American Merchant Ships and Sailors Part 6

Curiously enough, there did not begin to be a literature of whaling until the industry went into its decadence. The old-time whalers, leading lives of continual romance and adventure, found their calling so commonplace that they noted s.h.i.+pwrecks, mutinies, and disaster in the struggles of the whale baldly in their logbooks, without attempt at graphic description. It is true the piety of Nantucket did result in incorporating the whale in the local hymn-book, but with what doubtful literary success these verses from the pen of Peleg Folger--himself a whaleman--will too painfully attest:

Thou didst, O Lord, create the mighty whale, That wondrous monster of a mighty length; Vast is his head and body, vast his tail, Beyond conception his unmeasured strength.

When the surface of the sea hath broke Arising from the dark abyss below, His breath appears a lofty stream of smoke, The circling waves like glittering banks of snow.

And though he furiously doth us a.s.sail, Thou dost preserve us from all dangers free; He cuts our boats in pieces with his tail, And spills us all at once into the sea.

Stories of the whale fishery are plentiful, and of late years there has been some effort made to gather these into a kind of popular history of the industry. The following incidents are gathered from a pamphlet, published in the early days of the nineteenth century, by Thomas Nevins, a New England whaler:

"A remarkable instance of the power which the whale possesses in its tail was exhibited within my own observation in the year 1807. On the 29th of May a whale was harpooned by an officer belonging to the 'Resolution.' It descended a considerable depth, and on its reappearance evinced an uncommon degree of irritation. It made such a display of its fins and tail that few of the crew were hardy enough to approach it. The captain, observing their timidity, called a boat and himself struck a second harpoon. Another boat immediately followed, and unfortunately advanced too far. The tail was again reared into the air in a terrific att.i.tude. The impending blow was evident.

The harpooner, who was directly underneath, leaped overboard, and the next moment the threatened stroke was impressed on the center of the boat, which it buried in the water. Happily no one was injured. The harpooner who leaped overboard escaped death by the act, the tail having struck the very spot on which he stood.

The effects of the blow were astonis.h.i.+ng--the keel was broken, the gunwales and every plank excepting two were cut through, and it was evident that the boat would have been completely divided, had not the tail struck directly upon a coil of lines. The boat was rendered useless.

"The Dutch s.h.i.+p 'Gort-Moolen,' commanded by Cornelius Gerard Ouwekaas, with a cargo of seven fish, was anch.o.r.ed in Greenland, in the year 1660. The captain, perceiving a whale ahead of his s.h.i.+p, beckoned his attendants and threw himself into a boat. He was the first to approach the whale, and was fortunate enough to harpoon it before the arrival of the second boat, which was on the advance. Jacques Vienkes, who had the direction of it, joined his captain immediately afterward, and prepared to make a second attack on the fish when it should remount to the surface.

At the moment of its ascension, the boat of Vienkes, happening, unfortunately, to be perpendicularly above it, was so suddenly and forcibly lifted up by a stroke of the head of the whale that it was dashed to pieces before the harpooner could discharge his weapon. Vienkes flew along with the pieces of the boat, and fell upon the back of the animal. This intrepid seaman, who still retained his weapon in his grasp, harpooned the whale on which he stood; and by means of the harpoon and the line, which he never abandoned, he steadied himself firmly upon the fish, notwithstanding his hazardous situation, and regardless of a considerable wound that he received in his leg in his fall along with the fragments of the boat. All the efforts of the other boats to approach the whale and deliver the harpooner were futile. The captain, not seeing any other method of saving his unfortunate companion, who was in some way entangled with the line, called him to cut it with his knife and betake himself to swimming. Vienkes, embarra.s.sed and disconcerted as he was, tried in vain to follow this council. His knife was in the pocket of his drawers, and being unable to support himself with one hand, he could not get it out. The whale, meanwhile, continued advancing along the surface of the water with great rapidity, but fortunately never attempted to dive. While his comrades despaired of his life, the harpoon by which he held at length disengaged itself from the body of the whale. Vienkes, being thus liberated, did not fail to take advantage of this circ.u.mstance. He cast himself into the sea, and by swimming endeavored to regain the boats, which continued the pursuit of the whale. When his s.h.i.+pmates perceived him struggling with the waves, they redoubled their exertions. They reached him just as his strength was exhausted, and had the happiness of rescuing this adventurous harpooner from his perilous situation.

