In the American navy, unlike the British, there was no impressment; the sailor was a volunteer, and he shipped in whatever craft his fancy selected. Throughout the war there were no "picked crews" on the American side, [Footnote: James' statements to the contrary being in every case utterly without foundation. He is also wrong in his assertion that the American ships had no boys; they had nearly as many in proportion as the British. The Constitution had 31, the Adams 15, etc. So, when he states that our midshipmen were generally masters and mates of merchantmen; they were generally from eleven to seventeen years old at the beginning of the war, and besides, had rarely or never been in the merchant marine.] excepting on the last two cruises of the Constitution. In fact (as seen by the letter of Captains Stewart and Bainbridge to Secretary Hamilton), there was often much difficulty in getting enough men. [Footnote: Reading through the volumes of official letters about this war, which are preserved in the office of the Secretary of the Navy, one of the most noticeable things is the continual complaints about the difficulty of getting men. The Adams at one time had a crew of but nineteen men—"fourteen of whom are marines," adds the aggrieved commander. A log-book of one of the gun-boats records the fact that after much difficulty two men were enlisted—from the jail, with a parenthetical memorandum to the effect that they were both very drunk. British ships were much more easily manned, as they could always have recourse to impressment.
The Constitution on starting out her last cruises had an extraordinary number of able seamen aboard, viz., 218, with but 92 ordinary seamen, 12 boys, and 44 marines, making, with the officers, a total of 440 men. (See letter of Captain Bainbridge, Oct. 16, 1814; it is letter No. 51, in the fortieth volume of "Captains' Letters," in the clerk's office of the Secretary of the Navy.)] Many sailors preferred to serve in the innumerable privateers, and, the two above-mentioned officers, in urging the necessity of building line-of-battle ships, state that it was hard work to recruit men for vessels of an inferior grade, so long as the enemy had ships of the line.
One of the standard statements made by the British historians about this war is that our ships were mainly or largely manned by British sailors. This, if true, would not interfere with the lessons which it teaches; and, besides that, it is not true.
In this, as in every thing else, all the modern writers have merely followed James or Brenton, and I shall accordingly confine myself to examining their assertions. The former begins (vol. iv, p. 470) by diffidently stating that there is a "similarity" of language between the inhabitants of the two countries—an interesting philological discovery that but few will attempt to controvert. In vol. vi, p. 154, he mentions that a number of blanks occur in the American Navy List in the column "Where Born"; and in proof of the fact that these blanks are there because the men were not Americans, he says that their names "are all English and Irish." [Footnote: For example, James writes: "Out of the 32 captains one only, Thomas Tingey, had England marked as his birthplace…. Three blanks occur, and we consider it rather creditable to Captains John Shaw, Daniel S. Patterson, and John Ord Creighton, that they were ashamed to tell where they were born." I have not been able to find out the latter's birth-place, but Captain Shaw was born in New York, and I have seen Captain Patterson incidentally alluded to as "born and bred in America." Generally, whenever I have been able to fill up the vacancies in the column "Where Born," I have found that it was in America. From these facts it would appear that James was somewhat hasty in concluding that the omission of the birth-place proved the owner of the name to be a native of Great Britain.] They certainly are; and so are all the other names in the list. It could not well be otherwise, as the United States Navy was not officered by Indians. In looking over this same Navy List (of 1816) it will be seen that but a little over 5 per cent, of the officers were born abroad—a smaller proportion by far than would exist in the population of the country at large—and most of these had come to America when under ten years of age. On p. 155 James adds that the British sailors composed "one third in number and one half in point of effectiveness" of the American crews. Brenton in his "Naval History" writes: "It was said, and I have no reason to doubt the fact, that there were 200 British seamen aboard the Constitution." [Footnote: New edition, London, 1837, vol. ii, p. 456.] These statements are mere assertions unsupported by proof, and of such a loose character as to be difficult to refute. As our navy was small, it may be best to take each ship in turn. The only ones of which the British could write authoritatively were, of course, those which they captured. The first one taken was the Wasp. James says many British were discovered among her crew, instancing especially one sailor named Jack Lang; now Jack Lang was born in the town of Brunswick, New Jersey, but had been impressed and forced to serve in the British Navy. The same was doubtless true of the rest of the "many British" seamen of her crew; at any rate, as the only instance James mentions (Jack Lang) was an American, he can hardly be trusted for those whom he does not name.
Of the 95 men composing the crew of the Nautilus when she was captured, "6 were detained and sent to England to await examination as being suspected of being British subjects." [Footnote: Quoted from letter of Commodore Rodgers of September 12, 1812 (in Naval Archives, "Captains' Letters," vol xxv, No. 43), enclosing a "List of American prisoners of war discharged out of custody of Lieutenant William Miller, agent at the port of Halifax," in exchange for some of the British captured by Porter. This list, by the way, shows the crew of the Nautilus (counting the six men detained as British) to have been 95 in number, instead of 106, as stated by James. Commodore Rodgers adds that he has detained 12 men of the Guerrière's crew as an offset to the 6 men belonging to the Nautilus.] Of the other small brigs, the Viper, Vixen, Rattlesnake, and Syren, James does not mention the composition of the crew, and I do not know that any were claimed as British. Of the crew of the Argus "about 10 or 12 were believed to be British subjects; the American officers swore the crew contained none" (James, "Naval Occurrences," p. 278). From 0 to 10 per cent can be allowed. When the Frolic was captured "her crew consisted of native Americans" (do, p. 340). James speaks ("History," p. 418) of "a portion of the British subjects on board the Essex," but without giving a word of proof or stating his grounds of belief. One man was claimed as a deserter by the British, but he turned out to be a New Yorker. There were certainly a certain number of British aboard, but the number probably did not exceed thirty. Of the President's crew he says ("Naval Occurrences," p. 448): "In the opinion of several British officers there were among them many British seamen" but Commodore Decatur, Lieutenant Gallagher, and the other officers swore that there were none. Of the crew of the Chesapeake, he says, "about 32" were British subjects, or about 10 per cent. One or two of these were afterward shot, and some 25, together with a Portuguese boatswain's mate, entered into the British service. So that of the vessels captured by the British, the Chesapeake had the largest number of British (about 10 per cent. of her crew) on board, the others ranging from that number down to none at all, as in the case of the Wasp. As these eleven ships would probably represent a fair average, this proportion, of 0 to 10 per cent., should be taken as the proper one. James, however, is of the opinion that those ships manned by Americans were more apt to be captured than those manned by the braver British; which calls for an examination of the crews of the remaining vessels. Of the American sloop Peacock, James says ("Naval Occurrences," p. 348) that "several of her men were recognized as British seamen"; even if this were true, "several" could not probably mean more than sixteen, or 10 per cent. Of the second Wasp he says, "Captain Blakely was a native of Dublin, and, along with some English and Scotch, did not, it may be certain, neglect to have in his crew a great many Irish." Now Captain Blakely left Ireland when he was but 16 months old, and the rest of James' statement is avowedly mere conjecture.