Six Frigates
1903
TR tells the French ambassador, Jules Jusserand, that he intends to expand American naval power until it is capable of dealing with “foes more formidable than Spain ever was.” In April, he delivers his “Big Stick” speech in Chicago. That same month, the House of Representatives passes legislation to build four new battleships and armored cruisers.
1905
Navy Secretary Charles Joseph Bonaparte (grandson of Jérôme Bonaparte, grand nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte) proposes that the Constitution, now over a century old and a rotting hulk, should be “used as a target for some of the ships of our North Atlantic fleet and sunk by their fire.” Reported in the newspapers, the proposal meets with a chorus of disapproval from the public. Congress moves to appropriate $100,000 to repair the ship, though not for active service.
1906
In November, TR sails to Panama aboard the USS Louisiana to inspect the progress of the construction of the Panama Canal. It is the first time a sitting U.S. president has traveled abroad.
1907
TR argues for the “Great White Fleet’s” circumnavigation of the world: “I think a cruise from one ocean to the other, or around the world, is mighty good practice for a fleet.” When the Republican chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee opposes the plan, TR calls him a “conscienceless voluptuary.”
1909
Return of the Great White Fleet to Hampton Roads, and the retirement of TR from office.
1914
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Woodrow Wilson administration, gives a speech to the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers on the subject of “Our First Frigates: Some Unpublished Facts About Their Construction.” The speech is published along with drawings of the original frigate plans.
1914–18
During World War I, the government of President Woodrow Wilson protests that neutral maritime rights are routinely violated both by the Allies and by Germany. The British government goes to great lengths to avoid antagonizing America. Sir Edward Grey, British foreign secretary during the conflict, later writes: “There was one mistake in diplomacy that, if it had been made, would have been fatal to the cause of the allies. It was carefully avoided. This cardinal mistake would have been a breach with the United States, not necessarily a rupture, but a state of things which would have provoked American interference with the blockade [of Germany], or led to a ban on exports of munitions from the United States.” German submarine warfare, the sinking of American ships, and the killing of American citizens on board the Lusitania and other vessels brings the United States into the war in April 1917 on the side of the Allies.
1918
Death of Henry Adams in Washington at age eighty.
1919
Death of TR in New York at age sixty.
1924–29
Constitution’s hull is in extremely poor condition: her crew must pump it out each day. Surveys estimate repairs will cost $400,000. A national fund-raising campaign, sponsored by Secretary of the Navy Curtis Wilbur, eventually raises $660,000. A significant share of the total is denominated in pennies collected and donated by schoolchildren.
Release in 1926 of the silent screen classic Old Ironsides (Sons of the Sea in the UK) starring Charles Farrell, Esther Ralston, George Bancroft, and Nicholas De Ruiz, helps build support for the Constitution. She is restored (1927–30) in Dry Dock No. 1, Boston Navy Yard, at more than twice the original estimate.
1931–34
Constitution, towed by a minesweeper, tours the east and west coasts of the United States. She traverses 22,000 miles, passes through the Panama Canal, calls at ninety ports, and accommodates 4.6 million civilian visitors.
1941
Japanese aircraft attack Pearl Harbor on December 7. The United States declares war on Germany and Japan.
1945
Surrender of Germany and Japan.
1946
Winston Churchill delivers his “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College, in Fulton, MO.
1963
President John F. Kennedy declares Winston Churchill an Honorary Citizen of the United States—the first foreign citizen ever to receive the honor.
1976
During celebrations of the U.S. Bicentennial on July 11, the Constitution exchanges salutes with the Royal Yacht Britannia in Boston Harbor. The latter flashes a signal: “Your salute was magnificent—Britannia sends.” Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip are conducted on a tour of the frigate by Captain Tyrone G. Martin and Navy Secretary William Middendorf. When the queen is shown one of the Constitution’s 24-pounders, which bears a monogram of George III, she turns to Prince Phillip and says: “We really must talk to the Secretary about these foreign arms sales when we get home.”
