On 1 May 1814, the newly commissioned sloop-of-war Wasp, with 22 guns and 175 crewmen, evaded British blockading frigates and sailed east from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to attack the Achilles’ heel of the British Empire. She was ordered to do what the U.S. brig of war Argus had done the previous year: scuttle or bum English merchant ships in the English Channel, where the convoy system was ineffective.
In the first year of the War of 1812, the United States stunned England with a series of naval victories, sailing what the London Times had dismissed as “a few fir-built ships, manned by a handful of bastards and outlaws.”1 But two years later, proud U.S. frigates were virtually neutralized—with the Chesapeake and the Essex captured and the other ships mostly bottled up by powerful British squadrons. Whereas England boasted more than 1,000 warships, the entire U.S. Navy comprised only 23 ships. It was so small, according to John Adams, that “Gulliver might bury it in the deep by making water on it.”2
England had just defeated Napoleon, but the small Yankee ships continued their torment. Commerce raiders—fast, long-distance cruisers—could slip through the blockade. They were flush-decked, sharp, and heavily sparred, with large crews, weatherly enough to run down merchantmen or run away from superior forces. The vast majority of U.S. ships were privateers, such as the Baltimore clippers, but a few were U.S. Navy raiders, such as the sloop they called the Wasp.
The saga of the Wasp began with her predecessor of the same name. The earlier, somewhat smaller version, also ship-rigged and mounting 18 32-pound carronades, fought the British 18-gun brig Frolic in October 1812. The latter was escorting a convoy of 14 merchantmen from the West Indies to England.
The carronade was by this time the standard broadside weapon on smaller ships for both navies. A 32-pound carronade threw a round shot—an iron cannon ball—weighing 32 pounds. Usually mounted on a slide on a wheeled carriage, carronades were much lighter, easier, and faster to fire than long guns. Useless at long range, these stubby smashers were devastating at 100 yards—especially in Yankee hands.
After 45 minutes, the Wasp had inflicted such terrible carnage that when Americans boarded the Frolic, they met no resistance; virtually all survivors had fled below. Shortly after the surrender, both of the Frolic’s masts fell by the board. The British slaughter, however, had not been in vain. That same day, the British 74-gun Poictiers recaptured the Frolic and captured the Wasp, which was too damaged aloft to escape. Of course, the enemy convoy got away. The U.S. ship had been hunting alone.
In February 1813, the 18-gun sloop-of-war Hornet captured the English brig Peacock. The crew of the shattered British ship surrendered in 15 minutes—again with a heavy loss of life—before the Peacock sank with some members of both crews still on board.
It was unfortunate, however, that many U.S. naval officers routinely disobeyed strategic orders and pursued single-ship combat, because the less glorious commerce raiders were threatening England. During the summer of 1813, the dangerous and elusive Argus sailed into the English Channel and destroyed 21 merchant prizes. But when the Argus chose to fight the British 18-gun brig Pelican in August, she lost, thus ending the career of one of the best sea raiders of the war—and the life of her commander, William Allen.
In early 1814, William Jones, Secretary of the Navy, reported to President James Madison and the Congress that “six large sloops-of-war have been built, equipped, and manned in our seaports. . .within the preceding eight months. . . .”3 Only three of these sloops got to sea during the war. William Doughty (who had worked with Joshua Humphreys and Josiah Fox, designers of the first six U.S. frigates) designed the new Wasp, Frolic, and Peacock to be sister ships: each 117 feet, 11 inches between perpendiculars; with a 31-foot, 6-inch molded beam; a 14-foot, 6-inch depth of hold; and a weight of 504 tons.4 They cost less than $80,000 each.5 Three new 44-gun frigates and three 74-gun ships of the line were also under construction, but none got to sea during the war. The money and time could have been used to build at least a dozen new sloops of war.6
Cross and Merrill, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, built the new Wasp of the finest live oak, white oak, and yellow pine; she was a “super sloop,” just as the Constitution was a “super frigate.”7 She carried 20 32-pound carronades and two 12-pounder long guns (two more 32-pounders than her predecessor).
