The Dawn of Innovation (50 page)

A special pleasure of this book was working with my daughter-in-law, Jenn Morris, who interrupted her burgeoning artistic career to execute the illustrations for this book. A bonus was that she has a better mechanical eye than I do and saved me from a number of errors.

I have long been spoiled by the people at PublicAffairs, so thanks yet again to Peter Osnos, Susan Weinberg, Clive Priddle, and especially Melissa Raymond, who does the dirty work to ensure a book really happens. Beth Wright of Trio Bookworks was a careful and considerate copy editor.

And finally, but never least, a special thanks to my wife, Beverly, who has the best nose for pretentious jargon of anyone in my acquaintance.

1
Robert Gardiner, ed.,
The Line of Battle: The Sailing Warship, 1650–1840
(London: Conway, 1992); and Brian Lavery,
Nelson's Navy, The Ships, Men, and Organization, 1793–1815
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 245ff. My thanks to Quintin Colville of London's National Maritime Museum for confirming the count of active British first-raters in 1815. (They were the
Caledonia
, the
Ville de Paris
, the
Hibernia
, the
Impregnable
, the
Ocean
, and the newly launched
Nelson
.)

2
Henry Adams,
History of the United States during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (1801–1817)
(New York: Library of America, 1986), 2:447–448. For the chronology of the war, I used, among others, Jon Latimer,
1812: War with America
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), an English account; Theodore Roosevelt,
The Naval War of 1812
(New York: Modern Library, 1999); Richard V. Barbuto,
Niagara 1814: America Invades Canada
(Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2000); Robert Malcolmson,
Lords of the Lake: The Naval War on Lake Ontario, 1812–1814
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998); Robert Gardiner, ed.,
The Naval War of 1812
(London: Chatham, 1998); and for a crisp summary, Gordon Wood,
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), Chapter 18. The Naval Historical Center also published a splendid documentary history of the naval war, William S. Dudley, ed
.
,
The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History
, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1985), and Michael J. Crawford, ed.,
The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History
, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 2002). Henry Adams's classic history of the era, now back in print in two unabridged volumes, devotes nearly a fourth of its length to the war. Although Adams's history is a splendid read, it cannot be taken as a reliable account. Details are often incorrect, and it has, not unfairly, been criticized as Federalist history. See, e.g., Irving Brant, “Madison and the War of 1812,”
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
74, no. 1 (January 1966): 51–67.

3
Latimer,
1812
, 32, 17, 407 (for 1835 invasion plan).

4
Dumas Malone,
Jefferson the President: Second Term, 1805–1809
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 415–416; Adams,
History
, 2:1051 (
Times
quote); Wood,
Empire of Liberty
, 697–699, makes the case for the war as a confirmation of American sovereignty.

5
Niles Weekly Register
, September 5, 1812, 5 (Connecticut); October 24, 1812, 116 (Massachusetts).

6
Geoffrey M. Footner,
Tidewater Triumph : The Development and Worldwide Success of the Chesapeake Bay Pilot Schooner
(Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1998) 101–109.

7
Latimer,
1812
, 111.

8
Sinclair to Jones, September 3, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
The Naval War of 1812
, 3:574.

9
Hamilton to Chauncey, August 31, 1812, in Dudley, ed.,
The Naval War of 1812,
1:297; emphasis in original.

10
The most thorough account of the Chambers gun is William Gilkerson,
Boarders Away II: Firearms in the Age of Fighting Sail
(Woonsocket, RI: Andrew Mowbray, 1993), 123–139. Owen to Yeo, July 17, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:536. Gilkerson presents the evidence, which he calls circumstantial, for the presence of Chambers guns on Lake Ontario, but the Naval Institute (Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:537) takes it as settled. The rapid firing was transmitted from barrel to barrel by a cloth “roman-candle” fuse, ignited by the initial firing with the single lock.

11
Stoddard to Wadsworth, January 14, 1813, in Office of the Commander of Ordnance,
Correspondence
, National Archives, Washington, DC (hereafter OCO).

12
Barclay to Yeo, September 1, 1813, in Dudley, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 2:551; emphasis in original.

13
For the ships on Ontario, I use the data assembled in the Appendices in Malcolmson,
Lords of the Lake
, 327–342. For Huron and Erie, I rely primarily on Roosevelt,
Naval War of 1812
.

14
Malcolmson,
Lords of the Lake
, 54.

15
Stoddard to Wadsworth, January 23, 1813, OCO.

16
Lavery,
Nelson's Navy
, 172.

17
Roosevelt,
Naval War of 1812
, 126.

18
Malcolmson,
Lords of the Lake
, 174.

19
Ibid., 169–170.

20
Roosevelt,
Naval War of 1812
, 136.

21
Malcolmson,
Lords of the Lake
, 194.

22
Ibid., 203.

23
Roosevelt,
Naval War of 1812
, 138. Roosevelt, however, faults Chauncey for not following all the way into Burlington Bay, because he “was afraid that the wind would come up to blow a gale” (139). But as Malcolmson makes clear, the gale was already raging during the chase, which is why it was so fast. Chauncey properly feared getting driven onto a lee shore where a large British army detachment was in camp. His squadron had an exhausting passage beating out of the bay against the storm and several times had to rescue one or the other of the lakers.

24
Latimer,
1812
, 194.

25
Barclay to Yeo, September 12, 1813, in Dudley, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 2:556; Inglis to Barclay, September 10, 1813, in Dudley, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 2: 554–555.

