Volume I Part 6 (1/2)
The superiority of American gunnery, in this combat, was placed beyond dispute. It was a simple cannonade on a very rough sea. Yet the United States had but five killed and seven wounded, while out of three hundred men, the Macedonian had one hundred and four killed or wounded. So, also, the former lost her top-gallant masts, and had been hulled but a few times. It is true her rigging suffered severely, but the English frigate had almost every spar in her more or less shattered, while her hull was pierced with a hundred shot. In this, as in the former engagement between the Const.i.tution and Guerriere, the United States carried _four more guns_ than her antagonist. She was a heavier s.h.i.+p, but therefore a better mark, and yet the enemy's shot rarely hulled her. The decks of the latter presented a revolting spectacle. ”Fragments of the dead were distributed in every direction--the decks covered with blood--one continued agonizing yell of the unhappy wounded,”[30] filled the s.h.i.+p.
[Footnote 30: Statement of an American officer.]
Decatur having arrived with his prize in New London, dispatched Lieut.
Hamilton, son of the Secretary of the Navy, to Was.h.i.+ngton, with an account of the victory, and the captured colors. [Sidenote: Dec. 8.]
Hurrying on, greeted with the acclamations of the mult.i.tude as he pa.s.sed, he arrived at the capital in the evening. On that very night a ball had been given to the officers of the navy, at which Hull and Stewart and the Secretary of the Navy were present. Young Hamilton walked into the gay a.s.semblage and delivered his message to his overjoyed father, who immediately announced it to the company. Shout after shout shook the hall--all crowded around the young lieutenant, eager to hear the incidents of the action. As he narrated how they fought and how they conquered, tears of joy and grat.i.tude streamed from the eyes of his mother, who stood fondly gazing on him. Captured colors of the enemy decorated the room, and a delegation was sent to bring those of the Macedonia and add them to the number. Captains Stewart and Hull bore them in, and presented them, amid the loud acclamations of the throng, to the wife of the President--the band struck up an inspiring air, and intense excitement and exultation filled every bosom.
The Argus met with but little success. The seamans.h.i.+p of her officers was, however, tested during the cruise. She was chased three days and nights by an English squadron, and yet not only managed to escape, but having come upon an English merchantman during the chase, actually captured it in sight of the fleet, though by the time she had manned it the enemy had opened on her with his guns. Having made five prizes in all, she returned to port.
In the meanwhile the Wasp, Captain Jones, which was returning from Europe with dispatches, the time war was declared, had refitted and started on a cruise. Sailing northward to the lat.i.tude of Boston, she made a single capture and returned to the Delaware. On the 13th of October, the very day of Van Rensalaer's defeat at Queenstown, she again put to sea, and after being four days out, on the night of the 17th, made five strange sail. Not knowing their strength or character, Captain Jones deemed it prudent to keep off till daylight, when he would have a better opportunity for observing them. In the morning he discovered there were six s.h.i.+ps under the convoy of a brig of war. Two of them were armed, but the brig deeming herself alone a match for the American, sent them all forward, and waited for the latter to approach. The sea was rough from the effects of a storm that had swept those lat.i.tudes the day before, in which Captain Jones had lost his jib boom and two of his crew. There was no manoeuvering attempted in this tumultuous sea, and the Wasp surged on in dead silence, the only sound heard on her decks being the roar of the waves as they burst along her sides. She closed on her antagonist with a deadliness of purpose seldom witnessed in naval combats. She never delivered her broadside till within a hundred and eighty feet, and then with fearful effect. At first this heroism seemed doomed to a poor reward. The fire of the Frolic was incessant. Seldom had an Englishman been known to deliver such rapid broadsides. In five minutes the main topmast of the Wasp fell amid the rigging--in two minutes more the gaft and mizen top-gallant mast followed. Thus, in eight minutes from the time the vessels closed, the Wasp was so disabled that her destruction seemed almost certain. But while cut up herself so terribly aloft, she had struck with every broadside the heart of her antagonist. As she rolled on the heavy seas her guns were frequently under water, and the sailors staggered around their pieces like drunken men. Delivering her broadsides as she sunk, she hulled her antagonist at every discharge; while the latter, firing as she rose, made sad work with the rigging of the former. Jones seeing his spars and rigging so dreadfully cut up, was afraid that his vessel would become unmanageable, and therefore determined to run foul of his adversary and board. But when the vessels closed, the bows of the Frolic struck abaft the mids.h.i.+ps of the Wasp, which so swung the head of the latter around that she was enabled to throw a raking fire into the former. The order, therefore, to board was countermanded, and a fresh broadside directed to sweep her decks. In loading some of the guns, the rammers struck against the bows of the Frolic. The shot went cras.h.i.+ng the whole length of the s.h.i.+p, and the crew, excited by this hand-to-hand fight, could no longer be restrained from boarding. Mr. Biddle, the first lieutenant, leaped into the rigging, followed by Lieut. Rodgers and other men, and soon gained the decks of the Frolic--but, in looking round for the enemy, they saw but three or four officers standing aft, and bleeding.
