On 18 June 1812, the United States found itself at war, once again, with Great Britain. Isaac Hull, captain of the U.S. Navy frigate Constitution, was quickly ordered to sail his vessel north from the Chesapeake to rendezvous with Commodore John Rodgers’ squadron. Off New Jersey, Hull encountered a fleet of warships that he mistakenly took to be Rodgers’ squadron. Upon realizing his mistake, the American captain altered his course, and thus began one of the most celebrated sailing escapes in the history of the U.S. Navy. As Constitution gunner Moses Smith would remember years later: “we were pursued alone, by the shores of our native country, and a more resolute set of men never smelt salt water. There hung on the mast, drooping silently in the calm sky, the ensign we all loved so well; and as we looked toward it . . . we were determined . . . that it should never go down but with the ship.”1
Hull sailed the Constitution to Boston to resupply and await further orders. However, fearing that he would be instructed to stay there and/or relinquish command, he determined to sail, once he had confirmed that no orders were waiting for him. On 2 August Hull sent Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton his cruising plans to head toward the Grand Banks, the better to intercept convoys between the British port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Great Britain itself. And thus would begin the next phase of the naval War of 1812—not nail-biting chases and escapes, but single-ship engagements.
On paper and in reality the British navy was superior to all others on the oceans; it had hundreds of warships at its disposal (although not all listed Royal Navy vessels were available for sailing). In comparison, at the beginning of the war the U.S. Navy could muster at sea and in ordinary only three 44-gun and three 36-gun frigates (the original six authorized by Congress with the Naval Armament Act of 1794), and a dozen or so other warships of varying size.
Shockingly, between August and December 1812, two of the three largest American warships, the Constitution and United States, would achieve three separate frigate-to-frigate victories against their British counterparts. Each time one of the 44-gun U.S. frigates faced off against a 38-gun British frigate, and while the U.S. Navy officers, such as Hull, had been battle tested in either the Quasi- and/or Barbary wars, the crews of the American warships, were, in many cases, quite green. The Royal Navy, on the other hand, had been well seasoned in battle; by June 1812 Great Britain and France had been at war since 1793, and British officers and crews had been fighting, and winning, for years.
Little wonder, then, that the U.S. Navy’s decisive victories startled the Royal Navy and the British public. After the first of the American victories, the London Times indignantly noted:
It is not merely that an English frigate has been taken, after what we are free to confess may be called a brave resistance; but that it has been taken by a new enemy, an enemy unaccustomed to such triumphs, and likely to be rendered insolent and confident by them. . . . Never before in the history of the world did an English frigate strike to an American.
‘Her Sides Are Made of Iron’
In the months before the War of 1812, Isaac Hull had taken the Constitution’s inexperienced men and through diligent training, especially exercising at the great guns with live fire, turned them into a disciplined warship crew. Two months into the conflict they would be tested in battle.
Off the Grand Banks on 19 August 1812, the Constitution’s lookout sighted a frigate, HMS Guerriere, which had been prowling off the East Coast for many weeks. The first frigate-to-frigate battle of “Mr. Madison’s war” was about to begin. The Constitution’s logbook noted that the two ships spotted each other around 1400 and over the next hour or two, both frigates prepared for battle. When the order “Beat to Quarters” sounded, the crew of the Constitution gave three cheers—they were ready to fight.
Both Hull and the Guerriere’s captain, Richard Dacres, wrote detailed accounts of the battle from their perspectives. A mysterious discrepancy between their reports is the timing of the battle. Hull and Dacres agree on when the ships sighted each other. After that, a 28 August letter Hull wrote to Navy Secretary Paul Hamilton and the Constitution’s logbook provide for a longer period of early battle maneuvering and state that the Britons opened fire around 1700, but acknowledge that the real action did not begin until approximately 1800, when the Constitution began her heavy fire into the Guerriere. Dacres’ account shortens the maneuvering and begins the action at approximately 1600.
