A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy (17 page)

The schooner
Carleton,
having been lured into the American trap by
Enterprise,
had sailed headlong into the crossfire from the crescent line. From her angle of approach, she was unable to bring her twelve guns to bear. Murderous American fire raked the schooner, heavy shot holing her hull in several places, grapeshot spraying her decks. A cannonball grazed the head of
Carleton
's captain, knocking him unconscious, while another shot tore off the first mate's arm. Relentlessly, the Americans continued to hammer away at the ship as she began to fill with water and list heavily to one side. She would no doubt have been lost had it not been for two longboats that braved the heavy fire to take her under tow and row her out of the range of the American guns.

As the battle wore on, the crews on the American vessels served their guns well, sustaining a high rate of fire that proved effective. Firing, clearing, loading, and firing again, time after time, was a laborious business made all the more difficult as the British gunboats began to get the range and score hits. Eyes burning from powder fumes peered out from blackened faces to see more and more British gunboats pressing the attack. Shells crashed into the wooden hulls, crushing men under their weight, casting showers of lethal splinters about. Wounded men could receive little attention,
and many died lingering deaths as they lay unattended. The dead were quickly thrown over the side. And still these men—who just a short while before had been merchants, farmers, fishermen, teachers, and all manner of things but soldiers or sailors—fought on.

Liberty, Lee,
and
Washington
were close enough to the western shore that they were exposed to small arms fire from British marines and their Indian allies who had landed there. Fortunately, the spruce screens added before the battle made this fire less effective than it might have been.

The big bruiser
Thunderer
eventually arrived on the scene, but she was too cumbersome to work into the narrow confines of the battle, so she remained at long range ineffectively lobbing shells in the general direction of the American line.

As the shadows lengthened signaling the approaching end of the short October day,
Inflexible
at last entered the main battle, suffering the gauntlet of American fire to move up into position where the huge vessel could bring her heavy firepower to bear. She began pounding away at the American vessels and gradually turned the tide. Hit after hit took its toll.
Washington
suffered the most, but all of the American vessels were in danger of succumbing to the overwhelming firepower of this most powerful ship. Had darkness not intervened, the battle might well have ended there, with the American vessels shattered into so much driftwood. With barely enough light for safe navigation, the British vessels retired from the bay, delaying just long enough to set fire to the grounded
Royal Savage.

Gathered in a council of war illuminated by the flickering firelight of the burning
Royal Savage,
the Americans assessed their situation: sixty men dead, many others seriously wounded, three-quarters of their gunpowder expended, every vessel severely damaged,
Philadelphia
settling into the mud at the bottom of the bay even as they conferred. Yet surrender was not an option to these determined men.

A blanket of fog enhanced the darkness, and soon a plan took shape. Muffling their oars by tying pieces of clothing around them and hanging horn-shaped lanterns over their sterns that emitted no more than a tiny beam of light directly aft, the vessels got under way in single file, hugging the shore as closely as they dared.
Trumbull
led the way, followed by
Enterprise,
and then the remaining vessels. They could see Indian campfires along the shore and hear voices aboard General Carleton's flagship as they stole past the unsuspecting British fleet.

By the time dawn broke, the Americans were seven miles to the south. After much initial confusion, in which Carleton first sailed north after stranding a number of his men on Valcour Island, the British eventually gave chase. But the wind had by this time shifted to the south, making
progress difficult. It took another full day for the British to catch up to the Americans. When they did, another battle ensued in which the Americans miraculously held their own for five hours. Only
Washington
surrendered under a merciless barrage from
Inflexible.
At one point,
Congress
was surrounded by seven British vessels chewing away at her. More than a third of her crew was dead, her ammunition was exhausted, and she had twelve holes below her waterline. Yet she and several other remaining vessels managed to escape into the shallows of Buttonmould Bay where the British could not reach them. Deliberately running their vessels aground, the Americans removed what they could, jettisoned their guns, and set the vessels on fire. They then disappeared into the wilderness, found their way to the bastion at Crown Point, burned it to prevent it from falling into British hands, and moved on to Fort Ticonderoga where they were reunited with
Enterprise
and four other vessels that had managed to escape the British.