None but the dead and wounded c.u.mbered the decks. Not one was left to haul down the colors. The officers threw down their swords in token of submission, and Lieutenant Biddle, springing into the rigging, lowered the English flag with his own hand. The carnage was horrible for so small a vessel--nearly a hundred of the officers and crew being killed or wounded. The decks were literally covered with the mangled forms of men and officers. The corpses presented a ghastly appearance as they rolled from side to side with the tossing vessel, while s.h.i.+vered spars and masts covered the wreck, and still hanging by the ropes, swung with every lurch against its shattered hull. There can scarcely be a more mournful sight than a n.o.ble s.h.i.+p dismantled in mid ocean, her decks crimsoned with blood, while on every side, amid broken and rent timbers, her gallant crew dismembered and torn, are stretched in death.
The Frolic was a brig carrying in all twenty-two guns, while the Wasp, though a s.h.i.+p, carried but eighteen, thus making a difference in favor of the former of four guns.
The Wasp had, therefore, captured a superior force in single combat.
But in this, as in the two former engagements I have detailed, the same extraordinary disparity in the respective losses of the two vessels was exhibited. While near a hundred were killed or wounded in the Frolic, there were only five killed and as many wounded in the American s.h.i.+p. It is not a matter of surprise that the belief became prevalent in England that our vessels were filled with Kentucky riflemen. These men had become famous for their accuracy of aim; and it was supposed we had introduced them into our navy. In no other way could they account for the awful carnage that followed every single combat of s.h.i.+p with s.h.i.+p. In all her naval history, such destructive work had never been witnessed in so short a s.p.a.ce of time. The moment an American vessel opened her broadsides, death began to traverse the decks of her antagonist with such a rapid footstep, that men were appalled.
This was doubtless owing in a great measure to our guns being sighted, an improvement introduced by American officers, rendering the aim infinitely more accurate.
The Wasp in this engagement had been fought n.o.bly, but her victory proved worse than a barren one to her gallant commander and crew.
Scarcely had the English Jack been lowered to the Stars and Stripes, before the latter were struck to the English flag. The Poictiers an English seventy-four, soon hoved in sight and bore down on the two vessels lying to and clearing away the wreck. The Wasp endeavored to make use of her heels, but on turning out her sails, they were found completely riddled. Flight was out of the question, and both vessels surrendered. They were taken into Bermuda, where the Americans were parolled and allowed to return home.
On the 26th of October, Commodore Bainbridge left Boston, accompanied by the Hornet, with the intention of joining Captain Porter, in the Ess.e.x, and pa.s.sing into the Pacific Ocean, where the British fisheries and commerce could be easily struck. Captain Lawrence, cruising southward, at length arrived at St. Salvador, where he found a British sloop of war, the Bonne Citoyenne. The latter being in a neutral port, was safe. She was superior to the Hornet, but Lawrence, determined to provoke her out to single combat, sent a challenge to her commander--Commodore Bainbridge, in the meanwhile, promising to keep out of the way. The challenge was declined, and if the fact that she had a large amount of specie on board, had been given as the reason of her refusal, the conduct of Captain Green, the commander would have been un.o.bjectionable. But to intimate, as he did, that the frigate would interfere, after Bainbridge had pledged his word, and the American Consul offered guarantees, evinced a contemptible spirit, almost as degrading as cowardice.
Captain Lawrence determined, however, not to let the vessel go to sea without him, and he therefore blockaded the port.
The Const.i.tution left the Hornet blockading the Bonne Citoyenne, and steered south, keeping along the coast, and on the 29th discovered two sail between her and the land, which was about thirty miles distant and in full view. One of the vessels being small, kept standing in towards the sh.o.r.e, while the larger one, a British frigate, the Java, of thirty-eight guns, directed her course towards the American.
Bainbridge, wis.h.i.+ng to get farther from the land, tacked and steered to the south-east for two hours, the Englishman following after. About half-past one, finding himself clear of the land, Bainbridge tacked and stood towards the stranger. At 2 o'clock the two vessels were only half a mile apart, the Englishman to windward, and showing no colors.
