A FAMOUS SEA DUEL—THE SHANNON AND THE CHESAPEAKE.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9432, 2 June 1896, Page 6

A FAMOUS SEA DUEL—THE SHANNON AND THE CHESAPEAKE.

Br "VIDETTK. On the early morning of June 1, 1813, a solitary British frigate, H.M.S. Shannon, was cruising within sight of Boston lighthouse. She was a ship of about 1000 tons, and bore every mark of long and hard service. No gleam of colour sparkled about her. Her sides were rusty, her sails weatherstained ; a solitary flag blew from her mizzenpeak, and even Its blue had been bleached by sun and rain and wind to a dingy grey. A less romantic and more severely practical -ship did not float, and her captain was of the same type as the ship. As English Sailor. I aptain Philip Bowes Vere Broke was an Englishman pur sang, and of a type happily not uncommon. Hie fame will live as long as the British flag flies, yet a more sober and prosaic figure can hardly be imagined. He was not, like Nelson, a quarter-deck Napoleon ; he had no gleam of Dundonald's matchless ruse de guerre. He was as deeply religious as Havelock or one of Cromwell's major-generals; he had the frugality of a Scotchman and the heavy-footed common sense of a Hollander. He was as nautical as a web-footed bird, and had no more " nerves " than a fish. A domestic Englishman, whose heart was always with the little girls at Brokehall, in Suffolk, but for whom the service of his country was a piety, and who might have competed with Henry Laurence with his self-chosen epitaph " Here lies one who tried to do his duty." A sober-suited, half-melancholy common sense was Broke's characteristic, 5 and he had applied it to the working of his ship till he had made that vessel, perhaps, the most formidable fighting machine of her size afloat. He drilled His gunners until, from the swaying platform of their decks, they shot with a deadly coolness and accuracy nothing floating could resist. Broke, as a matter of fact, owed his famous victory over the Chesapeake to one of his malter-of-fact precautions. The first broadside fired.by the Chesapeake sent a 32-pound shot through one of the gun-room cabins into the magnzine passage of the Shannon, v/lie;e '.'. •■:!/' - have easily ignited some grains of powder and blown the ship up, if Broke had not taken the precaution of elaborately damping that passage before the action began ! The prosaic side of Broke's character is very amusing. In his diary he records his world famous victory thus :— «' June Ist. —Off Boston. Moderate." " N.W.—W(rote) Laurence." "P.M.—Took Chesapeake." Was ever a shining victory packed into fewer or duller words ? Broke's scorn of the histrionic is shown by his reply to one of his own men who, when the Chesapeake was bearing down upon her fluttering with colour, saidtohis commander, eyeing the solitary and dingy flag at the Shannon's peak, " Mayn't we have three ensigns, sir, like she has?" "No," said Broke, "we have always been an unassuming ship !" A Quixotic Challenge. And yet this unromantic English sailor had a gleam of Don Quixote in nim. On this pleasant summer morning he was waiting alone under easy sail, outside a hostile port, strongly fortified and full of armed vessels, waiting; for an enemy's ship bigger than himself to come out and fight him ! He had sent in the previous day, by way of a challenge, a letter that recalls the days of chivalry. "As the Chesapeake," lie wrote to Laurence, its captain, "appears now ready for sea, I request that you will do mc the favour to meet the Shannon with her, ship to ship." He proceeds to explain the exact I armament of the Shannon, the number of her crew, the interesting circumstances that he is short of provisions and water, and that he has sent away his consort so that the terms of the duel may be fair. " If you will favour mc," he says, "with any plan of signals or telegraph, I will warn you should any of my friends be too nigh, while you are in sight, until I can detach them out of the way." " Or " he suggests, " I would sail with you under a flag of truce to any place you think safest from our cruisers, hauling it down when fair, to begin hostilities." "Choose your terms," he concludes, "but let'us meet." Haying sent in this amazing letter this middle-aged, unromantic, but hard-fighting captain climbs at daybreak to his own main-top, and sits there till half-past eleven, watching the challenged ship, to see if her foretopsail is unloosed and she is coming out to fight. American Victories. It is easy to understand the causes which kindled a British sailor of even Broke's unimaginative temperament into flame. ' On June 18th, 1812, the United States with magnificent audacity declared war against Great Britain. England at that moment had 621 efficient cruisers at sea, 102 being line-of-battle ships. The American nary consisted of eight frigates and twelve corvettes! It is true that England was at war at the same moment with half the civilised world, but what reasonable chance had the tiny naval power of United States against the mighty fleets of England, rich with the traditions of the Nile and Trafalgar ? As a matter of fact, the commercial maritime of the States was practically destroyed ; but the Americans were of the same fighting stock as the English; to the Viking blood they added Yankee ingenuity and resource ; and up to the June morning when the Shannon was waiting outside Boston Harbour for the Chesapeake the naval honours of the war belonged to the Americans. The fight was one of single ship against single ship, but in these combats the Americans had scored more successes in twelve months than French seamen had gained in twelve years. The Guerriere, the Jave, and the Macedonian had each been captured in single combat, and every British post-captain betwixt Portsmouth and Halifax was swearing with mere fury. The Americans were shrewd enough to invent a new type of frigate which, in strength of frame, weicht of metal, and general fighting power was to a British frigate of the same class almost what an ironclad would be to a wooden ship. The Constitution, for example, was in size to the average British frigate as 15.3 to 10.9 ; in weight of metal as 76 to 51; and in crew as 46 to 25. Broke, however, had faith in his ship and his men, and he proposed in his sober fashion to restore the tarnished honour of his flag by capturing single-handed the best American frigate afloat. The American Champion. The Chesapeake was a fine ship, perfectly equipped, under a daring and popular commander. Laurence was a man of Dundonald's type, of brilliant ingenuity and courage, and had won fame four months before by capturing in the Hornet, after a. hard fight, the British brig-of-war Peacock. For this feat he had been promoted to the Chesapeake, and in his brief speech from the quarter-deck, just before the fight with the Shannon began, he exhorted his men to " Peacock her, Peacock her ! " The Chesapeake-was larger than the Shannon, its crew was nearly a hundred men stronger, its weight of fire 5981b., as against the Shannon's 5381b'. Her guns fired double-headed shot and bars of wrought iron, connected by links, and loosely tied by a few rope yarns, which, when discharged from the gun, spread out and formed a flying iron chain six feet long. Its cannister shot contained jagged pieces of iron, broken bolts and nails. As the British had a reputation for boarding, a large barrel of unslacked lime was provided to fling in the faces of boarders. An early shot of the Shannon, by the way, struck this cask of lime and scattered its contents in the faces of the Americans themselves ! Part of the equipment of the Chesapeake consisted of several hundred pairs of handcuffs intended for the wrists of English prisoners; Boston citizens prepared a banquet in honour of the victors for the same evening; and a small fleet of pleasure-boats followed the Chesapeake as she camo gallantly out to the fight. - The Fight. Never was a braver, shorter, or more murderous fight. *. Laurence, the most gallant of men, bore steadily down to-the starboard quarter of the Shannon. When within fiftj yards he luffed ; bis men sprang into the shrouds and gave three cheers. Broke fought with characteristic silence and composure. He forbade hU men to cheer, enforced the sternest silence along his deck,, and ordered the captain of each gun to fire as his piece bore on the enemy. "Fire into her quarters," he said, "maindeck into main-deck, quarter-deck into quarter-deck. Kill the men, and the ship is yours." The sails of the Chesapeake swept betwixt the slanting rays of the evening sun and th« Shannon, the drifting aiiadow