What accounts for this one-hour difference? The Guerriere’s chronometer might have been one hour ahead of the Constitution’s, if the former was set to the time in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Constitution’s would have been set to Boston time, one hour behind Halifax. Or could the discrepancy have been a simple mistake on either of the logbook keepers’ accounting? Or did Hull want to “speed up the action” so that his victory would become even more decisive in the retelling? We may never know the answer.
According to the American chronology, the early action, consisting of the Constitution approaching the Guerriere without being able to effectively return British fire, continued until 1745, when both ships ceased firing and maneuvered for greater advantage. At around 1800 Hull had his ship alongside the Guerriere. “Now close with them!” Moses Smith, a Constitution gunner, recalled his captain crying. “A whole broadside from our guns followed this command. The Constitution shook from stem to stern. Every spar and yard in her was on a tremble. But no one was hurt by the recoil of the guns, though several were made deaf by the noise.”1
Fifteen minutes into the heat of the battle, the Guerriere’s mizzenmast went by the boards and, according to the Constitution’s logbook, “our Crew gave three cheers.”2 The British frigate’s shot, in turn, was aimed high at her opponent’s rig, and as Smith recalled:
Our fore-royal truck was shot away . . . the flag was hanging down tangled on the shivered mast in the presence of the enemy. This sight inspired . . . Dan Hogan, to the daring feat of nailing the standard to the mast. . . . He was soon seen, under the fire of the enemy . . . clinging on with one hand, and with the other making all fast, so that the flag could never come down unless the mast came with it . . . those who could see him, kept cheering him.”3
As the battle continued, Smith noted that several British rounds penetrated his ship’s hull. But then, “One of the largest [shots] . . . struck us, but the plank was so hard it fell out and sank in the waters . . . and the cry arose: ‘Huzza! Her sides are made of iron!’ . . . . From that circumstance the name of the Constitution was garnished with the familiar title: ‘OLD IRONSIDES.’”4
As the frigates continued firing and maneuvering at close range, the Guerriere’s bowsprit became jammed in the Constitution’s mizzen rigging. Dacres, who was soon wounded, quickly ordered his marines and boarders to his ship’s foredeck.5 On the American frigate, boarders were ordered aft. According to U.S. Marine Lieutenant John Contee, the Constitution’s Marines were “led on by the illustrious [Lieutenant William] Bush, who, mounting the taffrail, sword in hand, and as he exclaimed ‘Shall I board her’ received the fatal ball on his left cheek bone, which passed through to the back of his head.”6 Thus fell the first U.S. Marine Corps officer to die in battle.
Around 1830, before either ship could be successfully boarded, they separated and the Guerriere’s foremast and mainmast fell. Hull ordered his frigate to haul off and make repairs before finishing off his disabled opponent. A half hour later, the Constitution again approached the British frigate, but in the evening darkness Hull could not ascertain if she had surrendered. He sent Lieutenant George Read in a boat to investigate, and 20 minutes later he returned with the defeated Captain Dacres. The wounded were transferred to the Constitution throughout the night. Midshipman Henry Gilliam, who accompanied Read aboard the Guerriere, left an eyewitness account of the destruction: “blood Lay in every direction and the groanes of the wounded . . . almost make me curse the war, but when I recollected that we were fighting under the banners of a Republic and in the cause of Liberty, it was a compleat Solace to my mind.”7
It was determined that the British ship could not be kept afloat, and the day after the battle, she was set on fire and blew up.
