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The War of 1812 was a conflict fought between the United States and its allies, and Great Britain and its dependent colonies in North America and its allies. Many Indigenous peoples fought in the war on both sides. Additionally, Great Britain was allied at the time with Spain against France and its powerful military under Napoleon, and thus Spain supported Britain in the Americas while France fought against the forces of both. The conflict began when the United States declared war on 18 June 1812, and officially ended in essentially the territorial status quo when the Treaty of Ghent was ratified by the United States on 16 February 1815. The United States won the sovereignty of the Northwest Territory previously ceded by treaty in 1783, British recognition of international immunity for its citizens, and freedom of the seas for its merchant ships.
A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or delegated authority issued commissions, also referred to as a letter of marque, during wartime. The commission empowered the holder to carry on all forms of hostility permissible at sea by the usages of war. This included attacking foreign vessels and taking them as prizes, and taking prize crews as prisoners for exchange. Captured ships were subject to condemnation and sale under prize law, with the proceeds divided by percentage between the privateer's sponsors, shipowners, captains and crew. A percentage share usually went to the issuer of the commission.
A letter of marque and reprisal was a government license in the Age of Sail that authorized a private person, known as a privateer or corsair, to attack and capture vessels of a nation at war with the issuer. Once captured, the privateers could bring the case of that prize before their own admiralty court for condemnation and transfer of ownership to the privateer. A letter of marque and reprisal would include permission to cross an international border to conduct a reprisal and was authorized by an issuing jurisdiction to conduct reprisal operations outside its borders.
The Embargo Act of 1807 was a general trade embargo on all foreign nations that was enacted by the United States Congress. As a successor or replacement law for the 1806 Non-importation Act and passed as the Napoleonic Wars continued, it represented an escalation of attempts to coerce Britain to stop any impressment of American sailors and to respect American sovereignty and neutrality but also attempted to pressure France and other nations in the pursuit of general diplomatic and economic leverage.
USS Congress was a nominally rated 38-gun wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy. James Hackett built her in Portsmouth New Hampshire and she was launched on 15 August 1799. She was one of the original six frigates whose construction the Naval Act of 1794 had authorized. The name "Congress" was among ten names submitted to President George Washington by Secretary of War Timothy Pickering in March of 1795 for the frigates that were to be constructed.Joshua Humphreys designed these frigates to be the young Navy's capital ships, and so Congress and her sisters were larger and more heavily armed and built than the standard frigates of the period.
Impressment, colloquially "the press" or the "press gang", is the taking of men into a military or naval force by compulsion, with or without notice. European navies of several nations used forced recruitment by various means. The large size of the British Royal Navy in the Age of Sail meant impressment was most commonly associated with Great Britain and Ireland. It was used by the Royal Navy in wartime, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice can be traced back to the time of Edward I of England. The Royal Navy impressed many merchant sailors, as well as some sailors from other, mostly European, nations. People liable to impressment were "eligible men of seafaring habits between the ages of 18 and 55 years". Non-seamen were sometimes impressed as well, though rarely. In addition to the Royal Navy's use of impressment, the British army also experimented with impressment from 1778 to 1780.
A blockade runner is a merchant vessel used for evading a naval blockade of a port or strait. It is usually light and fast, using stealth and speed rather than confronting the blockaders in order to break the blockade. Blockade runners usually transport cargo, for example bringing food or arms to a blockaded city. They have also carried mail in an attempt to communicate with the outside world.
USS Wasp of the United States Navy was a sailing sloop-of-war captured by the British in the early months of the War of 1812. She was constructed in 1806 at the Washington Navy Yard, was commissioned sometime in 1807, Master Commandant John Smith in command. In 1812 she captured HMS Frolic, but was immediately herself captured. The British took her into service first as HMS Loup Cervier and then as HMS Peacock. She was lost, presumed foundered with all hands, in mid-1814.
Prize money refers in particular to naval prize money, usually arising in naval warfare, but also in other circumstances. It was a monetary reward paid in accordance with the prize law of a belligerent state to the crew of a ship belonging to the state, either a warship of its navy or a privateer vessel commissioned by the state. Prize money was most frequently awarded for the capture of enemy ships or of cargoes belonging to an enemy in time of war, either arrested in port at the outbreak of war or captured during the war in international waters or other waters not the territorial waters of a neutral state. Goods carried in neutral ships that are classed as contraband, being shipped to enemy-controlled territory and liable to be useful to it for making war, were also liable to be taken as prizes, but non-contraband goods belonging to neutrals were not. Claims for the award of prize money were usually heard in a Prize Court, which had to adjudicate the claim and condemn the prize before any distribution of cash or goods could be made to the captors.
