It was five or six years before I worked up the courage to even begin looking through this formidable pile. Browsing through it all, spotting familiar names and some unfamiliar ones, I was surprised to find one piece of paper. This had events on it I had never heard of, history I was completely unfamiliar with and characters whose only connection was an ancestral last name.

Because part of my family is Irish, I telephoned the elderly aunt who had written this page in 1943, an interview she had had with a great-uncle, to ask if this might be Blarney. No. This was the Scottish side of the family. Not into spinning tales. Nor was my aunt. Definitely lace-curtain on the Irish side and she assured me, 
#1: the uncle was never a story-teller and 
#2 she had written down exactly what he had said:

The facts seem to be these:

The ship The General Armstrong

named after the Secretary of War, was built in 1812 in a very busy shipyard on New York's East River by the brothers Adam and Noah Brown. The shipyard was at the end of Houston Street and the money was put up by Renssalear Havens and other New York investors who would, after clearance by a prize court, share the proceeds from their captures with the captain, crew, American Marines and other stockholders.

Samuel Chester Reid

was the second captain of the Armstrong, born in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1783, son of a British Naval officer. The senior Reid was taken prisoner in a night boat expedition at New London, Connecticut, and afterward resigned his commission to become an American citizen. At the age of eleven the son went to sea, was captured by a French privateer and confined for six months at Basseterre, Guadeloupe.

The actual event:

September 26, 1814. Sundown. In the North Atlantic, in the Azores. about 1/3 of the way between Portugal and the United States in the neutral Portuguese port of Fayal (Faial). The American privateer, the GENERAL ARMSTRONG, is taking on water and supplies. Three British men-of-war unexpectedly appear, sailing into the mouth of the harbor. The British commander, Robert Lloyd, irrationally seems to delay his mission which was to join the flotilla assembling in the Caribbean for the Battle of New Orleans;

Crews from His Majesty's Ships Plantagenet, Rota and Carnation make two attempts to board the American ship.

In the first attempt, the British squadron sent boats in to reconnoiter but they were driven off by American gunfire. Then, at 8PM, four boats (were launched) from PLANTAGENET and three from ROTA, containing 180 seamen and marines, (and) about midnight began a major attack, attempting to board the schooner over the bow and the starboard quarter. The Americans opened fire with long 9-pounders and a swivel gun and the boats replied with their carronades. The British failed to cut through the netting on the quarter as pistols and muskets were fired at them at point blank range and long pikes were thrust in their faces and they retired to their boats. The attack over the bow nearly succeeded but Capt. Reid led the aft guard forward and turned the tide.

The next day British Captain Lloyd ordered HMS CARNATION to close with the schooner but was kept out of range by the American's single long 42-pounder gun.

At this point, however, Captain Reid realized that the long term position was hopeless so he scuttled his ship; he apparently took the 42-pound swivel gun, pointed it down the hatchway, and blew a hole in the bottom of the Armstrong. Two Americans had been killed in the battle and all the rest of the men escaped safely to the Island's shore.

But the British squadron was seriously depleted in manpower by (depending on the source) from 75 to 300 sailors and marines and -- was therefore said to be late in arriving at New Orleans and this might have had an effect on subsequent history.

A Famous event:

When the Armstrong's crew returned to the United States, they were feted with banquets and speeches, up the East Coast from Charleston to Boston.

And the story of the American privateer General Armstrong in the Azores became a widely known subject of illustration, poetry and song in the USA of the 1800s and thereafter.

[Currier print - then repeat with critique later]

A hand-colored Nathaniel Currier print (before he joined with Ives, circa 1830s, from his shop in downtown NYC on Nassau Street. Color done by immigrant girls, often German with some art education, each one applying a different color in an assembly-line fashion. )

[Sheet music from 1843, "The Yankee Boy"]

In all of those troubles I had to be there

Imprest and in prison in Battles to share

In the Brig General Armstrong I was in Fayal

Where by scores British seamen had to fall.

A Senate Report published in 1880 concluded:

It is therefore evident that the heroic actions of Captain Reid and his brave officers and crew saved New Orleans from conquest by England; for had the British forces arrived even one week before General Jackson, they would have captured the city, which was then utterly defenseless….

German painter Emanuel Leutze (who also painted "Washington Crossing the Delaware") did this rendition of the battle.

But was this merely an incident, now forgotten?

The speculation:

So I laid out the three lines from my aunt and all this accumulated information I had found and it started to make sense. "If there had been no Battle of Fayal, there would have been no Battle of New Orleans."

Well, with that kind of logic and a hefty admixture of speculation and imagination, I began to imagine a sweeping drama. A friend suggested my ancestor could be played by Mel Gibson with Charlie Sheehan as his brother. As for British commander Lloyd, what a great, villainous role for Charles Laughton if he were still alive, or today perhaps an even better role for Anthony Hopkins at his Hannibal Lector best.