On 31 August, the Constitution, her victorious crew, and the British prisoners of war sailed into Boston Harbor. Although the War of 1812 was not popular in Boston, Ship’s Surgeon Amos Evans wrote that “As [the Constitution] passd Long Wharf [we] were saluted with huzzas by a great concourse of people from that place and the different Merchant vessels . . . [the ship] was crowded all day with citizens—boats surrounded us, huzzaing, &c.”8
Long after the battle, Charles Morris, Hull’s first lieutenant, reflected on the effects of Constitution’s victory over the Guerriere: “This capture, the first of consequence which had been made from the enemy, produced great excitement and gratification throughout the country. . . . Our success was hailed as . . . what might be expected from the others.”9
‘Like Leaden Rain’
On 31 August 1812, the Constitution sailed triumphantly into Boston Harbor flying the Stars and Stripes over the captured battle flag of HMS Guerriere. By happenstance, Commodore John Rodgers’ five-ship squadron also arrived in Boston Harbor that day. As he stepped aboard the Constitution to congratulate his brother captain, Stephen Decatur, one of Rodgers’ squadron commanders, must surely have contemplated when he himself might claim his own victor’s laurels.1
For Decatur, captain of the 44-gun frigate United States, the opportunity to signalize himself in ship-to-ship combat was not long in coming. On 9 September, Navy Secretary Paul Hamilton directed Decatur to take charge of a squadron whose purpose was to protect American trade and harass enemy shipping.2 Decatur had two of his three ships, the United States and the brig Argus, ready to get under way by the first week of October. Delays in repairs to the frigate Chesapeake, the remaining unit of Decatur’s squadron, necessitated leaving that vessel behind.
The United States and Argus sortied from Boston on 8 October in company with the frigates President and Congress, the latter two warships under the command of Rodgers. Three days out, Decatur parted company with Rodgers’ squadron and detached the Argus to cruise westward of Barbados. Over the next two weeks Decatur followed a southeasterly track that brought him to a position approximately 700 nautical miles west of the Canary Islands.
At 0700 on the 25th, the United States’ lookout reported a strange sail standing directly for the frigate from the southeast.3 The unknown vessel proved to be the 38-gun frigate HMS Macedonian, commanded by Captain John Surman Carden. Only six months earlier, these two converging warships had peacefully shared an anchorage in Norfolk Harbor, Virginia, during which time their officers had socialized and visited each others’ vessels. Carden had jested with Decatur that if they “were ever to meet at sea as enemies,” the Macedonian would certainly best the United States, for he believed his 18-pounder long guns “could be fired and managed” with greater speed and “facility” than Decatur’s 24s.4 The British captain was about to have the opportunity to test that proposition.
In terms of size and firepower, the United States was an overmatch for the Macedonian; only in speed and maneuverability did the British frigate appear to have an edge over her Yankee adversary. From the outset of their encounter, the Macedonian held the weather gage, or windward position, over the United States, a tactical advantage Carden was loath to surrender. Decatur’s initial turning evolutions in the United States—maneuvers that had his ship first sailing away from, then toward the Macedonian—failed to entice Carden to fight. When one such turn put the United States on a passing track with the Macedonian, Carden ignored the entreaties of his first lieutenant, David Hope, to bear down and engage the approaching American, electing instead to keep his distance in order to maintain the weather gage.5
At around 0900, the action between the two frigates commenced, with both vessels exchanging ineffectual gunfire while sailing on opposite tacks. Carden immediately wore (turned) his ship onto the United States’ tack in an attempt to bring the American to battle. In pursuit and to windward of the American frigate, Carden could only close with Decatur by steering a long, angling intercept path. In so doing, the Macedonian’s commander left his ship vulnerable to destructive gunfire from the United States’ long 24-pounders, which outranged his own long 18s.
