The Naval War of 1812, Volume 1 by Theodore Roosevelt

Author:Theodore Roosevelt [Roosevelt, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781411453456
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Published: 2017-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

There being, as already explained, three independent centres of inland naval operations, the events at each will be considered separately.

At the opening of the war, Lieutenant Woolsey, with the Oneida, was stationed at Sackett's Harbor, which was protected at the entrance by a small fort with a battery composed of one long 32. The Canadian squadron of six ships, mounting nearly 80 guns, was of course too strong to be meddled with. Indeed, had the Royal George, 22, the largest vessel, been commanded by a regular British sea-officer, she would have been perfectly competent to take both the Oneida and Sackett's Harbor; but before the Canadian commodore, Earle, made up his mind to attack, Lieutenant Woolsey had time to make one or two short cruises, doing some damage among the merchant vessels of the enemy.

On the 19th of July, Earle's ships appeared off the harbor; the Oneida was such a dull sailer that it was useless for her to try to escape, so she was hauled up under a bank where she raked the entrance, and her off guns landed and mounted on the shore, while Lieutenant Woolsey took charge of the "battery," or long 32, in the fort. The latter was the only gun that was of much use, for after a desultory cannonade of about an hour, Earle withdrew, having suffered very little damage, inflicted none at all, and proved himself and his subordinates to be grossly incompetent.

Acting under orders, Lieutenant Woolsey now set about procuring merchant schooners, to be fitted and used as gun vessels until more regular cruisers could be built. A captured British schooner was christened the Julia, armed with a long 32, and two 6's, manned with 30 men, under Lieutenant Henry Wells, and sent down to Ogdensburg. "On her way thither she encountered and actually beat off, without losing a man, the Moira of 14, and Gloucester, of 10 guns."152 Five other schooners were also purchased; the Hamilton, of 10 guns, being the largest, while the other four, the Governor Tompkins, Growler, Conquest, and Pert had but 11 pieces between them. Nothing is more difficult than to exactly describe the armaments of the smaller lake vessels. The American schooners were mere make-shifts, and their guns were frequently changed153; as soon as they could be dispensed with they were laid up, or sold, and forgotten.

It was even worse with the British, who manifested the most indefatigable industry in intermittently changing the armament, rig, and name of almost every vessel, and, the records being very loosely kept, it is hard to find what was the force at any one time. A vessel which in one conflict was armed with long 18's, in the next would have replaced some of them with 68-pound carronades; or, beginning life as a ship, she would do most of her work as a schooner, and be captured as a brig, changing her name even oftener than anything else.

On the first of September, Commodore Isaac Chauncy was appointed commander of the

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