This drama would perhaps begin at a moment in time when a dirty look by an impressed Scotsman named Mackie, my ancestor, evolves into a string of circumstances ending with the collapse of British hopes for empire in the Western Hemisphere and with the rise of the American nation.

Without the details and spun from my aunt's brief notes, I began to imagine, obviously more as fiction than as history, a scenario where

[Speculative MAP]

1. The brothers, while fishing off the coast of Scotland, are taken and impressed into the British Navy

2. They end up on Captain Lloyd's ship, (possibly the Guerriere which was defeated by the USS Constitution very early in the War)

3. They are either among the prisoners in Boston or they jump ship, possibly off the coast of Virginia or in Long Island Sound

4. Make there way to NYC, get jobs as ship fitters building the General Armstrong with Noah and Adam Brown at the end of Houston Street on the East River

5. Sail with the General Armstrong on its many voyages

6. When British Captain Lloyd sails into the harbor in the Azores and sees the General Armstrong, he spies the Mackies aboard.  In a brief moment, as the Plantagenet glides past the Armstrong, Lloyd loses his mind, swears to avenge their desertion and to retake his former crewmembers no matter what…

I imagined entitling all this "Twist of Fate"

The questions:

Was it true? So while my curiosity about my ancestors, typical of genealogical pursuits, was egotistical, self-centered and vanity-driven, the subsequent questions this led to are perhaps of historical interest:

I will not be able to answer all these questions. Besides, 'what-if' is not history. But examining them, I've found, reveals a rich history of the Making of America and some examples of what research into primary sources can reveal. I'd like to share some of this examination with you.

A History of the War of 1812

The United States declared war on England in June of 1812. President James Madison and the US Congress, especially southern and western representatives, felt it had been treated with contempt by England and the cry was "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights"

• It was Free Trade versus Great Britain's Orders In Council which required US ships to stop at a British port and get a license to trade on the French-dominated Continent - a measure the British had taken as part of the long and ongoing Napoleonic Wars.

• It was Sailors Rights against Britain's impressment of American seaman into the Royal Navy.

Though not a stated war aim, the conquest of Canada was a big factor. Westerners and Southerners backed it. There were 5 attempts to do it. And none of them worked out. Even tho Thomas Jefferson had said that the annexation of Canada to the US "was merely a matter of marching."  There were plenty of disappointments.

It's not easy to characterize the War of 1812. Let's say that if the transatlantic cable had been operational 44 years earlier, this war might not have begun at all, and it certainly wouldn't have ended as it did.

I'll shortly get to the very important issue of impressment, but after extensive examination, I'd say that perhaps behind every war is national attitude and nothing could be more true of the War of 1812:

British attitudes toward America

"First, it should be said that the entirety of the War of 1812 was very small change in British minds; in London the real problem was Napoleon, not a gaggle of far-off and half-baked ex-colonials with an attitude."  (MARHST-L)

After the war of 1812, an American was upbraiding an Englishman for his ignorance of events: The American asked "Did you know that the British burned Washington?" "No." said the Englishman, "But I know we burned Joan of Arc."

Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, British commander-in-chief during the attacks on Washington and Baltimore and naval commander of the expedition to New Orleans, wrote of the Americans, "They are a whining, canting race much like the spaniel -- and require the same treatment--(they) must be drubbed into good manners."  (Christopher T. George) Quoted in Walter Lord, The Dawn's Early Light. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972, 35.

Possibly his hatred of Americans had a personal origin: his elder brother, on October 17, 1781, had been standing next to Cornwallis at Yorktown, when his head was shot off by an American cannonball. (Christopher T. George)  We'll hear more about Admiral Cochrane as he leads the naval expedition to New Orleans, which Lloyd is to join.

Perhaps the most stunning event was the burning of Washington; but this event has perhaps more  to do with the needs of American patriotic feeling than strategic necessity.  Now, the British usually pass it off as payback for American burning of York in Ontario. (York, it should be noted, is now Toronto.)  However, the US soldiers had run amok at York and that burning was against orders. But Washington was burned according to orders and the London Statesman said, "The (KAH-sacks) Cossacks spared Paris but we spared not the capitol of America." and were joined by some Members of Parliament. (Hickey). But when the news of the burning of Washington reached London, there were celebrations and bonfires in the streets.

Now, in military history in general, if you capture your enemy's capital city, you win the war; does that mean the capture of Washington D. C. meant the British won the War?

Except for a few big, government buildings, Washington was a small town, parts still swamp. Simply, it wasn't Moscow, Paris or London. The Government had only been there for 14 years and congressmen called it "wilderness city," or "Capital of Miserable Huts". There had even been talk of moving the Capitol.

But the burning became important in the American mind. Perhaps even more important was:

Impressment

For America and American pride, perhaps the biggest single cause of the War of 1812 was impressment. The Royal Navy, just between the years of 1803 and 1810, had taken at least forty-five hundred American sailors from US ships; students of the Jeffersonian administration will know of the USS Chesapeake incident in 1807 where the Royal Navy forcibly took four sailors off a US Navy vessel and ended up hanging at least one of them.

