Commodore James Barron was 39 when, in 1807, he received command of the U. S. Naval Forces in the Mediterranean and as his flagship the handy, Norfolk-built, 36-gun frigate Chesapeake.
Though he could draw deeply on the qualities of tenacity and the skill of his profession, James Barron was less resourceful in his liaisons with fellow officers. For one thing, he lacked that impulsive audacity that most of his contemporaries considered the only true valor and, unlike them, he professed no delight at all in the prospect of physical combat. He was by nature a reflective man, of inventive bent, and it seemed to many that he was not cut out for the Navy. He joined it certainly not from a burning ambition for glory, but perhaps because it was traditionally expected of a Barron; his father—for whom he was named—had been a prosperous shipmaster at 30 and Commander-in-Chief of the Virginia State Navy of the Revolution.
James Barron’s reputation for pacifism had gathered momentum in the Mediterranean during the war with Tripoli; thus, he came aboard the frigate Chesapeake with his courage already suspect.
Two years earlier, in 1805, he had incurred the wrath of the redoubtable Captain John Rodgers. At that time, James was serving as captain of the Essex in the squadron commanded by his elder brother, Commodore Samuel Barron, who flew his broad pennant on the President. Samuel, however, lay confined to his sick bed, suffering from a strange, lingering fever; nevertheless, he continued to direct operations from Malta where the headquarters of the squadron was based. Rodgers, as next senior officer, was in command of the blockading force off Tripoli. Although more aggressive operations were planned for the summer, Rodgers was in a frenzy to press the attack against the city. He accused James of urging Samuel to retain command “while assuring me with the gravity of a Judas that he was prevailing upon him to resign.”
Meanwhile, Colonel Tobias Lear, U. S. Consul General at Algiers, had been commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to negotiate a treaty of peace. In a letter dated 18 May, Samuel Barron advised Lear that, in his opinion, the present was a moment highly favorable for opening peace negotiations. Lear had reached the same conclusion, and expressed his determination to meet the overtures lately made by the reigning Pasha.
Samuel then resigned his command in a letter to Rodgers on 22 May, and instructed him to assist Lear in formulating a treaty with Tripoli. Rodgers, now a commodore, issued a terse statement from his cabin in the Constitution that Samuel Barron’s appeasement of the Barbary Powers “should forever damn his reputation.” Since Samuel was ill and incapable of defending his reputation, James felt bound to notify Rodgers that in due time he would be called to account; whereupon Rodgers replied with a taunt of cowardice.
In addition, Samuel wrote Rodgers that in resigning his command, he nevertheless reserved the right to resume it in case his health was restored and the war lasted longer than he expected. Obviously, he hoped to recover soon and had no intention of leaving the station immediately. The peace treaty was duly signed on 3 June and not until 13 July did James speed home with his ailing brother.
When at last Rodgers followed the Barrons home it was he who flung the challenge at an apparently spiritless James, who now claimed that his own ill-health and the Department’s orders would not permit a meeting. More than one officer found amusement in the spectacle of the pair reconnoitering each other, “unable to find a battleground.” Friends at length arranged a bloodless settlement which, although it required Rodgers to withdraw his taunt of cowardice as an irritation of the moment, did nothing to lessen his repugnance toward the younger Barron.
Stephen Decatur had also become disenchanted with his old friend and mentor. He made it plain to both brothers that he considered James’s part in the Rodgers affair highly reprehensible.
If Barron experienced any satisfaction from his new command in the Chesapeake, it must have been abruptly displaced by apprehension when he learned the identity of his officers.
Master-Commandant Charles Gordon was a foppish young man who strove for elegance in wit as he did in dress. He had served under Barron in the Mediterranean and the commodore considered him “an officer too much addicted to pleasure and parade to bend his mind to business.” When Barron was informed of Gordon’s assignment to the Chesapeake, he requested relief from command; Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith refused.
But Charles Gordon had no need of his commodore’s approbation. His mother had been born a Nicholson of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and his uncles Samuel, James, and John, were all captains in the Continental Navy. Another uncle, Joseph Hopper Nicholson, was a former leader of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. His cousin Hannah had married Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, the man whose fine hand had rendered Robert Smith’s Navy Department nearly impotent, through his and the Jefferson administration’s ideas for economizing.
As if the potential incompetence of his flag- captain was not enough to unsettle the commodore, the assignment of William Henry Allen as a ship’s lieutenant must have seemed the nadir of his fortunes, for Allen was an intimate of John Rodgers, and he came aboard the Chesapeake already poisoned against his commanding officer “with all the prejudice his friend Rodgers could inculcate.” The other officers were all to a greater or lesser degree bosom companions of Lieutenant Allen or admirers of Rodgers, and at least one of them had frequently reported to Rodgers on the state of Barron’s “health” during their late feud.
