> Enjoy....again, this is with Frank's permisson, finis....malinda
>
> Frank Pierce Young wrote:
>
> > AMERICAN PRIVATEERS IN THE WAR OF 1812 (2 of 2)
> >
> > At first, the privateers worked up and down the North American coast and
> > around the West Indies. But as the RN brought in more and more warships and
> > fewer and fewer British merchantmen remained to be taken, they moved east --
> > to Britain's own home waters. In the spring of 1813, YANKEE ran down the
> > Irish coast and took 7 vessels; SCOURGE and RATTLESNAKE ruined Baltic
> > commerce for the entire spring and summer season, the latter taking 18 prizes
> > worth $1 million plus, while the former stayed on for the year and took ten
> > Canadian merchantmen while en route home, for a total of 27 captures.
> > ANACONDA worked the Capa Verde islands and took HM packet EXPRESS and $80,000
> > in specie; AMERICA took six merchants off Land's End; LION worked the Bay of
> > Biscay and went home with $400,000 in auction money. And so forth, and by now
> > the latest commission number was well over 318. PRINCE DE NEUFCHATEL, which
> > on one cruise alone brought in nearly $1 million in value, was chased 17
> > times by British warships and never caught, and those few privateers that
> > were, fell to mishap -- grounding, wreck, accident, storm. The GOVERNOR
> > TOMPKINS sailed right into a protected convoy, and took three. KEMP sighted
> > an escorted convoy of seven East Indiamen, snookered the protecting frigate
> > into a fruitless chase into dark squalls, circled back, and took five
> > Indiamen before departing with her prizes. Admiral Warren got still more
> > ships for blockade, now upward of 200 overall.
> >
> > It did no good.  In 1814, privateers took mail packets in the Irish Sea on a
> > dismally regular basis. They sailed impudently into the Thames Estuary. They
> > scooted by anchored warships almost as an amusement. Dozens were lost, but
> > scores replaced them. One small Massachusetts inlet put out three privateers,
> > fully armed and manned, in 30 days. One British skipper reported sighting ten
> > in his short trip between Britain and Spain. COMET worked the South Atlantic,
> > took some treasure ships, and went home with $1.5 million in cash. MAMMOTH
> > took 18 prizes in 17 days. HARPY was out three months, and took a prize
> > daily. CHASSEUR, a two-masted topsail schooner -- a fairly typical rig --
> > under "Wild Tom" Boyle, blockaded St. Vincent so tightly that its merchants
> > appealed to Admiralty to relieve them lest they be ruined; when a frigate
> > finally appeared, Boyle vanished, only to reappear in the English Channel and
> > take 20 merchantmen. One he sent back into London with a message to Lloyd's,
> > proclaming "all the ports, harbours, bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, outlets,
> > islands and seacoast of the United Kindom of Great Britain and Ireland in a
> > state of strict and rigorous blockade."  Insurance, already skyrocketed in
> > cost, in many cases went altogether unavailable. Insurors of London, Bristol,
> > Liverpool and Glasgow met four times. Liverpool petitioned the Prince Regent
> > to stop the war. Collectively the insurors announced they would accept no
> > more risks. Glasgow declared that ".. the number of American privateers with
> > which our channels are infested, the audacity with which they have approached
> > our coasts, have proved ruinous to our commerce, humbling to our pride and
> > discreditable to the British navy; that 800 vessels have been taken by that
> > Power, whose maritime strength we have impolitically held in contempt, and
> > that there is reason to anticipate still more serious suffering."
> >
> > Well... yes. RAMBLER had gone to the Far East and was auctioning prizes in
> > Canton and Portugese Macao; JACOB JONES took an Indiaman with 20,000 pounds
> > worth of gold dust and opium aboard; LEO took a transport and uniforms for
> > the Duke of Wellington's army; a privateer took five merchantmen off the
> > Nore; English markets ran short of fish, a food staple, because so few
> > trawlers were left; and finally the Secretary of Admiralty issued a notice to
> > mariners that nobody should even attempt such a short and simple coastal
> > voyage as from Bristol to Portsmouth without an armed escort. The West Indies
> > merchants, who had aggravated the whole war by insisting on enforcement of
> > the Rule of 1756, a trade-protective mercantile act, decided that competition
> > from Americans was lots cheaper than the protection of no trade at all.
> > Formal communications began to go back and forth between the U.S. and Britain
> > about the war nobody really wanted.
> >
> > Parliament went into session on 8 November of 1814, its main discussion the
> > Prince Regent's address about pending negotiations at Ghent, in which he
> > noted war had led to unavoidly large arrears, and that the war still
> > subsisting with the United States rendered the continuance of great exertions
> > indispensable. Parliament was deep in second thoughts about the American war.
> > This led to December's Treaty of Ghent, in which everything went basically
> > back to the status quo ante albeit with more careful details, and impressment
> > -- the oft-cited causus belli for the U.S. --  was never mentioned at all.
> >
> > Alfred Thayer Mahan said that American commerce, about $7 million in its last
> > normal year of 1811, was destroyed without replacement. Not so. The commerce
> > was lost, but not its replacement. Few records attesting to their takings and
> > auctions have survived, but those which did show cited privateers bringing in
> > a net balance of $9,507,000 -- one historian estimating this as "perhaps" a
> > third of the whole. Some thumbnail figuring: on peacetime business, we are
> > now looking at a crudely estimated $3.5 million for the rest of 1812, another
> > $7 million each for 1813 and 1814; total, $17.5 million in "lost commerce."
> > If the estimated third of $9,507,000 is nearly correct for privateering input
> > meanwhile, it becomes $28,521,000. Thanks to privateering, the War of 1812
> > turned a sizeable American profit.
> >
> > Whether, as has been averred, the purported notion that American privateers
> > won the war is a "myth" may be argueable. Careful reflection suggests nobody
> > really won. But how they forced the issue is not. The war came down to not
> > how much damage Britain could do to the United States, but the other way
> > 'round, and Britain simply could not afford it. And privateers were the money
> > drainpipe.
> >
> >    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> > Readers: Apart from style there is little original with me in any of the
> > above; I have cribbed liberally from those who know lots more than I do.
> > References have included THE NAVY, A HISTORY, by Fletcher Pratt, 1941
> > edition; THE NAVAL WAR OF 1812, A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY, edited by Wm. S.
> > Dudley, 1985; CANADA, THE STORY OF THE DOMINION, by J. Castell Hopkins,
> > F.S.S., 1901; and THE HISTORY OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE III (third of three
> > volumes), by Robert Bissett, LL.D., 1828. << N.B. - this latter volume is the
> > last of a History of England in a set of nine; prior trios were written by
> > Hume and Smollett. >>
> >
> > -- FRANK PIERCE YOUNG
> >    Annapolis, MD                   [log in to unmask]

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