1992–95
Constitution again enters Dry Dock No. 1. During another complex three-year restoration, she is returned to her appearance in the era of the War of 1812. Constitution lies today at the wharf in Charlestown, just across the harbor from Boston’s North End, where she was built and launched more than two centuries ago. She is the oldest commissioned naval vessel in the world to remain afloat. (Nelson’s HMS Victory is the world’s oldest warship in commission, but is permanently dry-docked.)
2000
In a June 10 ceremony in Portsmouth, NH, militia leaders from Portsmouth, England, dressed in period uniforms, return a fragment of timber from the Chesapeake. The timber comes from the same Chesapeake Mill in Wickham, Hampshire, that was built in 1820 from gun deck timbers extracted from the captured American frigate.
2005
In June, an international fleet, representing thirty-five nations, gathers off Portsmouth, England to mark the bicentennial of the Battle of Trafalgar. The event includes a fleet review presided over by Queen Elizabeth II, and a reenactment of the battle. A quarter of a million spectators are on hand. To spare French and Spanish feelings, the re-enactment divides the ships into red and blue fleets, with neither identified by nationality. Anna Tribe, seventy-five, great-great-great granddaughter of Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton, objects to the “red-blue” concept. “I am sure the French and Spaniards are adult enough to appreciate we did win that battle,” she tells a reporter of The Times.
NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS
AA
Abigail Adams
Annals
Annals of Congress (formally known as The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States). New York: D. Appleton, 1857–61. Online at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwac.html
ASP
American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States. 38 vols. Washington, DC: Gales & Seaton, 1832–61. I. Foreign Relations; III. Finance, IV. Commerce and Navigation; V. Military Affairs; VI. Naval Affairs. Online at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwsp.html
BW
Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers: Naval Operations Including Diplomatic Background from 1785 Through 1807. 6 vols. Washington, DC: U.S. Office of Naval Records and Library, Government Printing Office, 1939–44
HUSJ
Henry Adams. History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson (1889–91). New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1986
HUSM
Henry Adams. History of the United States During the Administrations of James Madison (1889–91). New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1986
JA
John Adams
JH
Joshua Humphreys
JM
James Madison
LOC
Library of Congress
NW1812
Dudley, William S., and Michael J. Crawford, eds. The Naval War of 1812, A Documentary History. 3 vols. Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1985–2004
NYHS
New-York Historical Society
PHS
Historical Society of Pennsylvania
QW
Naval Documents Related to the Quasi-War Between the United States and France. 7 vols. Washington, DC: U.S. Office of Naval Records and Library, Government Printing Office, 1935
RG 45
Navy Documents, Record Group 45, U.S. National Archives
TJ
Thomas Jefferson
TJP
Thomas Jefferson Papers. Series 1: General Correspondence, 1651–1827, at www.loc.gov. In many cases, transcriptions are provided by Paul Leicester Ford’s The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes
TR
Theodore Roosevelt
WTJ
The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes. Federal Edition, ed. Paul Leicester Ford. New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904.
PART ONE: TO PROVIDE AND MAINTAIN
“Your memorialist has been”: Nelson quoted in Pope, England Expects, 89.
“The best and only mode”: Horatio Nelson to a British officer, August 21, 1801, from Downs. Recipient not identified; photostat in U.S. National Archives (NA), RG 45, Box 139.
“In case signals can”: King and Hattendorf, eds., Every Man Will Do His Duty, p. xxiii.
“like some awfully tremendous”: Ibid., Samuel Leech account, p. 307.
One example of such a rout: See Rodger, The Wooden World, p. 58.
“Sail; do not lose”: Bonaparte quoted in Pocock, The Terror Before Trafalgar, p. 185.
“There was fire”: Whipple, The Seafarers: Fighting Sail, p. 157.
“How my fingers got knocked”: “Sam,” a sailor on the Royal Sovereign, in Lewis, ed., The Mammoth Book of Life Before the Mast, p. 170.
the outpouring of mass grieving: See Whipple, The Seafarers: Fighting Sail, p. 170.