The Blockade of Africa began in 1808 after the United Kingdom outlawed the Atlantic slave trade, making it illegal for British ships to transport slaves. The Royal Navy immediately established a presence off Africa to enforce the ban, called the West Africa Squadron. Although the ban initially applied only to British ships, Britain negotiated treaties with other countries to give the Royal Navy the right to intercept and search their ships for slaves. The 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves abolished the intercontinental slave trade in the United States but the ban was not widely enforced.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Anglo-Russian War was the phase of hostilities between Great Britain and Russia after the latter signed the Treaty of Tilsit that ended its war with France. Anglo-Russian hostilities were limited primarily to minor naval actions in the Baltic Sea and Barents Sea.
These Orders in Council were a series of decrees, in the form of Orders in Council, made by the Privy Council of Great Britain in the course of the wars with Napoleonic France which instituted its policy of commercial warfare. The Orders are important for the role they played in shaping the British war effort against France, but they are also significant for the strained relations—and sometimes military conflict—they caused between Great Britain and neutral countries, whose trade was affected by them.
A Baltimore Clipper is a fast sailing ship historically built on the mid-Atlantic seaboard of the United States of America, especially at the port of Baltimore, Maryland. An early form of clipper, the name is most commonly applied to two-masted schooners and brigantines. These vessels may also be referred to as Baltimore Flyers.
Prize is a term used in admiralty law to refer to equipment, vehicles, vessels, and cargo captured during armed conflict. The most common use of prize in this sense is the capture of an enemy ship and her cargo as a prize of war. In the past, the capturing force would commonly be allotted a share of the worth of the captured prize. Nations often granted letters of marque that would entitle private parties to capture enemy property, usually ships. Once the ship was secured on friendly territory, she would be made the subject of a prize case, an in rem proceeding in which the court determined the status of the condemned property and the manner in which the property was to be disposed of.
The Rule of 1756 or Rule of the War of 1756 was a policy of the Kingdom of Great Britain, and later the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland that was promulgated during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). It ruled that Britain would not trade with neutral nations who were also trading with the enemy.
USS Gallatin (1807) was a post-Revolutionary War sailing vessel that the U.S. Department of the Treasury purchased at Norfolk, Virginia, for the United States Revenue-Marine in December 1807. An explosion on board destroyed her in 1813.
The Confederate privateers were privately owned ships that were authorized by the government of the Confederate States of America to attack the shipping of the United States. Although the appeal was to profit by capturing merchant vessels and seizing their cargoes, the government was most interested in diverting the efforts of the Union Navy away from the blockade of Southern ports, and perhaps to encourage European intervention in the conflict.
The first League of Armed Neutrality was an alliance of European naval powers between 1780 and 1783 which was intended to protect neutral shipping against the Royal Navy's wartime policy of unlimited search of neutral shipping for French contraband during the American Revolutionary War and Anglo-French War. British naval commanders followed their instructions with care, ordered away boarding parties and made seizures with impunity. According to one estimate, 1 in 5 merchant vessels did not make it to port safely due to this policy. By September 1778, at least 59 ships were taken prize - 8 Danish, 16 Swedish and 35 Dutch, not mentioning others from Prussia. Protests were enormous by every side involved.
The action of 3 February 1812 was an unusual minor naval engagement off the western coast of Haiti between a British frigate and a frigate manned by a loose coalition of Haitian rebels. The battle was fought against the background of the Napoleonic Wars and the collapse of government in Haiti in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution eight years earlier. After the French had been expelled from Haiti in 1804, the newly independent nation was first ruled by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who was murdered in 1806 and replaced by two of his advisors, Henri Christophe and Alexandre Pétion. These rulers divided the country between them and in the confused political situation that followed a number of minor fiefdoms appeared, including one led by Jérôme Maximilien Borgella in the south-west of the island called Sud. The small Haitian Navy defected to Borgella, who crewed the vessels with a collection of sailors from various countries, led by a notorious privateer named Gaspard.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Walton, Gary and Hugh Rockoff. History of the American Economy. Mason: South-Western, Cengage Learning, 2005. Print.
- 1 2 3 Davis, Lance and Stanley Engerman. Naval Blockades in Peace and War – An Economic History Since 1750. Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print.
- 1 2 Walton, Gary, and Hugh Rockoff. History of the American Economy. N.p.: South-Western, 2012. Print.
- ↑ DeConde, Alexander, Richard Burns, and Fredrick Logevall. "International Maritime Law in the 18th Century". Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy. 2001. Print