THE CRUISE OF THE "WASP"

A crash as when some swollen cloud
Cracks o'er the tangled trees!
With side to side, and spar to spar,
Whose smoking decks are these?
I know St. George's blood-red cross,
Thou mistress of the seas,
But what is she whose streaming bars
Roll out before the breeze?

Ah, well her iron ribs are knit,
Whose thunders strive to quell
The bellowing throats, the blazing lips,
That pealed the Armada's knell!
The mist was cleared,--a wreath of stars
Rose o'er the crimsoned swell,
And, wavering from its haughty peak,
The cross of England fell!
--Holmes.


THE CRUISE OF THE "WASP"

In the war of 1812 the little American navy, including only a
dozen frigates and sloops of war, won a series of victories
against the English, the hitherto undoubted masters of the sea,
that attracted an attention altogether out of proportion to the
force of the combatants or the actual damage done. For one
hundred and fifty years the English ships of war had failed to
find fit rivals in those of any other European power, although
they had been matched against each in turn; and when the unknown
navy of the new nation growing up across the Atlantic did what no
European navy had ever been able to do, not only the English and
Americans, but the people of Continental Europe as well, regarded
the feat as important out of all proportion to the material
aspects of the case. The Americans first proved that the English
could be beaten at their own game on the sea. They did what the
huge fleets of France, Spain, and Holland had failed to do, and
the great modern writers on naval warfare in Continental Europe-
-men like Jurien de la Graviere--have paid the same attention to
these contests of frigates and sloops that they give to whole
fleet actions of other wars.

Among the famous ships of the Americans in this war were two
named the Wasp. The first was an eighteen-gun ship-sloop, which
at the very outset of the war captured a British brig-sloop of
twenty guns, after an engagement in which the British fought with
great gallantry, but were knocked to Pieces, while the Americans
escaped comparatively unscathed. Immediately afterward a British
seventy-four captured the victor. In memory of her the Americans
gave the same name to one of the new sloops they were building.
These sloops were stoutly made, speedy vessels which in strength
and swiftness compared favorably with any ships of their class in
any other navy of the day, for the American shipwrights were
already as famous as the American gunners and seamen. The new
Wasp, like her sister ships, carried twenty-two guns and a crew
of one hundred and seventy men, and was ship-rigged. Twenty of
her guns were 32-pound carronades, while for bow-chasers she had
two "long Toms." It was in the year 1814 that the Wasp sailed
from the United States to prey on the navy and commerce of Great
Britain. Her commander was a gallant South Carolinian named
Captain Johnson Blakeley. Her crew were nearly all native
Americans, and were an exceptionally fine set of men. Instead of
staying near the American coasts or of sailing the high seas, the
Wasp at once headed boldly for the English Channel, to carry the
war to the very doors of the enemy.

At that time the English fleets had destroyed the navies of every
other power of Europe, and had obtained such complete supremacy
over the French that the French fleets were kept in port. Off
these ports lay the great squadrons of the English ships of the
line, never, in gale or in calm, relaxing their watch upon the
rival war-ships of the French emperor. So close was the blockade
of the French ports, and so hopeless were the French of making
headway in battle with their antagonists, that not only the great
French three-deckers and two-deckers, but their frigates and
sloops as well, lay harmless in their harbors, and the English
ships patroled the seas unchecked in every direction. A few
French privateers still slipped out now and then, and the far
bolder and more formidable American privateersmen drove hither
and thither across the ocean in their swift schooners and
brigantines, and harried the English commerce without mercy.

The Wasp proceeded at once to cruise in the English Channel and
off the coasts of England, France, and Spain. Here the water was
traversed continually by English fleets and squadrons and single
ships of war, which were sometimes covoying detachments of troops
for Wellington's Peninsular army, sometimes guarding fleets of
merchant vessels bound homeward, and sometimes merely cruising
for foes. It was this spot, right in the teeth of the British
naval power, that the Wasp chose for her cruising ground. Hither
and thither she sailed through the narrow seas, capturing and
destroying the merchantmen, and by the seamanship of her crew and
the skill and vigilance of her commander, escaping the pursuit of
frigate and ship of the line. Before she had been long on the
ground, one June morning, while in chase of a couple of merchant
ships, she spied a sloop of war, the British brig Reindeer, of
eighteen guns and a hundred and twenty men. The Reindeer was a
weaker ship than the Wasp, her guns were lighter, and her men
fewer; but her commander, Captain Manners, was one of the most
gallant men in the splendid British navy, and he promptly took up
the gage of battle which the Wasp threw down.

