USS LYNX

In modern times, the unexplained disappearance of a vessel at sea would raise much interest, concern, news coverage, and even sensationalist speculation.  Witness the loss of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 in 2014.  In the 19^th century, however, losses due to act of God were a known risk of oceanic enterprise. 

When President James Madison received from Congress a declaration of war against Great Britain in 1812, he found the US Navy woefully inadequate to the task.  Part of the subsequent build-up for that war included the creation two squadrons that could raid British shipping.  A contract was let to Mr. James Owner of Georgetown, DC, for the construction of a Baltimore Clipper-rigged schooner of 150 tons displacement and six guns.  Construction delays prevented her completion prior to the summer of 1815, six months after the end of the fighting.  Nevertheless, on 3 July 1815 she was commissioned into our Navy as USS LYNX, manned with 50 crewmen, and sent with Commodore William Bainbridge’s nine-ship squadron to the Mediterranean to police Barbary piracy.

Here, LYNX arrived too late for combat again.  Bainbridge took over command of our Mediterranean Squadron, and LYNX remained in the area for a year, showing the flag to insure Barbary peace.  Upon her return to the United States, her new skipper LT George W. Storer surveyed the northeastern coast, until piracy, that had started before the turn of the century. surfaced again along our Gulf coast.  LYNX was sent south to address this.

By 1819 LYNX had yet a new captain, LT John R. Madison, and experienced her first brush with combat.  On 24 October she overhauled and engaged two pirate schooners and two smaller boats loaded with booty off Louisiana.  LYNX departed subsequently for the coast of Texas, then part of Mexico.  Here, in Galveston Bay, she captured another pirate boat also loaded with stolen booty.

By early 1820, LYNX was operating out of St. Mary’s on Georgia’s Atlantic coast, from whence she received orders to Kingston, Jamaica.  Piracy had become rampant in the Caribbean, as newly independent former Spanish colonies such as Venezuela and Colombia commissioned privateers against Spanish shipping.  These privateers too often placed profit above patriotism and attacked ships of any nation.  American traders were falling victim, and LYNX was to be part of our Navy’s efforts against this affront.

On this day LYNX disappeared over the horizon, heading south.  Neither she nor Madison nor any of her crew were ever seen again.  The mythical Bermuda Triangle notwithstanding, a search by USS Nonsuch, 14, turned up nothing.  Months later some unidentifiable wreckage was found on Craysons Reef, off Florida, that is believed today to have been the remains of USS Lynx.  In the days before accurate weather forecasting, losses at sea were not uncommon.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  15 JAN 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cooney, David M.  A Chronology of the U.S. Navy:  1775-1965.  New York, NY: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965, p. 48.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 4 “L-M”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969, pp. 172-73.

Silverstone, Paul H.  The Sailing Navy, 1775-1854.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2001, p. 55.

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                                         ARTICLE 114. DUELING.

James Barron and Stephen Decatur enjoyed distinguished careers during the wars with the Barbary pirates.  They became not just colleagues, but good friends.  Thus, Decatur was disheartened in 1807 when Barron, then in command of the frigate CHESAPEAKE, 36, fell victim to HMS LEOPARD, 56.  The British suspected CHESAPEAKE of harboring Royal Navy deserters and watched for her departure from Virginia for the Mediterranean.  Once Barron had sailed beyond the Virginia Capes, CHESAPEAKE was halted and fired upon by LEOPARD.  The action caught Barron totally by surprise.  His guns had been stowed for the long voyage ahead, compelling him to strike his colors.

Barron later faced a court-martial over this incident.  Presiding at this trial, reluctantly, after his requests to the contrary had been denied, was Stephen Decatur.  The court found Barron negligent and suspended him from duty, whereupon he entered the merchant service.  As circumstance would have it, Barron was in England when hostilities in the War of 1812 commenced and was unable to secure passage to America until the War’s end.  Upon his return, murmurings sprang up that his detention in England had not been completely accidental, reflecting a hint of cowardice in his character.  It was rumored to Barron that Decatur was party to these murmurings, and he challenged his former friend to gentlemanly redress on the field of honor.

On this morning in 1820, the two met in a valley near Bladensburg, Maryland.  In retrospect, Decatur’s second, CDORE William Bainbridge, and Barron’s second, CAPT Jesse D. Elliott, could probably have resolved the quarrel had they acted on the opportunity that now presented.  Just before the two faced off Barron expressed to Decatur the hope that “…on meeting in another world, they would be better friends than in this,” to which Decatur replied, “I have never been your enemy, Sir.”  From a short eight paces they turned and fired, neither aiming to kill.

Barron was wounded in the thigh but survived.  Barron’s bullet entered Decatur’s hip and was deflected into his pelvis, causing substantial hemorrhage.  About 12 hours later, Stephen Decatur, one of the most promising officers in the history of our Navy, died at his home in Lafayette Square. 

Though this was certainly not the only duel between military officers in our history, it was arguably the most costly.  A revision of the Navy Regulations in 1837 forbade dueling as does our modern UCMJ.  James Barron eventually returned to the active duty list and ascended to the position of senior Commodore of the Navy, though he never again commanded at sea.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  26-27 MAR 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Beach, Edward L.  The United States Navy:  200 Years.  New York, NY: Henry Holt Co., 1986, pp. 143-46.

