Reservist

ISS1 2015

Reservist Magazine is the award-winning official publication of the United States Coast Guard Reserve. Quarterly issues include news and feature articles about the men and women who comprise America's premier national maritime safety and security

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In early summer, revenue cutter master George Brooks armed and manned the cutter James Madison in a manner similar to a heavily armed American privateer. Built in 1807 in Baltimore, the cutter James Madison originally served in that port before taking up station in Savannah in 1809. At eighty- six feet in length on deck and twenty-two feet wide, Madison was one of the largest of the revenue cutters. On July 17, 1812, Brooks announced he was departing Charleston to chase six unescorted British merchantmen sailing up the coast from Jamaica. On July 23, 1812, Madison captured the 300-ton British brig Shamrock after an eight-hour chase. Bound from London to Amelia Island with a cargo of arms and ammunition, Shamrock carried six cannon and a crew of sixteen men. In addition, on August 1, Madison captured the Spanish brig Santa Rosa near Amelia Island and brought it to Savannah for adjudication. Under the command of former U.S. Navy captain, Master Daniel McNeill, the cutter Gallatin also enjoyed early success in capturing British merchantmen bound for Spanish Florida. On August 1, 1812, Gallatin took the British brig General Blake, sailing from London to Amelia Island, and brought it to Charleston for adjudication. The British ship flew Spanish colors and carried an illegal cargo including African slaves. During the course of the war, the revenue cutters played an important part in the war effort, however, this brief history only allows space to mention a few of these heroic ships. Early in the war, the cutters continued to pursue their law enforcement mission in American waters despite more numerous patrols by units of the Royal Navy. For example, during the summer of 1812, a British squadron comprised of 38-gun frigate HMS Spartan, 36-gun frigate HMS Maidstone, 18- gun brig HMS Indian and 12-gun brig HMS Plumper patrolled off the Maine coast near the Canadian border. The first battle pitting a revenue cutter against Royal Navy forces took place between the cutter Commodore Barry and elements from this squadron. By the beginning of August 1812, the Commodore Barry had rounded up five smuggling vessels in this area and was escorting them back to the customs house for adjudication. On August 2 cutter master Daniel Elliott learned of a Royal Navy patrol and heard distant gunfire as the British captured American vessels not far from his anchorage. For self-defense Elliott anchored next to the American privateer Madison in the harbor of Little River, Maine, east of Machias. Anticipating a British attack, the Americans beached their vessels and set up shore batteries behind defenses improvised from cordwood. On August 3, the British sent in five armed barges with approximately 250 officers and men to attack the small American force. The British paid dearly for the attack on the Commodore Barry, suffering several dead and wounded, but the attackers carried the day. A local Maine fisherman witnessed the battle recounting that at "about 1 p.m. five launches of men (about 250) started from them [Royal Navy warships] for the harbor. In a few minutes the firing commenced and continued for nearly two hours, then it ceased." All but three of the cutter's crew escaped into the woods, and these three cuttermen became the first U.S. sea service prisoners of the war (POW) and the first POWs in Coast Guard history. The British sent the three men to Halifax, where they were the first revenue cuttermen incarcerated at the British military prison on Melville Island. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the French developed a naval strategy termed guerre de course that relied on warships or armed vessels to attack enemy merchant shipping. Not a mandated mission of the Treasury Department's cutters during the war, only the James Madison pursued this strategy. To increase the offensive capability of the Madison, Master George Brooks added four extra cannon, including short-range carronades, to the standard cutter armament of six guns. Brooks also more than tripled the cutter's usual complement of fifteen men to support boarding operations and accommodate prize crews for captured vessels. Brooks had turned the Madison into a tool for carrying out guerre de course tactics against the British. On August 13, 1812, James Madison set sail on a cruise out of Savannah, in company with privateers Paul Jones and Spencer, to prey on British merchantmen. By August 22 the James Madison located a British convoy and attacked that night. According to reports, Captain Brooks mistook the 32-gun frigate HMS Barbados for a large merchantman, ordered the cutter to fire several guns and attempted to board the British warship before realizing his error. For seven hours afterward the Barbados chased the Madison, which jettisoned two guns to escape, but the wind eventually died. The frigate finally captured the cutter after deploying barges to tow the enemy warship to the cutter's position. Barbados' captain, Thomas Huskinsson, noted that he had already chased Madison once before and complimented the cutter on its fast sailing qualities. After the capture of the James Madison, the ship-of-the-line HMS Polyphemus sent a prize crew of officers and twenty men on board the cutter to sail it to England. On October 7, 1812, James Madison's captors formally designated the cuttermen as "prisoners of war" and processed the men for parole or internment. The British paroled Brooks and his officers and, on November 24, 1812, they arrived by ship at New York. The British sent nine of Madison's enlisted men to Halifax and four of them to Boston. They placed the rest of the crew in prison at Chatham, England. Four men considered black slaves were captured with Madison as well as three men described as "mulatto," who were free "men of color" employed as members of the crew. One of the latter group, fifteen-year-old Beloner Pault ranks as the youngest POW in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard. On May 28, 1813, Madison seaman John Barber (or Bearbere) died on board the British hospital ship Le Pegase at Chatham. Historians consider him the first Coast Guardsman to die in captivity. The Norfolk-based cutter Thomas Jefferson distinguished itself many times during the war. It did so once again in April 1813. The enforcement of a British blockade of the Chesapeake Bay early in 1813 saw Royal Navy warships and their armed barges patrolling parts of the Hampton Roads area in search of unlucky American merchantmen. These armed barge patrols would meet their match on April 11, 1813, in the James River. On that day cutter Thomas Jefferson together with a pilot boat and a contingent of local militiamen overhauled three Royal Navy barges. The armed barges attempted to escape up the James, but the Thomas Jefferson ran them down so fast that the flotilla hove to. Just as Captain William Ham was about to order his gunners to fire a broadside, the British commander ordered the white flag raised Issue 1 • 2015 � RESERVIST 45

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