THE CRUISE OF THE "WASP"

N the war of 1812 the little American navy,

including

a

war, won a series of victories against the English, the hitherto undoubted masters of the sea, that attracted an attention altogether out of proportion to the force of the combatants or the actual damage done. For one hundred and fifty years the English ships of war had failed to find fit rivals in those of any other European power, although they had been matched against each in turn; and when the unknown navy of the new nation growing up across the Atlantic did what no European navy had ever been able to do, not only the English and Americans, but the people of Continental Europe as well, regarded the feat as important out of all proportion to the material aspects of the case. The Americans first proved that the English could be beaten at their own game on the sea. They did what the huge fleets of France, Spain, and Holland had failed to do, and the great

118

modern writers on naval warfare in

Europe. paid

ates

- men like Jurien de la Grav
the same attention to these cont
and sloops that they give to

actions of other wars.
Among the famous ships of the Ar

war were two named the Wasp.
an eighteen-gun ship-sloop, which
of the war captured a British brig
guns, after an engagement in
fought with great gallantry,

twenty British

knocked to pieces, while the Americans comparatively unscathed. Immediately a British seventy-four captured the vi memory of her the Americans gave the sa

a

m one of the new sloops they were

b

These sloops were stoutly made, speedy
which in strength and swiftness compared

ably with

navy

were

any ships of their class in an of the day, for the American ship as famous as the American g already

and seamen. The new Wasp, like her sister carried twenty-two guns and a crew of one

dred and Twenty

seventy men,

of her guns were

and was ship-ri

32-pound carron

while for bow-chasers she had two "long T

It was

in

the

year 1814 that the Wasp sailed

the United States to prey on the navy and merce of Great Britain. Her commander w

gallant Blakeley. cans, and

South Carolinian named Captain Johnson
Her crew were nearly all native Ameri-
were an exceptionally fine set of men.
staying
near the American coasts or

Instead of

of sailing the high seas, the Wasp at once headed boldly for the English Channel, to carry the war to the very doors of the enemy.

At that time the English fleets had destroyed the navies of every other power of Europe, and had obtained such complete supremacy over the French that the French fleets were kept in port. Off these ports lay the great squadrons of the English ships of the line, never, in gale or in calm, relaxing their watch upon the rival war-ships of the French So close was the blockade

emperor.

of the French ports, and so hopeless were the French of making headway in battle with their antagonists, that not only the great French threedeckers and two-deckers, but their frigates and sloops as well, lay harmless in their harbors, and the English ships patroled the seas unchecked in every direction. A few French privateers still slipped out now and then, and the far bolder and more formidable American privateersmen drove hither and thither across the ocean in their swift schooners and brigantines, and harried the Eng

lish commerce without mercy.

The Wasp proceeded at once to cruise in the English Channel and off the coasts of England,

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France, and Spain. Here the water w continually by English fleets and squ single ships of war, which were som voying detachments of troops for W Peninsular army, sometimes guarding merchant vessels bound homeward, and

merely

lenge, and

with her sails reduced to fighting trim,

On her forecastle

her guns run out, and every man ready, she came down upon the Yankee ship. she had rigged a light carronade, and coming up from behind, she five times discharged this pointblank into the American sloop; then in the light air the latter luffed round, firing her guns as they bore, and the two ships engaged yard-arm to yardarm. The guns leaped and thundered as the grimy gunners hurled them out to fire and back again to load, working like demons. For a few

up

minutes the cannonade was tremendous, and the men in the tops could hardly see the decks for the wreck of flying splinters. Then the vessels ground together, and through the open ports the rival gunners hewed, hacked, and thrust at one another, while the black smoke curled from between the hulls. The English were suffering terribly. Captain Manners himself was wounded, and realizing that he was doomed to defeat unless by some desperate effort he could avert it, he the signal to board. At the call the boarders gathered, naked to the waist, black with powder and spattered with blood, cutlas and pistol in hand. But the Americans were ready. Their marines were drawn up on deck, the pikemen stood behind the bulwarks, and the officers watched, cool and alert, every movement of the foe. Then the British sea-dogs tumbled aboard,

gave