For the next hour, the Macedonian closed the distance between herself and the United States. During this time, the superior range and weight of the United States’ guns told heavily against the Macedonian; the American scored hit after hit on the approaching British warship, while the Macedonian’s counterbattery fire was largely ineffectual.6
By the time the Macedonian closed to within about 60 yards of the United States, she was already crippled, having sustained heavy casualties and extensive damage to her masts, sails, rigging, and upper battery of carronades. Despite the Macedonian’s slackening fire, Decatur’s well-trained crew continued to work their guns with cool precision and efficiency. “There was no unnecessary noise or bustle, or confusion,” wrote one United States officer in praise of the ship’s cannoneers, “but every thing went on quietly and smoothly as if it had been a mere exercise.”7 On board the Macedonian, the enemy’s “Grape and canister shot” poured through the ship’s gunports “like leaden rain,” cutting down all in its pathway. According to one crew member, the ship’s “very keel” shook from the barrage of “iron hail” striking her sides.8
The Macedonian finally succumbed to the United States’ relentless cannonading after little more than two hours of fighting. The British frigate’s battered condition bore witness to the accuracy and intensity of the United States’ gunfire. Nearly a hundred shot holes scarred the Macedonian’s hull. All three masts had been severely damaged, with the mizzenmast itself going over the side.9
The battle also took a heavy toll on the Macedonian’s officers and men, with casualties totaling 36 killed and 68 wounded. Upon viewing the carnage on board the British prize following the battle, one United States officer confided to a friend:
I assure you the scene she exhibited just after the action was distressing to humanity; fragments of the dead were distributed in every direction—the decks covered with blood—one continued agonizing yell of unhappy wounded victims; a scene so horrible of my fellow creatures, I assure you, deprived me very much of the pleasure of victory.10
In stark contrast to the Macedonian’s condition, the United States emerged from the contest with only minor structural damage, the most serious being the loss of her mizzen-topmast, and casualties of 12 killed and wounded. Her stout hull had proven stubbornly resistant to British roundshot, and many of the Macedonian’s cannonballs tumbled “harmlessly into the water” after striking the American 44’s sides—a fact that prompted some British prisoners to speculate that the United States’ sides were not made of “iron,” like the Constitution’s, but “stuffed with cork” instead!11
Despite the damage to the Macedonian, Decatur considered her worth the risk to repair and escort back home. The return voyage of 2,600 nautical miles took five weeks, with the United States and her prize arriving off Montauk Point, New York, on the evening of 3 December 1812. The new ship would be taken into the Navy, and the United States crew shared in a $200,000 payout in prize moneys, the full value of the ship.
The United States’ decisive victory over the Macedonian provided a welcome year-end lift to the country’s wartime morale. It added luster to Stephen Decatur’s own fame as a naval officer and elevated the reputation of the Navy as a professional sea service. Significantly, this victory also produced a cadre of combat-tested officers who, like the veterans of the Constitution’s 1812 victories, took their experience and training to other ships in the fleet.
‘Close with the Enemy’
In September 1812, Captains Isaac Hull and William Bainbridge exchanged commands—Hull to the Boston Navy Yard and Bainbridge to the Constitution. Bainbridge, whose command reputation had suffered in the Quasi- and Barbary wars, eagerly took on “Old Ironsides.” However, many members of the crew threatened to follow Hull or outright refused to serve under Bainbridge. It took all of the new captain’s powers of persuasion to get the crew to stay and sail with him.
The Constitution’s late-1812 cruise was toward South America, and on 29 December she was off the coast of Brazil when two vessels were spotted. They proved to be HMS Java, a 38-gun frigate commanded by Captain Henry Lambert, and the captured American merchant ship William. The Java was on her way to the East Indies and had on board, along with her regular crew, 100 supernumerary officers and men destined for Royal Navy vessels; Lieutenant General Thomas Hislop, the new commander at Bombay; and several other commanding officers of the British Army.1
The two warships maneuvered for advantage and, as Theodore Roosevelt described in his seminal history, The Naval War of 1812, the battle began shortly after 1400 “at long bowls”—each vessel firing from a distance, each taking damage equally.2 But within a half hour, the Constitution’s situation appeared dire, gunfire from the faster Java having destroyed her wheel and twice wounded her commander.3 Bainbridge summoned the strength to stay on deck, and an emergency tiller was shipped below into the rudder. For the rest of the battle the frigate was maneuvered from two decks below.