What may have seemed a decisive British victory was not. Carleton arrived at the smoking remains of Crown Point as heavy snow began falling; convinced that further advance was not possible, he decided to retreat back to Canada for the winter. This bought the Americans another year, priceless time that permitted them to prepare for the next British attempt to strike from the north. The resulting American victory in the Battle of Saratoga the following summer was one of the most decisive of the entire Revolution; it prevented the British from severing the colonies, dealt them a terrible blow to their morale, and brought the French into the war as an American ally.

Famed naval historian Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan would later write of the Battle of Valcour Island: “Save for Arnold's flotilla, the British would have settled the business. The little American Navy was wiped out, but never had any force, big or small, lived to better purpose.”

As the British came south in the days just prior to Saratoga,
Enterprise
was there again, taking part in the evacuation of Fort Ticonderoga before she was overwhelmed by a fresh British fleet, forced aground on 7 July 1777, and burned by her crew to prevent her capture. Reminiscent of Viking funeral pyres of ancient times, it was an honorable death for a ship that had served honorably and well.

After the Battle of Valcour Island, the American Revolution would go on for seven more years before ending with the Treaty of Paris in September 1783. During that time, a second American naval vessel was named
Enterprise
—a twenty-five-ton schooner fitted out with eight guns. She served in the Continental Navy for a brief time, convoying transports, performing reconnaissance
missions, and guarding against British foraging raids in the Chesapeake Bay. Most of the records of her service were lost, so little is known about her.

In the years following the Revolution, the euphoria of victory and independence had been accompanied by the challenges of building a new nation virtually from scratch. There was a sizable war debt to be paid off, a national economy to be built, and governmental structures to be put in place. Of necessity, the nation's leaders needed to prioritize their time and resources, and with no immediate threat on the horizon, both the Army and Navy were seriously neglected, the latter virtually disappearing for a time.

But the rest of the world did not wait patiently for the United States to get around to all it had to do. To begin with, much had changed since France had been an American ally during the Revolution. In the aftermath of a revolution of their own, the French were now fighting much of Europe, and the relationship between the two former allies had seriously deteriorated. French vessels began taking advantage of the naval weakness of the United States and were plundering American shipping. To make matters worse, the North African states of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli had long taken advantage of their geographic location to demand tribute from vessels using Mediterranean waters. Without a navy, American shipping was particularly vulnerable. As if this were not enough, relations with Great Britain were gradually worsening as well.

It became clear that a navy was going to be needed, so the U.S. Congress at last began allocating money for that purpose. One of the ships authorized was the third
Enterprise.
Built in 1799 as an eighty-four-foot schooner similar in design to the famed Baltimore Clippers, which were known for their extraordinary speed, she was fitted out with twelve 6-pounder cannons. Her first challenge was to take on the French vessels that had been attacking U.S. commercial ships. These were not naval vessels but privateers—privately owned ships that had been authorized by the French government to capture helpless American shipping vessels. As part of a squadron led by the frigate
Constellation, Enterprise
captured eight of these privateers and liberated eleven previously taken American vessels.

In 1801,
Enterprise
sailed for the Mediterranean where the Barbary States of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli continued to harass American commercial shipping.

Encountering a Barbary corsair of fourteen guns named
Tripoli, Enterprise
engaged her in a three-hour battle. Twice during the fierce engagement the Tripolitans struck their colors as a sign of surrender, but when the Americans sent a boat to board, the enemy reopened fire and hoisted their colors. After a third resumption of devastating fire, the Tripolitan captain
tore down his colors and tossed them into the sea. Amazingly, the American Sailors had sustained no losses while their defeated enemy had fifty killed or wounded. The Americans jettisoned the Tripolitan guns and ordered the defeated corsair into the nearest port. Upon his return to Tripoli, the defeated captain—already wounded in the fierce battle—was ordered by the monarch to ride through the streets on the back of a jackass and was then beaten with a stick five hundred times on the soles of his feet. Needless to say, there were considerably fewer volunteers for service in the Tripolitan Navy after that.

