United States Defeats Macedonian
On the morning of October 25, 1812--195 years ago today--the USS United States was sailing southwest in the Atlantic Ocean, about 500 miles southeast of the Azores. As dawn broke, the lookout spotted a ship some twelve miles away. The captain, Stephen Decatur, recognized the approaching vessel: It was HMS Macedonian, a Royal Navy frigate. Decatur not only knew the ship; he was good friends with its captain, John S. Carden. The two men had dined together repeatedly when Macedonianwas in port at Norfolk, Virginia, just nine months earlier. Back then, America and Britain were on friendly terms, and at one point the two captains jokingly bet a beaver hat on the outcome of a future battle between their ships. But in July Congress had declared war, and now the two men's joke was about to become deadly serious.
As the two vessels got nearer, Carden recognized the ship of his friend. The United States was a new style of warship, sometimes dubbed a superfrigate, one of six built in the 1790s for the infant U.S. Navy. Their blend of speed, firepower, maneuverability, and sturdiness had already made them known and respected among naval men. The United States's revolutionary structural technology allowed it to be built long and sleek, like a much lighter ship, yet still fire forty-four 24-pound guns, considerably outweighing Macedonian's thirty-eight 18-pounders. In addition, the superfrigates were built of live oak, an especially hard wood found only in America. With up to two feet of this dense material girdling the ships' exteriors, their hulls were virtually impossible to penetrate.
Carden knew the United States had him outgunned, but he could not dodge a fight without being branded a coward, so he altered his course to approach it more directly. The difference in armament would not necessarily be decisive in itself; Carden knew that if he maneuvered properly, he would have the weather gauge--that is, he would be upwind of the American ship. This position provided numerous advantages, especially greater ease of maneuvering, which was Macedonian's strength; it was decidedly faster than the United States. It wouldn't be easy to defeat the bigger vessel, but the Royal Navy was proud of the quality of its ships and men after 15 years of war with Napoleon. Carden and his crew expected to make up the deficiency in firepower with their superior skill and spirit.
In the age of sail, naval warfare was a slow-motion boxing match in which ships tried to maneuver into what they hoped would be the best position to launch a broadside at their opponent. Choosing the right moment to fire required taking into account wind, waves (which change the guns' angle as they toss the ship up and down), and the distance, direction, and angle of the opposing ship, as well as the range and capacity of its guns. It also required keen anticipation of the opponent's actions.
At 8:30 A.M., with the ships about three miles apart, the maneuvering began. Decatur looped his ship around in what amounted to a figure eight, hoping to seize the weather gauge from Macedonian. Carden responded by turning his own ship to follow. This kept him upwind of the United States, as intended, but also left him somewhat astern (behind).
Macedonian was faster, so it began to catch up, but the rate of closing was slow, and this played into Decatur's hands. Since his ship's guns were more powerful, he could fire them as soon as Macedonian came within their range, and the return volley would do little or no damage. Also, Decatur had drilled his gun crews over and over, with great gains in efficiency. They could get off two salvos in the time it took the British tars to fire one.
Macedonian gamely pursued its bigger opponent until Decatur decided the time was right to open fire. Amid a shower of sharp, splintered pieces of wood, Macedonian's decimated crew responded with futile volleys of its own. The ships traded fire for half an hour, at which point Decatur pulled his ship away through the smoke to let Carden consider the situation. It was grim: All of his ship's important masts broken, a third of its guns disabled, several holes below the waterline, and a hundred men dead or wounded. When the wind brought the two ships side by side once more and Carden saw his virtually untouched opponent preparing another broadside, he realized that there was no hope and struck his colors.
Decatur sent over a boarding party, which spent two weeks repairing Macedonian. On December 4 it caused a sensation by sailing into Newport, Rhode Island, with an American flag above the Union Jack. Later that month Macedonian's battered British flag was presented to the First Lady, Dolley Madison, at a ball in Washington. After further repairs, the ship became part of the U.S. Navy.
The victory followed by two months the sinking of HMS Guerrière by one of the United States's sister ships, USS Constitution (this was the engagement that earned it the nickname Old Ironsides). The triumphs could not have come at a better time, for on land, United States forces were taking a frightful beating. In August, some 2,500 American soldiers had surrendered to a much smaller British force at Detroit, and further defeats, sometimes accompanied by Indian massacres, would soon follow elsewhere on the Western frontier as well as along the Niagara. The worst part was that the British had done all this with the handful of troops they could spare from the much more pressing business of defeating Napoleon. When that was taken care of, they could turn their full attention to striking back at their upstart former colonists.
The United States' survival as a nation was not in question; Britain had no interest in trying to reconquer America or grab territory that was already well settled. But a defeat could let the British expand their Canadian provinces deep into the thinly populated Great Lakes region, and it would reinforce America's commercial submission to the mother country. In those dark days of the war's first year, it was clear that America had rushed headlong into the fight with barely a gesture at preparation or planning. On land, this left America virtually defenseless, saved only by its distance from Europe and the matters of greater concern being played out there. But on sea, the brilliance of a few ingenious shipbuilders allowed America to hold its own until an army sufficient to fight off the invaders could be assembled, supplied, and trained.
In the fall of 1814, after the shock of Washington's burning, the U.S. Army began striking back against the Redcoats, and in January 1815 it won an inspiring victory at New Orleans. By that point a peace treaty had already been signed, basically restoring the status quo before the war. (The defeat of Napoleon had eliminated the issues over which America had chosen to fight, mainly free trade and the impressment of American seamen.) America emerged from the war newly confident and eager to expand westward. But without the foresight of a handful of naval planners, the discipline and resourcefulness of a few captains, and the bravery and dedication of their crews, America might well have emerged from the War of 1812 a shrunken and humiliated nation.