"Captain Lyons, of the 'Raith,' of Leith, while prosecuting the whale fishery on the Labrador coast, in the season of 1802, discovered a large whale at a short distance from the s.h.i.+p. Four boats were dispatched in pursuit, and two of them succeeded in approaching it so closely together that two harpoons were struck at the same moment. The fish descended a few fathoms in the direction of another of the boats, which was on the advance, rose accidentally beneath it, struck it with his head, and threw the boat, men, and apparatus about fifteen feet in the air. It was inverted by the stroke, and fell into the water with its keel upward. All the people were picked up alive by the fourth boat, which was just at hand, excepting one man, who, having got entangled in the boat, fell beneath it and was unfortunately drowned. The fish was soon afterward killed.

"In 1822 two boats belonging to the s.h.i.+p 'Baffin' went in pursuit of a whale. John Carr was harpooner and commander of them. The whale they pursued led them into a vast shoal of his own species. They were so numerous that their blowing was incessant, and they believed that they did not see fewer than a hundred. Fearful of alarming them without striking any, they remained a while motionless. At last one rose near Carr's boat, and he approached and, fatally for himself, harpooned it. When he struck, the fish was approaching the boat; and, pa.s.sing very rapidly, jerked the line out of its place over the stern and threw it upon the gunwale. Its pressure in this unfavorable position so careened the boat that the side was pulled under water and it began to fill. In this emergency Carr, who was a brave, active man, seized the line, and endeavored to release the boat by restoring it to its place; but by some circ.u.mstance which was never accounted for, a turn of the line flew over his arm, dragged him overboard in an instant, and drew him under the water, never more to rise. So sudden was the accident that only one man, who was watching him, saw what had happened; so that when the boat righted, which it immediately did, though half full of water, the whole crew, on looking round, inquired what had become of Carr. It is impossible to imagine a death more awfully sudden and unexpected. The invisible bullet could not have effected more instantaneous destruction. The velocity of the whale at its first descent is from thirteen to fifteen feet per second. Now, as this unfortunate man was adjusting the line at the water's very edge, where it must have been perfectly tight, owing to its obstruction in running out of the boat, the interval between the fastening of the line about him and his disappearance could not have exceeded the third part of a second of time, for in one second only he must have been dragged ten or twelve feet deep. Indeed, he had not time for the least exclamation; and the person who saw his removal observed that it was so exceeding quick that, though his eye was upon him at the moment, he could scarcely distinguish his figure as he disappeared.

"As soon as the crew recovered from their consternation, they applied themselves to the needful attention which the lines required. A second harpoon was struck from the accompanying boat, on the rising of the whale to the surface, and some lances were applied; but this melancholy occurrence had cast such a damp on all present that they became timid and inactive in their subsequent duties. The whale, when nearly exhausted, was allowed to remain some minutes unmolested, till, having recovered some degree of energy, it made a violent effort and tore itself away from the harpoons. The exertions of the crews thus proved fruitless, and were attended with serious loss.

"A harpooner belonging to the 'Henrietta,' of Whitby, when engaged in lancing a whale into which he had previously struck a harpoon, incautiously cast a little line under his feet that he had just hauled into the boat, after it had been drawn out by the fish. A painful stroke of his lance induced the whale to dart suddenly downward. His line began to run out from under his feet, and in an instant caught him by a turn round his body. He had but just time to cry out, 'Clear away the line! Oh, dear!'

when he was almost cut asunder, dragged overboard, and never seen afterward. The line was cut at that moment, but without avail. The fish descended to a considerable depth and died, from whence it was drawn to the surface by the lines connected with it and secured."

Whaling has almost ceased to have a place in the long list of our national industries. Its implements and the relics of old-time cruises fill niches in museums as memorials of a practically extinct calling. Along the wharves of New Bedford and New London a few old brigs lie rotting, but so effective have been the ravages of time that scarcely any of the once great fleet survive even in this invalid condition. The whales have been driven far into the Arctic regions, whither a few whalers employing the modern and unsportsmanlike devices of steam and explosives, follow them for a scanty profit. But the glory of the whale fishery is gone, leaving hardly a record behind it. In its time it employed thousands of stout sailors; it furnished the navy with the material that made that branch of our armed service the pride and glory of the nation. It explored unknown seas and carried the flag to undiscovered lands. Was not an Austrian exploring expedition, interrupted as it was about to take possession of land in the Antarctic in the name of Austria by encountering an American whaler, trim and trig, lying placidly at anchor in a harbor where the Austrian thought no man had ever been? It built up towns in New England that half a century of lethargy has been unable to kill. And so if its brigs--and its men--now molder, if its records are scanty and its history unwritten, still Americans must ever regard the whale fishery as one of the chief factors in the building of the nation--one of the most admirable chapters in our national story.

