During the War of 1812, which began and to some degree ended at sea, both sides gave out letters of marque to virtually any sea captain with an armed ship and a little experience who chose to apply. My own ancestor Renato Beluche was one of the few (in fact, he may have been the only) Baratarians who applied for and was given a U.S. letter of marque. His brig Spy, which he captained, was relatively successful against the British in and around their Jamaica Station. She was also patently illegal according to international maritime law as she carried not only her U.S. commission but one from the free state of Cartagena as well. This got Uncle Renato in trouble in the Bay of Biscay in 1813 when he dismasted in a storm while being pursued by a British frigate. He was boarded and Beluche lost his ship and got a few months in jail at Plymouth, England. I’m sure he would have agreed that some time in a dank British gaol is still better than a hanging.
Around the same time American Captain George Coggeshall found himself in a similar situation aboard his privateering schooner David Porter. Named after the Continental Navy hero and father of Commodore David Porter, who himself sired naval heroes David Farragut and David Dixon Porter, the schooner found herself caught in a terrifying blow in the Bay of Biscay on this day in 1814. Here is Coggeshall’s log entry from that day:
It blew a perfect hurricane, which soon raised a high cross-sea: at 8 o’clock A.M. I hove the schooner to under a double-reefed foresail, lowered the fore-yard near the deck and got everything as snug as possible. At 12 o’clock noon, a tremendous sea struck her in the wake of the starboard fore-shrouds. The force of the sea broke one of the top timbers or stauncheons and split open the plank-sheer, sot that I could see directly into the hold from on deck. As the gale continued to rage violently, I feared we might ship another sea, and therefore prepared, as it were, to anchor the vessel head to wind. For this purpose we took a square-sail boom, spanned it at each end with a new four inch rope, and made our small bower cable fast to the bight of the span, and with the other end fastened to the foremast, threw it overboard, and payed out about sixty fathoms of cable: she then rode like a gull in the water.
The staccato prose does not diminish the anxiety that must have been felt by every member of the crew in that storm. Coggeshall’s David Porter road her out, as he said like a gull, bobbing in the green water with his ship safely secured to her bower anchor. Thank goodness he had new cable. David Porter managed to slip past the blockade at Brest, France – to which port Renato Beluche was running when Spy was overtaken – and refit before heading back toward home. Every man aboard her would have a tall tale to tell, with the need for very little embellishment, once they got back to Baltimore.
Speaking of Baltimore – and completely off the subject – Happy 202nd Birthday to the inventor of modern horror as well as the detective story: Edgar A. Poe. Rest well, Laureate.
Header: Norwegian Harbor of Refuge by Hans Gude c 1873
We all know what a dock is, don’t we? It’s that long thing made out of worm-eaten wood that allows you to walk out over the lake/bayou/ocean/sea, sit down and fish. Or maybe jump off and go for a swim. Or just tie up the family dory. That is the experience that most of us have had. For me, a dock is a welcoming place of solitude and communion with the water. Or it’s a place of so much bustle and energy that the air fairly crackles.
In the great age of sail, and to men who went to sea in ships, it was more often the latter. A dock proper is a receptacle for ships where they can quite literally park to take in cargo or to refit. A dry dock, where ships could be built and/or repaired, was usually a deep trench with strong flood gates at one end. The ship, depending on size and the capacity of the dry dock, could be towed in, the water let out, the flood gates closed and work begun. By the end of the 18th century most blue water navies had large dockyards to support their fleets. Some of the most famous are Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans and San Francisco in the U.S., Deptford, Sheerness, Chatham and of course Plymouth or Pompey (from whose wonderful website the above picture of HMS Warrior comes) in the U.K. France had Dunkirk, Brest and Marseilles while Spain had Gibraltar and Malaga and Cartagena. Algiers, Tripoli and Sale kept things up on the Barbary Coast.
An entire language and culture sprang up in and around dockyards that was separate from but cousin to the culture of the sea. Dock dues were monies paid to the commissioner of a dock for use. Dockers were the inhabitants of a dockyard’s wider area. This term sprang up in England around the town of Plymouth in particular with a docker being anyone who had a residence between the dockyards proper and the town. Baltimore and New York also had “dockers”. In France they were known as diminuers – “diminishers”.
This derogatory sounding epithet may have stemmed from the distrust and sometimes outright hatred sailors felt toward dock workers. Dockyard duty was almost always the purview of a ship’s lieutenant or midshipman who commanded a gang of his mates ashore. They would be stationed at dry dock with their ship to keep an eye on the men working on her, frequently called “dockyard maties”. The artisans in particular – wood and metal workers – were considered dishonest and prone to steeling. Fights sometimes broke out between ship’s men and dockyard “artificers” that could end in serious injury or even death.
A ship is said to dock herself up when she has eased onto an underwater bed making her temporarily stationary. Docking a ship can occur elsewhere than a dock yard. A good example would be careening where in a ship is literally hauled up onto a beach or other shoreline and laid on her side for “breaming”. This is the process of getting the muck off her bottom by melting the tar and paint on her keel with fire which in turn removes seaweed, grass, lipids and worms from her bottom.
Though helpful for his ship the dockyard was generally no friend to a sailor, who felt he had to keep his guard up and an eye on his beloved ship at all times. The only exception being, it perhaps goes without saying, the taverns and the ladies. There at least, a seaman could find welcome and a good time.
In September, 1814, a 35 year old lawyer named Fancis Scott Key was sent aboard HMS Tonnant, at anchor in Chesapeake Bay outside of Baltimore, Maryland. Key's mission was to negotiate the release of American prisoners held by the British during the War of 1812. Unfortunately for Key, the British were about to attack the city. On September 13th, he was "detained" by his hosts and forced to watch the battle from the deck of HMS Surprise. As we now know, he saw the fifteen stars and fifteen stripes waving over Fort McHenry when the sun rose on the 14th. He wrote his poem The Defence of Fort McHenry then and there and, in 1931, it was adopted as the official anthem of the U.S.A.O! say can you see by the dawn's early lightWhat so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;O! say does that star-spangled banner yet waveO'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?In answer to your question, Mr. Key: hell yes! Happy Birthday to the U.S. and happy Sunday to all.Picture: U.S. ensign aboard USS Texas.
During the War of 1812, which began and to some degree ended at sea, both sides gave out letters of marque to virtually any sea captain with an armed ship and a little experience who chose to apply. My own ancestor Renato Beluche was one of the few (in fact, he may have been the only) Baratarians who applied for and was given a U.S. letter of marque. His brig Spy, which he captained, was relatively successful against the British in and around their Jamaica Station. She was also patently illegal according to international maritime law as she carried not only her U.S. commission but one from the free state of Cartagena as well. This got Uncle Renato in trouble in the Bay of Biscay in 1813 when he dismasted in a storm while being pursued by a British frigate. He was boarded and Beluche lost his ship and got a few months in jail at Plymouth, England. I’m sure he would have agreed that some time in a dank British gaol is still better than a hanging.
