It was a mixed team he got together, the sweepings of the streets. There were some good men among them, but more poor ones. And they were all new men to the ship and to the captain. They had not been trained to work together, and it was madness to fight a first-cla.s.s British ship with such a crew. Some, in fact, were mutineers and gave him trouble before he got out of the harbor.
But the _Shannon_ was a crack ship with a crack crew. Captain Broke had commanded her for seven years and had a splendidly trained set of men.
He had copied from the Americans and put sights on his guns, had taught his men to fire at floating marks in the sea, and had trained his topmen to use their muskets in the same careful way. So when Captain Lawrence sailed on June 1, 1813, he sailed to defeat and death.
Captain Broke sent a challenge to the _Chesapeake_ to come out and fight him ship to ship. But Lawrence did not wait for his challenge. He was too eager for that, and set sail with a crew who did not know their work, and most of whom had never seen their officers before.
What could be expected of such mad courage as that? It is one thing to be a brave man; it is another to be a wise one. Of course you will say that Captain Lawrence was brave; but no one can say he was wise. Poor fellow, he was simply throwing away his ship and his life.
It was in the morning of June 1 that the _Chesapeake_ left the wharves of Boston. It was 5.50 in the afternoon that she met the _Shannon_ and the battle began.
Both ships fired as fast as they could load, but the men of the _Shannon_ were much better hands at their work, and their b.a.l.l.s tore the American ship in a terrible manner. A musket-ball struck Lawrence in the leg, but he would not go below. The rigging of the _Chesapeake_ was badly cut, the men at the wheel were shot, and in ten minutes the two ships drifted together.
Men on each side now rushed to board the enemy"s ship, and there was a hand-to-hand fight at the bulwarks of the two ships. At this moment Captain Lawrence was shot through the body and fell with a mortal wound.
He was carried below.
As he lay in great pain he noticed that the firing had almost ceased.
Calling a surgeon"s mate to him, he said, "Tell the men to fire faster, and not give up the ship; the colors shall wave while I live."
Unfortunately, these words were spoken in the moment of defeat. Captain Broke, followed by a number of his men, had sprung to the deck of the _Chesapeake_, and a desperate struggle began. The Americans fought stubbornly, but the fire from the trained men in the _Shannon"s_ tops and the rush of British on board soon gave Broke and his men the victory. The daring Broke fell with a cut that laid open his skull, but in a few moments the Americans were driven below.
The _Chesapeake_ was taken in just fifteen minutes, one minute more than the _Hornet_ had taken to capture the _Peac.o.c.k_.
The British hauled down the American flag, and then hoisted it again with a white flag to show their victory. But the sailor who did the work, by mistake got the white flag under the Stars and Stripes.
When the gunners in the _Shannon_ saw the Yankee flag flying they fired again, and this time killed and wounded a number of their own men, one of them being an officer.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "DON"T GIVE UP THE SHIP!"]
The gallant Lawrence never knew that his ship was lost. He lived until the _Shannon_ reached Halifax with her prize, but he became delirious, and kept repeating over and over again his last order--"_Don"t give up the ship!_"
With these words he died. With these words his memory has become immortal. "Don"t give up the ship!" is the motto of the American navy, and will not be forgotten while our great Republic survives. So Captain Lawrence gained greater renown in defeat than most men have won in victory.
The capture of the _Chesapeake_ was a piece of wonderful good fortune for the British, to judge by the way they boasted of it. As Captain Pearson had been made a knight for losing the _Serapis_, so Captain Broke was made a baronet for taking the _Chesapeake_. A "baronet," you must know, is a higher t.i.tle than a "knight," though they both use the handle of "Sir" to their names.
The work of the _Shannon_ proved--so the British historians said--that, "if the odds were anything like equal, a British frigate could always whip an American, and in a hand-to-hand conflict such would invariably be the case."
Such things are easy to say, when one does not care about telling the truth. Suppose we give now what a French historian, who believed in telling the truth, said of this fight,--
"Captain Broke had commanded the _Shannon_ for nearly seven years; Captain Lawrence had commanded the _Chesapeake_ for but a few days. The _Shannon_ had cruised for eighteen months on the coast of America; the _Chesapeake_ was newly out of harbor. The _Shannon_ had a crew long accustomed to habits of strict obedience; the _Chesapeake_ was manned by men who had just been engaged in mutiny. The Americans were wrong to accuse fortune on this occasion. Fortune was not fickle, she was merely logical."
That is about the same as to say that the _Chesapeake_ was given away to the enemy. After that there were no more ships sent out of port unfit to fight, merely to please the people. It was a lesson the people needed.
The body of the brave Lawrence was laid on the quarter-deck of the _Chesapeake_ wrapped in an American flag. It was then placed in a coffin and taken ash.o.r.e, where it was met by a regiment of British troops and a band that played the "Death March in Saul." The sword of the dead hero lay on his coffin. In the end his body was buried in the cemetery of Trinity Church, New York. A monument stands to-day over his grave, and on it are the words:
"Neither the fury of battle, the anguish of a mortal wound, nor the horrors of approaching death could subdue his gallant spirit. His dying words were
"Don"t give up the ship!""
