Book Review
Every Man Will Do His Duty
Edited by Dean King with John B.Hattendorf. Owl Books $15.95 ISBN 0-8050-4609-7
A collection of firsthand accounts from officers and men who lived and fought at sea during the French Revolutionary War (1798-1802), the Napoleonic War (1803-1815) and the War of 1812 (1812-1815). The Editors state in the foreword that they have a shared interest in the historical novels of Patrick O'Brian, particularly his series of eighteen Aubrey-Maturin books dealing with the Royal Navy in the wars of the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1815. This collection of firsthand accounts compliments the historical novels of Patrick O'Brian, C.S.Forester, Alexander Kent et al.
The account of H.M.S. Macedonia vs. U.S.S. United States written by Samuel Leech serving on the Macedonia, alone makes the book worth buying. The Macedonia left Plymouth, England in some secrecy, as Leech recounts; "probably because we had several Americans in our crew, most of whom were pressed men". "These men, had they been certain that war had broken out, would have given themselves up as prisons of war, and claimed exemption from that unjust service, which compelled them to act with the enemies of their country. This was a privilege which the magnanimity of our officers ought to have offered them. They had already perpetrated a grievous wrong upon them in impressing them; it was adding cruelty to injustice to compel their service in a war against their own nation." "The difficulty with (British) Naval Officers is, that they do not treat a sailor as with a man. They know what is fitting between each other as officers; but they treat their crews on another principle; they are apt to look at them as pieces of living mechanism, born to serve, to obey their orders and admister to their wishes without complaint."
Tristan Jones, another seaman like Samuel Leech writing of his life in the British Navy some 150 years later, chronicles that this attitude with little change remained in the Royal Navy until WW2 and the loss of H.M.S. Hood. Then, and only then, did it change.
But to return to 1812 and Leech's account of the engagement and how an impressed American by the name of John Card, presented himself before the Captain requesting that he should be taken as a prisoner of war. Card was ordered back to his station, threatened being shot if he made the request again and was later in the engagement killed by a shot from his own countryman.
During the engagement " A man named Aldrich had one of his hands cut off by a shot, and almost at the same moment he received another shot, which tore open his bowels in a terrible manner. As he fell, two or three men caught him in their arms, and, as he could not live, threw him overboard."
With 104 men killed or wounded (the United States had only a dozen killed or wounded), "A council or war was now held among the officers on the quarter deck" "It was determined to strike our bunting. This was done by the hands of a brave fellow named Watson, whose saddened brow told how severely it pained his lion heart to do it. To me it was a pleasing sight, for I had seen enough fighting enough for one Sabbath; more than I wished to see again on a week day. His Britannic Majesty's frigate was now the prize of the American frigate United States."
After capture Leech stated " I soon felt myself perfectly at home with the American seamen, so much so that I chose to mess with them." "Many of our hands were in the service against their will; some were Americans, wrongfully impressed and inwardly hoping for defeat; while nearly every man in our ship sympathized with the great principle for which the American nation so nobly contended in the war of 1812. What that was, I suppose all my readers understand. The British, at war with France, had denied the Americans the right to trade thither. She had impressed American seamen and forcibly compelled their service in her navy; she had violated the American flag by insolently searching their vessels for her runaway seamen. Free trade and sailor's rights, therefore, were the objects contended for by the Americans. With these objects our men could but sympathize, whatever our officers might do."
Samuel Leech, R.N., fought in the brutal October 25, 1812 battle between the 38-gun H.M.S. Macedonia, commanded by Captain John Surman Carden and the 48-gun U.S.S. United States, Commordore Stephen Decatur. Leech's account of this mismatch, lacking the usuall reserve of the period, gives in grim detail, what a naval engaement was like in those days. It is facinating, and there are another 21 firsthand accounts of other battles by others, in Every Man Will Do His Duty.
To buy a copy of Everyman Will Do His Duty - click here
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