Happy PENGUIN Day!

On this date in 1815, the US Sloop of War HORNET was attacked by and subsequently captured and sank HMS PENGUIN in the South Atlantic in a fierce 22-minute battle.  To relate a portion of the story of that great victory, I'd like to post the text of an article written by Mr. Joe Holt, who formed part of the Marine Detachment aboard the most recent USS HORNET, CV-12 from 1967 to 1969.

Take it away, Mr. Holt:

We all know the history of seagoing Marines goes back as far as the Navy itself, but how often do we come across an opportunity that tells their tale?  All after-action reports promote the Navy’s exploits, but it’s rare to come across a ship’s account that brags on its Marines.  I’ve been lucky enough to discover just such a report.

24 February - HORNET sinks PEACOCK

Happy Peacock Day!  Here at NHS we're commemorating the 199th anniversary of the sinking of HMS Peacock by the US Sloop of War Hornet, commanded by Master Commandant James Lawrence.  I had originally intended to publish a much longer paper on the subject, but as has so often been the case, new information has come to light that is redirecting some of my conclusions.  Nevertheless, I hope to have it ready for next year's 200th anniversary.

So what exactly happened there?  How did Hornet manage to "maul so unmercifully" (as one period newspaper wrote) a ship of approximately similar size that she was reduced to a sinking condition in less than 15 minutes?  The general story, though often retold in short by almost every author writing on the War of 1812, is far more interesting than it would seem.  And though the action didn't officially begin until 5:25 pm, 199 years ago today, this morning in fact, the events that led both ships into the engagement were already playing out.

Footage of a bygone era

If I asked any number of naval history/heritage enthusiasts about their favorite film footage, most are likely to give me a Hollywood title - there certainly are a number of films made (or partially shot) aboard actual US Navy ships, most in the 1950s and '60s.  If you look closely you can even find James Cagney in a Monomoy, circa 1960!  In most of those films, Sailors past and present will undoubtedly recognize marked similarities to shipboard life today, and aside from the odd cigarette in the wardroom and general lack of OSHA approved safety gear, would be hard pressed to find real differences.

My favorite footage, however, is a bit older and more seemingly foreign.

Navy abandons its dead? or honors them?

There has been significant press lately on an issue more than 200 years old: thirteen American Sailors, often referred to as the first predecessors of today’s Navy SEALs, remain buried on Libyan soil. The families of some of those Sailors want the remains repatriated to the United States. Navy officials argue that the early practice of burying its dead at sea and along foreign coastlines near the site of death constitutes an official burial, and therefore considers the matter closed. Is the Navy honoring its dead? or doing an injustice to their memory? The issue is hotly contested.

Have you heard about this? What a great audience.

Earlier this week - on Sunday in fact, the Commander, US Fleet Forces Command put out some encouraging news that is directly pertinent to NHS. Take it away, Admiral (****) Harvey:

"Next year marks the start of the Bicentennial Commemoration of the War of 1812. Our Navy is partnering with non-profit organizations and cities around the nation to put together a commemoration program that will celebrate and honor our contribution to the war and the lasting impact it has had on our Navy and our nation. This commemoration program will not only educate the public on the importance of our Navy’s contribution to the war, but will also demonstrate – through Fleet Weeks, Navy Weeks and other special events – the great talent and capability of our Sailors today."

I don't know about you but I'm excited. When was the last time you had a discussion about Naval history in the fleet that didn't start with "This one night, we were so drunk..."? Getting initiatives like this out to the fleet - those opportunities to publicly reflect on what our past means to us, find real definition of who we are in where we came from, are priceless.

As the locally recognized authority on naval history in my cubicle, I have been asked - "so really, what's the big deal?" The 'deal' couldn't be bigger. In general terms, we found our national identity in the War of 1812 - and more directly applicable, we began to understand as a nation the importance of sea power in peace and war.

Here's the ten cent summary. Follow the links for more information.

In the opening years of the 19th century the United States had been operating under its Constitution for less than a decade. The size and relative power of the Federal Government was tiny, the nation still being little more than a loose collection of states - each of which largely governed itself. And although the army and navy of the revolution had been disbanded, many people fearing that the President could use a standing military to undully influence the democratic republic, a heated debate in the 1790s had recreated both.

From its inception, the Navy had been employed protecting the rights of American merchant sailors at sea - most notably from French privateers and commerce raiders, and from pillaging Barbary Pirates on the North African coast. But only a few years into the new century, a new and greater threat had emerged - our old nemeses the British.

Hurting for manpower, British ships had begun stopping American ships on the high seas and 'pressing' American sailors into British service. Legally, the British considered a person 'once a subject, always a subject' and this applied to many Americans, the nation being less than 30 years old. Things got really heated when the HMS Leopard opened fire on USS Chesapeake when the latter refused to submit to the former's demand to turn over members of its crew. Tensions flared. President Jefferson ordered a general embargo - effectively banning US ships from sailing abroad. The economy took a nose dive.