Johnston Blakely had taken command of her in August 1813, while she was under construction. Two weeks later, his previous ship, the 16-gun brig Enterprise, captured the British 14-gun brig Boxer. Both commanders were killed in the battle. Months later, Blakely wrote:
I shall ever view as one of the most unfortunate events of my life having quitted the Enterprise at the moment I did. . . . Had I remained in her a fortnight longer, my name might have been classed with those who stand so high. . . . The Peacock has ere this spread her plumage to the winds, and the Frolic will soon take her revels on the ocean, but the Wasp will, I fear, remain for some time a dull, harmless drone in the waters of her country. ... 8
Blakely, 32 years old, had served in the Navy for 13 years. One of “Preble’s Boys,” he had watched Master Commandants Jacob Jones, James Lawrence, and Oliver Hazard Perry, as well as Captains Isaac Hull, Stephen Decatur, Jr., and David Porter—and even his own first lieutenant, William Burrows (in the Enterprise)—win the glory that he craved.
The new Frolic captured only two prizes before being captured in turn by a British frigate and schooner in April 1814. In contrast, the Peacock captured yet another 18-gun British warship that month, HBM brig Epervier—with $118,000 in specie on board—escorting a small convoy of merchantmen from Bermuda. Once again, the British convoy escaped, but on her second cruise in 1814, the Peacock bagged 14 prizes.
On 2 June, the new Wasp stung for the first time, capturing the 207-ton Liverpool bark Neptune, bound from Cork to Halifax with sundries. On the 13th she caught a brig, on the 18th another brig, and on the 23rd the galliott Henrietta, which she sent in with prisoners. On 26 June, the Wasp took the 325-ton ship Orange Boven—with 9 cannon, 17 crewmen, and a cargo of sugar and coffee— bound from Bermuda to London. The Orange Boven and her cargo never made it.
On 28 June, the Wasp sighted two merchantmen sailing together to leeward, and then on the weather beam, a warship, which proved to be the 18-gun brig Reindeer. Blakely’s orders were to attack merchant ships, and avoid men-of- war. This was a more effective—and more humane— strategy, since the crews were spared. But Blakely had waited 13 years for this chance for glory and entered the Wasp into one of the most determined and bloody combats of the war. The 450-ton Reindeer—with 118 crewmen and 24-pound carronades—was no match for the Wasp, except in skill and heart. The gunfire lasted for half an hour, beginning at a range of 60 yards and ending with the ships in contact.
“Our loss of men,” reported Blakely, “has been severe . . . chiefly in repelling boarders. That of the enemy, however, was infinitely more. . . .” The Wasp had 11 men killed, and 15 wounded; the Reindeer suffered 33 killed and 34 wounded, a casualty rate of 57%. The British Captain Manners, already wounded by grape and musket shot, was killed while leading the Reindeer’s desperate, last-ditch attempt to board the Wasp. Finally, the Americans boarded the enemy’s bloody deck in turn. Blakely’s men accepted the surrender from the only British officer still standing, the captain’s clerk.
The British “pride of Plymouth,” said Blakely, “was literally cut to pieces, in a line with her ports; her upper works, boats, and spare spars were one complete wreck. A breeze springing up next afternoon, her foremast went by the board.”10 On 29 June, the Reindeer was set on fire and exploded. The Wasp’s cruise was temporarily over, but en route to L’Orient, France, Blakely captured and destroyed two more merchantmen.
With delays in repairing the Wasp, Blakely did not get to sea again until almost the end of August. Two months were lost. He began marauding again in the English Channel and racked up another three kills, including one of a convoy of ten ships escorted by a 74- gun ship of the line, on 1 September 1814- That night, as she headed southwest in the normal trade route between England and Gibralter, the Wasp fought another enemy ship in the dark and heavy sea. The gunfire lasted for about 45 minutes before the British, having lost their mainmast and suffered other extensive injuries, hailed to strike; they were sinking.
Before Blakely could take possession of the Avon (another 18-gun brig), two more British warships appeared, the Castilian and the Tartarus. The Wasp made off to repair running rigging, and the Castilian chased briefly, firing one ineffectual broadside before returning to her companions. The crew of the Avon barely escaped the wreckage before their ship sank. The Wasp disappeared in the night.
