the tiny navy kept
alive the spark of duty and readiness, while the nation drifted
inevitably towards war. There was no scarcity of capable seamen, for
the merchant marine was an admirable training-school. In those far-off
days the technique of seafaring and sea fighting was comparatively
simple. The merchant seaman could find his way about a frigate, for in
rigging, handling, and navigation the ships were very much alike. And
the American seamen of 1812 were in fighting mood; they had been whetted
by provocation to a keen edge for war. They understood the meaning of
"Free Trade and Sailors' Rights," if the landsmen did not. There were
strapping sailors in every deep-water port to follow the fife and drum
of the recruiting squad. The militia might quibble about "rights," but
all the sailors asked was the weather gage of a British man-of-war. They
had no patience with such spokesmen as Josiah Quincy, who said that
Massachusetts would not go to war to contest the right of Great Britain
to search American vessels for British seamen. They had neither
forgotten nor forgiven the mortal affront of 1807, when their frigate
_Chesapeake_, flying the broad pennant of Commodore James Barron,
refused to let the British _Leopard_ board and search her, and was fired
into without warning and reduced to submission, after twenty-one of the
American crew had been killed or wounded.

That shameful episode was in keeping with the attitude of the British
navy toward the armed ships of the United States, "a few fir-built
things with bits of striped bunting at their mast-heads," as George
Canning, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, described them.
Long before the declaration of war British squadrons hovered off the
port of New York to ransack merchant vessels or to seize them as prizes.
In the course of the Napoleonic wars England had met and destroyed the
navies of all her enemies in Europe. The battles of Copenhagen, the
Nile, Trafalgar, and a hundred lesser fights had thundered to the world
the existence of an unconquerable sea power.

Insignificant as it was, the American naval service boasted a history
and a high morale. Its ships had been active. The younger officers
served with seniors who had sailed and fought with Biddle and Barney and
Paul Jones in the Revolution. Many of them had won promotions for
gallantry in hand-to-hand combats in boarding parties, for following the
bold Stephen Decatur in 1804 when he cut out and