Complete Works. Henry Cabot Lodge
65 of their men were killed. James ("Naval Occurrences") gets around this by stating that it was probably a forgery; but, aside from the improbability of Commodore Bainbridge being a forger, this could not be so, for nothing would have been easier than for the British lieutenant to have denied having written it, which he never did. On the other hand, it would be very likely that in the heat of the action, Commodore Bainbridge and the Java's own officers should overestimate the latter's loss. 137
Taking all these facts into consideration, we find 446 men on board the Java by her own muster-list; 378 of these were paroled by Commodore Bainbridge at San Salvador; 24 men were acknowledged by the enemy to be killed or mortally wounded; 20 were absent in a prize, leaving 24 unaccounted for, who were undoubtedly slain.
The British loss was thus 48 men killed and mortally wounded, and 102 wounded severely and slightly. The Java was better handled and more desperately defended than the Macedonian or even the Guerrière. and the odds against her were much smaller; so she caused her opponent greater loss, though her gunnery was no better than theirs.
Lieutenant Parker, prize-master of the Java, removed all the prisoners and baggage to the Constitution, and reported the prize to be in a very disabled state; owing partly to this, but more to the long distance from home and the great danger there was of recapture, Commodore Bainbridge destroyed her on the 31st, and then made sail for San Salvador. "Our gallant enemy," reports Lieutenant Chads, "has treated us most generously"; and Lieutenant-General Hislop presented the Commodore with a very handsome sword as a token of gratitude for the kindness with which he had treated the prisoners.
Partly in consequence of his frigate's injuries, but especially because of her decayed condition, Commodore Bainbridge sailed from San Salvador on Jan. 6, 1813, reaching Boston Feb. 27th, after his four months' cruise. At San Salvador he left the Hornet still blockading the Bonne Citoyenne.
In order "to see ourselves as others see us," I shall again quote from Admiral Jurien de la Gravière, 138 as his opinions are certainly well worthy of attention both as to these first three battles, and as to the lessons they teach. "When the American Congress declared war on England in 1812," he says, "it seemed as if this unequal conflict would crush her navy in the act of being born; instead, it but fertilized the germ. It is only since that epoch that the United States has taken rank among maritime powers. Some combats of frigates, corvettes, and brigs, insignificant without doubt as regards material results, sufficed to break the charm which protected the standard of St. George, and taught Europe what she could have already learned from some of our combats, if the louder noise of our defeats had not drowned the glory, that the only invincibles on the sea are good seamen and good artillerists.
"The English covered the ocean with their cruisers when this unknown navy, composed of six frigates and a few small craft hitherto hardly numbered, dared to establish its cruisers at the mouth of the Channel, in the very centre of the British power. But already the Constitution had captured the Guerrière and Java, the United States had made a prize of the Macedonian, the Wasp of the Frolic, and the Hornet of the Peacock. The honor of the new flag was established. England, humiliated, tried to attribute her multiplied reverses to the unusual size of the vessels which Congress had had constructed in 1799, and which did the fighting in 1812. She wished to refuse them the name of frigates, and called them, not without some appearance of reason, disguised line-of-battle ships. Since then all maritime powers have copied these gigantic models, as the result of the war of 1812 obliged England herself to change her naval material; but if they had employed, instead of frigates, cut-down 74's (vaisseaux rasés), it would still be difficult to explain the prodigious success of the Americans. * * *
"In an engagement which terminated in less than half an hour, the English frigate Guerrière, completely dismasted, had fifteen men killed, sixty-three wounded, and more than thirty shot below the water-line. She sank twelve hours after the combat. The Constitution, on the contrary, had but seven men killed and seven wounded, and did not lose a mast. As soon as she had replaced a few cut ropes and changed a few sails, she was in condition, even by the testimony of the British historian, to take another Guerrière. The United States took an hour and a half to capture the Macedonian, and the same difference made itself felt in the damage suffered by the two ships. The Macedonian had her masts shattered, two of her main-deck and all her spar-deck guns disabled; more than a hundred shot had penetrated the hull, and over a third of the crew had suffered by the hostile fire. The American frigate, on the contrary, had to regret but five men killed and seven wounded; her guns had been fired each sixty-six times to the Macedonian's thirty-six. The combat of the Constitution and the Java lasted two hours, and was the most bloody of these three engagements. The Java only struck when she had been razed like a sheer hulk; she had twenty-two men killed and one hundred and two wounded.
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"This war should be studied with unceasing diligence; the pride of two peoples to whom naval affairs are so generally familiar has cleared all the details and laid bare all the episodes, and through the sneers which the victors should have spared, merely out of care for their own glory, at every step can be seen that great truth, that there is only success for those who know how to prepare it.
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"It belongs to us to judge impartially these marine events, too much exalted perhaps by a national vanity one is tempted to excuse. The Americans showed, in the War of 1812, a great deal of skill and resolution. But if, as they have asserted, the chances had always been perfectly equal between them and their adversaries, if they had only owed their triumphs to the intrepidity of Hull, Decatur, and Bainbridge, there would be for us but little interest in recalling the struggle. We need not seek lessons in courage outside of our own history. On the contrary, what is to be well considered is that the ships of the United States constantly fought with chances in their favor, and it is on this that the American government should found its true title to glory. * * * The Americans in 1812 had secured to themselves the advantage of a better organization [than the English]."
The fight between the Constitution and the Java illustrates best the proposition, "that there is only success for those who know how to prepare it." Here the odds in men and metal were only about as 10 to 9 in favor of the victors, and it is safe to say that they might have been reversed without vitally affecting the result. In the fight Lambert handled his ship as skilfully as Bainbridge did his; and the Java's men proved by their indomitable courage that they were excellent material. The Java's crew was new shipped for the voyage, and had been at sea but six weeks; in the Constitution's first fight her crew had been aboard of her but five weeks. So the chances should have been nearly equal, and the difference in fighting capacity that was shown by the enormous disparity in the loss, and still more in the damage inflicted, was due to the fact that the officers of one ship had, and the officers of the other had not, trained their raw crews. The Constitution's men were not "picked," but simply average American sailors, as the Java's were average British sailors. The essential difference was in the training.
During the six weeks the Java was at sea her men had fired but six broadsides, of blank cartridges; during the first five weeks the Constitution cruised, her crew were incessantly practised at firing with blank cartridges and also at a target. 139 The Java's crew had only been exercised occasionally, even in pointing the guns, and when the captain of a gun was killed the effectiveness of the piece was temporarily ruined, and, moreover, the men did not work together. The Constitution's crew were exercised till they worked like machines, and yet with enough individuality to render it impossible to cripple a gun by killing one man. The unpractised British sailors fired at random; the trained Americans took aim. The British marines had not been taught any thing approximating to skirmishing or sharp-shooting; the Americans had. The British sailors had not even been trained enough in the ordinary duties of seamen; while the Americans in five weeks had been rendered almost perfect. The former were at a loss what to do in an emergency at all out of their own line of work; they were helpless when the wreck fell over their guns, when the Americans would have cut it away in a jiffy. As we learn from Commodore Morris' "Autobiography," each Yankee sailor could, at need, do a little carpentering or sail-mending, and so was more