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Quote of the Day: ‘Don’t Give Up the Ship!’
Today I would love to tell you a rich and layered tale of good ship design, poor ship design, arrogance, and more arrogance that led to death, loss, and destruction. But I am not going to tell you that rich and layered tale. It would take a book or two to tell it properly, and I have other books to write. Thus I shall keep this simple.
On the First of June in 1813, the USS Chesapeake set to sea from Boston Harbor and met the waiting HMS Shannon. It was during the War of 1812 when we were at war with the UK. HMS Shannon had a much better-trained crew, drilled in gunnery by their captain, Philip Broke (pronounced Brook). The Shannon won the duel and captured Chesapeake, which was later taken into the Royal Navy as HMS Chesapeake and a mere six years later was sold out of the service, broken up, and the timbers were used to build a mill which still stands today in Wickham, England, UK, as a gift shop and tea room.
James Lawrence, newly-appointed captain of the USS Chesapeake, was mortally wounded in the battle. As he was being carried down to the surgery in the ship, he cried out:
Tell the men to fire faster! Don’t give up the ship!
They did give up the ship.
If you do have a hankering to read a book or two on naval warfare in the age of sail, you might want to look for some of @seawriter‘s work, which you can find listed here.
Published in History
If you’re interested in historical fiction, Patrick O’Brian wrote about the Shannon v. the Chesapeake, too. The battle lasted 13 minutes.
Yep. I read it. #6 The Fortune of War.
Thanks. I was looking at my bookshelf, but couldn’t pick it out.
My book Constitution vs Guerriere discussed that battle. Some of the interesting points:
All of this set up Lawrence for a massive fail. The gods of battle do not always favor the heavier battery (this battle was dead even), but they always favor the better prepared. Broke (commanding Shannon) was completely prepared. Lawrence was winging it.
Indeed. As I said, whole books could be written about the situation. The first “arrogance” I mentioned above was that of Josiah Fox, the shipbuilder, who thought he knew so much more than the original ship designer, Joshua Humphreys. You didn’t name those two, although the smaller ship as built that you did mention was due to Fox. The second “arrogance” mentioned was that of Lawrence, which you have covered well in the points above.
I think you are being a little unfair to Fox. Based on the information he had when he designed Chesapeake, it was a reasonable assessment. The British and French both experimented with 24-pound frigates in the late 1780s and in the 1790s and found significant drawback with them. The British converted three 64-gun ships-of-the-line into 24-pound frigates (one of which Indefatigable was made famous by the Hornblower stories).
The French discovered they could not beat the British with their 44-gun frigates (largely because they could only arm them with 18-pound or even 12-pound main deck guns due to structural weaknesses imposed by timber shortages). The British discovered they could beat large French frigates just fine with their 38-gun 18-pound frigates. The manpower savings in going to the 38-gun frigate was too much of an advantage.
So by 1812 the 24-pound frigate was viewed as a dead-end, an experiment worth trying but which did not pay off. That the War of 1812 reversed that judgement doesn’t change that naval architects and navies went by the experience gained in 20 years of warfare before that war started. Even the US Navy abandoned the 24-pound frigate until the War of 1812 revived it.
I discussed this in my first book – American Heavy Frigates.
Trust me, I’m much worse to the contentious Quaker in some of my upcoming books. 😆
Wow. 208 years ago today. A favorite phrase on my Dad’s side of the family, none of whom were wont to do it. Ever. No. Matter. What.
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Lucky shot crippled the steering and took out the very capable captain. Barring that, the Chesapeake was a match–more maneuverable, more guns.
As for the experience factor, the novice American crew of Old Ironsides beat the Guerreire one-on-one and I think the Chesapeake could have done the same under different circumstances.
Patrick O’Brien alludes to both battles in his marvelous series and even has Aubrey as a passenger on the Guerriere.
The best Don’t Give of the Ship story is that of Aristide Aubert du Petit-Thouars. He commanded the Tonnant anchored in Aboukir Bay with the French fleet when Nelson made his daring attack. In front of the Tonnant, the French flagship the Orient was literally reduced to splinters when a British cannonball penetrated her magazine resulting in a massive fireball. Quickly surrounded, the Tonnant fought all comers. Captain du Petit-Thouars lost an arm and both legs from cannon fire and ordered his men to stand him up in an open sand barrel (sand was for spreading over the deck so the inevitable pools of blood would be less slippery) where he continued to give orders for several minutes, one of which was to nail the flag to the mast so the colors could not be cut. The French Navy has named several ships after him over the years.
