![]() ![]() The American merchants and ordinary sailors who organized themselves into fighting units ultimately got everything they hoped for: no more impressment of U.S. ![]() ![]() “Privateers contributed more than the regular navy to bring about a disposition for peace in the British classes most responsible for the war,” concluded Henry Adams in his history of this era. Maritime insurance for British traders became three times more expensive than when all of Europe was at war in the Napoleonic era. Privateers captured or sunk around 2,000. Navy captured or sunk about 300 enemy ships. Over the course of the War of 1812, the U.S. These small privateers proved enormously effective-providing the lion’s share of military punishment during the three-year struggle. “Let every individual contribute his mite, in the best way he can to distress and harass the enemy, and compel him to peace,” urged Thomas Jefferson in 1812. Not long after hostilities were declared, there were 517 private corsairs defending the U.S. Typical records of the day from Marblehead, Massachusetts, showed that 900 local men volunteered for service during the 1812 conflict-120 of them in the Navy, 57 as soldiers, and 726 as privateersmen. So how did America avoid being obliterated by the English juggernaut? Individually funded, decentralized warfighting-in the form of privateers. Navy carried 450 cannons the Royal Navy 27,800. ![]() The comparison by firepower was even starker: the U.S. The British Navy at that same moment numbered a thousand warships-including 175 double-gundeck “ships of the line,” of which the United States had none. Navy possessed a total of seven frigates and less than a dozen other seagoing ships. ![]()
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