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Captain John Crane, 1800 - 1815

<h2 id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</h2> SAFE RETURN TO NEW YORK.—OFFER OF A NEW SHIP.—MY FRIENDS THE GRAHAMS.—OFF AGAIN.—THE CONSTITUTION'S ESCAPE AND MINE. Well, we are out of danger now, and safe inside the sheltering arms of the harbor. As we turn the Hook, a pilot boards us. He is an old acquaintance and friend, and gives me the warmest sort of a greeting. "What's the news?" I ask with eagerness, as soon as the greetings and congratulations are over. "Dead loads of news!" he answers. "Two prizes from you are safe in port, but the owners didn't look for you and the Marguerite as soon as this. You've got another prize or two, I suppose, and find yourself short-handed." "That's it exactly," I replied; and then I told him about the cartel and the last prize, and how I sent her to the Sound to avoid the risk of falling into British hands again. "By the way, what is that British ship which gave me such a run last night?" I asked. [239] "That is the Shannon, thirty-eight guns," he answered; "she's been cruising off New York for the past week, and has already made several prizes. One of them was the Nautilus, fourteen guns, which went out with the intention of getting in the track of the East Indiamen, and making some rich captures. But she ran into the Shannon, and so we lost her." I was sorry to hear this, partly because of the reduction of our naval strength to that extent, and partly because of the connection of the Nautilus with the fleet before Tripoli, when she did some excellent work. I may remark, parenthetically, that the Nautilus was the first vessel of war taken on either side, and her capture elated the British in the same proportion that it depressed us. "There was a fleet here almost ready to sail when I left," said I. "How soon did they get to sea, and what have they done?" "They got away within an hour after receiving the official proclamation of war. There were the President, forty-four guns, Essex, thirty-two, and Hornet, eighteen guns, under Commodore Rodgers; and they were joined in the lower bay by the United States, forty-four, Congress, thirty-eight, and Argus, sixteen, under Commodore Decatur. They went to pick up some prizes out of the fleet of Jamaica-men that sailed under convoy about that time, and ought to give some rich plunder." [240] The tide was unfavorable, and the wind became light; so I anchored in the lower bay, or rather the pilot did, as he was now the man of authority, and I was only a passenger. Towards noon the tide served, and the wind became more kindly; so that we went up the bay in fine style, and came to anchor off the Battery. My vanity was humbled a little by the absence of the prize which I had sent round through the Sound for safety; it would have added to my pride had I been able to bring her in with me, with the Stars and Stripes floating above the British ensign to tell exactly what she was. But I consoled myself with the reflection that she was probably safe from recapture, while she would have run great risk, and probably would have been lost, had I kept her with me. Soon as the anchor was down and the sails furled, I sent a messenger to tell the owners of my arrival, and of the prize that had gone into the Sound. I explained that I did not consider it judicious to go to the office in person, as all my officers were absent in prizes, and I had no one I could safely leave in charge of the Marguerite. But my messenger had not reached the landing-place before one of the owners arrived alongside, and immediately came on board. They had already learned of our arrival by means of the semaphore,[241] which had been established quite recently for sending communications from the lower bay to the city. It is a wonderful invention, and as simple as it is wonderful. On the tops of towers four or five miles apart, there are frames containing shutters, and the shutters are so arranged that the combinations of their positions represent the letters of the alphabet. In this way the name of a ship, or a message of any kind, can be spelled out, and it is repeated from one tower to another along the line. Of course, it can only work when the weather is clear, so that the signals can be seen. A fog cuts it off completely; and it sometimes happens that a fog comes up just in the middle of a very interesting message. <div class="figcenter2em" id="illo8"><ANTIMG src="images/illo8.jpg" width-obs="485" height="821" alt="" title="" /> <div class="caption"> The crew hauled away on the rope. Page 249.</div> </div> "You've done splendidly," said the gentleman, as soon as he had reached the deck and grasped my hand. "Here you've been gone only fifteen days and have sent in two first-rate prizes, besides the one that is coming by the Sound. It is probably all safe, as there are no British vessels there to trouble it when once it turns the eastern end of Long Island." Before the day was over I heard that the prize was safe, word to that effect having been brought down by a fishing-boat. The next day she came through the dangerous channel of Hell Gate, and anchored in the East River, where I visited her. Of course, the crew of the Marguerite wanted to[242] go on shore as soon as they could get away. I called them together and asked how many wanted to re-ship for the next cruise, which would begin just as soon as I could refit and get away. Every man responded; and the owner told me that those who had come in on the two prizes had already been secured. It was arranged that they should be under pay while we remained in port, one-half having liberty on shore, while the rest stayed on-board and helped with the work that was to be done. As soon as they learned of our arrival, my second and third mates reported for duty, their prizes having been turned over to the owners for condemnation and sale. In the afternoon I went ashore; and after visiting the office and transacting some business there, I hastened to the fashionable boarding-house on Broadway, just