The Dawn of Innovation (4 page)

Shortly before Chauncey mounted his Niagara campaign, Commodore Yeo had arrived at Kingston, with a cadre of 465 officers and seamen. He was met by Governor-General Prevost, his local superior, and Roger Sheaffe, the military commander for Upper Canada who had marched his troops there after the bloodying at York. The three were holding war councils when a huge plume of black smoke from the west announced the siege of Ft. George. With the whole American fleet up-lake, they decided to mount a surprise attack on Sackets Harbor. On May 26, the British dispatched an 800-strong assault force, including all four of Yeo's warships and a half dozen gunboats, towing a flotilla of landing craft—thirty-three boats in all.

Tactically, the assault was a failure. A first attempt was interrupted by a sudden storm, so the Americans had an extra day to organize their defense. When the British made the beach the next day, they took heavy fire. Casualties would have been much worse if a seven-hundred-strong contingent of state militiamen, carefully positioned in ambush, had not broken and run at the first shots. Then a young American lieutenant mistakenly fired Sackets's stores and a nearly finished new warship. By that time, the assault force's casualties exceeded a quarter of its men. The British commander chose to assume that the smoke signaled destruction of the warship and sounded the withdrawal. In fact, the ship was only scorched, and the burnt stores were replaced within a few weeks. Strategically, however, the raid radically changed the calculus of power. From that point, Chauncey was almost paranoid about Sackets's defenses and sharply curtailed his participation in joint land-sea operations.

 

In the meantime, the construction race moved into higher gear. The British had launched the
Wolfe
, a 22-gun corvette, in April, followed by the launch of a war schooner, the
Lord Melville
(16), in July. Chauncey countered with the
General Zebulon Pike
, the ship that was scorched during the Sackets raid. It may have been Eckford's masterpiece, a beautiful 26-gun corvette, the fastest and most powerful warship on the lake. The
Pike
was followed in August by a new war schooner, the
Sylph
(18), together with a very fast single-gun courier sloop,
Lady of the Lake
.
Table 1.2
shows the state of the standoff on Ontario as of about mid-August.

With such an investment, both national capitals expected a climactic early battle to settle the war. It never happened—because inherent asymmetries in the fleets and their tactics made it almost impossible for the two commanders to agree to fight.

To begin with, the favored Royal Navy ordnance were carronades: stubby, relatively inaccurate guns with heavy payloads that were easy to reload. Nelson's doctrine was “no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.”
¹⁶
The standard British tactic—bloody but fearsome and effective—was to close rapidly, pound away hull to hull, then grapple and board. Most ships mounted just a few long-range guns, and few captains even practiced long gunnery.

The Americans had a much higher ratio of long guns—Chauncey insisted on it. He drilled in gunnery, and his crews were decent artillerists. As
Table 1.2
shows, the throw weight of metal
^c
for the two fleets was the same—about 2,700 pounds—but more than 40 percent of the American throw weight was in long guns, compared to a peashooter's worth for the British. In a fight, the American long-range advantage was even higher, since 15 of their long guns were on swivels and could fight on either side, while the British had only 1 small swivel gun. The advantage shifted to the British in hull-to-hull battles: nominal throw weights were the same, but carronades used smaller crews and had faster firing cycles.

Sailing characteristics reinforced the asymmetry. Eckford's ships the
Madison
, the
Pike
, and the
Sylph
were superb, but the
Oneida
was “a perfect slug,”
¹⁷
and the rest, all converted lakers, were notoriously clumsy sailers, so Chauncey had serious problems keeping his squadron together. The Royal Navy, by contrast, placed a high premium on convoy sailing, and it was a constant focus of their drills. Chauncey and his officers marveled at
Yeo's tight-formation fleet maneuvers: “all sailing alike and able to support each other in any weather.”
¹⁸

Yeo would therefore naturally choose to engage the Americans on a day of tricky winds and choppy waters. The weather would scatter the American fleet and degrade its long-range gunnery, while superior British convoy sailing would allow them to swarm their targets. Chauncey's preferred scenario was precisely the opposite. With calm waters, he could stand off beyond carronade range, pound away at British rigging and gunports, and then close against wounded targets. In other words, with roughly equal forces, the two commanders would almost never choose to fight at the same time.

The obvious way to break the impasse was to acquire such overwhelming force that the asymmetries ceased to matter. But that would provoke the weaker opponent to avoid a fight at all costs, while redoubling his building efforts. In short, the Ontario shipbuilders' war was a classic arms race, like the Soviet-American missile race, that would continue until one side or the other was exhausted. All the professionals on the lake understood this and frequently commented on it, even as Chauncey and Yeo, in their dispatches to headquarters, lamented in almost identical tones the unwillingness of the other to engage in a climactic battle.

Yeo's temporary dominance of the lake ended on July 22, when Chauncey, leading his fleet in the
Pike
, mounted another raid on York, then dropped down to Niagara and sent off one hundred experienced seamen to man Perry's Erie squadron. A week later, with the
Melville
entering service, Yeo felt strong enough to go out and hunt for Chauncey. On the morning of August 7, the two fleets sighted each near the mouth of the Niagara River, and both announced their intent to fight by firing cannons.

The two fleets proceeded on a tack to meet just west of the river. Yeo was in the
Wolfe
, with all five of his other warships. Chauncey was in the
Pike
, with the
Madison
and the
Oneida
and nine of his lakers. The British
stayed in tight formation, but the American fleet quickly broke into three clusters. Chauncey reversed his course to gather up the fleet. Yeo turned as well but headed in the opposite direction. Watchers on the shore expecting to see the long-awaited showdown could not believe their eyes.