CHAPTER V

THE PRIVATEERS--PART TAKEN BY MERCHANT SAILORS IN BUILDING UP THE PRIVATEERING SYSTEM--LAWLESS STATE OF THE HIGH SEAS--METHOD OF DISTRIBUTING PRIVATEERING PROFITS--PICTURESQUE FEATURES OF THE CALLING--THE GENTLEMEN SAILORS--EFFECT ON THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY--PERILS OF PRIVATEERING--THE OLD JERSEY PRISON s.h.i.+P--EXTENT OF PRIVATEERING--EFFECT ON AMERICAN MARINE ARCHITECTURE--SOME FAMOUS PRIVATEERS--THE "CHa.s.sEUR," THE "PRINCE DE NEUFCHaTEL," THE "MAMMOTH"--THE SYSTEM OF CONVOYS AND THE "RUNNING s.h.i.+PS"--A TYPICAL PRIVATEERS'

BATTLE--THE "GENERAL ARMSTRONG" AT FAYAL--SUMMARY OF THE WORK OF THE PRIVATEERS

In the early days of a new community the citizen, be he never so peaceful, is compelled, perforce, to take on the ways and the trappings of the fighting man. The pioneer is half hunter, half scout. The farmer on the outposts of civilization must be more than half a soldier; the cowboy or ranchman on our southwest frontier goes about a walking a.r.s.enal, ready at all times to take the laws into his own hands, and scorning to call on sheriffs or other peace officers for protection against personal injury.

And while the original purpose of this militant, even defiant, att.i.tude is self-protection, those who are long compelled to maintain it conceive a contempt for the law, which they find inadequate to guard them, and not infrequently degenerate into bandits.

It is hardly too much to say that the nineteenth century was already well into its second quarter before there was a semblance of recognized law upon the high seas. Pirates and buccaneers, privateers, and the naval vessels of the times that were little more than pirates, made the lot of the merchant sailor of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a precarious one. Wars were constant, declared on the flimsiest pretexts and with scant notice; so that the sailor putting out from port in a time of universal peace could feel no certainty that the first foreign vessel he met might not capture him as spoil of some war of which he had no knowledge. Accordingly, sailors learned to defend themselves, and the s.h.i.+p's armory was as necessary and vastly better stocked than the s.h.i.+p's medicine case. To point a carronade became as needful an accomplishment as to box the compa.s.s; and he was no A.B. who did not know how to swing a cutla.s.s.

Out of such conditions, and out of the wars which the Napoleonic plague forced upon the world, sprung the practise of privateering; and while it is the purpose of this book to tell the story of the American merchant sailor only, it could not be complete without some account, however brief, of the American privateersman. For, indeed, the two were one throughout a considerable period of our maritime history, the sailor turning privateersman or the privateersman sailor as political or trade conditions demanded. In our colonial times, and in the earlier days of the nation, to be a famous privateersman, or to have had a hand in fitting out a successful privateer, was no mean pa.s.sport to fame and fortune. Some of the names most eminent in the history of our country appear in connection with the outfitting or command of privateers; and not a few of the oldest fortunes of New England had their origin in this form of legalized piracy.

And, after all, it is the need of the times that fixes the morality of an act. To-day privateering is dead; not by any formal agreement, for the United States, at the Congress of Paris, refused to agree to its outlawry; but in our war with Spain no recourse was had to letters of marque by either combatant, and it seems unlikely that in any future war between civilized nations either party will court the contempt of the world by going back to the old custom of chartering banditti to steal the property of private citizens of the hostile nation if found at sea. Private property on sh.o.r.e has long been respected by the armies of Christendom, and why its presence in a s.h.i.+p rather than in a cart makes it a fit object of plunder baffles the understanding. Perhaps in time the kindred custom of awarding prize money to naval officers, which makes of them a species of privateers, and pays them for capturing a helpless merchant s.h.i.+p, while an army officer gets nothing for taking the most powerful fort, may likewise be set aside as a relic of medieval warfare.