Although the Navy had fought pirates and raiders, they were completely unprepared to go toe to toe with the largest Navy in the world. During the Revolution, the Navy went from one embarrassing defeat to the next, with little to show for it. The campaigns in North Africa and against the French in the Carribean had fostered a fractured Navy culture, where individual captains and commodores exercised almost complete control of their forces, and there was little mission continuity from one commander to another. Taking such a force into action against the British in a global fight seemed madness.

I won't go into detail on the individual occurrences of the war - you can find great narratives here and here. But suffice it to say that the Navy - and the United States - emerged from the conflict in 1815 in a totally different light.

The loose collection of states realized the power of closer cooperation and mutual security - the sort that could only be attained with a significant federal military. Freedom of the seas for commerce triggered by the end of the war caused the US economy to boom, and American merchants again plied the globe moving cargoes.

The Navy had developed a culture - under fire - that banded captains and commodores to a common mission, objectives and infastrucutre. They created a system flexible enough to adapt to varying combat environments, but rigid enough to ensure that commanders knew exactly what was expected of them, not only by the nation, but other commanders. And at the end of the war, seeing the potential for naval power to deter large scale conflicts, the US saw the first postwar Naval buildup and the rise of a young, able and energetic officer corps capable of dealing with diverse missions in wide-ranging theaters.

In an era when our nation is mired by the greatest economic recession of our time, when our military is being spread over an increasing mission set amid funding cuts, we cannot forget the mettle that was forged 200 years ago - when we applied ourselves to emerging from similar dilemmas. It's not a difficult stretch to see global terrorism the same way the Americans viewed the British in 1812 - too widespread, difficult to pin down, take out one element and it keeps coming. And its certainly not difficult to imagine a time of high unemployment and rising debt. The things we did then made us who we are as a nation, and as a Navy. It isn't bull----, its our heritage, and it couldn't be more meaningful than it is right now.

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Models keep me motivated

As the inner keel for the 25-foot Launch lays clamped up on the molds, I find myself continually reading, researching and sketching new improvements. The original design was solid and its merits proven by our counterparts across the pond. However, from them we also learned a great deal about her drawbacks. Now, during construction of ours I have set out to improve on many of these. Issues such as hull shape, weight, reserve buoyancy, availability of materials and cost all play integral parts in how we proceed. And while I am now very sensitive to any delay in construction (we have material and money, and are short only on progress) I still find that we have plenty of time while we're waiting for one thing to dry to start others or yet further develop the remainder of her execution.

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One thing that keeps me highly interested are models. While I have literally dozens of sources talking about the qualities of boats, lists of boats carried by various ships, after-action reports of engagements involving boats and even a few primary source treatises on naval small craft construction, I find nothing so useful as studying extant contemporary models. A great source of these is the National Maritime Museum (UK), and this proves convenient for me as a good amount of their collection is available online. I've found that not many US maritime museums have the same level and scope of collections when it comes to small boats - and this is for two reasons. First, in the UK Royal Navy all bidding contracts went through centralized approval processes, many of which required models and/or extensive drawings, all of which were subsequently filed and indexed. Boats in the US Navy were often built on "local expertise" and didn't recieve the same level of higher-level attention that the Royal Navy counterparts did. As a result, few plans and almost no builders models survive.

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One model which very closely resembles the hull form and many of the features of our launch is actually a somewhat famous pair of models of the "Longboat belonging to HM Ship Medway" dated 1742. One model is shown unriged, with much of the planking removed to allow a view of the framing, while the other is shown rigged without sails. Though the provenance is a bit too antiquated for our direct interpretation as such, she clearly illustrates how windlasses were often fitted in boats, and how the sloop rig was carried in the mid-18th century. Later, the rig was heightened, the gaff lengthened and mast steps hinged to allow 'convenient' stepping underway. On a mast that size, it had better be a flat calm.

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Another great inspirational piece is one alternately labelled a 'cutter' and a 'launch'. Dated 1824, this piece is fascinating in that her lines represent a throw-back to the 1760s, when the raked transom and well-rounded stem were more common. She is, in fact, a launch - though her finer and somewhat antiquated lines led curators to assess her at first sight as a cutter. The model illustrates hawse trunks - a fairly common appliance to be fitted aboard boats at this time, yet rarely depicted in drawings. A work voucher returned at the dockyard at Plymouth dated 1784 indicates that several boats coming in for replacement had been "alter'd to ship a hawsr by trunk, beside the keelsen [sic]".

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And lastly - a model of the boat on which our original launch design could have been based. Dated 1824, the actual form is reflective of launches starting in the 1790s. Her lines are fuller, the transom is more of a barn door than a wine glass, and her center of flotation is slightly aft of midships. Most fascinating in this particular piece are the waterlines. Clearly someone was trying to sell the carrying capacity of the boat - one waterline reads "Water Line When Twenty Tons are Hove Up By the Windlass". Yeah - sold! Granted the boat depicted would have been 38 feet long, but launches of smaller size were still capable of hauling great loads (see the previous model for evidence).

