For Honour's Sake (6 page)

Through revolution America had gained independence from British rule only scant years before. Every American over thirty years of age had initially been a subject of the Crown, indeed a subject of King George III, who, although increasingly mentally incapable and having been unofficially superseded by his son, the Prince of Wales, George Augustus Frederick, still wore the crown. Before coming to think of themselves as Americans, there were hardly any who had not previously been English, Scottish, Irish, or Welsh. Indeed, many still held fiercely to their national roots even as they maintained they were now first and foremost American. They generally thought of America as a British nation in its traditions, laws, and values. In America, however, the state served the needs of the individual rather than the other way around.

America naturally looked first for British citizens to help populate the vast, unpopulated territories to the west. To foster such immigration, qualification for American citizenship was made a simple matter of residency, which after 1802 had been dramatically reduced to a mere five years.

Whether native-born or naturalized, no American was issued proof of citizenship. Hoping to avoid impressment, the wise seaman had a notary public or justice of the peace draft a sworn certification, called a protection. On July 12, 1790, a justice of the peace named Thomas Veale swore such a document on behalf of one Henry Lunt. It read: “I, Henry Lunt, do solemnly swear on the holy Evangelist of Allmighty God that I was born in Portsmouth in the County of Rockingham, State of New Hampshire and have ever been a subject of said State.”
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Such a document was easily forged by British seamen, so Royal Navy captains often dismissed their authenticity and just impressed anyone they wanted off American ships.

Had the American merchant marine not welcomed thousands of British seamen into its ranks without regard to whether some were Royal Navy deserters, the impressment problem might not have been so volatile. Wages on American ships were double that of British merchantmen and more than twice that again of the Royal Navy. Besides the great financial incentive, there was also the hope that it would prove easier to escape impressment if one served on a foreign ship. Estimates of how many seamen were impressed varied wildly in reports of both nations.

Whatever the real numbers—whether they were as high as 50,000 as one 1801 British report held or as few as 10,000 as some American reports stated—the fact that the Royal Navy considered itself lawfully empowered to board American merchantmen for the purpose of impressment was, in the eyes of many Americans, a clear act of war. Each boarding for impressment, Henry Clay argued in the Senate in 1810, formed but another part of “the long catalogue of our wrongs and disgraces, which has been repeated until the sensibility of the nation is benumbed by the dishonourable detail.”
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Not only impressment figured into Clay's catalogue of grievances. Also gnawing at his soul was the clear violation of sovereignty imposed on June 27, 1807, against an American naval ship.

American harbouring of Royal Navy deserters had long been a thorn in the side of the British Admiralty. In early 1807 the matter came to a head when a Royal Navy squadron blockaded two French ships of war sheltered in
Annapolis, about a hundred miles inside Chesapeake Bay. For several weeks the squadron lurked a little distance from Hampton Roads, ready to pounce the moment the French attempted to flee their safe harbour. Buffeted by storms and other calamities, a few British ships lay up in the anchorage at Hampton Roads or the navy yard at nearby Gosport for repairs or to take on supplies. Also anchored in Hampton Roads was the American frigate
Chesapeake,
flagship of Commodore James Barron, which was being outfitted for a two-year term of sea duty in the Mediterranean.
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Within easy distance of American soil, several sailors risked either execution or at best a severe flogging by fleeing their posts to take refuge ashore. In late February, three men crept down ropes from the decks of the squadron's flagship,
Melampus,
stole the captain's gig, and rowed it to shore.
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On March 7, an entire crew manning a jolly boat from the gun sloop
Halifax
deserted.
¹⁰