Forty minutes into the fight, Bainbridge “determined to close with the Enemy, notwithstanding her rakeing.” The battle continued for more than two hours, but the Constitution’s relentless fire gradually shattered the Java. First her bowsprit and jib boom and then her foremast were shot away. When her main-topmast fell, the wreckage covered most of the starboard guns so that they could not be fired. Captain Lambert was gravely wounded at 1530, and at 1620 the Java’s mainmast “went by the board.”4
According to Java First Lieutenant Henry D. Chads, who was also wounded:
We still waited the attack of the Enemy, he now standing toward us for that purpose. . . . He intended a position a head where he could rake us without a possibility of our returning a shot. I then consulted the Officers who agreed with myself that on having a great part of our Crew killed & wounded . . . and three masts gone, [and] several guns useless, we should not be justified in waisting the lives of . . . those remaining. . . . Under these circumstances, however reluctantly at 5.50 our Colours were lowered from the Stump of the Mizen Mast and we were taken possession a little after 6. by the American Frigate Constitution.”5
As with the Constitution’s earlier conquest, the Java was set on fire and blew up. Old Ironside’s surgeon, Amos Evans, recorded in his journal, “The explosion was not so grand as that of the Guerriere, as her small Magazine only took fire.”6 Even in defeat, Chads was gracious, writing to the Admiralty “expressing my grateful acknowledgement . . . publicly for the generous treatment Captain Lambert [who died of his wounds on 3 January 1813] and his Officers have experienced from our Gallant Enemy Commodore Bainbridge and his Officers.”7
Interestingly, in May 1813 the Java’s surgeon, Thomas Cook Jones, published accusations of “ill treatment” by the officers and crew of the Constitution toward his ship’s officers and men, including the wounded. Perhaps the most damning charge was that a Constitution officer suggested that a mortally wounded Java sailor be “assist[ed] . . . into eternity” by being dumped overboard before he had expired. Surgeon Evans’ rebuttal appeared in The Boston Chronicle and was reprinted in The War. “It is not true that there was any distinction made between the British and American wounded,” Evans wrote. He went on to challenge each of Jones’ charges before noting that “When the officers of the Java left the Constitution . . . they expressed the warmest gratitude for the humane and generous treatment they had experienced.”8
Evans’ anger prompted him to close his rebuttal with a sweeping accusation of his own: “The British . . . have proved, that although they may not always be able to conquer in battle; they can prevaricate, defame or mistake, with as much ease as any nation on earth.”9
While the Java’s surgeon aired his grievances against his conquerors in print, the British Admiralty secretly had acknowledged the sobering fact that their frigates might not be able to handle the larger American frigates. A little more than one month after the Java defeat, Royal Navy Rear Admiral Manly Dixon wrote to Lord Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty, commending the “equal skill & Bravery” of Lieutenant Chads, but concluded his letter with a comment on British frigates: “when it is considered how very inadequate our 38 gun frigates on their present construction are to those of the bulk & weight of metal & great number of men which the Constitution carries I doubt not your Lordship will accord with me in the merits of Lieut Chads.”10
And about six months later, First Secretary of the Admiralty John Croker sent a “Secret & Confidential” message to the commanders on station in North America not to engage “the larger Class of American Ships”—the 44-gun frigates.11 This was the legacy of the U.S. Navy’s superior frigates; the Royal Navy assumed that its frigates could only prevail over one of the 44s when they could converge on her with a superior number of ships.
William Bainbridge, like Isaac Hull before him, became a national hero. It is fitting that he credited the Constitution with his success when he spoke in Philadelphia in 1831: “Let me toast the Ship! Never has she failed us! . . . To have commanded . . . Constitution is a signal honor. . . . Not only do her deeds belong to our naval record, she is herself possessed of a brave personality. May the citizens of this country . . . in gratitude, see that she, like her namesake and prototype, will never be forgotten.”12
1. Moses Smith, Naval Scenes of the Last War: Or, Three Years on Board the Frigate Constitution and the Adams… (Boston: Gleason’s Publishing Hall, 1846), p. 27.
2. As quoted by Linda M. Maloney in The Captain from Connecticut: The Life and Naval Times of Isaac Hull (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986), p. 194, from The War I:114, 28 December 1812.
1. Moses Smith, Naval Scenes of the Last War: Or, Three Years on Board the Frigate Constitution and the Adams . . . (Boston: Gleason’s Publishing Hall, 1846), p. 32.
2. Logbook, Constitution, 20 August 1812, National Archives and Records Administration, microfilm publication M1030, roll 1.
3. Smith, Naval Scenes, p. 33.
4. Ibid.
5. James Richard Dacres to Vice Admiral Herbert Sawyer, R.N., 7 September 1812, William S. Dudley and Michael J. Crawford, eds., The Naval War of 1812, A Documentary History, 3 vols. to date (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1985–), 1:243.