The day was calm and nearly still; only a light wind stirred
across the sea. At one o'clock the Wasp's drum beat to quarters,
and the sailors and marines gathered at their appointed posts.
The drum of the Reindeer responded to the challenge, and with her
sails reduced to fighting trim, her guns run out, and every man
ready, she came down upon the Yankee ship. On her forecastle she
had rigged a light carronade, and coming up from behind, she five
times discharged this pointblank into the American sloop; then in
the light air the latter luffed round, firing her guns as they
bore, and the two ships engaged yard-arm to yard-arm. The guns
leaped and thundered as the grimy gunners hurled them out to fire
and back again to load, working like demons. For a few minutes
the cannonade was tremendous, and the men in the tops could
hardly see the decks for the wreck of flying splinters. Then the
vessels ground together, and through the open ports the rival
gunners hewed, hacked, and thrust at one another, while the black
smoke curled up from between the hulls. The English were
suffering terribly. Captain Manners himself was wounded, and
realizing that he was doomed to defeat unless by some desperate
effort he could avert it, he gave the signal to board. At the
call the boarders gathered, naked to the waist, black with powder
and spattered with blood, cutlas and pistol in hand. But the
Americans were ready. Their marines were drawn up on deck, the
pikemen stood behind the bulwarks, and the officers watched, cool
and alert, every movement of the foe. Then the British sea-dogs
tumbled aboard, only to perish by shot or steel. The combatants
slashed and stabbed with savage fury, and the assailants were
driven back. Manners sprang to their head to lead them again
himself, when a ball fired by one of the sailors in the American
tops crashed through his skull, and he fell, sword in hand, with
his face to the foe, dying as honorable a death as ever a brave
man died in fighting against odds for the flag of his country. As
he fell the American officers passed the word to board. With wild
cheers the fighting sailormen sprang forward, sweeping the wreck
of the British force before them, and in a minute the Reindeer
was in their possession. All of her officers, and nearly two
thirds of the crew, were killed or wounded; but they had proved
themselves as skilful as they were brave, and twenty-six of the
Americans had been killed or wounded.

The Wasp set fire to her prize, and after retiring to a French
port to refit, came out again to cruise. For some time she met no
antagonist of her own size with which to wage war, and she had to
exercise the sharpest vigilance to escape capture. Late one
September afternoon, when she could see ships of war all around
her, she selected one which was isolated from the others, and
decided to run alongside her and try to sink her after nightfall.
Accordingly she set her sails in pursuit, and drew steadily
toward her antagonist, a big eighteen-gun brig, the Avon, a ship
more powerful than the Reindeer. The Avon kept signaling to two
other British war vessels which were in sight--one an
eighteen-gun brig and the other a twenty-gun ship; they were so
close that the Wasp was afraid they would interfere before the
combat could be ended. Nevertheless, Blakeley persevered, and
made his attack with equal skill and daring. It was after dark
when he ran alongside his opponent, and they began forthwith to
exchange furious broadsides. As the ships plunged and wallowed in
the seas, the Americans could see the clusters of topmen in the
rigging of their opponent, but they knew nothing of the vessel's
name or of her force, save only so far as they felt it. The
firing was fast and furious, but the British shot with bad aim,
while the skilled American gunners hulled their opponent at
almost every discharge. In a very few minutes the Avon was in a
sinking condition, and she struck her flag and cried for quarter,
having lost forty or fifty men, while but three of the Americans
had fallen. Before the Wasp could take possession of her
opponent, however, the two war vessels to which the Avon had been
signaling came up. One of them fired at the Wasp, and as the
latter could not fight two new foes, she ran off easily before
the wind. Neither of her new antagonists followed her, devoting
themselves to picking up the crew of the sinking Avon.

It would be hard to find a braver feat more skilfully performed
than this; for Captain Blakeley, with hostile foes all round him,
had closed with and sunk one antagonist not greatly his inferior
in force, suffering hardly any loss himself, while two of her
friends were coming to her help.

Both before and after this the Wasp cruised hither and thither
making prizes. Once she came across a convoy of ships bearing
arms and munitions to Wellington's army, under the care of a
great two-decker. Hovering about, the swift sloop evaded the
two-decker's movements, and actually cut out and captured one of
the transports she was guarding, making her escape unharmed. Then
she sailed for the high seas. She made several other prizes, and
on October 9 spoke a Swedish brig.

This was the last that was ever heard of the gallant Wasp. She
never again appeared, and no trace of any of those aboard her was
ever found. Whether she was wrecked on some desert coast, whether
she foundered in some furious gale, or what befell her none ever
knew. All that is certain is that she perished, and that all on
board her met death in some one of the myriad forms in which it
must always be faced by those who go down to the sea in ships;
and when she sank there sank one of the most gallant ships of the
American navy, with. as brave a captain and crew as ever sailed
from any port of the New World.

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