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Happy browsing!

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What the $^&#@ is a leeboard?

There's no simple answer to that question. A frustration saving device, an oops we forgot something measure, a whoa it works widget. Get ready for your weekly dose of salt.

During the gruelling test sail, which proved to not be so gruelling, we found that it was difficult to sail closer than six or seven points off the wind without crabbing (sliding sideways). This effect, known as making leeway, can prevent us sailing upwind with any efficiency. The solution? Check the instruction manual. In our case, the US Navy published a guidebook called the "Deck and Boat Book." While many references are given to sailing boats without centerboards, there weren't many solutions except "pull the weather oars" (those closest to the wind). We did that during the test sail, and it worked, except there must be some way to do this without rowing.

As it turns out, there was.

The standard acquisition Monomoy Pulling Boats built between 1871 and 1904 were built without centerboards. This was specifically written into the contract because "through-hull openings [such as those for centerboards] have proven sources of structural failure, particularly on those boats which are frequently landed upon shore." The Norfolk Naval Shipyard Boat Shop records have frequent entries of centerboard boats being repaired having "ctrbd trunk sprung" - at least four such entries annotated as "failed hoisting loaded". Hmmm. That seems to make sense. The keel would be slotted for the centerboard - as illustrated in the extant drawings of centerboard versions. That means it would have been something of a weak spot, and even properly reinforced, the longitudinal flexing of the boat when hoisted could have caused the centerboard trunk planking to spring or seams to open. Very interesting.

So we know why the navy chose to opt out of centerboards. I'm still on topic, bear with me.

As we have seen, boats without centerboards are crap tacking into the wind. Any sailor can tell you more or less the same thing. So what did the navy do about it? Compensate.

The original 1871 contract specified no centerboards, but the 1873 revision added the following:

"Boat equipment... to include ten oars, one steering oar, one leeboard [emphasis added], sailing rig complete with spars, cordage, sails and associated appliances."

There it is! Leeway - centerboard. No centerboard - leeboard. After two years churning out boats, they figured out that something was needed to prevent excessive leeway. Leeboards hang off the lee gunwale and acts as a fin, retarding the crabbing motion of the boat when tacking. No through-hull openings, no structural alterations. Sailors probably figured out that improvised leeboards worked well, and officers passed the feedback to the shipyards. Granted, there is no evidence of that, but knowing how the navy worked and how close the ship to shipyard relationship was at that time, one can interpolate. After all, in those days captains spoke directly to the shipyard leaders, rather than to middle men as they do today.

So folks coming out this weekend to train for Conquer the Chesapeake 2010 have something new to play with. The Dockyard crew has been building a leeboard for our Monomoy based on drawings from the Norfolk Naval Shipyard Archives. Look for it in photos, or see it yourself on the waterfront at Naval Station Norfolk this Saturday.

That's all for now, back to the grind and time crunch.

Will

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Arrogance or innocence?

As I said yesterday, I've been reading more and more about the naval campaigns on the Great Lakes in the War of 1812. Next week I plan on a series of short articles about various actions or events that took place there during that period, and how they relate to what we're doing in NHS.

I started on this whole tack after some discussion around the Dockyard about comparing our efforts to history. Leaders on the Great Lakes in that period were given an opportunity unlike anything else in our naval history - the powers that be essentially told them to build their ships, then go fight. They seem to have had an astonishing amount of leeway selecting designs, arming existing ships and boats, and all within the realm of 'what do we have and what can we do with it?' - rather than it being strictly budget dependent. After all, if it were a mere matter of money, ther would have probably been much more of a buildup in that region. As it was, the growth was astounding.

And this had me thinking - we're sort of in a similar situation with our little organization. I'm not sure if its arrogance or innocence making such a comparisson, but even casual spectators would have to admit the parallels are there. Excepting that we're not building large scale craft to take into actual combat, we are limited in supplies, materials, manpower, skilled trades - all the things naval leaders faced on the Great Lakes in the early 19th century. Most of the time, making do with what we have is more important than what we can buy, or adhering to rigid practices and methods dictated by regulation. And while we aren't going to be facing actual combat, certain events, such as our crossing of the Chesapeake in the Monomoy Pulling Boat, do cause us to stake our physical (and mental, in many cases) well-being on our work.

So like Isaac Chauncey and Oliver Hazard Perry we're building and outfitting our own craft, only on a much smaller scale. No doubt we - or at least I - will draw strength and take example from their trials and tribulations. And then the issue becomes, just as they faced in those times, how to best use the products of our labors. I'm sure it will require the same fortitude, dilligence and flexibility as it did then.

More to follow.

Will

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