enough to attack the transports and storeships coming to Boston. So he despatched to the north shore, as it is called, to Beverly and Salem and Marblehead, two of his trusted officers, Colonel John Glover of Marblehead, and Stephen Moylan, the Muster-master-general of the army, to procure and fit out the vessels. Late in October the first two schooners got to sea, the "Lynch" and "Franklin," under Captain Broughton, who sailed for the Gulf of St. Lawrence to intercept ships bound for Quebec. Ten days later Moylan and Glover, by dint of hard work, got off two more of these diminutive cruisers,--the "Lee," under Captain John Manley, and the "Warren," under Captain Adams of the New Hampshire troops. These were also schooners, and carried each four 4-pounders and ten swivels,--little guns throwing a half-pound bullet mounted on pivots on the gunwales, just as gatlings are mounted to-day. Each had fifty men, most of whom were drafted from the army; but there was hardly any ammunition to spare for them, and it went against the grain to give them twenty rounds for each gun, which was all they carried.

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