On 18 June 1812, President James Madison signed a declaration of war against Great Britain. At that time, the United States faced the Royal Navy’s fleet of 600 warships with just 17 of its own, a fleet of small navy gunboats along with 14 cutters. The day war was declared, Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin sent a one-sentence circular to his customs collectors, writing, “Sir, I hasten to inform you that War was this day declared against Great Britain.”
Before this conflict, the revenue cutters already served a multi-mission role, including enforcement of U.S. trade laws and quarantine restrictions, interdicting smuggling, supporting the operation of lighthouses and, unofficially, rescue operations at sea. However, with the onset of war, they would expand this to include new combat-oriented missions.
As they did in future conflicts, the cutters served as the military tip of the spear with the war’s first captures. On 25 June, the cutter Thomas Jefferson, from Norfolk, Virginia, seized the British schooner Patriot, the first prize of the war for the United States. The cutter James Madison, out of Savannah, Georgia, captured the armed British brig Shamrock on 23 July. And on 1 August, the Madison seized a second vessel, and the cutter Gallatin captured the armed British brig General Blake, which had been sailing from London to Spanish Florida with a cargo of slaves and war material.
A Cutter Lost
Three weeks later, the James Madison became one of the first revenue-cutter losses of the war. After chasing down a British convoy at night, the Madison crew attempted to board a British frigate in the dark before realizing she was not a merchant ship. The British warship chased the cutter for seven hours, and after the ships were becalmed by the wind, the frigate finally caught the cutter by deploying barges that towed the warship within cannon range of the Madison.
Cutters also continued to fight smuggling. The busiest areas for this mission were the U.S. borders with Canada and Spanish Florida and the bayous near New Orleans. During her brief career patrolling the Passamaquoddy District of Maine, located along the border with Canada, the cutter Commodore Barry apprehended numerous smuggling vessels and brought them into port for adjudication by the local courts. Revenue officers and crew worked independently, or in conjunction with naval and army units, to curtail smuggling into New Orleans by ships and men from Barataria Bay.
An October 1812 newspaper article reported: “Captain Frazer, late of the United States Revenue Cutter, having been informed that a French Privateer or pirate was near Barataria, smuggling goods into this city, raised a party, and accompanied by Captain Holden, on Saturday last went in a small boat down the Bayou toward the lake.” The article went on to describe the ensuing struggle with the smugglers as “perhaps the most impudent daring act of smuggling, ever attempted in the U. States.”
‘Rescue at Sea’
An unofficial cutter mission carried on during the war was rescue at sea. The revenue cutters had supported this role since the establishment of the fleet in 1790. While numerous rescues were likely performed by the cutters during the conflict, some were noted in newspapers and journals. On 12 August 1812, the crew of the Portsmouth, New Hampshire–based cutter New Hampshire rescued five out of seven American privateersmen whose small boat overturned in severe weather at Winter Harbor, Maine. On 23 November, crew members of the Wilmington, Delaware–based cutter General Greene used axes to cut open the bow of the capsized brig Rattlesnake, which overturned during a severe storm. They saved 18 men and a boy who had been trapped for four hours in frigid chin-deep water.
In still another rescue, on 29 November, the Wilmington, North Carolina–based cutter Diligence picked up survivors of the brig Defiance, which capsized in a violent storm as she was bound from New York to Savannah. The crew saved the cargo, buried the dead, and delivered the survivors to Wilmington. On 31 January 1813, the crew of the cutter General Greene saved the prize ship Lady Johnson. Her crew was sick and nearly frozen while the vessel was trapped in thick pack ice and at risk of drifting ashore in Delaware Bay. More than a year-and-a-half later, on 4 June 1814, the Newport, Rhode Island–based cutter Vigilant saved the grounded American brig Little Francis, which British warships had bombarded with cannon and set on fire.
While rescue at sea was not an officially sanctioned revenue-cutter mission, enforcing U.S. trade restrictions was. In addition to the Non-Intercourse Act that was in force throughout the war, cutters had to enforce an additional seven trade restrictions passed by Congress during the conflict. Officers and crew had to be thoroughly familiar with the fine print of these numerous laws, for American shippers and ship captains would often challenge in court any seizures, forfeitures, or detentions of ships they believed to be illegal or wrongful.
In a very highly publicized 22 January 1814 maritime interdiction case, the New York-based cutter Active apprehended at Sandy Hook, New Jersey, the cartel ship Fair American, bound for Liverpool, England. The cuttermen found 11 men concealed in the ship’s hold with no passports, along with two British prisoners-of-war and a large quantity of letters, bills, and orders for supplying enemy forces in North America.
Royal Navy Blockade
By early 1813, the Royal Navy had established a tight blockade of the East Coast, requiring the diminutive cutters to serve as frontline units against enemy patrols and British warships. One of the cutters’ primary missions was protecting the U.S. revenue, requiring them to defend American coasting vessels navigating the sounds, bays, and inland waterways of the United States. Several cutters carried on the tradition of escorting convoys, which was established during the Quasi-War with France in the late 1790s. The cutters Active and Eagle remained very busy escorting merchantmen between New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. On 18 June 1814, a New York newspaper wrote, “Yesterday at 4 P.M. Passed the New-Haven Revenue Cutter Eagle, [Captain] Lee, from New York, with 20 sail of coasters under convoy, standing into New-Haven.”