darkened the English main-deck ports, the rush of the enemy's cutwater could be heard through the grim silence of the Shannon's decks. Suddenly there broke out the first gun from the Shannon ; then her whole side leaped into flame. Never was a more fatal broadside discharged ! A tempest of shot, splinters, torn hammocks, cut rigging, and wreck of every kind was hurled like a cloud across the deck of the Chesapeake, and of 150 men at stations there more than a hundred were killed or wounded. A more fatal loss to the Americans instantly followed, as Captain Laurence, the fiery soul of his ship, was shot through the abdomen by an English marine. Eacli strip fired two full broadsides, and, as the guns fell quickly out of range, prt of another broadside. The firing of the Chesapeake was furious and deadly enough to have disabled an ordinary ship. It is computed that forty effective shots would be enough to disable a frigate : the Shannon during the six minutes of the firing was struck by no less than ISB shot, a fact which proves the steadiness and power of the American fire. But the fire of the Shannon was overwhelming. In those six fatal minutes she smote the Chesapeake with no less than 362 shots, an average of sixty shots of all sizes every minute, as against the Chesapeake's twenty-eight shots. The Chesapeake was fir-built and the British shot riddled her. One Shannon broadside partly raked the Chesapeake and literally smashed the stern cabins and battery to mere splinters, as though a procession of aerolites had torn through it. "Follow Mk !" The swift, deadly, concentrated fire of the British in two quick-following broadsides practically decided the combat. The par-tially-disabled vessels drifted together, and the Chesapeake fell on board the Shannon, her quarter striking the starboard main chains. Broke, as the ships ground together, looked over the blood-splashed decks of the American and saw the men deserting the quarter-deck guns, under the terror of another broadside at so short a distance. " Follow mc who can," he shouted, and with characteristic coolness "stepped"— in his own phrase —across the Chesapeake's bulwark. He was followed by some thirtytwo seamen and eighteen marines—fifty British boarders leaping upon a ship with a crew of 400 men, a force which, even after the dreadful broadsides of the Shannon, still numbered 270 unwounded men in its ranks. It is absurd to deny to the Americans courage of the very finest quality, but the amazing and unexpected severity of the Shannon's fire had destroyed for the moment their, viorale, and the British were in a mood of victory. The boatswain of the Shannon, an old "Rodney man, lashed the two ships together, and in the act had his left arm literally hacked ofF by repeated strokes of a cutlass and was killed. One British midshipman, followed by five topmen, crept along the Shannon's foreyard and stormed the Chesapeake's foretop, killing the men stationed there, and then swarmed down by a back stay to join the fighting on the deck. Another middy tried to attack the Chesapeake's mizzen-top from the starboard mainyard arm, but being hindered by the foot of the topsail, stretched himself out on the mainyard arm, and from that post shot three of the enemy in succession. Meanwhile the fight on the deck had been short and sharp ; some of the Americans leaped overboard and others rushed below; and Laurence, lying wounded in his steerage, saw the wild reflux of his own men down the after ladders. On asking what it meant, he was told " the ship is boarded, and those are the Chesapeake's men driven from the upper decks by the English." This so exasperated the dying man that he called out repeatedly, •' Then blow her up; blow her up."

