Benjamin Stoddert was desperate for ships. In fact, Stoddert— who took office under President John Adams in 1798 as the very first Secretary of the Navy—was desperate for everything. French men-of-war were attacking American merchant ships in the western Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea in what came to be known as the Quasi-War. The Navy suddenly came into existence, and Stoddert needed ships, sailors, guns, powder, supplies, bases—the list just kept going. To solve the ship problem, he began a pattern that would stretch across the 19th century: He looked to existing merchant vessels and other civilian designs that could be converted to wartime use.
Frigates were the backbone of the new U.S. Navy, but ships of that size were hard to produce. Given the extraordinary violence of naval combat, it generally seemed wise to purpose-build them from the keel up as warships. However, navies also needed smaller vessels to patrol, convoy, and perform other missions. The Quasi-War in particular demanded the capability to confront French privateers, whose ships could be smaller, more nimble, and less well armed than frigates because they preyed on merchants. Stoddert therefore contacted his naval agent in Maryland to begin an experimental plan: Find two small ships, arm them, and deploy them to the Caribbean. In doing so, he overruled critics who said they would be too small to defend themselves or have a militarily significant impact and despite the fact that most naval officers wanted to command larger ships of 20 guns or more.
Shipwrights in Baltimore had been refining construction of small, fast ships for a generation. The result was a class of schooners that came to be known as the Baltimore clipper. These were some of the fastest vessels that sailed the Western Hemisphere and were popular with merchants who wanted to get their goods to market before competitors. But the speed, shallow draft, and room for a few guns also made them useful small combatants of a type that became the preferred ships for privateers, pirates, and other maritime troublemakers. In Baltimore, the Navy’s agent, Jeremiah Yellot, purchased two from shipwright Henry Spencer.
With a displacement of 135 tons, a length of nearly 85 feet, a beam of almost 23 feet, and a draft of 10 feet, each was armed with 12 6-pounder cannon. The ships were named Enterprise and Experiment. One—the Enterprise—would go on to carry a storied name across four decades and inspire the crews of five more ships that carried the name. The other would become the most successful ship of the Quasi-War, only to be sold and disappear from the historical record after the end of hostilities.
The Experiment set sail in November 1799 from Baltimore under the command of Lieutenant William Maley, with a crew of 70 sailors and Marines. Maley, like many of the junior officers in the new U.S. Navy, had no experience as a naval officer and just his aggressive nature to guide him. And guide him it did. The schooner joined the frigate Constitution and a squadron under the command of Captain Silas Talbot off western Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti). For seven months, the ship cruised against French forces in the region, chasing down privateers and recapturing U.S. merchant ships that had been taken as French prizes. The Experiment blended in easily with the local civilian shipping traffic, affording a distinct advantage over the squadron’s larger, heavier, and unmistakably naval vessels that signaled “warship” to anyone who saw them.
On New Year’s Day 1800, the Experiment was convoying a group of American merchant ships through the Bight of Léogâne. The French colony of Saint-Domingue was in a state of civil war, with different factions fighting for independence, warlords vying for power, and the great powers maneuvering in conflict over the island’s future. Toussaint Louverture, the leading revolutionary in what would become Haiti and eventually the country’s first president, had become a partner of the Americans as they both fought the French. While the Experiment and the four ships under convoy headed to Port-au-Prince, they were becalmed off territory controlled by Louverture’s rival Andre Rigaud and his allied bands of pirates.
As the ships waited for the wind to return, lookouts spotted a group of barges headed toward the Americans from the shore. In total, 11 armed boats crewed by several hundred pirates made for the stranded ships. Maley ordered his men to quarters and began preparing to protect his ship and the vessels in his convoy. Over the span of nearly seven hours, the crew of the Experiment attempted to fight off the pirates.
The Americans sank two enemy boats and killed or injured dozens of the attackers. One of the merchant ships was taken captive, with the captain killed by the pirates. Outnumbered and outmaneuvered, the Experiment nevertheless was able to save the crews of two other ships before they were overwhelmed and abandoned ship to row for the safety of the small U.S. warship. Maley and his crew were lauded for saving so many American lives, and there was only a single casualty in the crew of the Experiment. Maley’s first lieutenant, a young officer named David Porter, was injured when a musket ball grazed his arm.
Despite his success in the battle in the Bight of Léogâne and the squadron-leading number of prizes and recaptures, Maley developed a reputation as a terrible leader. A man with a notorious temper, he was harsh and disliked by his subordinates as well as his superiors. He also gained a reputation for ignoring the rules of engagement that he had been given by his commander. As a result, when the Experiment returned to the Delaware River in July 1800, Secretary Stoddert relieved the young lieutenant of command.
After nine months of hard sailing and fighting, the Experiment was in serious need of refit and repair. The schooner spent several months in Philadelphia, where she was at work alongside the frigate United States, captained by John Barry. Barry recommended one of his lieutenants to replace Maley, and Stoddert, desperate to get the ship back to sea, appointed 22-year-old Charles Stewart to the command. Stewart finished the refit and, at the very end of July, the ship and crew returned to sea.
Stewart had all of Maley’s aggressiveness, but with a much better sense of both the rules of engagement and his role as a commanding officer. On the first of September, the Experiment’s crew captured a French privateer, their first prize under Stewart. They captured the French Navy schooner Diane the following month. As an unexpected surprise, on board the Diane was none other than Andre Rigaud, the warlord and pirate leader from the southwest coast of Hispaniola, whose 11 boats had attacked the Experiment and her convoy ten months earlier. Under Stewart’s command the Experiment captured or recaptured eight prizes and rescued more than 60 Spanish passengers when their ship Eliza wrecked on a reef.
After six months at sea, Stewart turned his bow northward toward home. The Experiment made Norfolk in February 1801. Safely back in the United States, Stewart began plans to refit and recrew his vessel, as most of the enlistments for his sailors had expired. However, word had reached Washington at the end of December 1800 that negotiators had completed a treaty to end the conflict between the United States and France. Stoddert ordered Stewart to sit tight before preparing his ship for sea again.
With Thomas Jefferson set to be inaugurated as President in March 1801, Congress debated the future of the U.S. Navy. The outgoing Federalist Congress passed a law that created what they hoped would be a peacetime Navy. But, as with most American conflicts, the Quasi-War, too, came with a peace dividend. The Secretary of the Navy was ordered to cut the size of the fleet. The Enterprise was retained in the service and would go on to make history in the Barbary War, the War of 1812, and the counterpiracy campaign of the 1820s. But the Experiment was not slated for retention and was sold in Baltimore in October.
Measured by the number of prizes and recaptured vessels, the Experiment was the most successful ship of the Quasi-War. Despite their small size and relatively weak armament, the Baltimore schooners Enterprise and Experiment turned out to be two of the most important ships in the American fleet during the war. While older and more senior officers demanded larger and more prestigious ships, these small combatants skippered by aggressive young lieutenants were vital to a war that developed out of great power maritime competition. Porter and Stewart went on to be heroes of the early U.S. Navy, becoming successful combat leaders in the Barbary War and the War of 1812 after learning the lessons of command on board their schooners. As Captain Silas Talbot himself wrote, the Experiment was “a most useful vessel on this station if well commanded.”