The three men who deserted
Melampus
were all impressed Americans—William Ware, an Indian from Pipe Creek, Maryland; Daniel Martin, a Negro from Westport, Massachusetts; and a white Marylander, John Strachan. All three had been impressed about two years earlier onto
Melampus.
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In each of these group desertions the captains of the ships involved shortly learned that some or all of the men had volunteered for and been accepted as seamen aboard
Chesapeake
while the others were granted protection by local authorities. Among those who deserted
Halifax
was a stocky former London tailor named Jenkin Ratford, who enlisted on
Chesapeake
under the alias John Wilson.
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Soon after the
Halifax
desertions, the sloop's captain encountered Ratford and another of the men ashore and asked them to return to service. Ratford berated the officer with “abuse and oaths,” adding “that he was in the land of liberty and would do as he liked.” Formal complaints were filed with the local authorities, and the British consul in Washington, also duly alerted to the incident, lodged a protest that resulted in the secretary of the navy ordering an inquiry into whether
Chesapeake.
' s captain was knowingly recruiting deserters. The inquiry ruled that the three men off
Melampus
were Americans and so not subject to reclamation by the British. The presence of Ratford or other British deserters aboard the ship went unmentioned.
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As for the
deserters who had not signed on with
Chesapeake,
they
were
allowed to head off to new lives in America.

While the inquiry was under way, the desertions were duly reported to Vice-Admiral George Cranfield Berkeley in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In charge of “His Majesty's Ships and Vessels employed & to be employed in the River St. Lawrence, along the coast of Nova-Scotia, the Islands of Prince Edward and Cape Breton, in the bay of Fundy & the islands of Bermuda,” Berkeley was one of the most powerful figures in British North America.
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He also owed his position less to ability than to political influence he and his brother wielded in Britain. Since arriving in Halifax in the spring of 1806, Berkeley had distinguished himself mostly by way of authoring “a steady stream of complaints against the Admiralty, against Jefferson, against the United States,” which, with scant regard for normal channels, he forwarded directly to Lord William Grenville, the leader of the opposition party responsible for his appointment to the command.
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The fifty-two-year-old vice-admiral was incensed that any of the deserters should have been taken on the roster of an American ship of war. Deciding the affront to King and Crown was too much to be left to diplomats to resolve, Berkeley determined to settle the matter by force of arms if necessary. On June 1, 1807, he issued orders to all ships under his command that in a long preamble argued that deserters off at least six Royal Navy ships were aboard
Chesapeake.
Included in this list of ships was
Halifax,
but not
Melampus.
These same deserters, he wrote, had “openly paraded the streets of Norfolk, in sight of their officers, under the American flag, protected by the magistrates of the town and the recruiting officer belonging to the above-mentioned frigate, which magistrates and naval officer refused giving them up, although demanded by his Britannic Majesty's consul, as well as the captains of the ships from which the said men had deserted.”

The “captains and commanders of his Majesty's ships and vessels under my command are therefore hereby required and directed, in case of meeting with American frigate
Chesapeake
at sea, to show to the captain of her this order, and to require to search his ship for deserters.”
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To ensure that the squadron standing off Hampton Roads brought
Chesapeake
to heel, Berkeley ordered his flagship,
Leopard,
to deliver the
order and then remain on station there in hopes the American frigate would venture out to sea. Although an aging 50-gun fourth-rater whose career as a fighting ship was nearing an end,
Leopard
was more than a match for the 36-gun frigate. Capt. Salusbury P. Humphreys dropped anchor in the bay on June 21. The very next morning
Chesapeake
put up sails and departed Hampton Roads on a fair breeze. Humphreys quickly weighed anchor and headed seaward, keeping well ahead of the American vessel in order to present the illusion that he was engaged on a routine reconnaissance mission and had no interest in
Chesapeake.
Six and a half hours later, the two ships were about 10 miles southeast by east of Cape Henry and beyond the 3-mile territorial limit.