below Trinity Church, where I understood the Graham family was staying. I was most heartily welcomed by them; and when I told my story of what had happened since they left me, Captain Graham said he congratulated me as much as it was possible for a loyal Englishman to congratulate his country's enemy. "Everybody has been very kind to us," he said, "from the officers and crew that had us in charge, to the owners of the Marguerite, to whom we gave your letter on our arrival. I am under parole, and hope to be[243] exchanged before long; but I find New York so agreeable that I shall be sorry to leave it when the time comes to go away." "I like it very much too," said Mrs. Graham, as her husband paused. "We go out walking every pleasant day, and find the Battery a delightful place to loiter in. I never get tired of looking at the ships and boats in the bay, and I don't wonder that the people who live here are so fond of their city." I accepted an invitation to remain, or rather to return for tea; and it is needless to say that I had a very pleasant evening. By tacit consent all allusion to the war was omitted, and we chatted upon various topics, in which our recollections of the Washington had a prominent place. It was rather late in the evening when I returned to the Marguerite and went to bed. While I was at breakfast the next morning a messenger came with the request that I would go to the office of the owners as soon as possible. "We have a proposal to make to you for a new command," said the senior member of the firm of owners, as soon as I entered the office. I signified my readiness to listen to any offer they had to make, as I felt sure it would be a good one. "We were thinking of converting the Camperdown into a privateer," said he, "by reducing her free-board[244] so that she will sit low in the water. She can easily carry twelve or fourteen guns, and a proportionately larger crew than the Marguerite. We think that she will be a good sailer with the alterations we propose; but there is the possible chance that she will be injured rather than improved. What do you think of the plan? We shall give the command of the new privateer to you in case the change is made." "At first thought it does not strike me favorably," I answered, "in spite of the temptation it offers in giving me command of a larger vessel than the Marguerite. The schooner is very fast and easily handled; she is faster than the Camperdown, and can be brought about more readily, which is often a very important thing at sea, especially in time of war. For capturing merchant-ships, which is the object of privateering, seven guns are as good as fourteen; now and then an armed merchantman might surrender to the larger vessel when she would not to the smaller one, but such cases are not numerous. "Besides, sir," I continued, "you will excuse the suggestion, but I know my crew regards the Marguerite as a lucky craft, and that goes a long way in keeping up the spirits of the men during a cruise. They believe she will win every time; and with this belief they will always be ready to take any risk that I put upon them. Of course I have no superstitions[245] of the sort myself; but, all things being equal, I prefer a lucky ship every time." "Spoken like a man," said my employer; and then he asked what I would advise under the circumstances. "I would advise that the Camperdown be sold; probably the government would pay a good price for her, and convert her into a cruiser. The proceeds of the sale would buy and equip a privateer of the same grade as the Marguerite, and probably less time would be lost in making the sale and purchase than in altering the Camperdown in the manner proposed." He said they would think the matter over, and decide upon it as soon as possible. Then came up the question of prize-money for the captures we had made; and on this subject I received some important information. The cargoes of the prizes had been sold in great part, but all the goods could not find a ready market, except at a sacrifice, which was not considered judicious. Congress had enacted a law regulating the distribution of prize-money arising from captures by national vessels, and my employer said the same rule, as far as practicable, would be adopted by the owners of privateers. Here is the law as it relates to captures by national vessels:— [246] "One-half of the prize-money goes to the National Government; the other half is divided into twenty equal parts, and shall be distributed in the following manner: to captains, three parts; to lieutenants and sailing-masters, two parts; to the marine officers, surgeons, pursers, gunners, carpenters, master's mates, and chaplains, two parts; to midshipmen, surgeon's mates, captain's clerks, schoolmasters, boatswain's mates, gunner's mates, carpenter's mates, stewards, sailmakers, masters-at-arms, cockswains, and armorers, three parts; to gunner's yeomen, boatswain's yeomen, quartermasters, quarter-gunners, coopers, sailmaker's mates, sergeants, and corporals of marine, drummers and fifers, and extra petty officers, three parts; to seamen, ordinary seamen, and boys, seven parts." As he finished reading the new law he paused, and said, with a laugh, that he thought it doubtful if I would have as many classes of men for whom to make a distribution of prize money. I replied that it was probably in order to give me a chance to have them that they had proposed to convert the Camperdown into a privateer, and put her under my command. "That hardly corresponds to the account which a sailor once gave of the way prize money is distributed," I remarked, at the first pause in the conversation. "How was that?" "He said that when prize money is distributed, it is sifted through a ladder; all that goes through is for the officers, while all that sticks is for the men." "I don't think I ever heard that before," he an[247]swered; and then the conversation turned to the question of converting the Camperdown into a privateer. In the course of our talk we were joined by the other partners; and before