Today, the Gold Standing Liberty Quarter Dollar Coin remembers the contentious battle between the USS President under Commodore Rodgers and the HMS Little Belt under Captain Bingham on May 16, 1811.
From The Pictorial Field-book of the War of 1812, by Benson John Lossing, published in 1869:
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Since the favorable arrangement with France, British cruisers hovering upon the American coast had become more and more annoying to commerce.
A richly-laden American vessel bound to France had been captured within thirty miles of New York; and early in the month of May a British frigate, supposed to be the Guerriere, Captain Dacres, stopped an American brig only eighteen miles from New York, and a young man, known to be a native of Maine, was taken from her and impressed into the British service.
Similar instances had lately occurred, and the government resolved to send out one or two of the new frigates immediately for the protection of the coast trade from the depredators.
The President, Captain Ludlow, was then anchored off Fort Severn, at Annapolis, bearing the broad pennant of Commodore Rodgers, the senior officer of the navy.
The commodore was with his family at Havre de Grace, seventy miles distant; the President’s sailing-master was at Baltimore, forty miles distant; her purser and chaplain were at Washington, an equal distance from their posts, and all was listlessness on board the frigate, for no sounds of war were in the air.
Suddenly, at three o’clock in the afternoon of the 7th of May, while Captain Ludlow was dining on board the sloop-of-war Argus, lying near the President, the gig was seen, about five miles distant, sailing at the rate of ten miles an hour, with the commodore’s broad pennant flying, denoting that he was on board.
Rodgers was soon on the President’s quarter-deck. He had received orders from his government to put to sea at once in search of the offending British vessel, and on the 10th he weighed anchor and proceeded down the Chesapeake, with the intention of cruising off New York as an inquirer concerning the impressment.
He stopped on his way down the bay for munitions, and on the 14th passed the Virginia capes out upon the broad ocean.
He lingered there as an observer for a day or two, and at about noon on the 16th, Cape Henry bearing southwest, and distant about forty miles, he discovered a strange sail on the eastern horizon.
The squareness of her yards and symmetry of her sails proclaimed her a war vessel. She was bearing toward the President under a heavy press of sail.
Thinking she might be the offender, the President stood for the stranger, and at two o’clock displayed her broad pennant and ensign. The stranger made several signals. These were unanswered, and she bore away southward.
Anxious to speak with her, Rodgers gave chase. The President gained upon her, and at three in the afternoon was so near that her hull was seen upon the horizon; but the breeze slackened, and night fell upon the waters before the two vessels were near enough to each other to discern their respective characters.
At twenty minutes past eight in the evening the President brought-to on the weather-bow, or a little forward of the beam of the stranger, and, when within about a hundred yards of her, Rodgers hailed, and asked “What ship is that?”
No answer was given, but the question was repeated from the stranger, word for word. After a pause of fifteen or twenty seconds Rodgers reiterated his inquiry, and, before he could take his trumpet from his mouth, was answered by a shot that cut off one of the main-top-backstays of his vessel, and lodged in her main mast.
He was about to order a shot in return, when a gun from the second division of his ship was fired.
At almost the same instant the antagonist of the President fired three guns in quick succession, and then the rest of her broadside, with musketry. This provocation caused the President to respond by a broadside.
“Equally determined,” said Rodgers, “not to be the aggressor, or suffer the flag of my country to be insulted with impunity, I gave a general order to fire.”
In the course of five or six minutes his antagonist was silenced, and the guns of the President ceased firing, the commander having discovered that his assumed enemy was a feeble one in size and armament.
But, to the surprise of the Americans, the stranger opened her fire anew in less than five minutes. This was again silenced by the guns of the President, when, Rodgers again demanded “What ship is that?”
The wind was blowing freshly at the time, and he was able to hear only the words, “His majesty’s ship—” but the name he could not understand.
He immediately gave the name of his own vessel, displayed many lights to show his whereabouts in case the disabled ship should need assistance, and bore away.
At dawn the President discovered her antagonist several miles to the leeward, and immediately bore down upon her to offer assistance.
Lieutenant Creighton was sent in a boat to learn the names of the vessel and her commander, to ascertain the extent of damage, offer assistance, and to express the regret of the commodore that necessity on his part had led to such results.
