Jefferson's War (12 page)

Unlike Pearl Harbor in 1941 or the World Trade Center and Pentagon terror attacks sixty years later, Algiers's brazen piracy didn't cause the Republicans and Federalists to paper over their ideological differences. The Senate was 17—13 Federalist-controlled; the House, where the issue would be decided, was 57—48 Republican. As a result, even the question of naming a nine-man committee to make recommendations about a naval force resulted in a close House vote: 46—44 to proceed.

The navy debate began on Friday, February 7, 1794, when the committee chairman, Thomas Fitzsimons of Pennsylvania, read a resolution recommending a six-frigate naval force. The debate lasted a month, with James Madison, the Republicans' point man and Jefferson's closest confidant, leading the navy opponents, who were Southerners for the most part. Notably absent was Jefferson, who had resigned from Washington's Cabinet and left Philadelphia a month earlier with all his possessions, bound for Monticello and retirement—but only temporary retirement, as events would prove. His timely departure spared him the discomfort of having to choose between his Republican allies and a cherished project: building a navy.

Six frigates were too few, and yet the timetable for building them was too long to meet the current crisis, Madison argued. He proposed that the money for a navy instead be spent on a treaty with Algiers. He reasoned that the Algiers—Portugal truce likely would be broken before a U.S. navy was afloat, and, if negotiations with Algiers failed, America could use the treaty money to pay Portuguese warships to protect U.S. merchantmen.

Fitzsimons said it was presumptuous of Madison to so casually
dismiss his committee's long and careful study of the issue. Algiers, he said, jeopardized all the recent advances in American trade, even its trade in commodities as prosaic as salt. Two million bushels of salt were imported from Europe each year, and if Algiers's warships curtailed that commerce, it would cost $1 more per bushel to import it from elsewhere, or $2 million—three times the $660,000 estimated cost of building a frigate navy. The similarly inflated cost of other commodities would ratchet the total severalfold, making a navy seem like a bargain by comparison. Benjamin Goodhue of Massachusetts attempted to knock down Madison's assertion that six frigates couldn't stand up to Algiers's navy; the committee, he said, had studied intelligence reports showing the force was adequate to the purpose. Fisher Ames of Massachusetts made alarmist predictions about what would happen if Congress failed to act. “Our commerce is on the point of being annihilated, and unless an armament is fitted out, we may very soon expect the Algerines on the coast of America.”

The Republicans fell back to their second line of defense, the British question, another fault line between them and the Federalists, who wished to reestablish friendly relations with their former mother country. The Republicans, who with good reason distrusted Britain, favored closer ties with France, although the French Revolution's excesses were beginning to dampen the enthusiasm of even Francophiles. Britain, said John Nicholas of Virginia, not only had brokered the Algiers—Portugal truce, but had tried to discourage the Portuguese from convoying American merchantmen. Other Republicans warned that Britain would continue secretly to encourage Algiers to prey on American trade to prevent U.S. goods from reaching Britain's enemy, France. “Algiers was but the instrument, Britain was the cause,” said William Giles
of Virginia. Madison asserted that if America built a navy, Britain would urge Algiers to harass U.S. shipping. “In the same way that they give underhand assistance to the Indians, they would give it to the Algerines, rather than hazard an open war.”

British interference was not well documented, argued Congressman William Vans Murray of Maryland, and it would be foolhardy for America to depend on Portugal for protection. “It would create a disgraceful dependence on a foreign power, and weaken the spirit of our marine; whereas, if you fit out frigates, you employ your money in nourishing the roots of your own industry; you encourage your own shipbuilding, lumber and victualing business.” A U.S. squadron could blockade Gibraltar without fear of being confronted by Algiers's navy, because the corsairs “wanted plunder, not glory; when they discovered they had to get the first by hard fighting, they would listen to peace, accompanied by money.”

The House passed the momentous Act to Provide a Naval Armament, 50—39, with congressmen from the rural South and West opposed and able at the last minute to attach an important amendment. Peace negotiations must be pursued with Algiers while shipbuilding went forward, and if a treaty were signed, construction must cease. President Washington signed the act into law on March 27, 1794. It allocated $688,888.82 for six frigates mounting at least 32 guns each.

 

War Secretary Henry Knox was a former artillery officer who had learned all that he knew about naval affairs from Plutarch's Lives. Now suddenly in charge of building a navy from scratch, he picked the brains of shipbuilders, businessmen, ship captains, and congressmen, and a vision of a fleet of “super frigates” began to
take shape in his mind. The ships, Knox concluded, “should combine such qualities of strength, durability, swiftness of sailing, and force, as to render them equal, if not superior, to any frigate belonging to any of the European Powers.” Given the job of designing the frigates and seeing them built was the esteemed shipbuilder Joshua Humphreys, who had designed the Continental Navy's 24-gun frigates at the age of twenty-four. Humphreys, who would become known as “the father of the U.S. Navy,” was to be assisted by thirty-year-old Josiah Fox, who would transform Humphreys's ideas into blueprints that would guide the shipwrights in their work. Fox, a wealthy Englishman, had been traveling in America scouting timber for his family's shipyard when his extraordinary talent caught the attention of Knox and Humphreys. He enthusiastically accepted the challenge of helping build a navy from the ground up. Curiously, both Humphreys and Fox were Quakers.

Knox, Humphreys, and Fox were determined to build the best frigates in the world. Since the United States couldn't afford to match the imposing men-of-war of the first-rate European powers—mammoth two- and three-deck fighting ships with 64 guns or more—they reasoned that it was better to build ships swift enough to get out of their way, yet packing enough firepower to whip anything lesser. With only France possessing frigates in any number among the European powers, the United States could distinguish itself by building frigates unequaled anywhere in speed and firepower. Humphreys rhapsodized to Senator Robert Morris of Pennsylvania that the frigates “in blowing weather would be an overmatch for double-deck ships” and in light weather would be able to evade them. “No ship under sixty-four now afloat, but what must submit to them.”