The order to fire a shot to make the latter set his ensign being misunderstood, a whole broadside was delivered, and the battle commenced. A tremendous cannonade followed. The wind was light and the sea smooth, so that full scope was given for manoeuvering and accurate aim. Bainbridge, who at the commencement of the war, had urged the President to send the national s.h.i.+ps to sea, and was now in his first fight, felt not only the promise he had given the Secretary of the Navy weighing on him, but his responsibility as commander of the Const.i.tution, fresh with laurels from the capture of the Guerriere.
He managed his s.h.i.+p with consummate skill, and not only foiled every attempt of the enemy to get a raking position, but soon obtained one himself, and delivered a broadside that swept the decks of the Java.
The vessels had at length approached within pistol shot, and the effect of the rapid broadsides of the Const.i.tution delivered so closely and on that smooth sea, could be heard in the rending timbers of the enemy's s.h.i.+p. Bainbridge, in the mean time, received a musket ball in his thigh. He however still walked the quarter deck, watching every movement of his antagonist, and the effect of every broadside.
In a few minutes later, a cannon shot plunged into the wheel, shattering it in fragments, and sending a copper bolt into his leg.
Crippled and bleeding--refusing even to sit down--he continued to limp over the quarter deck, watching the progress of the combat, and directing the movements, apparently unconscious of pain. The destruction of the wheel he felt to be a more serious affair than his wounded leg, for he was no longer able to give verbal orders to the helmsman. The tiller was of course worked below the second deck by ropes and tackles, where the helmsman unable to see the sails and steer accordingly, depended entirely on orders transmitted to him.
This would have been of minor consequence in a steady yard to yard-arm fight, but in the constant manoeuvering of the two vessels, either to get or prevent a raking fire, it was a serious inconvenience. Still, the Const.i.tution managed to secure this advantage in almost every evolution. The tremendous fire she kept up, so staggered the Englishman, that he resolved to run his vessel aboard at all hazards.
He came stern on, and his bowsprit pa.s.sed through the mizen rigging of the Const.i.tution. The next moment, however, it was cut in two by a cannon shot, when the two vessels parted. At length the Const.i.tution, after wearing twice to get the right position, threw herself fairly alongside her antagonist, and they moved on together, yard-arm and yard-arm, pouring in incessant broadsides. In a few minutes the mizen mast of the Java went over, and as her foremast had gone long before, nothing but the main mast was left standing. Her fire had now ceased, and Bainbridge, under the impression she had struck, set his sails and pa.s.sed off to windward to repair damages, make his masts secure, and be ready for any new combat that might be forced on him, in a sea filled with the enemy's cruisers. After an hour spent in overhauling his s.h.i.+p he returned, and finding the enemy's ensign still flying, he pa.s.sed directly across her bows, and was about to deliver a raking fire, when she struck. The combat lasted for more than two hours, and from the number of evolutions on both sides, was brought to a termination several miles from where it commenced. The Java was completely dismantled. Her mizen mast had been cut away close to the deck--the mainmast fell soon after the firing ceased, while nothing but a stump of the foremast, some twenty or thirty feet long, was left standing. Her bowsprit, too, was gone; in fact, every spar had been shot out of her. The Const.i.tution, on the contrary, at the close of the long severe conflict, had every spar standing. An eighteen pound shot had made an ugly hole through her mizen mast, and another had cut a deep gash in the foremast, and a quant.i.ty of ropes swinging loose in the wind, showed that she had been in the midst of cannon b.a.l.l.s, but she came out of the conflict as she went in, every spar erect and her royal yards across. The outward appearance of the s.h.i.+ps did not present a more striking contrast than their decks. Those of the Java were rent and torn, and strewed with the dead. A hundred and sixty-one had been killed or wounded, while nine killed and twenty-five wounded covered the entire loss of the Const.i.tution.
Among the prisoners taken was Lieutenant-General Hislop, with his staff, on his way to Bombay, as Governor. They were all treated with that kindness and generosity which ever characterizes a truly brave man--conduct which the English, in the very very few opportunities offered them, did not generally reciprocate.
The severe wounds of Commodore Bainbridge could not force him to leave the deck, even after the action was over. In his anxiety for his s.h.i.+p and the prize, and care of the wounded and prisoners, he forgot his sufferings, keeping his feet till eleven o'clock at night. These eight hours of constant exertion increased the inflammation to an alarming degree, and well nigh cost him his life.
It was a proud day for him; he had redeemed his pledge to the government, and added another wreath to the laurels that already crowned the American navy.
The Const.i.tution lay by the Java for two or three days, in order that the wounded might be removed with care and safety. When this was accomplished, the latter vessel being so completely riddled that it would be impossible to get her into an American port, was blown up.