6. Lieutenant John Contee to Lewis Bush, 13 September 1812. Courtesy USS Constitution Museum, Boston.
7. Lilla M. Hawes, ed., “Letters of Henry Gilliam, 1809–1817,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 38, no. 1 (March 1954):61.
8. Amos A. Evans, Journal Kept on Board the Frigate Constitution, 1812 (Lincoln, MA: reprinted for William D. Sawtell from The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1967), p. 378.
9. Charles Morris, “The Autobiography of Commodore Charles Morris, U.S.N.”, Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute, vol. 6, no. 12 (1880):165.
1. For Decatur’s visit, see Amos A. Evans, “Journal Kept on Board the United States Frigate Constitution,” 1812, pt. 2, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 19, no. 3 (1895), p. 378.
2. Decatur’s orders were identical to those issued to John Rodgers and William Bainbridge. For a printed version of these orders, see Hamilton to Rodgers, 9 September 1812, in William S. Dudley and Michael J. Crawford, eds., The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History, 3 vols. to date (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1985–), 1: 471–72.
3. Multiple witnesses, British and American, agree the time of sighting was 0700. However, United States’ log records the time of the sighting as 0600. See the letters of two United States midshipmen: True American (Trenton, NJ) 14 December 1812, and The Statesman (New York), 9 January 1813. See also the court-martial testimony of Macedonian’s master, James Walker, which is reproduced in transcript form in National Archives and Record Administration (Hereafter NARA) T829, roll 422, p. 24. For the United States’ 1812 logbook, see NARA, M1030a, roll 3.
4. Niles’ Weekly Register (Baltimore), 5:236. For the socializing between the officers of both ships, see Samuel Leech, A Voice from the Main Deck, Being a Record of Thirty Years’ Adventures of Samuel Leech (1843; repr., Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999), pp. 62–63; and, the letter of Midshipman J[ohn] S[tansbury] to his father, 16 December 1812, in The Statesman, 9 January 1813.
5. David Hope’s court-martial testimony in NARA, T829, M422, p. 22. A portion of the court-martial’s verdict criticizing Carden is quoted in C. T. Atkinson, ed., A Curtail’d Memoir of the Incidents and Occurrences in the Life of John Surman Carden Vice Admiral in the British Navy Written by Himself 1850 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1912), p. 311.
6. The foregoing draws largely on the court-martial testimony of John Carden, First Lieutenant David Hope and Master James Walker in NARA, T829, Roll 422.
7. Chaplain Benjamin F. Bourne to Thomas Welsh, 29 October 1812, in Farmer’s Repository (Charlestown, WV), 25 December 1812.
8. Leech, Voice from the Main Deck, p. 86.
9. Charles Carden to John W. Croker, 28 October 1812 and, Decatur to Hamilton, 30 October 1812, in Dudley and Crawford, Naval War, 1:549.
10. “A letter from an Officer on board the frigate United States, to his friend in New-Brunswick,” The War (New York), 1:115.
11. Leech, Voice from the Main Deck, p. 97.
1. William Bainbridge to Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton, 3 January 1813, as published in The American State Papers. http://memory.loc.gov.cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsp&fileName=023.db&Page=290.
2. Theodore Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1882), p. 120.
3. William S. Dudley and Michael J. Crawford, eds., The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History, 3 vols. to date (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1985–), 1:641.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., pp. 646–47.
6. Amos A. Evans. Journal Kept on Board the Frigate Constitution, 1812 (Lincoln, MA: Reprinted for William D. Sawtell from The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1967), p. 478.
7. Ibid., p. 648.
8. Amos A. Evans, “British Veracity,” from The Boston Chronicle as reprinted in The War, vol. II, no. 39, 15 March 1814.
9. Ibid.
10. Postscript of letter of Admiral Manly Dixon to the British Admiralty 24 January 1812 [1813], copy in the USS Constitution Museum, Boston. Courtesy of David Chads.
11. Dudley and Crawford, The Naval War of 1812, 2:183.
12. H. A. S. Dearborn, The Life of William Bainbridge, Esq. of the United States Navy, James Barnes, ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1931), pp. 217–18.