![]() Captains Stephen Decatur, Isaac Hull, and William Bainbridge became household names and much-needed national heroes.Įqually important, the brash courage displayed by America’s fighting captains would be matched by the strategic adroitness of the young navy’s leader, William Jones. How was America’s “Lilliputian” navy able to so defy the odds to hold off-and even humiliate-the mightiest seaborne power on earth? Certainly, American victories in a series of dramatic frigate-to-frigate battles early in the conflict rallied domestic public opinion at a crucial moment when the country had almost splintered over the war. Never again would European powers treat American independence or the principle of freedom of the seas cavalierly. Indeed, on a fair day British men-of-war stood in plain sight, unchallenged, just outside-sometimes inside-New York’s harbor, seizing with impunity American merchantmen bound for Napoleon’s France, sending the prizes to Halifax, and pressing seamen from the ships into service in the Royal Navy.īut over the next three years, Americans would somehow defy British sea power, stunning the world and creating a new reality on the seas. ![]() On the North American station alone, the British squadron of one 74-gun ship of the line and five frigates outmatched the entire U.S. The British had 250 frigates to America’s 7 200 ships of the line to none for the United States. With 17 vessels, 5 of which were in such a state of dilapidation that they would need to be practically rebuilt even to be seaworthy, the United States Navy in 1812 had fewer guns (447) than the Royal Navy had ships (1,048). ![]() A parsimonious Congress routinely rejected bills authorizing the construction of a few new frigates-or any of the much larger ships of the line. “Our Navy,” the crusty former president wrote, “is so Lilliputian that Gulliver might bury it in the deep by making water on it.”įor years, the very same Republicans who were now beating the war drums the loudest had blocked every effort to expand the tiny navy of the United States. In June 1812, on the eve of America’s headlong plunge into mad war against the mightiest seaborne power in the world, old John Adams confided to his grandson his opinion of the young nation’s chances. William Jones’s shrewd strategy was the key to America’s asymmetric warfare against the Royal Navy in 1812.
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