> Enjoy....again, this is with Frank's permisson....malinda
>
> Frank Pierce Young wrote:
>
> > American Privateers in the War of 1812  (1 of 2)
> >
> > When on 18 June 1812 the U.S. Congress declared war upon the United Kingdom
> > of Great Britain & Ireland, etc., a weak new nation grabbed the Lion by its
> > tail. The U.S. War Department was an incompetent political mess and its
> > little army of 6,700 little better, when Great Britain could move thousands
> > of crack troops as it pleased. (And it did; though logistically limited
> > essentially to raid-and-run, the bumblefooted U.S. Army did not exactly cover
> > itself with laurels during the war.) The Navy Department was a very different
> > matter -- but its forces very small. At war's outbreak, the USN had nine
> > frigates and eight smaller vessels on hand; the Royal Navy had 1,048 vessels
> > of all types. Very poor odds.
> >
> > Worse: though years-long RN stopping of American merchantmen for real or
> > alleged attempts to get cargoes into Napoleonic France and French-controlled
> > areas, and RN impressment (even from a warship) of real or alleged British
> > seamen from them infuriated Americans and became political mantras -- "Free
> > Trade & Sailors Rights" came to appear even on flags -- the nation was
> > nonetheless divided. The small but busy New England states, whose very
> > considerable shipping earlier got shut down by a Presidential embargo, and
> > then later bear by far the bulk of the risks, confiscations, manpower takings
> > and trade losses from RN searches and seizures, not to mention the dark value
> > of insults, were not in favour of war with Britain. The push for that came
> > from the mid-Atlantic states and those of the south.
> >
> > All logic made war foolish. In fact, had a telephone existed at the time, war
> > might not have occurred at all. On 16 June,  Mr. Brougham, MP moved in
> > Parliament for an address to the Prince Regent, beseeching him to recall or
> > suspend all related Orders and adopt such measures as might conciliate
> > neutral Powers without sacrificing the dignities of the Crown, withdrawn when
> > Lord Castlereagh announced that the government was about to make just such a
> > conciliatory move directly to America. It was too late. In the U.S., the
> > declaration of war two days later doused New England's reluctance, and
> > sparked a remarkable patriotic upsurge everywhere.
> >
> > A contemporary historian of English history notes that "Compared to the war
> > in the peninsula [Spain and Portugal], the war with the United States was
> > regarded by the people of England as an affair of inferior importance [though
> > Americans] obtained some successes at sea ..." Indeed. What the tiny U.S.
> > Navy managed to do against the vaunted RN in the first few months of the war,
> > before it was mostly blockaded, is well known; suffice that it stunned the
> > Royal Navy and utterly shocked Parliament. The nose-bloodied RN got sailing
> > orders in heaps: shut down all American ports; blockade their merchantmen,
> > kill their trade, lock up those infernal Yankee warships. But more was
> > already going on in American ports, ad hoc, driven by that most sparkly of
> > inducements  -- the gleaming prospect of Big Money, there for the easy
> > taking.
> >
> > When news of war came, the merchants of Salem, Massachusetts, promptly began
> > financing their own little private warships. On 27 July their letter to the
> > Secretary of the Navy advised that eight were armed and crewed within ten
> > days of the war news, three more in a "state of forwardness, one of which
> > will sail this day, and a number of others preparing. The number of prizes
> > already sent in amount to sixteen sail, and a number more are known to be
> > captured." Then they asked for two gunboats for harbour protection. More of
> > the same was going on in Baltimore and Norfolk, where fitting out privateers
> > became an overnight fury of activity, the latter sending out its first on 20
> > July, with crowds cheering from shore.
> >
> > >From war's outbreak through the rest of 1812, British merchantmen were taken
> > by the score, nay the hundred, by Americans; the London TIMES asking, "Good
> > God! Can such things be?", and the weekly PILOT stating that Lloyd's List had
> > posted notices of "...upward of five hundred British vessels captured in
> > seven months ... Five hundred merchantmen and three frigates! Can these
> > statements be true? Anyone who had predicted such a result of an American war
> > this time last year would have been treated as a madman or a traitor ..."
> >
> > Over that period, U.S. Navy warships ESSEX took 11 merchantmen, CONSTITUTION
> > nine, PRESIDENT seven, and little ARGUS six; some others took fewer. Given
> > the enormous size of the British merchant marine, these naval captures were
> > picayune. The too-real floating fright was American privateers.
> >
> > Within weeks they were a veritable infestation, and would become more so. A
> > coterie of merchants of the West Indies petitioned Parliament that they had
> > already lost "... 200 sail of British merchantmen and three or four packets
> > .. .so daring as to cut vessels out of harbours, though protected by
> > batteries, and to land to carry off cattle. Jamaica is blockaded by
> > privateers ..."  In Parliament during debate on this problem, Lord Lansdowne
> > said, "I am almost ashamed to mention .. what had been the services of our
> > own navy..."
> >
> > The year 1813 saw full British port blockade in force, and American land
> > affairs at best in doldrums. Not so at sea. Back on 5 October of '12 British
> > Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren wrote the Secretary of Admiralty from Halifax
> > about "..the demand of Ships for Convoys and the protection of Commerce, the
> > State of War which seems to assume a new as well as more active and
> > inveterate aspect than heretofore ... the Enemy's Cruizers being very active
> > and perservering which by the accompany Copy of a Commission found on the
> > Prize Master of a ship recaptured by the SAN DOMINGO will be seen already to
> > amount to three hundred and eighteen ... the necessity of re-inforcing the
> > Squadron on this Coast and in the West Indies, to enable me to meet the
> > exertions of the Enemy, who seem determined to persevere in the annoyance and
> > destruction of the Commerce of Great Britain and these Provinces. I have the
> > honour to be, Sir, &c ..."
> >
> > Privateer licence no. 318, and this capture was almost an anomaly. Warren
> > sailed south to the Indies to check out the merchants' stories, and saw
> > privateers daily in the distance all the way down. Meanwhile, Warren wrote,
> > "The Swarms of Privateers and the Crews of several having landed at points on
> > the coast of Nova Scotia and in the Leeward Islands, and cut out of the
> > harbours some Vessels, render it too necessary immediately to send out a
> > strong addition of ships or the Trade must inevitably Suffer, if not be,
> > utterly ruined and destroyed."
> >
> > He already had 100 warships on blockade and chase duty, and the first part
> > was solid. Chasing was the problem. It took fairly large vessels to remain on
> > station for lengths of time -- that meant frigates, which as the late Lord
> > Nelson had glumly noted were always in short supply. And while frigates' guns
> > could overawe fat merchantmen and keep in warships trying to get out, doing
> > so required watchfulness around the clock, and people got weary, and darkness
> > came daily, and weather could bring rain or fog -- and in the relative blink
> > of a few eyes, another fast privateer, and often two or three, were out and
> > gone. And if the blockader tried going after them, they would split up and
> > force choices; meantime, the moment any blockading warship moved away, still
> > more privateers sleeked out.  As time went on, they tended to work in pairs.
> >
> > (End pt. 1 of 2)

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