the conference was over a representative of the government called to ascertain when the Camperdown would be condemned and sold. He added a hint that the government would purchase her at a good price. I was introduced as the captor of the ship, and as soon as the gentleman knew who I was, he advised me to hurry away and take more prizes of the same sort. In four days the Marguerite was ready for sea again; and it is hardly necessary to say that she got away as soon as possible. As long as we were in port I was a daily caller at the house where the Grahams were staying. They always gave me a cordial welcome, and when I announced my departure, Captain Graham said he was very sorry to have me go away, partly because of my friendship for the family and my treatment of them, and partly because he knew that British commerce was about to suffer more depredations, unless my luck took a turn for the worse. In the lower bay, when I reached it, there were two English vessels that had just come in, their flags showing them to be prizes. We were obliged to anchor, as the wind was unfavorable to our getting to[248] sea at once; and it so happened that we anchored within hailing distance of one of them. I hailed her, and ascertained that both of the vessels were prizes taken by the Hyacinth, Captain Taylor; and so I was able before sailing to rejoice over the good luck of my old comrade. Then I thought of my wager with David, and found that I had won it, as my first prize was taken a day before he captured his. I had left a letter for him at the office of the owners, and I now took the opportunity to write a few lines in addition, and congratulate him on his success. Near nightfall the wind shifted; and as the British man-of-war that troubled me somewhat when I arrived had now gone to the southward, I had no difficulty in getting on the ocean again. I learned afterwards that I had a narrow escape from running into a British fleet of five ships, with an aggregate of two hundred guns. It was a little to the south of the course I followed, and had already made several prizes; it was looking for the fleet of Commodore Rodgers, and also watching for the forty-four gun ship Constitution, which had gone into Chesapeake Bay, and was expected to come out again very soon. The Constitution came out as expected; and on Friday, July 17th, she was off the coast, but out of[249] sight of land, when she made out four sails to the northward, and soon afterwards a fifth sail. One of them was discovered to be a man-of-war, but the others were supposed to be merchantmen. The wind was light during the afternoon and evening, and also during the night. On the morning of the 18th, the Constitution found herself almost surrounded by a British fleet, consisting of one ship of the line, sixty-four guns, and four frigates, enough to make short work if they could once succeed in closing in upon her. All day the wind was light, or there was a dead calm. The Constitution took advantage of every puff, and she got out her boats and tried to tow out of danger. Then, finding she was in about twenty fathom water, she took all the spare rope that could be found, and bent it to a kedge, which was carried ahead about half a mile and dropped. As soon as the kedge took the ground, the crew hauled away on the rope, walking aft with it as fast as they could; and in this way the ship moved away as though she had a steam-engine on board. The maneuver was repeated several times before the British discovered it, and then they tried the same trick. Well, to make a long story short, that chase was kept up for three days in light wind or dead calm, the Constitution managing to keep just out of range and no more. All the ships had every stitch of can[250]vas out, and the men were kept in the tops to wet down the sails and make them draw as much as possible. It's a wonder the Constitution escaped, when we remember she had five ships closing around her, two of them being right abeam of her at one time for several hours, one on the starboard and the other on the larboard. The sailor who told me about the chase said that all through it everything on the Constitution was in the best of order, and all the evolutions were performed as though the ship had been lying at anchor in port. The chase was brought to an end by a squall. It came suddenly, and lasted only an hour; and the Constitution used it to such advantage that, when the clouds blew away, she was far ahead of the nearest of her pursuers, and they fired two guns to leeward as a signal that they gave up the struggle. After escaping from the British fleet, as I have just described, the Constitution went into Boston to refit, and sailed from there on the second of August, in the hope of falling in with some one of the English war-ships that were cruising along the coast between Halifax and Nantucket. Captain Hull, her commander, was particularly anxious to fall in with the Guerrière and fight her single-handed; but it was not his fortune to meet her or any other British war-ship between Boston and the Bay of Fundy. Then Captain Hull[251] cruised eastward, capturing a few merchant vessels, and then turned to the south. On the 19th of August his spirits were cheered by the report of a sail in sight; and he immediately gave chase in her direction. She was soon made out to be a frigate, and the chances were largely in favor of her being British. She showed a willingness to meet the Constitution, and the captain ordered the decks cleared and everything made ready for a fight. The stranger hung out British colors, and was at length made out to be the Guerrière, the very ship that Hull was looking for. The ships maneuvered for nearly an hour, the Englishman endeavoring to get in a position to rake the American, and at the same time avoid being raked himself. Both ships dodged about for a good while, and it was six o'clock in the evening before they got fairly together. <hr class="chap" /> [252] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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