As captain of the U.S. frigate Constitution, Charles Stewart accomplished the singular feat of capturing two British warships in one engagement.1 He was making a cruise across the Atlantic on 20 February 1815 when his crew spotted HMS Cyane and Levant 200 miles east-northeast of Madeira. Unaware that Britain and the United States had ratified the Treaty of Ghent and that the War of 1812 was over, the opposing commanders sailed to engage.
At the time "Old Ironsides" was armed with thirty-one 24-pounders and twenty 32-pounder carronades and was manned by a crew of nearly 500 officers and men. The two British vessels were much smaller, the Cyane mounting twenty-two 9-pounders, two 6-pounders, and eight 24-pounder carronades with a crew of about 155. The Levant had only two 6-pounders and eighteen 32-pounder carronades and about 135 men.
The Cyane came on gamely, however, and exchanged fire with the Constitution as the sun set. It took Stewart only 15 minutes to force the ship's surrender, after which he pursued and soon captured the Levant. The British suffered 12 killed and 45 wounded, while American losses were 4 dead and 14 wounded. Stewart kept his prizes under his wing and sailed to the anchorage at Porto Praya in the neutral Portuguese Cape Verde Islands on 10 March. Along the way, he had the Cyane repainted to take on the appearance of a much more heavily armed frigate.
The very next day should have put an end to any victory celebration Stewart and his crew were enjoying because a squadron of powerful British frigates appeared off the port. It was led by HMS Leander, which had been built and launched in 1813 expressly to challenge the large American frigates. Crewed by about 450 officers and men, the Leander carried thirty-four 24-pounders, one 9-pounder, twenty-four 42-pounder carronades, and one 5.5-inch howitzer. She was accompanied by her sister ship, the Newcastle, which was similarly armed, and the Acasta, rated at 40 guns but actually armed with 48.
The senior British officer was Sir George Ralph Collier. He had likely entered the Royal Navy in 1787 and, having won recognition in action against the French, rose to the rank of post captain by 1803. He was knighted in 1807, an honor that was upgraded in January 1815. As the first commander of the Leander, Collier joined the North America Station and succeeded in capturing the U.S. brig Rattlesnake on 22 June 1814. In company with the Newcastle and Acasta, he blockaded the Constitution in the following months before returning to Halifax briefly for a refit. When once more off Boston, Collier learned that Captain Stewart managed to slip through the blockade and heard a rumor that the Constitution was intended to meet with the frigates Congress and President for an attack on shipping in the English Channel. Collier set sail, with the Newcastle and Acasta, in pursuit of Stewart.
The British commander, then, was looking for three large ships when his squadron arrived off Porto Praya and spotted Old Ironsides and her prizes heading for sea (Stewart had weighed immediately after his lookouts saw the British). Fog reduced visibility to five or six miles so that none of the commanders accurately identified each other and the British apparently had difficulty reading signals. Though the Acasta was gaining on the Constitution, Collier recalled her, which signal the Newcastle also took to mean to break off her chase of Cyane, and all three British ships went after the Levant. They caught her later in the day back at Porto Praya. Realizing his error, Collier's squadron set out after the Constitution and Cyane, and though coming very close, it never caught up.
Eyebrows were raised at Collier's failure to engage the Constitution and her prizes more effectively, but little was printed publicly. The Admiralty promoted Collier to commodore of the West Africa Squadron in 1818, and for the next several years he was active in suppressing the slave trade. His reputation as "a brave, experienced, clever seaman, and most generous, warm-hearted, friendly man" appeared unsullied.2
Enter William James, a British lawyer turned naval historian. When in 1817 he had published Naval Occurrences of the War of 1812, James gave short shrift to the Leander-Constitution matter, briefly trying to explain away the "most unaccountable escape."3
Seven years later, however, James had more to say in his exhaustive Naval History of Great Britain during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He had studied the American and British logs and traced the events in great detail for his readers, concluding that Collier's handling of the chase was "the most blundering piece of business recorded in these six volumes."4
Captain Collier, who was at his home outside London during the third week of March 1824 when he heard about James' accusation, rushed to London to find a copy of the book and to make sure the Admiralty still held him in high regard. Although at least one individual later reported that he "appeared in his usual state of health," others said he was "exceedingly agitated" and that he "laboured under an aberration of mind."5 Collier made several visits to the Admiralty over the next few days, encountering old acquaintances with whom he discussed challenging James to a duel or finding out which of his enemies had prompted the writer to question his conduct in the Leander.
So troubling did Collier's behavior become that his friends advised his brother Thomas Collier to take the captain under his supervision. This was done, and on the night of 23 March the captain dined with his brother at his home and then went to bed. To keep an eye on him, Thomas' servant Henry Berridge bedded down in the same room.
Captain Collier spoke to Berridge several times after the lamps had been extinguished, asking for water but not drinking it. Around 0200 he asked Berridge if he had gotten into bed, and when the servant replied that he had, Sir George Collier gripped a razor he had been hiding and cut his own throat. He was dead in five minutes.
Numerous naval officers attended an inquest on 25 March and heard their once-glorious compatriot's end ruled a suicide. William James' further comments have not come to light.
There is a postscript to the story. In the pages of Naval History of Britain, James had also harshly criticized Captain Sir John Phillimore for failing to destroy a French frigate in a ship-to-ship action in January 1814. Phillimore took offense, but unlike Collier, he directed his wrath outwardly by finding William James and beating him with his walking stick.6 For the assault, Phillimore was fined £100, a sum the captain was probably content to pay. And, perhaps, as he knocked James to the ground, he got in a few licks for poor old Collier.
1. Publications describing Stewart's achievement and the involvement of the Leander squadron include: Lynn W. Turner, "The Last War Cruise of Old Ironsides," American Heritage: The Magazine of History, 6 (1955): 56-61; Tyrone G. Martin, A Most Fortunate Ship: A Narrative History of "Old Ironsides" (Chester, CT.: Globe Pequot Press, 1980), pp. 156-66; William L. Clowes, The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to 1900. 7 vols. (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1809; reprint, London: Chatham Publishing, 1997), vol. 6, pp. 169-73.
2. "Sir George Ralph Collier, Bart," John Marshall, ed., Royal Navy Biography. 4 vols. and 4 supplements (London:, 1823-1835), vol. 2, pt. 2, pp. 518-40.
3. William James, A Full and Correct Account of the Chief Naval Occurrences of the Late War between Great Britain and the United States (London, 1817; reprint, London: Conway Maritime Press, 2004), p. 236.
4. William James, The Naval History of Great Britain . . ., 5 vols. (London: 1824-26). The remarks about Collier were on vol. 5, p. 540. The author worked from a publication of the enlarged 1827 edition (London: MacMillan and Co., 1902), which featured six volumes with the comments on p. 261 of vol 6.
5. "Inquest on Capt. Sir Geo. Ralph Collier, K.C.B." London Chronicle (London, 1825), pp. 37-41.
6. The incident is cited in Tom Wareham, The Star Captains: Frigate Command in the Napoleonic War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001), pp. 196-7.