Meanwhile, at Washington, a diplomatic flurry set the final backdrop for the bizarre incident which would confirm the whispered accusations of cowardice which swirled about the commodore. When the British complained that four deserters from His Majesty’s frigate Melampus had been recruited for the Chesapeake, the commodore investigated and apparently satisfied both Secretaries Smith and James Madison and the British Consul John Hamilton that three of the men had indeed been signed on the American vessel but that they were in fact American citizens earlier pressed into British service; the fourth remained unaccounted for. But the case of a fifth man from the sloop Halifax was brought neither to the government’s nor Barron’s attention, the oversight no doubt that of John Hamilton, who failed to include in his note the name of the sailmaker. Now Jenkin Ratford, alias “John Wilson,” a true if disloyal Englishman, labored on board the Chesapeake forgotten by all but a British squadron hovering off the Virginia Gapes.
Charles Gordon brought the frigate down the Potomac to Hampton Roads where she would take on her commodore, the last of her crew, guns, and shot. In passing Mount Vernon, where every armed national vessel traditionally fired a salute to the memory of the late George Washington, Gordon found his sponges and cartridges were too large for the guns. This was attributed to the inefficiency of the Washington Navy Yard. Proceeding down river, the frigate’s passage was studded with fatal accidents, desertions, and attempted mutiny.
When at last on 22 June, the Chesapeake pointed her bowsprit toward the Atlantic and got underway for the Mediterranean, her decks were a plateau of disorder, cluttered with baggage, canvas, cordage, empty water casks, and the armorer’s forge and bellows. She carried 339 men and boys, several dependent passengers, and a Marine complement of 52. The British squadron was clearly visible off Cape Henry Light. It had been there since the previous winter when it took up a blockade of two French vessels. When HMS Leopard, a 50-gun frigate, backed south and preceded the Chesapeake to sea, her maneuvers failed to arouse the commodore’s suspicion. At half past three, the Leopard rounded up on the Chesapeake's windward quarter and advanced to within 60 yards when her captain hailed; he bore dispatches for the American commodore, he said.
Minutes later, a British lieutenant named Meade climbed from a gig to the frigate’s spar deck and was escorted below to the commodore’s great cabin. The dispatch he brought bore the signature of Admiral George Cranfield Berkeley, Commander-in-Chief, the Royal Navy on the North American Station. It listed six British ships from which seamen had purportedly deserted to the Chesapeake, and required his captains to search the American vessel should they encounter her. Captain Salisbury Pryce Humphreys of the Leopard in his covering note conveyed his hopes that an adjustment could be reached without disturbing “the harmony subsisting between the two countries.”
Commodore Barron explained to the lieutenant that the only deserters he was acquainted with were those from the Melampus and that that matter had been recently adjusted in Washington. Since the Melampus did not appear on the admiral’s list, he could only presume that the British naval authorities, too, were satisfied with the results of his investigation. But what Barron did not know was that “John Wilson” of the Halifax (which ship was listed) lurked somewhere below decks, and that Captain Humphreys was very much aware of his presence.
After discussing the dispatch with a passenger and old friend, Doctor John Bullus, the commodore drafted a reply. “I am . . . instructed,” he closed, “never to permit the crew of any ship that I command, to be mustered by any other than their own officers; it is my disposition to preserve harmony; and I hope this answer to your dispatch will prove satisfactory.” Barron had, in fact, received a specific reminder from Secretary Smith before sailing: America was a peaceful nation and “Our interests as well as good faith requires that we should cautiously avoid whatever may have a tendency to bring us into collision with any other power.”
It was only after the lieutenant returned to his gig that Barron discovered the Leopard was cleared for action, gunports triced up, tompions removed, and Marines at station. He told Gordon to get the men to quarters quietly without benefit of the drum. Boys scurried below to the magazine for powder horns and matches; men were put to clearing the gun and spar decks. But it was too late.
Gazing toward the American frigate, Captain Humphreys called out something about being compelled to comply with orders. Commodore Barron, delaying for precious minutes, replied that he could not hear.
The first ball flew athwart the Chesapeake's bow, soon followed by another. Then broadside after broadside was hurled into the frigate. Men were drenched in the blood of their companions as they cringed behind the silent guns. Only seven powder horns out of 54 on board were filled; the slow matches were not primed; even the logger- heads were cold. Commodore Barron could only stand by and watch his ship beaten into splinters while his own batteries stayed mute. Seven times wounded himself, he could not comprehend the inactivity of his officers. Captain Hall later testified that Barron, observing some of the rigging shot away, cried, “For God’s sake, gentlemen. Will nobody do his duty? Look at those braces, and that rigging. Why are not stoppers put upon them?” In the confusion, Barron’s latent distrust of his officers must have been confirmed by what he considered disloyalty and dereliction of duty.