His men did eventually give up the ship. It became the HMS Tonnant and was the British flagship for the Chesapeake campaign and the unsuccessful bombardment of Fort McHenry. Francis Scott Key (an American lawyer aboard negotiating prisoner releases) was forced to remain on board the Tonnant when the shooting started and from its deck he witnessed the oversized, in-your-face American flag still waving.
You get the luck you earn. Had Lawrence not passed on a stern rake, there would have been a lot less opportunity for a lucky shot.
Umm . . . No. Constitution‘s crew could not be described as novice. They had been in commission prior to the War of 1812, and the battle with Guerriere was fought during Constitution‘s second (or third) cruise of the War of 1812. They were very well drilled when they fought Guerriere. Hull maneuvered repeatedly during the approach to Guerriere, to spoil his opponent’s aim. Stephen Decatur was equally prudent and capable when he fought Macedonian. By contrast, Lawrence, with a green crew, passed up any opportunities for maneuvering and simply sailed up to a pistol-shot exchange of broadsides against the best-prepared 18-pound frigate in the Royal Navy.
In Constitution vs Guerriere I explored the possibility of a victory by Chesapeake. Let me quote from it:
For the rest, read the book.
Later in that same year of 1813 Oliver Hazard Perry had a flag made with Lawrence’s famous words sewn onto it. The flag was raised on his flagship at the start the Battle of Lake Erie which was a famous victory for the U.S. Navy and led to Perry’s famous words “We have met the enemy and he is ours” (and of course we know the Pogo cartoon modification “We have met the enemy and he is us”)
Here is an interesting article about Perry’s “Don’t Give Up The Ship” flag in the battle and after. It’s not clear if the flag was raised again when Perry was forced to change flagships though the consensus is it was. I find fascinating the story of the flag’s several restorations and current display at the U.S. Naval Academy. It’s not even clear that the flag was originally blue as was shown in period portraits done of Perry.
http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/pa-heritage/flag-bears-witness-dont-give-up-the-ship.html
For those interested, I wrote about that battle, too.
“We have met the enemy and they are ours. Two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.” The entire Royal Navy Lake Erie squadron. Determination, courage, luck, and a boneheaded opponent.
It’s always a plus, but one just can’t depend upon it.
I am going to dispute that boneheaded opponent part. Barclay played his cards about as well as he could. He had more ships, but had resource and personnel problems even worse than that of Perry. Barclay even lacked flintlocks for all of his cannon. Some had to be fired using slow match or even by flashing pistols (holding the hammer part of a flintlock pistol over the touchhole and pulling the trigger to create sparks). Both men were at the very end of a long and tenuous supply chain, but Perry got what he needed, while Barclay did not.
As it was Barclay almost won. Against a foe less indomitable than Perry he would have.
Perry had a disadvantage too. His second-in-command was either a traitor or a cowardly twerp. Maybe both.
Neither, as far as I can tell. Just not as competent as Perry. My take on it from my book:
The battle only took place because Barclay lifted his blockade. Nobody seems to know why, unless it was in order to offer battle. He didn’t need to do that. He had Perry bottled up.
He was out of food. He returned to Amherstburg for more. He gambled he could get back before Niagara and Lawrence were across the bar and lost the gamble. Moreover, Perry bluffed Barclay into believing the US ships were ready for a fight.
But then you send one guy back for food.
I never heard that they were short of rations before, but you wrote a book and I read one once. So there’s that.
I think you are underestimating the primitiveness of the British facilities on the lakes as well as the limitations Barclay had in the number of ships. He could not have sent one of his smaller schooners back for food. They lacked the space to carry all the food required for his flotilla and the manpower to load the food quickly once at Amherstburg. Anyone who could serve as a longshoreman was aboard Barclay’s ships. If he sent enough ships back to carry food for the remaining vessels he effectively divided his command in the face of a superior enemy. Not recommended. Additionally he maintained his station for seven weeks, enough to go through the rations in ships which were not particularly voluminous. He made the least bad choice of a number of really bad choices available.