Now, in all this, my ancestors would not have been among the more than 6,000 Americans wrongly impressed into Royal Navy floating hells. As British subjects, they would have been rightly and legally  impressed into Royal Navy floating hells.

During the peacetime that preceded the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy had about 10,000 men; by the War of 1812, the number had risen to 140,000. The overwhelming majority of these men came from The Press. To maintain the navy's strength, the press gangs were constantly at work. Not only did they have to replace men who were killed or died in service, but they also had to replace the countless vacancies created by desertion. Lord Nelson estimated that between 1793 and 1801 perhaps as many as 40,000 men deserted the navy.

The British also boarded hundreds of American ships on the high seas, hauling off droves of their own sailors who had deserted to the growing American merchant fleet, which offered better pay and conditions.  During a six-year period through 1810, the more than 4,500 sailors the British snatched off American vessels, included 1,361 native-born Americans, who were later freed with few apologies.

Madison's report to Congress, recommending war, said,

Under the pretext of impressing British seamen, our fellow-citizens are seized in British ports, on the high seas, and in every other quarter to which the British power extends, are taken on board British men-of-war and compelled to serve there as British subjects. In this mode our citizens are wantonly snatched from their country and their families, deprived of their liberty, and doomed to an ignominious and slavish bondage, compelled to fight the battles of a foreign country, and often to perish in them.

Any English-speaking sailor was in danger of being impressed. Especially with a Scottish, Irish or English brogue. But it was all problematic because 25 years before, all Americans were English citizens. Until 1850, England did not recognize the right of a man to renounce his nationality.

During the War, 23 American prisoners of war claimed by Britain as its subjects, some of whom had been naturalized in America, were sent to England for trial as traitors, leading to threats of retaliation. The issue was resolved by stipulation in the agreement of 16 July 1814 on the exchange of prisoners.

The US Government instituted Seamen's Protection Certificates beginning in 1806 but the English said you could buy papers in any American port for a dollar.

And with the war against Napoleon, the Royal Navy was hungry for seamen.

Let me quote here the tail-end of the story of the General Armstrong in the Battle in the Azores; this is from a recounting done by the American consul-general on the island: 

"Since this affair, the commander, Lloyd, threatened to send on shore an armed force, and arrest the privateer's crew, saying there were many Englishmen among them. …... At length, Captain Lloyd, fearful of losing more men, if he put his threats in execution, adopted this stratagem:

He addressed an official letter to the Governor, stating that in the American crew were two men who deserted from his squadron in America, and as they were guilty of high treason, he required them to be found and given up." (Cogg / JOHN B. DABNEY)

This was at a time when commanders of British warships patrolled the Atlantic, short of seamen in their own ships, pressed American merchant seamen into service. When boarding a U.S. ship for inspection, British officers frequently demanded a muster of the ship’s crew in order to search for deserters.

My ancestors and their crewmates might have been under just such a threat. I've speculated that they may have changed their names for this reason and therefore I could never pinpoint them in documents. But at least -- it's the instigation for this pursuit in history

According to Jerome Garitee's great book on privateering from Baltimore, The Republic's Private Navy, American citizenship was required to join the crew of an American privateer. All carried Seamen's Protection Certificates - if one were found falsely issued, it would confirm the British presumption and imperil the POW status of the entire crew.

Let me quote here A British/Canadian Perspective (Galafilm)

Sea power was Britain's pride and glory, and it was imperative to its defense. In the early 1800s, Britain was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the Napoleonic Empire, and the Royal Navy was the only thing that prevented Napoleon from crossing the Channel and conquering Britain.

Despite the navy's acute need for sailing crews, thousands of British seamen chose to jump ship in favour of a more comfortable and profitable position with the American merchant marine.

Wartime necessity justified the recapture of "deserters" from any ship. Even deserters who had adopted the American nationality were not immune from seizure as the Royal Navy adhered to a principle of inalienable British citizenship. Besides, American citizenship certificates were frequently assumed to be forged.

An American Perspective

The British Royal Navy was a notorious floating hell. The pay was low, when it was paid at all, shipboard conditions were miserable, and there was the ever-present risk of death or injury in battle. Small wonder then, that so many British sailors chose to abandon the Royal Navy for the rapidly expanding American merchant marine, which offered better pay and better conditions. ….and once the War of 1812 began, if a deserter could get on the crew of a fast American privateer and share in it's prizes, why that would be going from Hell to Heaven.

When British commanders began to board American ships in search of Royal Navy deserters, the Americans were highly offended. First of all, searching an American ship was an insult to national sovereignty. Secondly, legitimate Americans were sometimes "impressed" into British service on the pretext that they were British deserters. As there were no obvious differences in physical appearance, language or clothing, the British Navy was able to abduct as many as 6,000 Americans in the early 1800s.

 

 

Again, the cry in the US was "Sailors' Rights and Free Trade" with the human emphasis on Sailors' Rights - that is, freedom from the threat of impressment.