Yeo was just being sensible. By reversing course to await his lakers, Chauncey signaled his intent to open the battle at long range—the lakers had a third of his long guns. The water was calm, ideal for American gunnery, and Yeo had no interest in playing target-practice dummy.
¹⁹

That night, the British lay near York, while Chauncey was still far across the lake. A sudden, and violent, electrical storm capsized the two largest lakers, the
Hamilton
and
Scourge
, with the loss between them of some eighty men and 19 guns. After a service for the drowned men, Chauncey brought his fleet to within firing range of Yeo. As they were on the point of engaging, a nasty squall sprang up, and both sides broke off. Chauncey decided that from then on his newer warships would tow the lakers to the point of an engagement.

Finally, the fourth day of the encounter, August 10, appeared to offer a real fight. Yeo's fleet, caught in a calm, was spotted by the Americans, who were about twenty miles away with a good breeze. Chauncey poured on the sail, dragging the lakers with him, but as they neared the British, the wind suddenly kicked up and shifted in Yeo's favor. Yeo quickly formed a line and started for the Americans. Two of the lakers, off their tow, missed a signal and sailed toward the British. They were quickly captured, and the two sides broke off the engagement.

Although there had been no real action, Yeo had clearly won on points. Including the capsized schooners, Chauncey had lost four lakers with upward of two hundred men and 26 guns. A string of anonymous complaints about Chauncey's timidity, apparently from crewmen, found their way into public press.

The two fleets spotted each other several times over the next couple of weeks, but without an engagement. Toward the end of August, Chauncey more than made up for the loss of his lakers by the launch of the
Sylph
, a fast sailer with 18 guns, including 4 long 32-pounders on swivels.

On September 11, returning from Niagara, Chauncey spotted the British fleet becalmed near the mouth of the Genesee River on the American side of the lake. The
Pike
and the
Sylph
closed within three-quarters of a mile and began to pound away with their long guns. The lakers, dragged along for just such an engagement, once again did not get into the action. A land breeze kicked up in time for the British to escape with only modest casualties and damage. The Americans gave chase across the lake, breaking off when Yeo tried to set an ambush behind some islands on the Canadian side. Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote a small masterpiece on the naval war, was no fan of Chauncey, but he mocked Yeo's battle report for failing to admit that his fleet “ran away.”
²⁰
Prevost complained to London of his “disappointment” at Yeo's “having been so many days in sight of the enemy's squadron without having obtained a significant advantage.”
²¹

On September 28, the fleets met again while both were on transport duty in the lake's western end—Yeo on the northern side sailing eastward and Chauncey to the south but moving northwest. There was a strong easterly wind, so Chauncey had the weather gage.
^d
Yeo turned southward, while Chauncey ran north and then turned, with the
Pike
in the lead, to approach Yeo at an angle with the wind. Both sides cleared their decks for battle. This time Chauncey did not attempt to stay at long range but sailed right into the
Wolfe
's broadside, taking fire from the
Beresford
and
Royal George
at the same time. At a distance of several hundred yards, the
Pike
veered to unleash a full powerful broadside. The
Wolfe
reeled, and the
Pike
lost part of its topmast. A second exchange of broadsides took down the
Wolfe
's whole topmast. The
Wolfe
“staggered and lost its heading . . . its deck a scene of chaos,”
²²
as the
Pike
closed in for the kill.

At that moment, the
Wolfe
was all but lost. A major mast in the water effectively anchored the ship. Until its frantic crew could chop away the dense tangle of thick ropes that held the mast, it was utterly exposed to the
Pike
's heavy guns. With the
Wolfe
out of action, the rest of the British
fleet could not stand against the
Pike
, the
Madison
, and the
Sylph
. Chauncey, as hungry for glory as any captain, suddenly had the lake, and possibly the war, in his grasp.

Yeo was saved when his number two, William Mulcaster, arguably the best sailor on the lake, darted the
Royal George
between Chauncey and Yeo and fired his broadside on the
Pike
, giving Yeo a respite to regroup. There was a disorganized melee on the
Wolfe
for some fifteen minutes, while the crew got free of its shattered masts and cleared away its dead and wounded. By then the
Madison
and the
Oneida
were in the fray, and the easterly wind a gale. Yeo signaled the fleet to make an all-out run to Burlington, a harbor on the far western shore. Off they went, with the Americans in chase, covering fifteen miles in ninety minutes, an extraordinary pace for square-rigs. Spectators on shore dubbed the episode “the Burlington Races.”

The Americans were hampered by Chauncey's insistence on towing the lakers, which seems clearly wrong. Neither the
Sylph
nor the
Madison
could stay abreast during the chase, so it was only the
Pike
, which had absorbed most of the British gunnery during the battle, that was in truly hot pursuit, although leaking badly, with cut-up rigging and topmasts. Chauncey's hope of a glorious victory disappeared when one of his big guns exploded, killing or wounding twenty-two men. With several others showing cracks, Chauncey finally gave up the chase. His fleet then faced a long struggle into the teeth of the gale to get back to the safety of the natural harbor at Niagara.

“The battle, if such it may be called,” Roosevelt wrote, “completely established Chauncey's supremacy, Yeo spending most of the remainder of the season blockaded in Kingston.” By Roosevelt's count, the Americans enjoyed unrestricted movement on Ontario for 107 days in the 1813 sailing season, while the British had only 48 days, and another 69 days were contested.
²³
And despite the complaints about Chauncey's caution, his attack on the
Wolfe
was arguably the single most aggressive naval action during the entire Lake Ontario face-off.