Suddenly
Leopard
came about and rode down the wind to come alongside
Chesapeake.
Shouting into a brass speaking trumpet, an officer aboard
Leopard
reported that he bore dispatches for Commodore Barron. The commodore ordered Capt. Charles Gordon, who while in nominal command of
Chesapeake
deferred to the senior officer in every decision, to heave to and prepare to receive a boat from the British ship. At 3:45 a young lieutenant named Meade clambered up from a rowboat onto the frigate's deck, was escorted to Barron's cabin, and delivered a copy of Berkeley's order with a short covering note from Humphreys stating that he hoped Berkeley's instructions could be respected “in a manner that the harmony subsisting between the two countries may remain undisturbed.”
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While reading Berkeley's order, Barron noted that
Melampus
was not on the list of ships reported to have lost deserters to
Chesapeake.
While Barron knew that the three sailors from this ship were aboard, he was unaware of any from the ships that Berkeley cited. Taking up his quill, Barron penned a reply. “I know of no such men as you describe,” he wrote. The commodore stated that the ship's recruiters were under standing instructions “not to enter any deserters from his Britannic Majesty's ships, nor do I know of any being here. I am also instructed never to permit the crew of any ship that I command to be mustered by any other but their own officers.”
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As Meade scrambled back into the rowboat and the oarsmen started rowing back to
Leopard
at 4:15, Barron told Gordon to clear the gun deck
for possible action.
Chesapeake's
poorly trained 340-man crew set to in a desultory manner, with Gordon and his officers little hurrying the pace.

Meade, meanwhile, had rejoined
Leopard.
Seeing
Chesapeake's
crew preparing for action and having read Barron's note, Humphreys fetched up his speaking trumpet and shouted, “Commodore Barron, you must be aware of the necessity I am under of complying with the order of my commander-in-chief.”

Knowing
Chesapeake
could not be ready for battle in less than thirty minutes, Barron played for time. “I do not hear what you say,” he replied.

Not intending to give Barron the time needed, Humphreys ordered a shot fired across the American frigate's bow and, when this failed to elicit a response, fired another after a delay of only one minute. Then, at precisely 4:30, and just two minutes after the second warning shot,
Leopard
unleashed a full broadside. Eleven 24-pound guns on
Leopard.
' s lower deck and a matching number of 12-pound guns on the upper deck roared, and a deadly barrage of solid shot and canister fired point-blank at a range of about 150 feet crashed into
Chesapeake.
Round shot tore through the hull, ripped holes in the sails, and battered the ship's three masts. Spars and rigging crashed down upon the decks, joining a deadly rain of grapeshot. Without pause,
Leopard
followed its first broadside with two more.

With
Chesapeake's
guns still covered, the American crew huddled behind whatever cover presented itself. Three men died, eight were severely wounded, and ten less so. Barron was among those lightly wounded. Fifteen minutes after
Leopard's
first broadside, Barron ordered
Chesapeake's
colours struck. As the flag dropped, a single gun on the American ship fired a ball into the British hull.

A British boarding party mustered the Americans and detained the three deserters from
Melampus.
Although between twelve and fifteen other alleged deserters were pointed out by members of the boarding party, the officers in charge were uncertain enough of their identity to decline to take them into custody. A thorough search of the ship turned up Jenkin Ratford hiding in a hold loaded with coal. After Ratford was dragged onto the deck, the British boarding party returned to
Leopard.

They carried with them a note to Humphreys from Barron conceding that
Chesapeake
was the British captain's prize. Humphreys declined his right of battle and offered instead whatever assistance the commodore might need to see to the safety of his ship. “I … do most sincerely deplore that any lives have been lost in the execution of a service which might have been adjusted more amicably, not only with respect to ourselves but the nations to which we respectively belong.”
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Leopard
returned with its four prisoners to the squadron off Hampton Roads while
Chesapeake
limped slowly back to the port itself. The four men lifted off the American vessel were taken to Halifax, where the three Americans were imprisoned. Tried for mutiny, desertion, and contempt, Ratford was convicted and hanged. One of the Americans died in custody while the other two were released only in 1812, just before war broke out between the United States and Britain.
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