Thirteen Fiery Minutes.

The fight lasted exactly thirteen minutes ; the broadsides occupied six minutes, the boarding seven, and in thirteen minutes after the first shot the British flag was flying over the American, the Shannon and the Chesapeake were bearing up, side by side, for Halifax, the spectators in. the pleasure boats were left ruefully staring at •the spectacle, and the Boston citizens had to consume, with what appetite they might, their own banquet! The carnage on the two ships was dreadful. In thirteen minutes 252 men were' either killed or wounded, an aveiage of nearly 20 men for every minute the fight lasted. In the combat betwixt two frigates nearly as many men were struck down as in the battle of Navarino ! The Shannon itself lost as many men as any seventy-four gun ship ever lost in battle. Captain Brokk. Captain Broke was desperately wounded in a curious fashion. A group of Americans, who had laid down their arms, saw the British captain standing for a moment alone on the break of the forecastle. They snatched up weapons lying on the deck, and instantly attacked him. Warned by the shout of the sentry, Broke turned round to find three of the enemy rushing, on him. He parried the middle fellow's pike, and wounded him in the face, but was instantly struck down with a blow from the butt end of a musket, which laid bare his skull. He also received a slash from the cutlass of the third man, which clove a portion of his skull completely away and le"ft the brain bare. He fell, and was grappled on the deck by the man he had first wounded, a powerful fellow, who got the uppermost and raised a bayonet to thrust through Broke. At this moment a British marine came running up, and concluding that the man underneath must be an American, also raised his bayonet to give the coup de grace. "Pooh, pooh, you fool," said Broke in the most matter-of-fact fashion, " Don't you know your captain V whereupon the marine changed the direction of his thrust and slew the American. How the Nkws was Told. The news reached London on July 7th, and wae carried straight to the House of Commons, where Lord Cochrane was just concluding a fierce denunciation of the Admiralty on the. ground of the disasters suffered from the Americans, and Croker, the secretary to the Admiralty, was able to tell the story of the fight off Boston to the wildly cheering House as a complete defence of his department. Broke was ajb once created a baronet and a Knight of the Bath. In America, on the other hand, the story of the fight was received with mingled wrath and incredulity. " I remember," says Rush, afterwards U.S. Minister at the Court of St. James, "at the,first rumour of it, the universal incredulity. I remember how the post-offices were thronged for successive days with anxious thousands ; how collections of citizens rode out for miles on the highway to get the earliest news the mail brought. At last, when the certainty was known, I remember thet public gloom, the universal badges of mourning. 'Don't give up the ship,' the dying words of Laurence, were on every tongue." It was a great fight, the most memorable and dramatic in naval history. The combatants were men of the same stock, and fought with equal bravery. Both nations, in fact), may be proud of a fight so frank, so fair so gallant. The Shannon won because Broke had welded his men into a fighting force of the finest quality, and had made the firing of his ship absolutely destructive. The world, we may hope will never witness another Shannon engaged in the fierce wrestle of battle with another Chesapeake, for the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes are knitted together by an unwritten bond that grows stronger every year. And. if when Englishmen and Americans, who once fought so bravely against each other, stand side by bide, what can resist them ?

The Ships. For years the Shannon and the Chesapeake lay peacefully side by side in the Medway, and the two famous ships might well have been preserved as national trophies. For thick-headed unimaginative stupidity, however, the British Admiralty can hardly be surpassed. The Shannon was broken up for old timber in 1859, her figure-head being presented to the Broke family. The Chesapeake was bought by the Admiralty after the fight for exactly £21,314 11s and six years afterwards she was sold as mere old timber for £500, was broken up, and today stands as a Hampshire flour mill, peacefully grinding English corn. But still on the mill timbers can be seen the marks of the grape and round shot of the Shannon.— Melbourne Argus.