CHAPTER XVI
COMMODORE PERRY WHIPS THE BRITISH ON LAKE ERIE
"WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND THEY ARE OURS"
IN the year 1813, when war was going on between England and the United States, the whole northern part of this country was a vast forest. An ocean of trees stretched away from the seaside in Maine for a thousand miles to the west, and ended in the broad prairies of the Mississippi region.
The chief inhabitants of this grand forest were the moose and the deer, the wolf and the panther, the wild turkey and the partridge, the red Indian and the white hunter and trapper. It was a very different country from what we see to-day, for now its trees are replaced by busy towns and fertile fields.
But in one way there has been no change. North of the forest lands spread the Great Lakes, the splendid inland seas of our northern border; and these were then what they are now, vast plains of water where all the ships of all the nations might sail.
Along the sh.o.r.es of these mighty lakes fighting was going on; at Detroit on the west; at Niagara on the east. Soon war-vessels began to be built and set afloat on the waters of the lakes. And these vessels after a time came together in fierce conflict. I have now to tell the story of a famous battle between these lake men-of-war. There was then in our navy a young man named Oliver Hazard Perry. He was full of the spirit of fight, but, while others were winning victories on the high seas, he was given nothing better to do than to command a fleet of gunboats at Newport, Rhode Island.
Perry became very tired of this. He wanted to be where fighting was going on, and he kept worrying the Navy Department for some active work.
So at last he was ordered to go to the lakes, with the best men he had, and get ready to fight the British there. Perry received the order on February 17, 1813, and before night he and fifty of his men were on their way west in sleighs; for the ground was covered deep with snow.
The sleighing was good, but the roads were bad and long; and it took him and his men two weeks to reach Sackett"s Harbor, at the north end of Lake Ontario. From that place he went to Presque Isle, on Lake Erie, where the fine City of Erie now stands. Then only the seed of a city was planted there, in a small village, and the forest came down to the lake.
Captain Perry did not go to sleep when he got to the water-side. He was not one of the sleepy sort. He wanted vessels and he wanted them quickly. The British had warships on the lake, and Perry did not intend to let them have it all to themselves.
When he got to Erie he found Captain Dobbins, an old shipbuilder, hard at work. In the woods around were splendid trees, white and black oak and chestnut, for planking, and pine for the decks. The axe was busy at these giants of the forest; and so fast did the men work, that a tree which was waving in the forest when the sun rose might be cut down and hewn into ship-timber before the sun set. In that way Perry"s fleet grew like magic out of the forest. While the ships were building, cannon and stores were brought from Pittsburgh by way of the Allegheny River and its branches. And Perry went to Niagara River, where he helped capture a fine brig, called the _Caledonia_, from the British.
Captain Dobbins built two more brigs, one of which Perry named the _Niagara_. The other he called _Lawrence_, after Captain Lawrence, the story of whose life and death you have just read.
Have any of you ever heard the story of the man who built a wagon in his barn and then found it too wide to go out through the door? Perry was in the same trouble. His new ships were too big to get out into the lake.
There was a bar at the mouth of the river with only four feet of water on it. That was not deep enough to float his new vessels. And he was in a hurry to get these in deep water; for he knew the British fleet would soon be down to try to destroy them.
How would you work to get a six-foot vessel over a four-foot sand bar?
Well, that doesn"t matter; all we care for is the way Captain Perry did it. He took two big scows and put one on each side of the _Lawrence_.
Then he filled them with water till the waves washed over their decks.
When they had sunk so far they were tied fast to the brig and the water was pumped out of them. As the water went out they rose and lifted the _Lawrence_ between them until there were several feet of water below her keel. Now the brig was hauled on the bar until she touched the bottom; then she was lifted again in the same way. This second time took her out to deep water. Next, the _Niagara_ was lifted over the bar in the same manner.
The next day the British, who had been taking things very easily, came sailing down to destroy Perry"s ships. But they opened their eyes wide when they saw them afloat on the lake. They had lost their chance by wasting their time.
Perry picked up men for his vessels wherever he could get them. The most of those to be had were landsmen. But he had his fifty good men from Newport and a hundred were sent him from the coast. Some of these had been on the _Const.i.tution_ in her great fight with the _Guerriere_.
[Ill.u.s.tration: OLIVER H. PERRY.]
Early in August all was ready, and he set sail. Early in September he was in Put-in Bay, at the west end of Lake Erie, and here the British came looking for him and his ships.
Perry was now the commodore of a fleet of nine vessels,--the brigs _Lawrence_, _Niagara_ and _Caledonia_, five schooners, and one sloop.
Captain Barclay, the British commander, had only six vessels, but some of them were larger than Perry"s. They were the ships _Detroit_ and _Queen Charlotte_, a large brig, two schooners, and a sloop. Such were the fleets with which the great battle of Lake Erie was fought.
I know you are getting tired of all this description, and want to get on to the fighting. You don"t like to be kept sailing in quiet waters when there is a fine storm ahead. Very well, we will go on. But one has to get his bricks ready before he can build his house.
Well, then, on the 10th of September, 1813, it being a fine summer day, with the sun shining brightly, Perry and his men sailed out from Put-in Bay and came in sight of the British fleet over the waters of the lake.