A decade had passed since the United States could claim to have a navy, but even during the Revolution, its warships were outclassed, outgunned, and outcaptained. They had contributed little to the war's outcome. Except for John Paul Jones's stunning victory over the
Serapis,
and few other wartime exploits, the Continental Navy had performed dismally. It had been launched with two armed merchant ships, two brigs, and a sloop, its crews filled out by press gangs. They sailed under the Grand Union flag, a knockoff of the British flag, until Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes in June 1777. The cobbled-together fleet and the small frigates Humphreys had designed all were sunk or captured—all but one of the thirty-five—while the British lost only five ships. At Yorktown, it was the French fleet that sealed off Chesapeake Bay. The last Continental warship, the
Alliance,
had been auctioned for $26,000 on August 5, 1785.

 

Knox parceled out the frigate—building among six shipyards from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Norfolk, Virginia—an early pork-barrel project benefiting the coastal states. He overconfidently predicted the frigates would be completed by the end of 1795, underestimating the time needed by years. But the delays and cost overruns were of his own making. First, while spreading the work among six shipyards might have been politically shrewd, it complicated the logistics of bringing together all the materials to make a ship. Then Knox also made the frigates bigger, displacing 300 tons more than the ships Congress had authorized. Finally, he had insisted they be framed in live oak—not the typical white oak—because ships made of tough, durable live oak would last at least half a century instead of the usual dozen years or so. But that meant
work crews would have to be sent to the sweltering Georgia Sea Islands to harvest the live oak. Malaria decimated them, and white replacement workers couldn't be found to brave the intense heat, humidity, fever, snakes, and bugs. Black slaves cut the live oak.

Humphreys and Fox first drew up blueprints for the three 44-gun frigates they intended to build: the
Constitution, President,
and
United States
. The other three warships would be smaller, 36-gun frigates: the
Constellation, Chesapeake
, and
Congress.
The
Constitution
, “Old Ironsides,” built at 1,576 tons in Boston—and anchored there today, still a commissioned naval vessel—was built by Colonel George Claghorn, a Revolutionary War veteran, at Edmund Hartt's Boston shipyard, using Humphreys's design. Humphreys personally oversaw construction in Philadelphia of the
United States
, the first completed frigate, in July 1797. Forman Cheesman supervised the building of the
President
in New York. The
Congress
was built in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the
Constellation,
in Baltimore, by David Stoddert, under the watchful eye of Captain Thomas Truxtun, one of the early Navy's warriors who would bring the ship credit during the Quasi-War with France in the late 1790s. The unlucky
Chesapeake,
being built in Norfolk, was destined to be memorably surrendered twice: by Captain James Barron to the HMS
Leopard
in 1807, and six years later by Captain James Lawrence to the HMS
Shannon,
despite Lawrence's dying words to his crew: “Don't give up the ship.”

The frigate builders looked across the Atlantic for inspiration, to France's powerful fleet. Not able to afford a navy like England's, the French, too, had chosen to build large frigates because they were cheaper and faster than the towering, heavily armed ships of the line with their three gundecks. Like the French ships, the American “super frigates” were copper-bottomed and on their two
gundecks carried long guns that fired solid shot. Carronades were mounted on the spar deck, for clearing enemy decks with shrapnel. The long guns were standard on warships everywhere. Solid shot's chief purpose was smashing holes in enemy hulls and killing enemy gunners. A crude measure of cannon caliber was the weight of the shot that it fired; there were 36-pounders, 24-pounders, 18-pounders, 12-pounders, 9-pounders, and 6-pounders. The carronade was relatively new, named for the foundry in Carron, Scotland, that designed it in 1779. It was a light, maneuverable, short-barreled gun that could fire a large round or belch a cloud of wicked projectiles—nails, chain, odd metal bits—that eviscerated anyone in its path, or could shred an enemy's sails, leaving him dead in the water.

Copper bottoms repelled barnacles, increasing ship speed, and also made it unnecessary to “careen” the vessel—tip it on its side—every six months or so to scrape off barnacles and repair holes bored by toredo worms. The British Royal Navy sheathed all its warship bottoms in copper, starting with a crash program in 1778.

While they were built upon the French model, the frigates' operations followed the Royal Navy's worthy example. Americans copied English shipboard organization, discipline, and all manner of daily operations, down to the rum ration. The 44-gun super frigates were crewed by 356 seamen, and the 36-gun ships by 306 sailors. They enlisted for 12 months. Able-bodied seamen were paid $14 a month, and ordinary seamen received $10. While they earned less than merchant seamen, the sailors could share in booty during wartime. The typical American seaman was twenty-two. Often, he was English. Nearly half of the sailors came from the cities—at a time when America was only 5 percent urban. Each day, they stood at least one of the five four-hour watches and two
two-hour watches. They spent long hours scrubbing decks and brightwork, whitewashing ceiling planking, repairing rigging, patching small boats, and practicing gunnery.

There were rules for practically everything, and harsh consequences for breaking them. For serious infractions, miscreants were slapped in irons, put on bread-and-water rations—and, mostly, punished with the cat-o‘-nine-tails. Less draconian punishments were meted out for lighter offenses. Quitting watch before relief arrived was punishable by three hours on the “spanker boom” and no rum ration for three days. Jutting over the ship's stern, the spanker could be a sickeningly rough ride in stormy weather.