That, indeed, was often a minor factor. If he were a shrewd and thrifty man, the profit of his own personal speculations would far exceed the wages of his professional service. Thus the old-time captains were enabled liberally to provide for their families, and at the same time to make a start toward becoming shipowners themselves. To this day this ancient custom survives in the American merchant service to the extent at least of allowing and encouraging the master of a Maine or New York sailing ship to possess a share in the vessel known as the "captain's interest. In the service of the steam lines, however, the captain of a ship, as a rule, is an employee of the corporation, and nothing more.

But the salary of a modern steamer captain is far greater than the wages of any shipmaster of the last years of the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth century. Congress, in 1794, fixed the pay of a captain in the naval service at $75 a month, or $900 a year, and many of the best merchant captains of the period eagerly sought even the commission of a lieutenant who received $40 a month, or somewhat less than $500 a year. Now a naval captain is paid $4,000 a year; the merchant captain of a first-class ocean liner, $5,000; the captain of a large steamer or important sailing ship, from $1,500 upward.

There are good men in all these services. In courage and fidelity there has been no falling off among American ship captains since the time of the old merchant navigators. The great fundamental qualities of the race have not changed. If modern captains are less versatile than the old, it is simply because their calling, like so many other callings, has under modern conditions become more highly specialized, and because there is now not so wide a range of demands upon their skill and judgment.

CHAPTER VII

IMPRESSMENT AND EMBARGO.

Jefferson's Cautious Course

1801-15

Playing War with the Barbary Pirates

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Preble fights in Earnest - England, France, and the "Rule of 1756"-Decrees and Orders in Council launched against our Neutral Merchantmen Yankee Seamen kidnapped into the British Fleet-The "Leander" and the "Richard" the "Leopard" and the " Chesapeake - Our Retaliation in the Embargo of 1807 - More Harmful to Us than to Our Enemies Napoleon's Trap sprung on American Vessels - The Day of Retribution War declared against Great Britain - Brilliant Work of Armed Merchant Ships as Privateers Impressment shot to Pieces Our Tonnage, 1801-15

To the American sailor of a hundred years ago the characteristic perils of the sea-far greater then than nowmust have often seemed only the minor dangers of his calling. His chief risk came not from the fury of the elements, but from the arrogance, greed, or treachery of mankind. The early years of the nineteenth century, from the close of our naval war with France, in 1801, to the close of our second war with England, in 1815, were a period of almost barbaric lawlessness upon the ocean.

International obligations, maritime rules and customs, were trampled under foot in the long, fierce death-grapple of Napoleon Bonaparte and the British government. The United States held aloof from this combat, which was probably wise, but it won the contempt as well as the hatred of both combatants by its obvious unreadiness to assert its neutral rights and especially to protect its sailorcitizens. Washington had believed in a strong seagoing

navy; so had Adams. When Jefferson became President, the fine fleet of frigates and sloops which the brief war with France had given us was reduced to a skeleton, and the national defence was committed to a preposterous flotilla of smooth-water gunboats, which accorded more nearly than our stout thirty-eights and forty-fours with Jefferson's ideas of democratic simplicity. These craft proved worthless in the War of 1812. They were so light of draught as to be unseaworthy; so cramped that life aboard was torment to their officers and crews; so overloaded with their one or two heavy guns that quickness or precision of fire was impossible. Practical sailors everywhere derided this odd armada of the sage of Monticello, and England and France quickly recognized that a merchant marine thus protected was not protected at all.

Nor were these great wrestling giants the only eager foes of American commerce in the troublous first decade of the last century. Tribute of money, guns, powder, naval stores, and even complete warships had failed to appease the Dey of Algiers, and had inflamed the jealousy of the sea-thieves of the other Barbary States. Tunis demanded her share, and when she received it, Jessuf Karamauli, Bashaw of Tripoli, sent an impudent demand to President Adams. The reply was not satisfactory. On May 14, 1801, the Bashaw cut down the flagstaff of the American consulate, thus declaring war in characteristic Turkish fashion upon the United States. A swarm of corsairs was at once let loose upon the American merchant ships bound to and from the north shore of the Mediterranean, while two cruisers of considerable force were sent to seize American vessels at the Straits of Gibraltar, or even outside in the Atlantic.

A keen surprise awaited these over-greedy Tripolitans. As they lay at Gibraltar on July 1, 1801, watching, like two hawks, for the white wings of unsuspecting Yankee

traders, four Yankee ships came in, but not just the vessels for which the Turks were looking. They were the stately forty-four-gun frigate "President," the thirtysix-gun "Philadelphia," the thirty-two-gun "Essex," and the twelve-gun schooner "Enterprise," sailing under the broad pennant of Paul Jones's old lieutenant, Commodore Richard Dale. The "Philadelphia" was ordered to blockade the two corsairs. She kept so merciless a watch that the Tripolitan admiral, a renegade Scotchman, despaired of escape, dismantled his ships, and stole away in boats with his robber crews across the Straits and overland to Tripoli.

Commodore Dale's squadron had been sent out in May from home, when war was seen to be probable, if not inevitable. But President Jefferson's love of "strict construction" had tied the hands of the fighting executive of the "Bon Homme Richard." Jefferson saw that he must do something to save American merchant ships from seizure, and their crews from the awful fate of Moorish slavery. It appealed to his thrift that as Madison, his Secretary of State, had shrewdly argued, the frigates were part of the peace establishment, and "the expense of sending them abroad would not be much larger than the cost of keeping them at home.' But Jefferson's horror of war was exceeded only by his worship of the Constitution. He believed that the power to make war was a prerogative of Congress, and that without formal declaration a state of war could not exist, though a Turkish despot hewed down forty flagstaffs and filled his dungeons with the crews of plundered American ships. Brave old Dale was thereupon ordered not to make war or to take a prisoner, but to content himself with a "spirited defence." When the "Enterprise" captured a Tripolitan polacre, the pirate craft was neither kept nor destroyed. Her guns were thrown overboard, and she was left to find her way back to Tripoli to refit and sail on another cruise against Yankee merchantmen.

This was interpreted as "a defensive act and no violation of the orders of the President." But how it must have fretted the stout soul of the fighting commodore!

Dale's squadron was strong enough to afford much protection to American commerce, if it had not been hampered by these restrictions. Jefferson's prudence accorded ill with the bold and enterprising spirit of his country's merchant marine. These orders to Commodore Dale were the first token that American merchants and sailors could look for no effective support to their government so long as Jefferson controlled it. These orders were the earliest of a series of grave blunders in our maritime policy, of which the embargo of 1807 was the chief and most memorable example.

Congress, in 1801, realized that the war with the African corsairs must be pushed more vigorously than Jefferson had permitted. An Act was passed not declaring war, but giving the President express authority to maintain à squadron in the Mediterranean, and to seize and destroy the ships and property of the Barbary Powers. More frigates were sent out. Commodore Dale, whose orders had brought him home in December, 1801, was succeeded by Commodore Morris. Still the conduct of the war remained over-cautious. American merchantmen, bound into or out of the Mediterranean, were given convoy between Gibraltar and Leghorn, or Malta. A few corsairs were captured or blockaded. But no direct attack was made on Tripoli. In 1803 Morris was recalled.

Commodore Preble, who relieved him, was almost an ideal leader for this difficult service. His officers and crew had a chance to learn his metal soon after his flagship arrived in the Mediterranean. The "Constitution" fell in with a strange ship one black night in the Straits of Gibraltar. Preble's hail was evasively replied to, while both ships adroitly manoeuvred for the weather gage. Preble now shouted,