The Jews in America Trilogy (96 page)

The American Navy, at this time, was closely modeled after the British. Its officer class consisted of men with old-school ties, who all “knew” each other, who regarded themselves as “gentlemen.” U.S. naval officers, in other words, constituted a kind of club, with rules and rituals and membership requirements that were inflexible. No Jew had ever been a U.S. naval officer, and it was unthinkable that one should ever wish or try to be. Uriah Levy had chosen for his arena the institution of American life where the Jew's role had always been the weakest, the most capitulating, where Jews had traditionally been given the least power and the meanest jobs.

In 1809, the Embargo Act was lifted, and Uriah Levy—now a naval school graduate—was back in service. It wasn't long before he had his first run-in with the power structure.

In the years between the two wars, British impressment gangs prowled the streets of American port cities looking for susceptible young men whom they could literally shanghai into the British Navy. American men who carried the proper documents were usually immune from this sort of danger, however, and Uriah Levy had naturally taken pains to have his “protection certificate” up to date and in order. As a result, when the cry of “Press gang!” rang through a Philadelphia tavern one afternoon—and most of the young men in the place headed quickly for the back door—Uriah Levy remained calm, sipping his coffee.

A squad of British marines, in white breeches and blue
coats, with tall red plumes sprouting from fat shakos, marched into the room with rifles at port, and demanded to see Uriah's credentials. Uriah withdrew his certificate from his breast pocket. One of the marines took the certificate, scanned it, looked at Uriah, and said, “You don't look like an American to me. You look like a Jew.”

Uriah replied coolly, “I am an American and a Jew.”

“If the Americans have Jew peddlers manning their ships, it's no wonder they sail so badly,” the sergeant said.

The Levy temper took over. Uriah immediately doubled his fist and struck the British sergeant in the jaw. A second member of the press gang promptly raised his rifle butt and felled Uriah with a single blow. When he regained consciousness, Uriah Levy was in the brig of a British cutter named the
Vermyra,
bound for Jamaica.

Uriah spent several miserable weeks slaving as a deckhand on the British ship. He was repeatedly ordered to be sworn into His Majesty's Navy, and each time refused with the polite and formal statement: “Sir, I cannot take the oath. I am an American and I cannot swear allegiance to your king. And I am a Hebrew, and do not swear on your testament, or with my head uncovered.” Obviously, the commander of the
Vermyra
realized he had a somewhat unusual situation on his hands. Possibly his uncertainty as to what a Jew actually was caused him to treat Uriah Levy with some deference. The young man's stiff and haughty attitude, and carefully phrased responses, hinted that the captain was in the presence of a Personage. At Jamaica, Uriah was permitted an audience with Sir Alexander Cochrane—the Briton who, a few years later, would order the city of Washington, D.C., put to the torch. Uriah, however, found Sir Alexander sympathetic and disapproving of the practice of impressment. Sir Alexander looked over Uriah's papers, said that they appeared to be authentic, and announced that Uriah could be released provided he
made his own way back to the United States. Within a few weeks, he was back in Philadelphia again.

In 1811, Uriah Levy had saved enough money to purchase a one-third interest in a 138-ton schooner named the
George Washington
—from the first names of his other partners, George Mesoncort and Washington Garrison. Levy was designated the ship's master. “By this time,” he wrote, with unfailingly breezy self-confidence, in his memoirs, “I had passed through every grade of service—cabin boy, ordinary seaman, able-bodied seaman, boatswain, third, second, and first mates, to that of captain. By means of my eight years' experience and instruction afloat and ashore, I had become familiar with every part of my profession—from the sculling of the compass to the taking of the altitude of the sun; from the splicing of a rope to the fishing of a mainmast; from the holding of a reel to the heaving to of a ship in a gale of wind.” He was perhaps the first commander in the history of American shipping to nail a mezuzah outside his cabin door; it was a gift from his proud Jewish mother. When he took command of the
George Washington,
Uriah Levy was only nineteen years old.

His first command involved a cargo of corn, which Uriah carried to the Canary Islands and sold for 2,500 Spanish dollars. He then took on a second cargo of Canary wine and headed for the Cape Verde Islands, off the coast of Africa.