Lieutenant Creighton brought back the information that the ship was the British sloop-of-war Little Belt, 18, Captain A. B. Bingham, who had been sent to the waters off Charleston, South Carolina, in search of the Guerriere, and, not finding her, was cruising northward for the same purpose, according to his instructions.
Captain Bingham politely refused aid, because he did not need it, and sailed away to Halifax, where he reported to “Herbert Sawyer, Esq., Rear-admiral of the Red,” the commander-in-chief on the American station.
The President proceeded on her voyage toward New York, and “off Sandy Hook,” on the 23d, Commodore Rodgers wrote the dispatch to the Secretary of the Navy from which the foregoing facts have been drawn.
The reports of the occurrence by Rodgers and Bingham were utterly contradictory in respect to the most essential fact, namely, as to the aggressor.
Rodgers stated positively that he hailed twice, and his words were repeated by the stranger; that she first fired one shot, which struck his vessel, then three shots, and immediately afterward the remainder of her broad side, before he opened his guns upon her, except the single one which one of the deserters declared was discharged by accident.
This account was fully corroborated, before a court of inquiry, by every officer and some of the subordinates who were on board the President, under oath.
On the contrary, Captain Bingham reported that he hailed first, and that his words were twice repeated from the President, when that vessel fired a broadside, which the Little Belt immediately returned.
This statement was fully corroborated before a court of inquiry, held at Halifax on the 29th of May, by the officers of the Little Belt, and two deserters from the President, under oath.
Bingham and his supporting deponents declared that the action lasted from forty-five minutes to one hour; while Rodgers declared that it lasted altogether, including the intermissions, not more than fifteen minutes.
Bingham also intimated in his dispatch that he had gained the advantage in the contest.
When intelligence of this affair went over the land it produced intense excitement. Desires for and dread of war with England were stimulated to vehement action, and conflicting views and expressions, intensified by party hate, awoke spirited contentions and discussions in every community.
The contradictions of the two commanders were in due time made known, and added fuel to the fires of party strife.
Each government naturally accepted the report of its own servant as the true one. Not so with all the people of the United States.
The opposition politicians and news papers, with a partisanship more powerful for a while than patriotism, took sides with the British; and, eager to convict the administration of belligerent intentions, while at the same time they inconsistently assailed it because of its alleged imbecility and want of patriotism in not resisting and resenting the outrages and insults of Great Britain, or making efficient preparations for such resistance and resentment, circulated a report, with the fiercest denunciations, that Rodgers had sailed with orders from Washington to rescue by force the young man lately impressed from a Portland brig.
They exultingly drew a comparison between the late and present Democratic administration, the former denying the right of the Leopard to take a seaman by force from the Chesapeake, the latter ordering Rodgers to do what Captain Humphreys had been condemned by the Americans and punished by his own government for doing.
Rodgers himself, who had behaved most prudently, gallantly, and magnanimously in the matter, received his full share of personal abuse from the opponents of the administration; and, strange as it may seem, when the question was reduced to one of simple veracity on the part of the two commanders, a large number of his countrymen, even with the overwhelming testimony of all the officers and many of the subordinates of the President against that of five officers and two deserters produced by Captain Bingham, were so misled by party zeal as to express their belief that the British commander uttered nothing but truth, and that Rodgers and his people all committed perjury!
But these ungenerous and unpatriotic assaults soon lost their chief sustenance when the Secretary of State officially declared that no orders had been given for a forcible rescue of the impressed American; and the satisfaction of Mr. Foster, the British minister at Washington (who had requested an inquiry into the conduct of Rodgers), that the statements of that commander were substantially true, was manifested by the fact that the subject was dropped in diplomatic circles, was never revived there, and the affair of the Chesapeake was settled in accordance with the demands of the government of the United States.
But while the two governments tacitly agreed to bury the matter in official oblivion, the people of the respective countries, highly excited by the event, would not let it drop.
It increased the feeling of mutual animosity which had been growing rapidly of late, and widened the gulf of separation, which every day became more and more difficult of passage by kindly international sentiments; and when the Twelfth Congress assembled, a month earlier than usual, the administration party in and out of that body was found to be decidedly a war party, while the Federalists, growing weaker in numbers every day, were as decidedly opposed to war.
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The Gold Standing Liberty Quarter Dollar Coin shows with an artist’s image of the USS President, circa mid-1800s.
