“Don’t give up the ship!”—attributed to mortally
wounded James Lawrence, captain of
the U.S.S. Chesapeake, by his
attending physician, June 1, 1813
What amazes me about military history is how often
defeat—no, even a downright debacle—can be converted to something
inspirational. Dunkirk, transformed into a triumph of the human spirit with
a blast of Churchillian oratory, narrowly averted a decimation of the British
army. In perhaps the first attempt of a Yale man in the field of intelligence,
Nathan Hale botched perhaps the only mission he ever had, but became a byword
of patriotism for a gallows statement he probably didn’t make in the form we
know it. ("I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country" sure sounds much better than "I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged that my only
regret is that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service.")
Likewise with Captain James Lawrence, who has come
down as one of the heroes of the War of 1812, even though his career was
shorter and his judgment considerably lesser than many colleagues in the
fledgling U.S. Navy. Accounts vary on his exact final words—some believe it was
“Don't give up the ship; fight her till she sinks"; others think it was
"Tell them to fire faster--don't give up the ship."
But you get the idea—and so did his friend, fellow
naval commander Oliver Hazard Perry, who flew a bright blue banner emblazoned
with Lawrence’s words at the masthead of a vessel named for the fallen sailor,
USS Lawrence, at the Battle of Lake
Erie.
Perry’s brilliant victory—and his dramatic use of
the flag in the battle (he took it with him when the Lawrence was put out of commission in the fighting, then when he rejoined the fight unexpectedly)—did much to
shine a kinder light on his friend. In his estimable The Naval War of 1812, Theodore Roosevelt noted: “I doubt if ever
before a nation gained so much honor by a few single-ship duels.”
But the contest between the Chesapeake and its
British counterpart, the Shannon, was
a notable exception. Tom Halsted’s recent article in The Boston Globe on the circumstances surrounding the battle had to
have been a hard pill for many to swallow, but most historians—including
Roosevelt—have long concluded that, at very least, the British commander, Captain
Philip Broke, used better tactics during the contest.
But it also appeared that Lawrence took an
unnecessary risk. He had been ordered to slip out of Boston Harbor at the first
opportunity and to begin picking off British merchant ships in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence as the opportunity presented itself. He was not authorized to take on the Shannon,
or any ship, mano-a-mano—particularly
when he’d only been given command of the frigate a mere two weeks before, and
he was helming a crew as untrained as it was demoralized (understandably, since
they hadn’t been paid in weeks).
But Lawrence, seeing the enemy hanging out in the
harbor, couldn’t resist taking the bait. It was all over shockingly fast. His
famous plea notwithstanding, there simply was no officer at the conclusion of
the battle to continue the fight. Fifteen minutes after the battle was joined,
to the shock of the crowd of spectators on shore, the Chesapeake had struck its colors,
with the ship and its crew—including the fatally wounded Lawrence—being hauled
up to Halifax.
Eventually, Lawrence’s remains—already buried by the
enemy with full military honors—were returned to the United States. He is now
laid to rest in the burial ground of New York’s Trinity Church, along with other notables such as Alexander Hamilton, Robert Fulton and Albert Gallatin. In its
understandable zeal to honor the brave, Americans might well have questioned how
much to honor occasions such as Lawrence’s last battle, when daring
outweighs good judgment.
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