ESCAPE OF ENTERPRISE

Part of our Navy’s upsizing for the War of 1812 was the strengthening of several schooners then in service.  Extra guns and extra crewmen were added, but at the cost of making the spritely schooners too heavy to run from larger British warships.  Indeed, by this date our celebrated schooners of the Barbary Wars, WASP, ARGUS, and VIXEN had already been overhauled and captured, and HORNET was too slow to escape the enemy blockade of New York.  Recognizing the vulnerability of these modified schooners, another of the class, ENTERPRISE, 16, was sent to the West Indies where she was to shun faster enemy warships and tackle only slow and lightly armed British merchant ships.  She sailed with RATTLESNAKE, 14, a former New England privateer recently brought into our Naval service.

Their cruise proved initially fruitful.  During the winter of 1813-14 ENTERPRISE and RATTLESNAKE encountered the British privateer Mars, 14, off Florida.  Privateers were armed civilian ships who cruised under permission of their government to capture enemy commercial shipping.  The sight of two American warships spurred half of Mars’ crewmen to take to the boats and escape to shore.  Mars’ master, however, boldly ranged up under the guns of LT James Renshaw in ENTERPRISE.  The American loosed a broadside that splintered the privateer’s hull and felled four of her remaining crew.  Without further convincing the privateer struck.  The American pair took two more prizes during their cruise while successfully avoiding stronger British warships.

But on this morning off South Carolina the luck of the pair ran out.  Sighted by a British frigate, they immediately split and headed separately toward shore.  The frigate took her chances with the slower and ungainly ENTERPRISE.  Through this day and the next, the frigate gained steadily on Renshaw.  Even under a full press of sail the overburdened schooner wallowed.  Renshaw ordered the loose gear and stores thrown over the side.  When that didn’t work, the schooner’s twelve 18-pounder carronades were jettisoned.  From time to time the frigate ranged close enough to lob a few shots at ENTERPRISE, but Renshaw managed to stay just out of reach until the two were becalmed on the morning of the 27^th.  Renshaw lowered his rowboats, hoping to kedge the schooner to safety.  But as he did a slight breeze freshened about the schooner.  For once the smaller ship had the advantage, she crept slowly out from under the frustrated and becalmed frigate.  She made Wilmington on 9 March, saved by luck of the breezes alone.

Recognizing that ENTERPRISE would continue to be outsailed and outgunned, she was anchored in Charleston as a guardship, where she remained for the rest of the war.  She was one of only two of her encumbered class to survive the war in American hands.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  28 FEB 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cooper, James Fenimore.  History of the Navy of the United States of America, Vol. II.  Philadelphia, PA: Lea & Blanchard, 1840, pp. 175-76.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 355.

Roosevelt, Theodore.  The Naval War of 1812.  New York, NY: Da Capo, 1999, p. 208.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  ENTERPRISE’s other notable contribution during the War of 1812 had come a month before being sent south above.  She captured the British schooner HMS BOXER, 14, off Maine on 5 September 1813.

Following the stationing of ENTERPRISE in Charleston, Renshaw was transferred to command RATTLESNAKE.  Various historical sources report conflicting details as to the date and circumstances of the above encounter, and appear to confuse this event with a similarly harrowing chase of RATTLESNAKE under Renshaw later in 1814.

James Renshaw’s reputation in our Navy was less than sterling.  Regarded as a martinet who was unable to get on with superiors or his crewmen, CDORE Isaac Hull wrote of Renshaw upon learning of his appointment to command ENTERPRISE, “The ENTERPRISE, I presume, will not be very enterprising.”  In 1841, now commander of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, saw Renshaw brought before a Board of Inquiry for political favoritism.  He allegedly preferentially selected Democratic candidates for new hires and targeted Whig party employees for rebuke and dismissal.  The Board found Renshaw guilty of the charge, and he was relieved of command of the Brooklyn Yard.

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                               USS ASP vs. OVERWHELMING ODDS

In February of 1813 our nation was struggling once again against the naval superpower of the day, Britain, and fears of a British incursion into the Chesapeake were real.  Our Navy was no match for His Majesty’s, but we nevertheless purchased the 79-ton bay schooner Adeline in Alexandria and outfitted her at the Washington Navy Yard as the 3-gun sloop-of-war USS ASP.  This day found her cruising with the 4-gun sloop USS SCORPION in the Yeocomico River, a tributary of the Potomac.  Exiting the tributary to the Potomac proper, the pair were sighted by the British cruisers HMS CONTEST, 14, and HMS MOHAWK, 18, about 1000 this morning.  ASP, being a bit ungainly, ducked back into the Yeocomico and anchored up one of her creeks.  Her skipper, Midshipman James B. Sigourney, correctly surmised that the British cruisers drew too much water to enter the creek.  But the British launched three small boats that were shortly seen rowing toward ASP, led by LT Curry of CONTEST and LT Hutchinson of MOHAWK.

ASP beat to quarters, and without time to raise her anchors, she cut her cables and turned further up the creek.  But shallowing water halted the Sigourney’s escape with the enemy still in relentless pursuit.  The Midshipman ordered his 21-man crew to the guns, and three 18-pounders flashed in anger.  These, and muskets, kept up a steady fire against the advancing enemy boats.  For moments it looked like the British would prevail despite the intense fire–until American iron and lead took its toll.  The cruel volleys that tore through their ranks convinced LT Curry to opt for discretion.

About an hour later, the enemy was reinforced with two more boatloads of attackers.  This time the American fire could not turn them back.  They swarmed aboard ASP with a vengeance, cutting down ten of the American crewmen including Midshipman Sigourney.  Upwards of 50 British possessed the deck, and against those odds the eleven surviving Americans scattered into the Virginia woods.  Here, second in command Midshipman Henry M. McLintock rallied the men.  The British set fire to ASP and quit both her and the creek–too soon, it would prove.  McLintock regained the deck and after a difficult struggle, stemmed the fires aboard the schooner.  ASP was able to get underway and return to Washington.  She was repaired and continued in service in the defense of Baltimore for the remainder of the War of 1812.  She finally left naval service over a decade later, in 1826.

In modern times two destroyers, the WWI Wickes-class SIGOURNEY (DD-81) and the WWII Fletcher-class DD-643, remember Midshipman James B. Sigourney.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  19 JUL 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cooper, James Fenimore.  History of the Navy of the United States of America, Vol. II.  Philadelphia, PA: Lea & Blanchard, 1840, pp. 186-87.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 1 “A”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1991, p. 430.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, p. 502.

Letter of Midshipman Henry McLintock to Secretary of the Navy, dtd. 19 July 1813.  IN:  Dudley, William S. (ed).  The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History  Vol II.  Department of the Navy, Navy Historical Center, Washington, DC: GPO, 1992, p. 368.

Roosevelt, Theodore.  The Naval War of 1812.  New York, NY: Da Capo, 1999, pp. 196-97.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  USS SCORPION escaped up the Chesapeake Bay toward Harve de Grace, Maryland.  SCORPION would be burned 14 months later in the Patuxent River to prevent her capture by a British force advancing on Washington, DC.

One of the curiosities in our early Navy was the coexistence of two warships named, USS ASP.  Communications being what they were during the War of 1812, the name given to one of the warships operating on Great Lakes was not known in Washington DC at the time the small schooner above was commissioned.

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