Over the course of this war, revenue cutters undertook new missions and established their role as effective shallow-water naval vessels. The sailing warships of the U.S. Navy were too large to enter the inland American waterways. Designed to catch smugglers, the revenue cutters proved very effective in navigating such areas. The cutter Commodore Barry was among the first federal vessels to engage units of the Royal Navy. The Barry and an American privateer battled British forces in the shallows of Little River, Maine. The two vessels were run ashore and guns mounted behind a battery of cordwood. The cutter was taken on 3 August 1812, after an enemy force of 250 Royal Navy seamen and marines attacked with heavy losses.
Three of the cutter’s crew were captured, but the rest escaped into the thick forest. The Commodore Barry’s master, Daniel Elliott, continued to serve with distinction out of Machias, Maine. Using the revenue boat Income, he skirmished with British privateers and captured a number of enemy prize ships. But the Battle of Gloucester Point, Virginia, by the Baltimore–based cutter Surveyor proved to be the most hotly contested revenue-cutter engagement of the war.
Combat at Gloucester Point
In 1813, the British blockade of the East Coast brought the naval war to home shores, especially in the Chesapeake Bay area. Not knowing the proximity of enemy forces to his cutter, the Surveyor, anchored off Gloucester Point, Captain Samuel Travis set out a picket boat and installed boarding netting around the cutter’s deck. On the rainy and dark night of 12 June, British barges with nearly 50 officers and men approached with muffled oars. By the time Travis could see them, the barges were too close for the ship’s cannon. The British invaders eventually made it on the deck, and Travis armed his 19 crew members with two loaded muskets per man.
Despite a heroic defense by the cuttermen, the British finally captured the ship after the loss of three British seamen and the wounding of several more. The commander of the enemy forces, Senior Lieutenant John Cririe, later returned Travis’ sword and penned the following note to him: “Your gallant and desperate attempt to defend your vessel against more than double your number excited such admiration on the part of your opponents as I have seldom witnessed, and induced me to return you the sword you had so ably used. . . .”
Under orders from the local customs collectors, each revenue cutter took responsibility for the security of her homeport and surrounding coastal waters. To keep regional waters secure for American commerce also meant fighting British privateers, which patrolled off East Coast ports and preyed on American merchantmen. Fights between cutters and privateers occurred periodically and included the battle between the cutter Vigilant and the British privateer Dart.
The Vigilant and the Dart
The engagement between the Vigilant and Dart was one of the most impressive captures of an enemy ship by a revenue cutter during the war. The sloop Dart, formerly an American ship, was a British privateer that had captured more than 20 American merchantmen. News of the privateer reached Newport on 13 October, so Captain John Cahoone placed added armed men aboard the cutter Vigilant and set out in search of the raider. After firing on the privateer, Cahoone located the Dart off the east end of Block Island and ordered the Vigilant’s crew to fire the guns. Cahoone steered her alongside the Dart, and the cuttermen quickly boarded the raider, chased the enemy crew belowdecks, and took her as a prize. The Columbian Patriot commended captain and crew: “Captain Cahoone, with the volunteers under his command, deserves the highest credit for the spirit and promptitude with which this affair was conducted.” This was the last known use of an armed boarding party by a revenue cutter during the Age of Sail.
In another case, news arrived in New Haven, Connecticut, on 10 October 1814 that an American merchantman had been captured by a privateer in Long Island Sound. Captain Frederick Lee quickly assembled local militia to join his cutter and sailed into the night to recapture the American vessel and take the British ship as well. The next morning, Lee’s cutter was dangerously close to the 18-gun brig HMS Dispatch and her armed tender, but he managed to escape capture from their armed barges by running the cutter ashore on Long Island. Lee’s crew and the militia stripped the cutter’s sails, dragged the Eagle’s cannon up bluffs on shore, and dueled with the British ships.
After exhausting their large shot, the Eagle’s men tore up the ship’s logbook to use as wadding and fired back enemy shot that had lodged in the bluff. During the engagement, the British shot away the cutter’s flag three times, but crew members replaced it each time. After fighting for two days, the Dispatch left in search of reinforcements, and Lee patched and refloated his damaged cutter. However, on 13 October the British gun brig and her tender returned with the 32-gun frigate HMS Narcissus. Later that day, this enemy flotilla delivered an overwhelming force of seven armed barges with officers, marines, and seamen who fought off Lee’s men and towed away the damaged cutter. Lee later wrote: “The officers and crew, together with the volunteers, on board the cutter, have done their duty as became American sailors.”
Gathering Intelligence
During the war, cutters also adopted an intelligence-gathering mission. They monitored enemy naval movements, located British privateers and U.S. Navy vessels, and provided news regarding American merchantmen. Cutter captains shared this information with customs collectors, local officials, and military personnel. For example, in late May 1813, Captain Caleb Brewster of the cutter Active sailed off Montauk Point, Long Island, to maintain surveillance of the British blockading squadron and, by using local fishing smacks, relayed the latest information to Commodore Stephen Decatur’s blockaded flotilla.
In Delaware Bay, the primary mission of the cutter General Greene was to monitor enemy vessels and report on numbers and positions of enemy ships, landing of troops, provisioning of enemy vessels, and any Americans providing supplies to the enemy. On 12 July 1813, the New Bern, North Carolina-based cutter Mercury saved the day by escaping enemy barges at Ocracoke and saving the local customs papers and funds. The British hoped to capture the cutter so that their naval force could take the city of New Bern by surprise. But the Mercury thwarted those plans by outrunning the barges and sailing to the city with news of imminent attack by British troops, thus allowing local authorities time to muster militia and regular army forces.
During the War of 1812, the revenue cutters adopted new missions, as a part of their longstanding multi-mission role. Cutter operations would forever include their previous peacetime responsibilities and their new wartime roles; thereby cementing many core missions that the U.S. Coast Guard still supports today.