When he arrived at the Isle of May in the Cape Verde group, Levy anchored and began what turned out to be an extended stay. He remained at anchor offshore nearly three weeks all told, and in his copious memoirs he never satisfactorily explained the reasons for his stay—nor why, inexplicably, he never attempted to unload his wine. Did he spend these weeks studying the slave trade? Possibly. The Cape Verde Islands lie off Africa's western coastal bulge, along which was strung the chain of slaving “castles.”
During his stay, Levy became friendly with another American captain, Levi Joy, and the two men spent considerable time together. Captain Joy was definitely involved in the slave trade, and might have been regarded as a certain kind of expert at it. He and Uriah Levy met frequently ashore for meals and exchanged visits on each other's ships. What did they talk about? It is impossible to say, and hard to know what Uriah's feelings about the slave trade might have been, because his visit to the Isle of May was terminated in dramatic fashion.

At dinner one night aboard Captain Joy's ship, Uriah was suddenly interrupted by an excited pair of his crewmen, who clambered on board from the
George Washington
's dinghy, crying, “Sir, your ship has been stolen!” Uriah rushed to the rail and watched as his ship, under full sail, disappeared over the horizon. It was the last he ever saw of her. A treacherous first mate and a couple of accomplices among the crew had plotted the piracy. With them went all of Uriah Levy's Spanish dollars, and all his casks of Canary Island wine. By the time he made his way home, an impoverished maritime hitchhiker, America was at war with England for a second time.

For his war service, Uriah Levy had two choices. He could sign on a privateer—an often lucrative occupation, particularly if one was successful at capturing enemy ships and splitting up the booty—or he could join the United States Navy as a sailing master, at a modest forty dollars a month. Though it afforded “little prospect of promotion and little gain,” as he put it, the Navy “furnished the best proof of love to my country.” Also, this was clearly where he was aiming. On October 21, 1812, after a visit to a Boston tailor, Uriah Phillips Levy made his first appearance in the full uniform of the United States Navy as it was in the War of 1812: “A dark blue double-breasted coat, with a rolling collar with two loops of gold lace on each side; blue
woolen pantaloons and white stockings; black silk cravat with a white shirt, and a black cocked hat.”

He cut a dashing figure, for he was slim and well built, with dark hair, curling sideburns, and a perfectly clipped and curled handlebar moustache. His earliest naval assignments took him frequently to Manhattan, where he attended synagogue at Shearith Israel, was entertained at the best teas and dinner dances, and was frequently seen strolling with well-placed young ladies along State Street and Battery Walk. In New York he heard rumors that the brig
Argus,
which had been anchored in the bay for several months, was preparing to break the British blockade. Uriah borrowed a rowboat, rowed over to the
Argus,
and presented himself to her commander. “Knowing that the cruise of the
Argus
could not fail to be a stirring one,” he wrote, “and hoping she might meet the enemy in such circumstances as to permit a battle, I sought and obtained permission to join her as a volunteer.”

The career of the
Argus
has become one of the greatest in the annals of U.S. naval history. Her first task, with Uriah aboard, was to carry—through the blockade—America's new minister to France, William H. Crawford. During the crossing, Levy was able, as he put it, “to gain the confidence and friendship of this eminent and most upright man.” This friendship was to stand Levy in good stead later on.

After depositing Crawford on the coast of France, the
Argus
went on to become “the dreaded ghost ship,” the raider that haunted the English and Bristol channels, that cruised the English and Irish coasts, attacking and destroying much larger ships, the ship whose very name was said to strike terror in the hearts of British sailors. At one point, with Uriah Levy at the helm, the
Argus
found itself—at dawn, in heavy fog—in the middle of a British squadron. Ghostlike, it made its way through and was not spotted
until it was out of reach of the enemy cannon. In its many gory encounters, the decks of the
Argus
were spread with wet sand so that the fighting crew of the “phantom raider” would not slither in the blood. When the
Argus
was finally captured, the ship was held in such respect that its crew was greeted with three cheers by the British. The final battle was “kept up with great spirit on both sides,” and when the captain, who lost his leg in the encounter, was captured and taken to Britain, he became a kind of folk hero during the several months before he died of his wounds, uttering to his men, “God bless you, my lads, we shall not meet again.”