Site visit, Stephen Decatur House, Lafayette Square, Washington, DC, 23 May 2007.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3^rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, p. 36.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Edward Beach contends that the real instigator in this duel was Jesse Elliott.  Branded since the War of 1812 as the “coward of Lake Erie” for failing to come to the aid of his Commodore, Oliver Hazard Perry, Elliott is known to have harbored a desire to recover his honor against Perry.  His desires were thwarted, however, when Perry died in August 1819 of yellow fever.  Elliott and Barron had agreed to act as each other’s second in their respective duels.

Two other Navy officers were present that morning as well.  CAPT’s David Porter and John Rodgers had both refused offers to be Decatur’s second, and both had discouraged Decatur’s participation.  Both had ridden independently to Bladensburg that morning and secreted themselves in the nearby wood.  When Barron and Decatur both fell, Elliott was suddenly overcome by the fear of becoming an accessory to murder.  Dueling was illegal even back in 1820, though existing laws were seldom enforced.  Elliott fled the scene, and it was Porter who reportedly ran him down on the road back to Washington and forced Elliott to return to Barron’s side.

Though dueling was unlawful and Barron, Bainbridge, and Elliott were widely known to be participants in this duel, none was ever censured by the Navy.  All three continued to rise within the Navy’s hierarchy.  As a result, the respectability of Naval officers in the public’s eye (as compared to Army officers) suffered for decades.

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                                            27-28 OCTOBER 1855

                                      USS DECATUR vs. The Indians

The Oregon Treaty with England in 1846 deeded that portion of British Columbia south of the 49^th parallel to the United States–the area that would become our States of Washington and Oregon. Settlers who had been trickling into the area for decades, began appearing in greater numbers.  Those who came by sea settled in the fertile valleys of the rivers draining into Puget Sound.  Here, in a scenario that would be repeated many times in the American West, the intrusion of the white man stirred some Native Americans to violence.  In fact, it was just such escalating tensions that sent the sloop-of-war DECATUR, 16, to investigate the Northwest Territory in 1855.  DECATUR was then patrolling under CAPT Guert Gansevoort with the US Navy’s Pacific Squadron.  She entered the Straits of San Juan de Fuca on July 19^th, but finding things quiet after several weeks of surveying, she turned toward San Francisco for re-provisioning.

In her absence, on September 27^th, hostile Indians attacked and burned the cabin of a settler named A.L. Porter in the White River Valley near Tacoma.  Though Porter escaped by sleeping in the nearby woods, he and his frightened neighbors hurried north to Seattle, in whose harbor DECATUR shortly dropped anchor.

Friendly Indians began filtering into that town bearing warning of an all-out attack in the very near future.  Preparations commenced immediately.  Food and water enough for a lengthy siege were stocked in the blockhouses protecting the town.  Gansevoort took the women and children aboard DECATUR and to aide in the town’s defense, landed a Dahlgren howitzer.  This was positioned behind the henhouse of a Mr. Plummer (near modern-day Fifth and Jackson Streets) to command the approaches from a hill overlooking the town.

On the night of October 27^th the Indians struck more cabins further inland.  War whoops could be heard from the hills above Seattle, and musket shots from the trees peppered the town.  Gansevoort landed Marines and bluejackets to bolster the townsmen, then loosed DECATUR’s guns at the hill overlooking town.  When Indians next appeared at the edge of the timber, crewmen serving the howitzer opened with langrage that proved more than that for which the attackers had bargained.  The staunch defense put up by the townsmen and the sailors and Marines of DECATUR turned back the first wave.  Heavy fighting continued through the next day, finally ending when the outgunned Indians parleyed for peace.  DECATUR lingered until a formal treaty was signed in January.  Except for the 2^nd Seminole War two decades earlier, the incident represents one of the rare encounters of our Navy with hostile Indians.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  3 NOV 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Brandt, John H.  “The Navy as an Indian Fighter”.  Proceedings of the US Naval Institute, Vol 56 (8), August 1930, p. 691.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 249.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3^rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, p. 56.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  A decade earlier, in the 1844 Presidential election, the Democratic Party adopted the slogan, “Fifty-four Forty or Fight!” reflecting the desire in some circles that the northern border of the Oregon Territory be 54⁰ 40′.  Though this more northern boundary was never adopted, to the northern plains Indians the 49^th parallel came to be known as the “Medicine Line,” as US cavalry would not pursue beyond it.

The Dahlgren howitzer mentioned above is the same type of gun as that displayed in the central courtyard of Naval Medical Center San Diego.  Made of brass, it was lighter and more easily wrestled about than conventional iron guns of pre-Civil War era.  Dahlgren designed the gun to be mounted on a carriage for shipboard use, or mounted on a limber (two-wheeled carriage) for use ashore.  In addition, most launches and small boats were constructed to accept a Dahlgren howitzer in a bow-mounted position.  The weapon was commonly used as an anti-personnel device, being loaded with grapeshot or canister.  Langrage is ordnance usually fired to shred sails consisting often of scrap iron, nails, and other debris loaded into a case.

CAPT Gansevoort went on to serve in the Civil War Union Navy, commanding the triple-turreted ironclad USS Roanoke.  Unfortunately, Roanoke proved top-heavy in rough seas, and her hull was too weak to stand the firing of her guns.  Gansevoort retired in 1867 and died 18 months later.  He is remembered with the WWII Benson-class destroyer GANSEVOORT (DD-608).

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