Bombship EAGLE
25 JUNE 1813
BOMBSHIP EAGLE
Smarting from the British blockade of American seaports during the War of 1812, Congress turned for help to our private citizens. Legislation was passed in March 1813 allowing a bounty equal to one-half the value of any British warship, its armament, and rigging, to be paid to any citizen who destroyed the ship. It was called the “Torpedo Act,” a reference to the contemporary word for a static bomb. It was hoped the Act would transform His Majesty’s blockading ships into targets for enterprising entrepreneurs.
Three months later, New York businessman John Scudder, Jr. completed a project in keeping with Congress’ Act. Scudder gutted the civilian schooner Eagle, then re-constructed a large cask below decks. This he filled with 40 ten-pound kegs of gunpowder packed in sulfur. Large stones were piled loosely over the cask, and for extra measure, containers of turpentine were laid amongst the rocks. Two musket flintlocks were rigged as triggers, with lines running through the deck to two innocent looking flour kegs topside. Any movement of the kegs would trip the flintlocks. New spools of line and other valuable ships stores were stacked about the deck as bait. Scudder then hired a man history records only as “Captain Riker,” (probably a false name) to sail Eagle toward the British squadron at the mouth of Long Island Sound.
Riker knew well that the British made a habit of seizing any sizeable vessel operating in the Sound. And as expected, on this morning a British officer and twenty sailors set out after Riker in a barge from the flagship HMS RAMILLIES, 74. But instead of running, Riker and his crew dropped Eagle’s anchor and fled to shore. As the British boarded the schooner, Riker and his men opened musket fire so intense the redcoats had to cut her anchor cable to move away. Exactly according to Riker’s plan, Eagle was taken into the warship anchorage, where, lacking an anchor, she had to be tied off to another vessel. But alas the tide and wind carried her far down range, where she was secured to another American sloop that had been captured a few days earlier. A British detail began relieving the tempting “bait,” until about 1430, when some unlucky tar hoisted one of the flour barrels. Eagle, the captured sloop, and eleven British sailors disappeared in a 900-foot column of smoke and flame. Pitch and splinters rained onto RAMILLIES a mile away.
The British immediately suspected Stephen Decatur was behind this plot, another of his efforts to break out from New London where the British had him bottled-up. But in truth, it was a bold act by private citizens for personal profit. Had Ramillies been destroyed, Scudder stood to earn over $150,000.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 29 JUN 23
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
De Kay, James Tertius. The Battle of Stonington: Torpedoes Submarines, and Rockets in the War of 1812. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1990, pp. 34-37.
Warren, ADM Sir John B. letter to 1st Secretary of the Admiralty, dtd 22 July 1813. IN: Dudley, William S. (ed). The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History Vol II. Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, Navy Historical Center, 1992, pp. 163-64.