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The American Navy
The American Navy
By Rear-Admiral French E. Chadwick ( U. S. N., Retired ) GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1915 Copyright, 1915, by Doubleday, Page & Company All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian TO MY COMRADES OF THE NAVY PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE...
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Rear-Admiral French Ensor Chadwick was born at Morgantown, W. Va., February 29, 1844. He was appointed to the U. S. Naval Academy from West Virginia (then part of Virginia) in 1861, and graduated in November, 1864. In the summer of 1864 he was attached to the Marblehead in pursuit of the Confederate steamers Florida and Tallahassee . After the Civil War he served successively in a number of vessels, and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Commander in 1869; was instructor at the Naval Academy
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
The navy in all countries has ever been, and, as far as we can now judge, ever will be, a preëminent instrument of government. It was through her navy that Greece destroyed the power of Persia; Rome that of Carthage; the allies at Lepanto that of the Turks; England that of Holland and later that of France in America; the navy of France, in turn, caused the relinquishment of Great Britain’s sovereignty over the thirteen colonies which formed the United States, and a generation later it was the Br
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
When Great Britain attempted to reduce to obedience the rebellious colonies which were to form the United States of America she was dealing with a people who in the North at least had long been conversant with the building and sailing of ships. A New England built ship entered the Thames in 1638, only eighteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts. The New England men, with a sterile coast, with limitless fishing grounds and unsurpassed harbors, turned as naturally t
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
In September , 1744, there met at Philadelphia, then our foremost city, representatives of each of the thirteen colonies, called together on account of the increasing difficulties which had arisen with the mother country. These difficulties arose mainly from the tendency of parliament to govern the colonies as it would, say, any county of England. This right the Americans denied. They were good subjects of the King, but they objected to parliamentary rule. The underlying idea which governed the
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
The ships put afloat by Congress and which may be taken as the regular navy of the Revolution were, however, strongly supplemented by the navies of the states (except New Jersey and Delaware), and by the multitude of privateers which cruised under both state and Continental commissions. Massachusetts led in the number of state ships; but South Carolina in size and importance. Massachusetts had sixteen vessels, the only one of any size being the Protector , a ship carrying 26 light guns. All the
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
It was not until February, 1776, that what may be termed a strictly naval event took form in the sailing of the little fleet in command of Commodore Esek Hopkins, under orders which were sufficiently explicit in primary meaning, viz.: to proceed to Chesapeake Bay and destroy the powerful flotilla which the royal governor of Virginia had gathered together and with which he was harassing the Chesapeake shores. Hopkins was then to proceed to the Carolinas and act in like manner against the enemy’s
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
Silas Deane had been the first American agent abroad, reaching Europe in July, 1776. Franklin and Arthur Lee arrived in France in December of that year, the former in the brig Reprisal , which was the first American man-of-war to visit the eastern hemisphere. Seldom has there been a ship whose safety meant so much; for upon Franklin’s great social and political influence was to depend the aid of France, and upon this aid, American independence. The Reprisal had taken several prizes which she had
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
The new treaty with France was to bring into special prominence one of the most remarkable characters of his time, John Paul Jones. On October 10, 1776, he had been made the eighteenth captain on a list of twenty-four then established. He considered himself ill-treated, and justly so, as having been first on the list of lieutenants he should have been placed higher. His animadversions on the subject, in a letter to Robert Morris, are worth quoting. It showed along with some very just criticisms
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
The activity of American privateers as well as Continental ships in British waters during 1777-1779 was very great, that of the Reprisal , Lexington , Dolphin , and Revenge (the first two, Continental brigs) being particularly notable. France was at this period (1777) made a basis for the fitting out of Continental vessels and privateers, and for the supply of men in a way which would be far from possible to-day. Captain Lambert Wickes of the Continental brig Reprisal and Gustavus Conyngham of t
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
Stretching along the southern shore of the Mediterranean some 1,800 miles, in the latitude, roughly speaking, of Cape Hatteras, are the regions known to our forefathers as Barbary. The westernmost was Morocco, then Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. The last three were nominally appanages of the Turkish Empire. Anciently there had been along these shores a high civilization. Carthage (now Tunis) had disputed with Rome the empire of the Mediterranean; she failed through Rome’s final dominancy at sea, a
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
The depredations of the new French Republic had come to give an impetus to our new navy, and on April 27, 1798, $950,000 was appropriated for its increase, and a regular navy department created. Benjamin Stoddart, of Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, was the first secretary. War against France was formally declared, in so far as authorizing, on July 9, 1798, the capture of French ships, and authorizing the President to issue commissions for privateers. On the same day a marine corps of 88
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
The ending of the war with France was but to find, shortly, another on our hands, for which the former, however, was an admirable preparation at a minimum cost; for it had caused provision of the absolute essentials to meet the new emergency: ships, officers, and men. The lesson to be learned was, however, largely to be disregarded by those now to come into political power. Fenimore Cooper began the seventeenth chapter of his classic history of the navy by some words of political wisdom which ar
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
We now come to the other and vastly more honorable phase of our relations with the Barbary powers and to a series of actions which form one of the most dramatic chapters of American naval history. The Philadelphia and schooner Vixen were the only two vessels blockading Tripoli. It was October, with much rough weather. Carried by the gales well to the eastward of Tripoli, the Philadelphia on October 31st was returning, with the wind now shifted into the east, to her station. Sighting a vessel ins
