The American Consul: A History of the United States Consular Service 1776â1924. Revised Second Edition. Charles Stuart Kennedy
state the latest outrages against American neutral rights and try to protect their charges as best they could within their consular districts. Each consul was left to struggle with the twin evils of impressment and the seizure of American ships.
The British were by far the greater offenders in impressment. The French sometimes imprisoned crews of American ships seized by their navy or privateers for alleged blockade violations. The honors were fairly even between the two powers for taking ships and confiscating their cargoes.1
Caught between two devils, Americans had to pick their enemies carefully or try to avoid them completely. In the quasi-war with France (1798–1800), whose privateers were the main source of provocation, American consuls in the Caribbean cooperated with the British military commanders to put down French privateering in that sea. Following the turn of the century came a period of attempts to navigate between the two conflicting European powers (1800–1807) while ship seizures and impressment waxed and waned, depending on the military situation and whims of the English and French. President Jefferson then tried the “plague on both your houses” policy at the end of 1807 by having Congress declare an embargo, which virtually prohibited the export of goods from the United States.
The embargo was designed both to keep American ships and seamen out of the reach of the French and British, and to place economic pressure on those warring states to respect neutral rights. An embargo has often been a favorite tool of American Presidents. Wherever there was a situation abroad about which the United States could do little without actually fighting, placing an embargo gave the appearance of retaliation, without the costly side effect of warfare.
The embargo of 1807 was as ineffective as most of its successors.2 The main losers were the American merchant marine and the farmers who raised the principal exports of the United States. The embargo also had a disastrous effect on American consuls abroad, who received no salaries but depended upon commissions earned in assisting and documenting trade with the United States. While earnings were drastically cut due to the curtailment of trade, the consuls’ work was not, since there were still seamen stranded abroad, as they signed on and off ships of other nations, including those of France and Britain. Sailors had to make a living, embargo or not.
The embargo lasted little more than a year. Congress repealed the act in March 1809 and substituted it with one that forbade trade only with ports under British or French control, but this also was unsuccessful.3 There were profits to be made, American seamen needed jobs, and shipping interests did not take direction from their government supinely.
Through all the twists and turns of America’s policy toward the belligerent powers, the consuls’ work changed little. The major problem was what to do about seamen left destitute in a foreign port, put into a French prison, or impressed into the British navy. That many American sailors ended up on the beach with no money was not always the fault of the belligerent powers. American ships were well built; sometimes a captain found it profitable to sell both cargo and vessel when he docked in a European port. Even if he paid off his crew and gave them money for passage home, which was not always the case, sailors and their wages were often quickly separated in the taverns and brothels of a port city. American crews were well paid; unscrupulous ship masters, once in European ports, found excuses to leave some of their men behind and sign on less expensive French, British, Dutch, Portuguese, or Scandinavian seamen.
Desertion compounded the difficulties of consuls. Although Americans expected high wages because they were known as good and healthy seamen (scarce in wartime Europe), they were sought after not only by British press gangs but by both French and British recruiters for privateers.
The consuls had the power to call on the local authorities to assist them in catching and holding deserters from American ships. William Lee, consul in Bordeaux, in reply to a charge that he had arrested Americans who refused to serve on his own ships (he was in the shipping business), reported that “the principal reason for the arrestation of so many of our seamen in this port is desertion. The privateers of those who are fitting out French bottoms offer any price for American seamen who will quit their vessels they engaged on board of the U. States. I have always from fifteen to twenty of these deserters to lock up. This very morning I have dispatched a party of soldiers after seventeen sailors who have left their vessels, shipped on board a privateer.”4 Surprisingly, Lee obtained the help of the French military to arrest the deserters when they were going on a French privateer. The French were seldom so obliging to American requests. Lee must have been both diligent and persuasive.
Congress and the executive branch quite early did what they could to help the plight of seamen. On 28 May 1796 an Act for the Relief and Protection of American Seamen was passed, which provided for two agents to reside overseas “to inquire into the situation of such American citizens, or others sailing under the protection of the American flag, as have been impressed or may hereafter be impressed or detained by a foreign Power; to endeavor by all legal means to obtain the release of such American citizens or others and to render an account of all impressments and detentions.”5 One agent for seamen was to work in Great Britain and the other elsewhere, at the discretion of the President. Because of the volume of shipping in the Caribbean and the impressment activities of the British navy there, the second agent was posted in Kingston, Jamaica, a British colony in the West Indies. These agents were, in effect, specialized consuls paid for their work to allow them to devote full time to the serious business of helping American seamen. Consuls in other ports were not absolved from their duty toward the distressed sailors in their districts; agents and consuls worked together on the problem, but with only moderate success.
Impressment was the problem that would not go away in events that led to the War of 1812. The confiscation of cargoes and ships by the belligerent powers was provoking, but American shippers could balance their ledgers if only some of their ships were able to slip into a European port; the profit from even a few would offset the losses. Protection of shipping interests was not a cause to die for. The impressment of seamen was a graver matter. Native-born Americans dragged off ships flying the Stars and Stripes by boarding parties led by zealous junior officers of the British navy were forced to serve in those ships in virtual slavery. There was often little difference between being the slave of a Barbary ruler or a seaman in the British navy.
The issue of impressment was not always clear-cut. Many deserters from the British navy served on American ships; pay and working conditions were far better on the Yankee vessels, and American shipmasters were not particular about whom they signed on board.6 Also, many of the seamen were naturalized Americans, having been born British subjects, and the British at that time adhered to the rule “once an Englishman, always an Englishman.” The British were fighting a long, hard war for survival against Napoleonic France and desperately needed men for their navy. For the most part the captain of a British warship was the final judge as to who might be a British subject. There was little love lost between the British officer class and American merchant mariners; neither the boarding officer nor his captain was scrupulous in seeing that only true British subjects were taken.7 The British Admiralty usually backed up its officers’ arbitrary decisions and refused to discipline even gross cases of wrongful impressment.
The first agent for seamen in Kingston was Silas Talbot, who had been an officer in the Continental navy. During his service (1796–98) Talbot had some success in using his powers of persuasion with British governors, admirals, and captains on the West Indies station to effect the release of some seamen whom he could verify as Americans.8 He was able to use the colonial courts to obtain writs of habeas corpus, but the British commander in chief in the West Indies, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, put a stop to that by ordering his officers not to obey writs issued by British civilian courts. Depending on the admiral in charge and on the naval manpower situation, the agents who followed had varying degrees of success but were unable to change the basic situation, and Americans continued to be impressed off their merchant ships.
David Lenox, a former comptroller of the United States Treasury, was the first agent for seamen sent to London. He spent five years (1797–1802) in that demanding post. Initially he succeeded in persuading the Admiralty to release those Americans whose citizenship could be proved without dispute. Such documentation in that era was difficult, especially for men whose background was uncertain because of their itinerant lives as seamen. A market flourished for false citizenship documents,