26
Latimer,
1812
, 184.

27
See, for instance, Ralph J. Roske and Richard W. Donley, “The Perry-Elliot Controversy: A Bitter Footnote to the Battle of Lake Erie,”
Northwest Ohio Quarterly
34, no. 3 (Summer 1962): 111–123, and Lawrence J. Friedman and David Curtis Skaggs, “Jesse Duncan Elliott and the Battle of Lake Erie: The Issue of Mental Stability,”
Journal of the Early Republic
10, no. 4 (Winter 1990): 493–516. An older source that presents Elliott's side of the story is Charles J. Peterson,
American Navy: Being an Authentic History of the United States Navy and Biographical Sketches of American Naval Heroes
(Philadelphia: James B. Smith, 1860), 401–417. Roosevelt,
Naval War of 1812
, 147.

28
Adams, 2:1186.

29
Jones to Chauncey, January 15, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:386.

30
Robinson to Prevost, April 6, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:413–415; Yeo to Prevost, April 22, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:416–417; Yeo to Cochrane, May 26, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:492.

31
Malcolmson,
Lords of the Lake
, 243.

32
Crawford,
Naval War of 1812, 3:468
–469.

33
For more information about the first footnote on page 28, see Malcolmson,
Lords of the Lake, 259.

34
For more information about the second footnote on page 28, see Latimer,
1812
, 179.

35
Brown to Chauncey, August 10, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:584–585; Chauncey to Brown, September 14, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:587–588; Prevost to Drummond, September 16, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:614; Prevost to Bathhurst, October 18, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:628.

36
Wellington, quoted in Adams,
History
, 2:988.

37
Report of Lt. Robinson RN, September 12, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:613.

38
Latimer,
1812
, 232.

39
MacDonell to Beckwith, February 4, 1815, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:688–689.

40
O'Conor to Melville, December 19, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:672.

41
Prevost to Bathhurst, October 18, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:628.

42
Jones to Madison, October 26, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:631–632.

43
Chauncey to Jones, October 12, 1814, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:622.

44
Eckford and Browns to Chauncey, February 10, 1815, in Crawford, ed.,
Naval War of 1812
, 3:690.

1
Rory Muir,
Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1807–1815
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 365; Niall Ferguson,
The House of Rothschild
, vol. 1:
Money's Prophets, 1798–1848
(New York: Viking Penguin, 1998), 96–98.

2
Cited in Ferguson,
House of Rothschild
, 111.

3
Joel Mokyr,
The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Great Britain, 1700–1850
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 257–260, has a good discussion of the issues; the quote is on 258.

4
Adam Smith,
Wealth of Nations
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991), 9–10.

5
Robert C. Allen,
The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 146–147. The factor-price theory (high wages, cheap energy) as the spur to the British industrial revolution is from Allen.

6
See ibid., 14–22.

7
The brief summary here follows ibid., 182–212.

8
The classic account is H. W. Dickinson,
A Short History of the Steam Engine
(Cambridge, UK: The University Press, 1939), 29–51, 66–89.

9
Allen,
British Industrial Revolution
, 217–293; H. R. Schubert, “Iron and Steel,” in
A History of Technology
, vol. 4:
The Industrial Revolution, c.1750-c.1850
, Charles Singer et al., eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), 99–118, quote at 102.

10
K. C. Barraclough,
Steelmaking Before Bessemer
, vol. 2:
Crucible Steel
(London: The Metals Society, 1984), 102.

11
David S. Landes,
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
(New York: Norton, 1998), 215–220.

12
N. A. M. Rodger,
Command of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 172.

13
Dava Sobel,
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Mystery of His Time
(New York: Penguin Books, 1995); David S. Landes,
Revolution in Time
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 145–170.

14
K. R. Gilbert, “Machine-Tools,” in Singer, ed.,
The Industrial Revolution
, 417–441; K. R. Gilbert,
Henry Maudslay: Machine Builder
(London: Science Museum, 1971); Joseph Wickham Roe,
English and American Tool Builders
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1916), 33–49.

15
Maurice Damaus, “Precision Mechanics,” in Singer, ed.,
The Industrial Revolution
, 379–416, quote at 414.

16
Gilbert,
Henry Maudslay
, 4.

17
James Nasmyth,
An Autobiography
, Samuel Smiles, ed. (London: John Murray, 1883), 148–149.

18
T. M. Goodeve and C. P. B. Shelley,
The Whitworth Measuring Machine
(London: Longman, Green, 1877), 16, 18.

19
Nasmyth,
Autobiography
,
270.

20
Sir Joseph Whitworth,
Miscellaneous Papers on Mechanical Subjects: Guns and Steel
(London: Longmans, Green, Readers & Dyer, 1873), 24. The military similarly rejected his fluid compressed steel, a very compact, nearly flawless steel (it was compressed under high pressure for some hours after it flowed from the converter) that was later adopted by Bethlehem Steel, the largest American heavy ordnance maker. (William Kent,
The Mechanical Engineers' Pocket-Book
, 6th ed. [New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1903], 410.) The Whitworth rifle was much favored by Confederate snipers during the Civil War. (Union sniper rifles were as accurate but weighed twenty to thirty pounds, compared to the nine-pound Whitworth rifle.) Although the British did eventually adopt the Whitworth bore size, some features of the original design that made it so accurate—like the hexagonal barrel with a larger number of rifling twists—made it prone to fouling with black powder ammunition. Accuracy was in any case not a great advantage with standard volley-firing infantry tactics. A British Civil War buffs' organization (
www.americancivilwar.org.uk/index.php
) has many details on the sales and use of the Whitworth rifle during the Civil War.