Some minutes later, Barron requested Hall to “ ... go down to the gun deck and ask them for God’s sake to fire one gun for the honour of the flag. I mean to strike.” Using a hot coal from the galley, a lone gun was fired by Lieutenant Allen at the very moment when the commodore ordered the colors struck. The British boarded and took off not only “John Wilson” (found lurking in the coal hole), but the three Melampus men as well. Captain Humphreys deplored the necessity of the measures he had been forced to employ and refused Barron’s invitation to accept the Chesapeake as a prize. Their governments were, after all, at peace.
The only alternative was to return to port. The commodore called a council of his officers to solicit their views of the afternoon’s events.
At first no one spoke. Then Gordon broke the silence: although it was true that further bloodshed had been avoided by striking the colors, “a few broadsides would have been more to our credit.” Lieutenant Montgomery Crane said, “It had been better if the Chesapeake were blown from under us than be thus dishonored.” Lieutenant Allen went further. He could scarcely refrain from cursing the commodore. “We have disgraced ourselves,” he said. Before any of the others could venture an opinion, Barron said he had heard enough and dismissed them.
The frigate crept back to port, her sails riddled and patched, colors missing, carrying three dead (one more would die) and 20 wounded.
The commodore’s hastily written report of the encounter was borne to Secretary Smith by Captain Gordon “in order that you may have an opportunity of getting such information as you may wish.” It breathed no trace of dissatisfaction with the conduct of his officers, though by now he was convinced of their dereliction. Perhaps he believed they would close ranks with him in the face of the official inquiry and public censure that was certain to engulf them all.
But the officers of the Chesapeake were less charitable than their commander. They were motivated by more personal considerations; prompt disavowal of Barron’s surrender might relieve them of complicity. So, with the commodore’s dispatch went another signed by the lieutenants and the sailing master demanding Barron’s arrest on two charges: that on the probability of an engagement he had neglected to clear his ship for action; and that he had failed to do his utmost “to take or destroy a vessel which we conceive it his duty to have done.” In reply to their petition, Secretary Smith complimented them on their action and promised it would be properly attended to.
Barron’s prospects, never good, steadily worsened. While the nation clamored for war with England, he was relieved of command and the multiple wounds he had suffered kept him at home. He might have taken temporary comfort from the appointment of Commodore Edward Preble as President of the Court of Inquiry assembled to probe the encounter, but he was plunged into despair when Preble died in August and the post went to Commodore Alexander Murray, a cousin of Gordon, and an officer whom Barron once had privately criticized for his sloppy fitting out of the captured Insurgente. It had been at a time when confidences were brittle; word had eventually reached Murray, and Barron gained another foe.
The commodore’s glimmering hope for an unbiased hearing vanished when Commodore John Rodgers was installed as President of the ensuing Court Martial. Young Stephen Decatur made manifest his own prejudice toward Barron when he was appointed to sit on the court. “It is probable that I am prejudiced against Commodore Barron,” he wrote Secretary Smith. “Even prior to the attack my opinion of him as a soldier was not favorable.” The Secretary denied his request for relief as he did several others, for there were already too few captains available to serve. Barron wanted to protest Decatur’s inclusion but was dissuaded by his attorney. The Judge Advocate for both the Court of Inquiry and the Court Martial was Littleton Waller Tazewell, a staunch friend of the Nicholsons and also of Thomas Jefferson.
Barron, Gordon, Marine Captain John Hall, and Gunner William Hook were all to be tried separately for various offenses. It was made clear from the outset that Gordon was under no obligation to answer any questions put to him at the Barron trial if his replies would prejudice his own case that was to follow. He exercised this privilege frequently, so frequently in fact that Commodore Barron remarked in his defense plea, “A stronger motive operates upon him; the web of his destiny is interwoven with mine; my condemnation is the pledge of his acquittal; . . . To the prosecution his inmost soul is cheerfully unfolded; to me, he is cold as death; and silent as the tomb.” Why? Because if Barron were to be acquitted of his charges, the guilt must fall on the shoulders of Charles Gordon.
From the wording of Admiral Berkeley’s dispatch, the court determined that Barron should have expected an encounter; and his hastily worded report to the Secretary confirmed their opinion. Unfortunately, the only person who could have testified as to Barron’s exact impressions upon receiving the dispatch was Dr. Bullus, who begged to be excused from the trial, and was not pressed to appear.
The commodore was finally acquitted of all but one charge: “For neglecting on the probability of an engagement to clear his ship for action.” He was guilty of failing to sniff hostile intent and for this error in judgment was suspended from active service for five years, that is, until 8 February 1813.
