Forgotten wars beget forgotten heroes.
One such conflict is the War of 1812. A forgotten hero of that war is Captain Thomas Macdonough.
It might seem odd to declare Macdonough forgotten. He had fame. At the urging of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 1937 two-cent, first-class postage stamp commemorated him. The Naval Academy named a hall after him. So did a couple of other colleges, although today’s students may wonder why. Streets, counties, and a couple of elementary schools bear his name. There was even a Macdonough Island off Washington’s coast—however the name was later changed to Camano Island. Also it might seem odd to say the 1812 War is forgotten. For a couple of years there have been commemorations of the 200th anniversary of that three-year conflict with Great Britain. But the ceremonies have drawn relatively little notice.
It’s safe to say—as historians do—that most Americans know little about the 1812 war—or about its heroes. That’s not good. The valiant earn the right to our attention from time to time.
As to the war: It was mismanaged. Bungled. And although Americans won some notable battles, the messy affair ended in a draw. Over the years, the public seems to have resolved to forget past blunders.
Still, the War of l812 was significant. It showed again that Americas would stand up to the greatest power on earth. It helped unify the nation then struggling out of infancy. And as historian Donald Hickey writes in The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, the war, “Promoted national self-confidence and encouraged the heady expansionism that lay at the heart of American foreign policy… the war was fraught with consequence for the future.”
Like the war, Macdonough’s exploits were important and clearly worth remembering in this bicentennial period.
Macdonough was commissioned a Midshipman in 1799. He was 16. Five years later, he was serving with swashbuckling Captain Stephen Decatur and engaged in slashing sword fights with pirates of the Mediterranean Sea.
Macdonough fought at Decatur’s side when the captain boarded and retook a frigate lost earlier to the Barbary Pirates. Later, although knowing the odds against him were five-to-one, he volunteered and helped capture a pirate ship manned by cutthroats who had murdered Decatur’s brother.
Early in his career, Macdonough proved to be not only brave, but smart, and a savvy skipper.
When the War of 1812 began, Macdonough waited in Washington DC for a ship to be outfitted. But he craved action, sought a transfer, and wound up in Burlington Vermont on Lake Champlain. There, while commanding a squadron of ships, he stopped an invasion.
Lake Champlain stretches for121-miles between New York and Vermont mountains. Centuries ago it served as a prime military shipping lane between Canada and the United States. During most of the 1812 war, British ships controlled it.
In August 1814, 10,000 British troops from Canada invaded the United States. They attacked and easily occupied Plattsburgh, New York, an important lakeside town. The force then waited for supplies from Canada via Lake Champlain before continuing south. The troops were still waiting on September 11, 1814 when a squadron of British warships bearing vital supplies neared them.
Macdonough knew he must stop those vessels. He commanded four ships and ten small gunboats and was confronting four, better-built British ships and 17 gunboats.
Although roughly even in ships and number of guns—the Brits had 92; Macdonough 86—the enemy owned the 37-gun Confiance, biggest ship on the lake. Moreover the enemy ships’ mounted bigger guns. Its ships could attack from a distance while out of reach of U.S. cannon.
Noting this, Macdonough sheltered his squadron in a little bay. That kept the enemy’s long-range guns from hitting the U.S. ships from long distance. Consequently, the British were forced to attack close range. Besides, the British could fire broadsides from just one side of their ships before laboriously turning and firing from the other side.
Faced with the same limitation, Macdonough anchored his ships in a way that allowed his men to haul on the anchor lines and, in effect, spin the ships in place. Thus they could fire from one side, rotate, and fire from the other.
The Confiance bore down on Macdonough’s 26-gun flag ship, Saratoga, and raked her with red hot shot. The barrage severely damaged her and set her on fire. Forty of her crew died, and Macdonough fell unconscious when the bloody head of a decapitated sailor hit him. Flying debris smashed into him later, and he went down a second time. But he and the Saratoga revived and kept fighting.
As the contest continued, each side lost a ship.
Seeing how Macdonough had anchored his ships, Confiance’s commander tried to do something similar. In the process, Confiance’s lines tangled. As she struggled to keep battling, Saratoga riddled her.
Confiance took 105 shots to the hull and her terrified crew finally refused to fight on. The British flagship surrendered. So did her sister ships Linnet and Finch. Her accompanying gunboats rapidly retreated.
Hearing of Macdonough’s devastating victory, the commander of the British invading force at Plattsburg knew he had no source of resupply. He ordered his troops back to Canada. Those who didn’t desert ran home.
And that’s how Captain Macdonough scuttled an invasion, won complete and lasting control of Lake Champlain, and earned the right for his fellow Americans to remember him.
----Gus Gribbin
No comments:
Post a Comment