For three days, Nelson’s body: Herman, To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, p. 396.
The Ann Alexander: Albion and Pope, Sea Lanes in Wartime: The American Experience, 1775–1942, p. 88.
“When I see our numerous”: Captain Alexander Murray to Navy Secretary Benjamin Stoddert, February 20, 1799, QW II:374.
A 250-ton merchantman: Albion and Pope, Sea Lanes in Wartime, p. 19.
“Should a war”: Ibid, p. 17
From the outbreak of war in 1792: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Part 2, 1976, series Q 518–523, “Value of Waterborne Imports and Exports of Merchandise,” p. 761.
In the same fifteen-year period: Ibid., series Q 417–432, “Documented Merchant Vessels,” p. 750; 69,000 seamen in 1807 from “Blodget’s Economica,” figures published in Niles’ Register, vol. 1, p. 79.
“the pleasantest part of my Labours”: Anderson, “John Adams, the Navy, and the Quasi-War with France,” American Neptune, 30(2) (1970):117.
“It is very odd”: John Adams to Elbridge Gerry, November 5, 1775, Naval Documents of the American Revolution, II:896.
“scrambling for rank and pay”: McCullough, John Adams, p. 169.
to “insult the coasts of the Lords”: Franklin quoted in Powell, American Navies of the Revolutionary War, p. 54.
“Paul Jones resembles”: Morison, John Paul Jones: A Sailor’s Biography, p. 246.
He was branded: Quoted in Thomas, John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy, p. 200.
the “flesh of several of them”: Ibid., p. 197.
“This ship is now a mere”: Quoted in Fowler, Jack Tars and Commodores, p. 2.
“In looking over the long list”: JA to President of the Congress, July 6, 1780, in Francis Wharton, ed., The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States (Washington, 1889), III:833.
“Until Revenues for the Purpose”: Robert Morris quoted in Nuxoll, “The Naval Movement of the Confederation Era,” in Dudley and Crawford, eds., The Early Republic and the Sea, p. 6.
would “no longer be confined”: David Ramsey, Oration on Advantages of Independence (1778), quoted in McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America, pp. 93–94.
“Our plan is commerce”: Paine, Common Sense online at http://www.classicallibrary.org/paine.
The cover of a popular 1782 almanac: American print in Weatherwise’s Town and Country Almanac, reprinted in Tuchman, The First Salute (illus. insert).
Cut off from their traditional markets: See Morris, The Forging of the Union, 1781–1789, pp. 136–41.
By 1788, ship arrivals: Ibid., pp. 136–38.
“suffered more by the Act of Independence”: Ibid., pp. 131–48.
“Our West Indies business”: Szatmary, Shays’ Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection, p. 25.
A French traveler reported: Brissot quoted in Morris, The Forging of the Union, 1781–1789, pp. 141–42.
“a numerous body of citizens”: “Petition No. 4”: ASP, Finance, vol. 1, p. 10.
In 1785, the Empress of China: Morris, The Forging of the Union, 1781–1789, p. 160.
“well formed, indicating strength”: Edmund Bacon, Overseer, quoted in Rosenberger, ed., The Jefferson Reader, A Treasury of Writings About Thomas Jefferson, pp. 67–70.
“The Ministry are disposed”: Quoted in Malone, Jefferson and the Rights of Man, p. 50.
“An Ambassador from America!”: Quoted in McCullough, John Adams, p. 337.
“false—if it was not too rough”: AA to TJ, London, October 19, 1785, in Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters, I:84.
she had been “repeatedly shocked”: AA to TJ, London, October 7, 1785, in ibid., I:79.
“I would not give”: TJ to AA, Paris, June 21, 1785, in ibid., I:33–35.
“I fancy it must be”: TJ to AA, Paris, September 25, 1785, in ibid., I:69–71.
declaring it a “distinguished honor”: McCullough, John Adams, p. 336.
“as gracious and agreeable”: AA to TJ, June 6, 1785, in Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters, I:28–29.