Sailing south, the Wasp took and destroyed two more prizes. Then, on 21 September, off Madeira, Blakely sent in a prize crew with his last capture, the rich prize Atalanta—an American-built, 252-ton Liverpool brig with 19 men and eight guns—carrying 48,000 francs’ worth of wine, brandy, and silks from Bordeaux to Pensacola." Under the command of Midshipman David Geisinger, she reached Savannah safely on 4 November with dispatches. The Atalanta was prize number 15 (counting the men-of-war); Blakely had sent all but two of these vessels to the bottom.
September 1814 proved to be the decisive month of the war: Macdonough’s small fleet defeated the British on Lake Champlain, and the attack on Baltimore failed. For the British in home waters, however, the attacks of the Wasp were the most alarming events of the war. It is not difficult to imagine what a swarm of Wasps could have accomplished. “The depradations. . .by American ships of war, and privateers,” cried the London Naval Chronicle, had “attained an extent beyond all former precedent.” The Yankee raiders had “literally swept our seas, blockaded our ports, and cut up our Irish and coasting trade. . .. The insurance ... is now three times higher than it was when we were at war with all Europe!”12 On 9 October, off the Cape Verde Islands, the Wasp met the Swedish brig Adonis, enroute to Europe, and two exchanged officers from the Essex transferred to the Wasp. The latter was seen last sailing south. After that, she simply dropped out of sight, forever. Perhaps she turned west and then north toward home. No one knows for sure. The Wasp and her crew vanished without a trace—probably lost at sea in a storm. Strangely, the earlier Wasp, captured in 1812 by the British, also disappeared with all hands.
The Treaty of Ghent, signed on Christmas Eve, 1814, and ratified in February 1815, established a status quo ante bellum. The issues of free trade and sailors’ rights—for which the “second war of independence” had ostensibly been fought—were not even mentioned in the treaty. But they did not need to be. During the war, 23 U.S. Navy ships had taken 244 British ships; 517 privateers had captured 1,300 prizes. Yankee privateers and Navy raiders had, as President Thomas Jefferson predicted, made “the merchants of England feel, and squeal, and cry out for peace.”14 Although the Wasp’s sting was painful, it was hardly fatal. British maritime trade during the war actually increased by more than 30%, to more than 50 million pounds.13 But how much more damage could a swarm of Wasps have inflicted?
The short-lived Wasp was perhaps the best of her class ever built. The fate of her gallant crew remains a mystery, but their exploits made Americans proud.
1. Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, Chicago, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1989, p. 98.
2. Reuben Elmore Stivers, Privateers and Volunteers: The Men and Women of Our Reserve Naval Forces: 1766 to 1866, Annapolis, Maryland: U.S. Naval Institute Press, pp. 50-60.
3. William Jones to the Senate, 22 February-18 March 1814, 13th Congress, American State Papers, Naval Affairs I. Documents-Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States, Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, p. 307.
4. Howard I. Chapelle, The History of the American Sailing Navy: The Ships and Their Development, New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1949, pp. 198-201.
5. Leonard Allen Porter, Warships of the United States Navy: a Statistical History of the Commissioned Warships of the United States Navy from 1775 to 1955, Vol. 1 Age of Sail 1775-1853, p. 43.
6. Ibid., pp. 41-42.
7. Chapelle, op. cit., pp. 198-201.
8. Fletcher Pratt, “Johnston Blakely, the Carolina Sea Raider,” Proceedings, September 1950, p. 997.
9. “Cruise of the Wasp. Copy of a letter from Captain Johnson Blakeley to Secretary of the Navy,” Niles Weekly Register, 29 October 1814, pp. 114-15.
10. Blakely, Niles Weekly Register, op. cit., pp. 114-115.
11. James M. Perry, “The U.S. Sloop-of-War Wasp," Proceedings, February 1961, p. 92.
12. “Marine Law, Naval History of the Present Year, 1814, August-September, Retrospective and Miscellaneous,” Naval Chronicle, London, 1814, p. 244.
13. Stivers, op. cit., pp. 50-60.
14. Ibid., p. 132.