In its earliest days, of course, privateering was the weapon of a nation weak at sea against one with a large navy. So when the colonies threw down the gage of battle to Great Britain, almost the first act of the Revolutionary government was to authorize private owners to fit out armed s.h.i.+ps to prey on British commerce. Some of the s.h.i.+powners of New England had enjoyed some experience of the profits of this peculiar industry in the Seven Years' War, when quite a number of colonial privateers harried the French on the seas, and accordingly the response was prompt. In enterprises of this character the system of profit-sharing, already noted in connection with whaling, obtained. The owners took a certain share of each prize, and the remainder was divided among the officers and crew in certain fixed proportions. How great were the profits accruing to a privateersman in a "run of luck" might be ill.u.s.trated by two facts set forth by Maclay, whose "History of American Privateers" is the chief authority on the subject. He a.s.serts that "it frequently happened that even the common sailors received as their share in one cruise, over and above their wages, one thousand dollars--a small fortune in those days for a mariner," and further that "one of the boys in the 'Ranger,' who less than a month before had left a farm, received as his share one ton of sugar, from thirty to forty gallons of fourth-proof Jamaica rum, some twenty pounds of cotton, and about the same quant.i.ty of ginger, logwood, and allspice, besides seven hundred dollars in money." To be sure, in order to enjoy gains like these, the men had to risk the perils of battle in addition to the common ones of the sea; but it is a curious fact, recognized in all branches of industry, that the mere peril of a calling does not deter men from following it, and when it promises high profit it is sure to be overcrowded. In civil life to-day the most dangerous callings are those which are, as a rule, the most ill paid.

Very speedily the privateersmen became the most prosperous and the most picturesque figures along the waterside of the Atlantic cities. While the dignified merchant or s.h.i.+powner, with a third interest in the "Daredevil"

or the "Flybynight," might still maintain the sober demeanor of a good citizen and a pillar of the church, despite his profits of fifty or an hundred per cent. on each cruise, the gallant sailors who came back to town with pockets full of easily-won money, and the recollection of long and dismal weeks at sea behind them, were spectacular in their rejoicings.

Their money was poured out freely while it lasted; and their example stirred all the townsboys, from the best families down to the scourings of the docks, to enter the same gentlemanlike profession.

Queerly enough, in a time of universal democracy, a provision was made on many of the privateers for the young men of family who desired to follow the calling. They were called "gentlemen sailors," and, in consideration of their social standing and the fact that they were trained to arms, were granted special and unusual privileges, such as freedom from the drudgery of working the s.h.i.+p, better fare than the common sailors, and more comfortable quarters. Indeed, they were free of duty except when fighting was to be done, and at other times fulfilled the function of the marine guards on our modern men-of-war. This came to be a very popular calling for adventurous young men of some family influence.

It has been claimed by some writers that "the Revolution was won by the New England privateers"; and, indeed, there can be no doubt that their activity did contribute in no small degree to the outcome of that struggle. Britain was then, as now, essentially a commercial nation, and the outcry of her merchants when the ravages of American privateers drove marine insurance rates up to thirty-three per cent., and even for a time made companies refuse it altogether, was clamorous. But there was another side to the story. Privateering, like all irregular service, was demoralizing, not alone to the men engaged in it, but to the youth of the country as well. The stories of the easy life and the great profits of the privateersmen were circulated in every little town, while the revels of these sea soldiers in the water-front villages were described with picturesque embellishments throughout the land. As a result, it became hard to get young men of spirit into the patriot armies. Was.h.i.+ngton complained that when the fortunes of his army were at their lowest, when he could not get clothing for his soldiers, and the snow at Valley Forge was stained with the blood of their unshod feet, any American s.h.i.+pping on a privateer was sure of a competence, while great fortunes were being made by the speculators who fitted them out. Nor was this all. Such was the attraction of the privateer's life that it drew to it seamen from every branch of the maritime calling. The fisheries and the West India trade, which had long been the chief mainstay of New England commerce, were ruined, and it seemed for a time as if the hardy race of American seamen were to degenerate into a mere body of buccaneers, operating under the protection of international law, but plunderers and spoilers nevertheless.

Fortunately, the long peace which succeeded the War of 1812 gave opportunity for the naturally lawful and civilized instincts of the Americans to a.s.sert themselves, and this peril was averted.

It is, then, with no admiration for the calling, and yet with no underestimate of its value to the nation, that I recount some of the achievements of those who followed it. The periods when American privateering was important were those of the Revolution and the War of 1812. During the Civil War the loss incurred by privateers fell upon our own people, and it is curious to note how different a tone the writers on this subject adopt when discussing the ravages of the Confederate privateers and those which we let loose upon British commerce in the brave days of 1812.