“There is a strong propensity”: JA to Richard Henry Lee, August 26, 1785, quoted in McCullough, John Adams, p. 348.
“basis of our great power”: Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism, pp. 69–70.
“The defence of Great Britain”: Adam Smith, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1880), pp. 35–38.
“The words ‘Ship and Sailor’”: JA to TJ, August 4, 1785, in Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters, I:48.
“Seamen, the navy”: JA to James Bowdoin, Governor of Massachusetts, May 9, 1786, quoted in Malone, Jefferson and the Rights of Man, p. 58n.
By the mid-1780s, 100 American ships: See Whipple, To the Shores of Tripoli: The Birth of the U.S. Navy and Marines, p. 25.
“Our sufferings is beyond”: Richard O’Brien to TJ, August 24, 1785, quoted in Malone, Jefferson and the Rights of Man, p. 27.
“absolutely suspended”: Jefferson quoted in ibid, p. 27.
“Money and fear”: Vergennes quoted in TJ to JA, May 30, 1786, in Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters, I:132–33.
“the Ridicule of it”: JA to TJ, February 17, 1786, in ibid., I:121–22.
“Sorry to hear that”: Ibid., I:121–22
“it to be wisest for Us”: Ibid., pp. 138–39.
“it would be best”: TJ to JA, July 11, 1786, in ibid., I:142–43.
“great and weighty”: Ibid., I:146–47.
“The mutual influence”: John Quincy Adams quoted in James Morton Smith, Liberty and Power: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and “the Mutual Influence of These Two Mighty Minds.” An “Evening Conversation” at Monticello, sponsored by the Jefferson Legacy Foundation, May 23, 2001, www.jeffersonlegacy.org.
Known to his family: Ellis, Founding Brothers, p. 53.
Late in life: Morris, Witnesses at the Creation, p. 99.
“against every form of tyranny”: Lipscomb, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, X:175.
“We are not living”: Kaut quoted in Gay, The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism, p. 20.
“such books
as may be”: JM to TJ, April 27, 1785, in Smith, ed., Republic of Letters, I:367.
“turning over every book”: Quoted in McCullough, John Adams, p. 321.
“whatever may throw light”: JM to TJ, March 16, 1784, in Smith, ed., Republic of Letters, I:299–304.
He would be happy to have: JM to TJ, April 27, 1785, in ibid., I:367.
In a typical letter: TJ to JM, January 12, 1789, in ibid., I:278.
“animal curiosities”: JM to TJ, May 12, 1786, in ibid., I: 419–23.
“For want of something”: JM to TJ, June 19, 1786, in ibid., I: 423–28.
“with respect to every thing”: TJ to JM, February 6, 1786, in ibid., I:410.
“interior government is what”: TJ to JM, September 1, 1785, in ibid., I: 380–83.
“for the purpose of forming”: Quoted in Morris, Witnesses at the Creation, p. 163.
“plaited, clubbed up”: Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, p. 187.
“might have been tracked”: Quoted in Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution, p. 189.
“frequently to temporary want”: Hamilton quoted in Flexner, Young Hamilton, pp. 207–8.
“they cannot bring their ships”: Smelser, Congress Founds the Navy, p. 8.
“No, sir,” said: James Jackson and William Grayson quoted in ibid., p. 24.
The procession was led: Morris, Witnesses at the Creation, pp. 249–50.
A scroll hung: Hecht, Odd Destiny, p. 163.
The most impressive feature of the parade: Morris, Witnesses at the Creation, pp. 249–50.
addressed a circular letter: Circular by David Humphreys, U.S. Minister to Portugal, October 8, 1793, BW I:47.
“four frigates, three Xebecks”: David Humphreys to Michael Morphy, October 6, 1793, BW I:46.
“I have not slept”: Edward Church to Secretary of State, October 12, 1793, BW I:47–50.
“the Algerine Cruisers”: BW I:56.
“On our landing”: Letter from David Pierce, December 4, 1793, BW I:57.
“all manner of eatables”: Smelser, Congress Founds the Navy, p. 48.