Enterprise
later captured the Tunisian ship
Paulina
and, with the frigate
Constitution,
the Tripolitan ketch
Mastico.
She also bombarded the North African coast on several occasions, sent landing parties inshore, and together with other ships of the American squadron attacked the capital city of Tripoli. In this latter engagement,
Enterprise
led a group of gunboats into the inner harbor, where her crew boarded and captured several enemy gunboats after fierce hand-to-hand combat.

In the early summer of 1805, the Tripolitan monarch signed a treaty that effectively ended the so-called Barbary War, and
Enterprise
was then laid up
in ordinary,
a term similar to the more modern “in mothballs,” meaning that the vessel was put out of commission but preserved for possible future use. That future use was not far off. Relations with Great Britain continued to deteriorate, and in 1809 she was refitted and back at sea.

When war was declared in June 1812, the Navy quickly converted
Enterprise
into a more capable brig, armed with two long-range 9-pounders and fourteen shorter-range 18-pounders called
carronades,
so named because they were originally designed in Carron, Scotland. For the first year of hostilities she cruised along the East Coast of the United States, searching for English quarry. On 4 September 1813, near Pemaquid Point, Maine, an
Enterprise
lookout called down from his perch near the top of the mainmast, reporting that he had spotted another brig anchored in a small inlet.
Enterprise
cleared for action and hoisted battle ensigns to the tops of her two masts. The other brig, HMS
Boxer,
did likewise, and the two stood out to open water, loaded with various arrays of round shot and grapeshot.

For several hours the two ships lay becalmed, unable to get at one another. Then at about 1130 a breeze sprang up from the south. Fortunately for
Enterprise,
she lay to the south of
Boxer,
which gave the Americans the advantage of the weather gage, just as the earlier
Enterprise
had enjoyed for a time at Valcour Island.

With local residents watching from the nearby shore,
Boxer
evaded for a time, trying to work herself into a more favorable position. But
Enterprise
managed to keep her advantage, all the while closing on her British adversary.
Finally, at just past 1500, what sounded to those on shore like a sudden clap of thunder rolling across the water signaled the beginning of the battle as
Enterprise
fired a broadside from her starboard side.
Boxer
responded immediately with all the guns along her opposite side, then known as the larboard.

This first exchange of fire was hardly decisive, yet it was very significant. A cannonball struck and killed Samuel Blyth, the British captain, leaving the ship's only other officer in command. A musket ball fired by one of the
Boxer
's sharpshooters struck down the American captain, Lieutenant William Burrows. As he lay mortally wounded upon the deck, his head propped up by a rolled hammock, Burrows looked up at the ensign fluttering in the breeze, its peppermint stripes already rent by several shrapnel holes, and said to Lieutenant Edward McCall, who had assumed command, “Never strike that flag.” Both vessels fought on, their seconds in command carrying on in a manner that each navy expected of them.

Seventeen-year-old William Barnes had grown up in the small town of Woolwich, Maine, and now worked with six other men serving one of
Enterprise
's large carronades. Each time the 2,700-pound gun fired, young Barnes had to stand clear to make sure the heavy carriage did not run over his feet as it flung itself backward in recoil. A heavy rope, called a
breeching,
was fastened to the ship's side on either side of the gun and passed through a ring on the bulbous after end of the weapon, the
cascabel
in ordnance parlance; the breeching stopped the cannon's recoil just enough to allow Barnes to get at the muzzle of the weapon. It was his responsibility to run a corkscrewlike tool called a
worm
down inside the still-smoking barrel to dislodge the chunks of smoldering powder left behind by the firing of the weapon. If he failed to clear it sufficiently, the remaining residue could prevent the fresh powder cartridge or the ball from being properly loaded.