from captain Dacres' official account of the action. To show the relative force of each ship engaged in the different actions as we proceed, I shall present the broadside weight of metal only, and where a shifting gun is on board I shall add that to it. The Guerriere had a gun in every port on her main deck, including the bridle one, but it was only to bring her by the head, which was her trim of sailing, and such bow-gun could not be used in the broadside, therefore will be excluded from the calculation. "The force of the Constitution in guns as given below, is taken from an American statement subsequently extorted from them, and agrees within six pounds with that published in captain Dacres' letter to the admiralty. The following then is an esti mate of the force engaged in that action. With probably one or two small boat With howitzers in all the tops, and guns. Men (19 boys included) Measurement, 263 1084 tons. some boat guns. Men "all picked." Measurement (English) Superiority on the American side. In weight of metal as-three to two. In size of vessel as-three to two. 768 476 1,630 tons. "With such disparity of force no one can be surprised at the result of this action. But certainly had the Guerriere's men been half as well skilled in the use of the great guns as the Constitution's were, the proportion of killed and wounded would not have been so great as fourteen to seventy-eight, nor one ship made a complete wreck of, while the other suffered no material injury in hull or rigging. These are lamentable truths that betrayed a laxity of discipline on board our ships, and which in the course of time would have ruined our navy. Thanks to the war with America, so fatal a catastrophe is not now likely to happen again." A Cursory Examination of " A Synopsis of Naval Actions between the Ships of his Britannic Majesty and of the United States, during the Late War. By a British Naval Officer on the American Station." THE time is not very remote, when there was nothing the people of America believed more implicitly than the accounts of British victories published in England, and re-published in the United States. The royal gazettes were our political scriptures, and the falsehood of a French bulletin, and the truth of a British official account, were equally matters of implicit faith. Of late years, however, this faith is somewhat shaken, and a man may now doubt the veracity of English newspapers, and English statements, without being persecuted as a nonconformist, or burned as a heretic. We have uniformly observed, that these newspapers, and statements, and official accounts, have been not only different from our own, but in direct contradiction to those of every other nation. There must be a vast difference in the character of witnesses, if the testimony of one is to weigh against that of many, inasmuch as it is much more probable that one should be either mistaken, or suborned, than that several should be so. It is, we think, much more likely that a man who is always contradicting every body should be generally wrong, than that every body else should be uniformly mistaken. Ever since the commencement of the war in 1812, thousands of mistatements and misrepresentations have been ushered into the world under the sanction of British veracity; denials of notorious facts and assumptions of notorious falsehoods have been so common, that we even begin to doubt the truth of their historical achievements. Setting aside the battles of Cressy and Agincourt, which nothing but an established character for veracity, and the recent example of the battle of New Orleans can render probable, it begins now to be shrewdly suspected, that the victories of Howe and Duncan, as well as those of the amorous Nelson, have been recorded a little too much in the spirit of English hyperbole. It is now indeed a notorious fact, that during the battle of Trafalgar at least one third of the Spanish sailors, as they were called, were sea-sick, and that far the greater proportion of the whole were mere city vagabonds, impressed upon the spur of the occasion, without inquiring whether they had ever been at sea or not. So much indeed has a belief in the prowess of the British navy fallen in the United States, since the last war, that the British. Naval Chronicle, which formerly sold at six or seven dollars a volume, has been lately purchased at less than seventy-five cents. This marks a fearful declension in the price of romances, and I doubt not but it will be urged against us as a proof of our want of taste in polite literature. Such being the state of the public mind, we are encouraged to attempt a reply to the article of which the first number is here presented to the reader, that he may see both sides of the question and judge accordingly. It is possible, too, that in the course of our examination, we may be tempted to use some little asperity, and we wish the reader to see that it is not entirely unprovoked. Most of the statements, reasonings, and assertions in the Synopsis, have already been published separately, and separately refuted before. But they are here collected in one mighty mass, and every defeat palliated and excused with every exertion of the writer's art and ingenuity. We presume that this then is intended as England's apology for her defeats at sea, and that all the force of her advocate and apologist has been put in requisition to make the apology as satisfactory as possible. Such being our ideas, we will bestow some little attention to this Synopsis, which is in reality but an indifferent production, marked with a deal of pertness, disingenuousness, and misrepresentation. As the best. that England can do in this way-as a production coming abroad under the sanction of the admiralty, we are inclined to treat it with more respect, at least with more attention, than its intrinsic merits deserve. The "naval officer on the American station" sets out with the assertion of the fact, that in every action that occurred during the last war, the superiority either in men, guns or ships, was on the side of the Americans. Our ships are all great seventy-fours; almost as large as Ptolemy's great galley-our guns throw twice or thrice as many pounds of ball, at a broadside; and our men are not only much more numerous, but much taller, stronger, braver, more active, dexterous and powerful than the poor little beef-eating jack tars of Old England. The "British naval officer," doubtless intending that his work should be a romance, has thus set out in the genuine track of the writers of sir Tristan, Don Belianis, and the peers of Charlemagne, whose heroes never yielded to any thing less than a misbegotten giant, a magic sword, or an odds of at least fifty to one. This is the true language of fable, and no doubt the admiralty selected for its defender one of the writers most learned in the romances of the middle ages. Such a writer was well calculated to make the best of a bad bargain, for though he could not actually gain a victory over us, he could tell exactly why we ought to have been victorious, and it is always a marvelous consolation to know the reason of any thing. The ingenuity of the English has been exhausted to find excuses during the last war, and had their officers and sailors been half as zealous in defending the honour of their flag, as their writers, these last had not been put to such straits for excuses, devices, and inventions. One of the arts resorted to in England, for many years past, in all the official statements, as well as in that romantic fiction, "Steele's List," has been, and still is, that of stating the whole number of guns, of a captured ship, and only the number at which the vessel capturing was rated, thus always making it appear that they had conquered a superior enemy. But the moment the captured vessel is put on Steele's List, as a government ship, you will find her frequently rated below the vessel by which she was taken. The Guerriere at the time of her capture from the French was called a large forty four, but in Steele's List, we find her transformed into a thirty-eight: nay, even the candid author of the Synopsis, notwithstanding his affecting lamentations on account of the national credit being injured by painters and journalists, himself adopts this very practice, with an easy effrontery that would surprise us in a writer of any other nation. So far, however, from agreeing with him, that the reputation of the English navy has been tarnished by the painters and journalists, we are of opinion that it is principally owing to the exertions of these worthy gentlemen that it has now any reputation at all. Were it not for the fine pictures of the one, and the fine stories of the other, it would hardly now be believed that the navy of England was once mistress of the ocean-that" the rolling sea was Britain's wide domain"—or that old Neptune was once absolutely henpecked by Britannia. The observation, however, which the "British officer on the American station" has coupled with his charge against the painters and journalists, is not only just, but it betrays a curious secret, as well as a very diverting perplexity. It seems he is willing that these patriotic rogues should continue this practice of overrating the force of an enemy, and diminishing their own, in respect to the French and Spaniards, because they dont understand English-and therefore cant turn this falsity against the inventors or if they did, honest John Bull could not understand them, and no harm would be done. But-and "there's the rub"-we Americans can understand and read English, though it seems we cant write it, and consequently can expose these unblushing bravadoes and turn them back upon their authors. This is a great stumbling block in the way of the modern writers of British romances. We fear St. George will never kill another dragon, and are really inclined to feel a little sympathy with the poor "British officer on the American station." The writer of the Synopsis has placed the capture of the Chesapeake at the head of his list, although it did not occur until long after several other engagements which had a differ |