The court next turned to Charles Gordon. He pleaded his own case without benefit of legal counsel. He did not deny that the general state of the vessel had been his responsibility. Placing himself at the mercy of his peers, he pointed out, however, that “If the guns were not securely fitted in their carriages, they certainly did not jump out that day. If the sponges and wads were not of the proper sizes, neither sponge nor wad was that day used. If the powder horns were not all filled, those which were filled were not used that day. If the matches were not primed, no effort was made to light them on that day. . . . if I have been guilty of omissions, therefore, this court will do me the justice to say that the disastrous results did not proceed from them. That they were mere neglects of duty, from which no evil consequence has been felt. ... I feel confident that you will not say I have ever omitted anything which I ought to have done. ...”
Barron’s defense attempted to prove that he was misled on the state of the ship and introduced evidence in the form of a letter addressed to him by Captain Gordon before the ship sailed: “All station bills are completed. The guns are all charged and if possible we have an exercise this evening.” Gordon refused to acknowledge that he had written the letter until it was repeatedly dangled under his nose. Nevertheless, the court remained prejudiced in favor of Gordon.
Charles Gordon had been derelict in his duty, and the court found him guilty as charged. Since “no evil” was said to have resulted from the neglects of which he stood accused, however, he was entitled to the most generous treatment. Never was the confidence of an accused in his judges more bountifully rewarded. He was sentenced to be privately reprimanded by the Secretary of the Navy, and it was added that since his offense had been “a very slight one,” if a more lenient penalty had been available, the court would not have hesitated to impose it. Captain Hall of the Marines also received a verdict and sentence identical with those of Gordon. Gunner Hook was adjudged guilty of negligence in performing his duty and was dismissed from the service.
One does not need to dispute the judgment or the penalty in Barron’s case in order to question whether Charles Gordon was so much less reprehensible that the court would, after finding him guilty of neglect of duty, seek the softest penalty it could find, and even announce that it had done so, as if in public apology for having heard his case at all.
How could the court so easily have condoned Gordon’s neglect of a bounden duty to have his ship ready for instant engagement at all times, when it had just condemned Barron for failing to clear the same unprepared ship for action in the space of less than an hour?
The reason given is that “no evil” resulted from Gordon’s omissions. But had the frigate been properly prepared for sea, 20 minutes would have sufficed to clear her decks and get her guns firing, according to Lieutenant Allen’s testimony. And Barron had taken half an hour to answer Captain Humphreys’ dispatch. The evil which certainly did result from Gordon’s omissions was as much due to Gordon’s neglect as to Barron’s failure to detect promptly hostile intent.
The commodore went to his grave convinced that “There was an influence in the cabinet of that day which protected Captain Gordon.” In view of Gordon’s highly placed relatives, it would be difficult not to agree with Barron.
In later years, when the commodore was pressing for re-employment after his term of suspension, the Chesapeake’s Marine Captain John Hall unburdened his conscience by disclosing to Barron that the Judge Advocate had written both his own and Gordon’s defenses. Indeed, stories were circulated around Norfolk that Charles Gordon himself had often been heard to boast of Tazewell’s uncommon favor.
After the trial, Barron entered the merchant service and remained abroad until 1818, when he returned to the United States and again sought service in the Navy. The majority of naval officers opposed his readmission, most particularly Decatur, who was then on the Board of Naval Commissioners. Barron felt that his court-martial sentence had been “cruel and unmerited” and that the principal officers, by refusing him service, were adding injuries to what they had already done to him in the past. Always a jealous man, he brooded on his wrongs and became extremely touchy.
In reply to a real or fancied insult by Decatur, Barron commenced a correspondence that was exasperating and inflammatory on both sides. It eventually led him to challenge Decatur to a duel, which, according to the customs of the day, was the only way for men of honor to settle a dispute. Though in this case, Barron was considered the aggressor, Decatur’s conduct was not above reproach.
On 22 March 1820, the duel took place at Bladensburg. Decatur was mortally wounded and died 12 hours later at his home. Barron was wounded in the thigh, but soon recovered. Shortly afterward, he was restored to active duty, but in spite of all his requests, he never commanded a ship or went to sea again. He served as commandant of the Norfolk and Philadelphia navy yards, and as governor of the naval asylum at Philadelphia; and died in 1851 at the venerable age of 83, the Navy’s senior officer.
Yet, even today, public sentiment and the official record are in want of correction. The Index for General Courts Martial and Courts of Inquiry, 1799-1861, declares Barron’s culpability as “Neglect of duty, and failing to encourage his men on board the Frigate Chesapeake— Confirmed: Thos. Jefferson.”