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
Preble left for home without having come to terms with the Pacha of Tripoli. He was not willing to rise above $500 for each of the captives, and would offer nothing for peace or for tribute. Had he remained, it is very possible that he would have forced a peace without a ransom. Peace, however, was to come under his successor largely through one of the extraordinary adventures of our history. Yusuf Karamanli, the Pacha of Tripoli, was the youngest of three brothers. In 1790 at the age of twenty
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
While we were fighting the Algerines, we were suffering from depredations on our commerce by France and England a hundredfold more serious than all we had undergone from the African corsairs. The story is as shameful to the statesmanship of the period as our stand with regard to Barbary was honorable. Napoleon dominated Europe by land; England by sea. The former’s great aim after subjecting the Continental states, rotten with the decaying feudalism of the past centuries, was to destroy English s
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
There were three important and epoch-making events in the war: the victory of the Constitution over the Guerrière , the battle of Lake Erie, and the battle of Lake Champlain. Each of these was of such immense importance that they overshadow all others, picturesque and striking as others were. The administration had at first only considered the laying up of our ships, but the indignant protests of our naval officers caused another course. The first ships to get to sea were those at New York: the
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
The British force on our own coast was now, in 1813, much increased. Particular attention was paid to the approaches of New York and to the Chesapeake, which latter region was devastated. Destruction was carried on under the general orders of the British Admiralty to “destroy and lay waste all towns and districts of the United States found accessive to the attacks of the British armaments.” Hampton, in Virginia, was thus sacked with a brutality which even the very prejudiced British historian, J
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
Our army efforts on the frontier of Canada had been great failures. In the very beginning of the war General William Hull, Governor of Michigan, had been obliged to surrender his small army at Detroit for the simple reason that he was faced by starvation. He was tried and sentenced to death, but was reprieved by President Madison. But the fault was not wholly Hull’s. It was, along with Hull’s age and inefficiency, the ineptitude of our own administrative and legislative authorities in Washington
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
There was to be one other battle on the lakes, that of Lake Champlain, which was to have momentous consequences quite equal to that of Lake Erie, and place the name of young Thomas MacDonough high on the list of benefactors of his country. MacDonough, on September 28, 1812, had been directed to proceed immediately and take command on the lake, the control having previously been under a young lieutenant, Sydney Smith. There was, however, little to command. The Americans had three armed sloops and
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
The war had no more than begun when the question of peace was being considered. The United States had gone to war for two causes: the “Orders in Council” which bore so heavily upon our shipping; and the impressment of our seamen. The former were revoked on June 23d, five days after the declaration of war by Congress; peace was to be made without even a mention of the latter. Actual steps toward peace were taken through Russia even as early as September, 1812. The whole is a long story, but on No
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
Though thirty-one years was to pass before the United States was again to be at war with a foreign power, and then with Mexico—which had no navy—they were far from being years of idleness or want of deeds accomplished. Our flag was now shown in every sea and with the weight and authority which success always carries. Thus N. P. Willis, who in the early thirties was the guest of wardroom officers of the flagship in the Mediterranean, says in his “Pencilings by the Way”: “From the comparisons I ha
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CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
Though there were many mutterings of the coming tempest in the decade 1850-1860, the navy, whose duty, unaffected by internal politics, lay abroad, went its even tenor. We had come to the verge of war with Spain in 1852 over the case of the Black Warrior . There had been filibustering expeditions and the slave trade to look after; threatenings of difficulties with England; a successful expedition to Paraguay in 1858 and 1859 to demand reparation for the firing upon the United States steamer Wate
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CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
The end of the “Brothers’ War” had made of the United States a nation. Our country took its place in the world, and its fleets again reached into every sea. But the lessons of the navy had not touched the dull minds which in June, 1860, had voted down the supplies of the little navy which was to expand so greatly in the four succeeding years. To such, the whole work of defeating the Confederacy appeared to be the more spectacular work of the army. The constriction of the blockade was not of the
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CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
Naval action now shifts almost entirely to the Caribbean. Until in the last days of the war there was to be in the Pacific no further special naval movement beyond the seizure of Guam by the Charleston on June 11th and the sending to Manila the monitors Monterey and Monadnock to reinforce Dewey. The first of the army sailed from San Francisco on May 28th. The departure of Cervera from the Cape Verdes caused Admiral Sampson to move from Havana east 970 miles to San Juan, Puerto Rico, with the exp
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CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
The losses of the navy in the war with Spain were extraordinarily small. There were but sixteen killed and sixty-eight wounded, of whom two died later. But even more remarkable, and it reflects the highest praise upon the service, was the state of health of the 26,102 men during this war of 114 days (April 21st to August 12th, inclusive). There were but fifty-six deaths in this period from disease, or at the rate of 6.85 per thousand a year. There were but thirteen cases of typhoid fever, and no
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A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY
A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY
It would take a great many pages to give a complete bibliography of the subject of the American navy. I must content myself with mentioning only a few of the more prominent works. There were two navies: that of the Revolution, which disappeared wholly in 1785; and that of to-day, which had its origin in 1794. The two most complete works regarding the former are those of Gardner W. Allen, “A Naval History of the Revolution,” 2 vols., Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, and Oscar
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