1812: The Navy's War by George Daughan Read Free Book Online

Navy, which then became their life. The Admiralty employed any device, fair or foul, to man its ships, save the most obvious one: improving the lives of those who served. The Royal Navy had done so spectacularly well against all competitors that changing methods of recruitment seemed ludicrous to an Admiralty steeped in tradition, particularly when change was demanded by America, a nation that seemed to annoy the British more than any other.
     
     
    THE PASSIONS IMPRESSMENT unleashed on both sides were not easily tamed. The British saw themselves in mortal danger from a French enemy who ought to have been America’s foe as well, while, even as Napoleon threatened to extinguish the very liberties Americans insisted were the foundation of their society, the United States was acting as if she had no stake in the outcome of the struggle in Europe. The Royal Navy, as far as the British were concerned, was the only force preventing Napoleon from realizing his dream of a North American empire, uniting Louisiana with Canada. And to think he would stop there was naïve: Bonaparte would never rest until he had destroyed the republican regime in America; it was a living rebuke to everything he stood for.
    The British, then, fighting what they saw as America’s fight, found it strange indeed that the sympathies of Jefferson and Madison remained with a dictator openly hostile to their professed ideals. Even more galling, America’s insistence on the right of neutrals to trade freely with both belligerents looked as if shortterm profits were more important than European liberty. Surely America’s moral sense had been deadened by gross materialism, as Yankee merchants sought to profit from Europe’s misery.
    Deserters from the Royal Navy, the British believed, were necessary for the American merchant fleet to carry on its burgeoning wartime trade, which in turn supported the revenues of an American government financed largely by customs duties. By insisting on carrying on their international commerce, then, regardless of the consequences, Americans were endangering British liberty—and ultimately their own—for the sake of money. Even worse, the British felt that the real reason Jefferson and Madison wanted to do away with impressment was to destroy Britain’s maritime power, regardless of the consequences.
    Given this attitude, it is not surprising that Britain refused to alter an official policy hallowed by three centuries of practice in order to appease American demands. The Royal Navy had trebled in size since the war with France began in January 1793, and the Admiralty needed every seaman it could lay its hands on. Volunteers alone were not enough. For every citizen of the United States in the Royal Navy, their lordships estimated, there were ten Englishmen in American ships, private and public. The ministry wanted them back—or at least hanged as a deterrent.
    The United States, for her part, could not suffer ships flying her flag to be boarded and seamen impressed and still call herself an independent country. Allowing such an outrage to continue would be to submit to colonial status again. In the eyes of Jefferson and Madison, accepting impressment was unthinkable. Britain had no right whatever, they insisted, to seize anyone from a vessel flying the American flag, no matter what the pretext.
    In America a seaman could obtain citizenship by being naturalized after a period of five years, no matter where he’d been born, whereas Britian now maintained, as most countries did at the time, that if you were born a British subject, you remained one for life. The British conveniently overlooking their own laws, dating back to Queen Anne and George II, which stipulated that any foreigner who served two years in a British warship or merchantman automatically became a naturalized British subject without the need for an oath or any other requirement.
    Regardless of these old laws, Great Britain, faced with the Napoleonic menace, was