A true type of the Revolutionary privateersmen was Captain Silas Talbot, of Ma.s.sachusetts. He was one of the New England lads apprenticed to the sea at an early age, having been made a cabin-boy at twelve. He rose to command and acquired means in his profession, as we have seen was common among our early merchant sailors, and when the Revolution broke out was living comfortably in his own mansion in Providence. He enlisted in Was.h.i.+ngton's army, but left it to become a privateer; and from that service he stepped to the quarter-deck of a man-of-war. This was not an uncommon line of development for the early privateersmen; and, indeed, it was not unusual to find navy officers, temporarily without commands, taking a cruise or two as privateers, until Congress should provide more s.h.i.+ps for the regular service--a system which did not tend to make a Congress, which was n.i.g.g.ardly at best, hasten to provide public vessels for work which was being reasonably well done at private expense. As a result of this system, we find such famous naval names as Decatur, Porter, Hopkins, Preble, Barry, and Barney also figuring in the lists of privateersmen. Talbot's first notable exploit was clearing New York harbor of several British men-of-war by the use of fire-s.h.i.+ps. Was.h.i.+ngton, with his army, was then encamped at Harlem Heights, and the British s.h.i.+ps were in the Hudson River menacing his flank. Talbot, in a fire-s.h.i.+p, well loaded with combustibles, dropped down the river and made for the biggest of the enemy's fleet, the "Asia." Though quickly discovered and made the target of the enemy's battery, he held his vessel on her course until fairly alongside of and entangled with the "Asia," when the fuses were lighted and the volcanic craft burst into roaring flames from stem to stern. So rapid was the progress of the flames that Talbot and his companions could scarcely escape with their lives from the conflagration they had themselves started, and he lay for days, badly burned and unable to see, in a little log hut on the Jersey sh.o.r.e. The British s.h.i.+ps were not destroyed; but, convinced that the neighborhood was unsafe for them, they dropped down the bay; so the end sought for was attained. In 1779 Talbot was given command of the sloop "Argo," of 100 tons; "a mere shallop, like a clumsy Albany sloop," says his biographer. Sixty men from the army, most of whom had served afloat, were given him for crew, and he set out to clear Long Island Sound of Tory privateers; for the loyalists in New York were quite as avid for spoils as the New England Revolutionists. On his second cruise he took seven prizes, including two of these privateers. One of these was a 300-ton s.h.i.+p, vastly superior to the "Argo" in armament and numbers, and the battle was a fierce one.

Nearly every man on the quarter-deck of the "Argo" was killed or wounded; the speaking trumpet in Talbot's hand was pierced by two bullets, and a cannon-ball carried away the tail of his coat. The damages sustained in this battle were scarce repaired when another British privateer appeared, and Talbot again went into action and took her, though of scarce half her size. In all this little "Argo"--which, by the way, belonged to Nicholas Low, of New York, an ancestor of the eminent Seth Low--took twelve prizes.

Her commander was finally captured and sent first to the infamous "Jersey"

prison-s.h.i.+p, and afterward to the Old Mill Prison in England.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEARLY EVERY MAN ON THE QUARTERDECK OF THE "ARGO" WAS KILLED OR WOUNDED.]

The "Jersey" prison-s.h.i.+p 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PRISON s.h.i.+P "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-s.h.i.+ps, the rest were conveyed to the "Jersey," which had been originally a 74-gun s.h.i.+p, then cut down to a hulk and moored at the Wallabout, at that time a lonely and deserted place on the Long Island sh.o.r.e, 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 b.u.t.ter; 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 b.u.t.ter--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 s.h.i.+p. Many times since, when I have seen in the country a large kettle of potatoes and pumpkins steaming over the fire to satisfy the appet.i.te of some farmer's swine, I have thought of our dest.i.tute 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 pa.s.s the night amid the acc.u.mulated 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 s.h.i.+p into a boat. Some of the prisoners were allowed to go on sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e 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 s.h.i.+ps, 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 s.h.i.+p twenty-eight in a single cruise. Nearly eleven hundred prisoners were taken with the captured s.h.i.+ps. 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 s.h.i.+pping 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 sh.o.r.e--became peaceful sailors, or fishermen, or s.h.i.+p-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 grat.i.tude 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 a.s.sured of immunity from governmental prosecution. And, finally, he found the ma.s.ses 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 sh.o.r.e. The crisis came, however, when one of these s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+pped 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 s.h.i.+p 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 Was.h.i.+ngton'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 s.h.i.+ps against British aggression, began itself to prey upon our commerce. Then the state of our maritime trade was a dismal one. Our s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+pping 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 s.h.i.+pping 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 wars.h.i.+p could follow. They mounted from four to twelve guns, and carried an armory of rifles and cutla.s.ses 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 punis.h.i.+ng Europe for interfering with our commerce by laying an embargo which kept our s.h.i.+ps at home had failed, war was declared with England; and from every port on the Atlantic seaboard privateers--s.h.i.+ps 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 amids.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+p. 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 a.s.signed 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 s.h.i.+powner; 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 "Cha.s.seur," 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 embarra.s.sment 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+powners and merchants of Glasgow, in formal resolutions, called the attention of the admiralty to the fact that "in the short s.p.a.ce 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 100,000 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."