Unfortunately, Uriah had no part in these final glories. One of the ships that the
Argus
had overtaken carried a cargo of sugar, which was considered a bit too valuable to be put to the torch at sea. Uriah Levy was assigned to take her and her sugar across the channel to France. A day later, the new ship, heavy with sugar, virtually unarmed, encountered a British merchantman with eight gun carronades on each side and long guns forward and amidships. To defend the little ship was hopeless. Uriah surrendered and was carried off to England, and to Dartmoor Prison.

Charles Andrews, a prisoner at Dartmoor for three years, wrote:

Any man sent to Dartmoor might have exclaimed:

“Hail, horrors! Hail, thou profoundest hell!

Receive thy new possessor.”

For any man ordered to this prison counted himself lost.

A Philadelphia gentleman by upbringing, a Jewish aristocrat by instinct, Uriah worked at keeping up his health and his spirits. The winter of 1813–1814, which he spent at Dartmoor, was one of the hardest in British history, and the Thames froze solidly to the bottom. Levy was confined at Dartmoor for sixteen months and, by the time he was
released, in an exchange of British and American prisoners, the war was over.

At Dartmoor, he had accomplished a few things. He had taught himself French, with the help of French prisoners. He had learned to fence. He had had a book, the
New American Practical Navigator,
which he read over and over again. But one thing he had most wanted to do in prison he had been unable to do. He had tried to organize a Jewish congregation. But Jewish law requires that there be a minyan, or quorum, of at least ten Jews before the Sabbath or any public prayer can be celebrated. Uriah could find only four at Dartmoor.

Back home again in Philadelphia, a friend took Uriah Levy aside and counseled him not to continue his Navy career in peacetime. “Nine out of ten of your superiors may not care a fig that you are a Jew,” the friend warned him. “But the tenth may make your life a hell.” Uriah, however, was by now a man with a mission. He struck a pose and replied, according to his memoirs: “What will be the future of our Navy if others such as I refuse to serve because of the prejudices of a few? There will be other Hebrews, in times to come, of whom America will have need. By serving myself, I will help give them a chance to serve.”
*

He was ready for his next round with the Establishment, and he did not have long to wait. Dancing in full uniform at Philadelphia's Patriots' Ball, he brushed shoulders accidentally with a young naval officer, Lieutenant William Potter. Or was it an accident? A few minutes later, Lieutenant Potter collided with him again, this time with more force. Moments later, the lieutenant crashed into Levy and his partner a third time. Uriah turned and smartly slapped
the lieutenant across the face. An enlisted man had struck an officer. “You damned Jew!” Potter cried. A crowd gathered, and several of Potter's fellow officers, murmuring that Potter had had too much to drink, led him off the floor while he continued to shout insults and obscenities. The music resumed, Levy and his partner returned to the floor, and Uriah assumed that the incident was over. The next morning, however, an emissary from Lieutenant Potter appeared on board Uriah's ship, the
Franklin,
carrying a written challenge to a duel.

Dueling had become extremely fashionable in the United States. Duels were fought for the slightest of excuses, and an elaborate framework of rules and ritual grew up around them. Technically against the law, dueling existed in a kind of limbo within the law, with its own, unwritten set of statutes.

Law cases involving deaths through dueling had also to contend with the mystical duelists' code. And, meanwhile, all the best people dueled. In the fifty years between 1798 and 1848, deaths from dueling were two-thirds the number of those from wars, and 20 percent of those who fought in duels were killed. Perhaps one of the charms of dueling was that when a duel was over, both combatants—the victor and the loser—were elevated to the rank of heroes. To have fought a duel—whether to have won or lost—was one of a man's surest ways to achieve social success.

Uriah Levy was not at all anxious to fight a duel over the matter of a dance-floor insult from a drunken lieutenant. But when he demurred, offering to shake hands with Potter and forget the whole thing, he was warned that if he did so he would be labeled a coward. And it was true, according to the code duello, that “a man who makes arms his profession cannot with honor decline an invitation from a professional or social equal.” Uriah wrote later that he “wanted to be the first Jew to rise to high rank in the Navy,
not be the first Jewish officer killed in a duel.” But the code left him no way out. A date was selected, seconds were chosen. The weapons were agreed upon: pistols.