HISTORY

The Last Ride of the USS President

Captain Stephen Decatur was desperate to get the USS President (53 guns) back in the war. However, the ship was blockaded in New York Harbor and already badly in need of repairs. On January 13, 1815, New York City was blanketed by a blizzard and the British squadron was blown off station. Decatur saw the storm as his chance to get out of the harbor and made ready to sail. His escort, the USS Peacock, USS Hornet, and USS Tom Bowline were forced to remain in port due to the severity of the storm. But they were ordered to meet up with the USS President in the South Atlantic at a later date.

The escape did not go well. Either because of poor visibility in a blinding snowstorm or because the channel was poorly marked, the USS President ran aground. The ship spent nearly two hours stuck on a sand bar in relentless winds. Some of the copper sheathings of the hull were stripped away and the masts of the ship became twisted in the gale-force winds. The crew reported these same masts had developed long cracks. Decatur himself later reported he believed the hull had become twisted in the storm as well.

Desperate to escape, the ship limped east along the shore of Long Island and not back to port. She was spotted by the HMS Endymion (47 guns) the next morning as the British ships were returning to their stations. Still, even damaged, the USS President was capable of outrunning almost any ship in the British fleet… all except the HMS Endymion.

Pursued by the British frigate, the USS President could no longer turn west. North was out of the question with Long Island in the way. Decatur realized turning south would only allow three additional British ships to catch up, so he continued east. The HMS Endymion raked the deck with a 24-pounder bow canon. Normally, the heavy US frigate would have easily allowed the standard 18-pounder Royal Navy ball to bounce off, but the unusually heavy gun sprayed the American ship with deadly splinters. Decatur responded with his two rear guns, but they had little effect.

The American ship needed to disable its pursuer, so they finally turned south. While the President leveled it guns at the British rigging, the Endymion concentrated its fire on the gun ports of the American frigate. Ten of the fifteen guns the American could fire were put out of action. One shot even entered the magazine of the President and she took almost six feet of water in her hold. With the sun already down, it became impossible to target the British rigging, so the President showed a lantern in the mast as a sign of nighttime surrender… as no one would have been able to see a white flag in the gloomy darkness.

The firing stopped, but the Endymion had no working boats to row over and accept the ship's surrender. By 8:30 pm, having not received any British officers, the USS President attempted to sneak off in the darkness, heading back east. There she ran into two other ships of the British flotilla. The chase came to a final end as the trapped Captain Decatur send his sword on one of the American frigate's boats to the HMS Pomone (39 guns.)

The USS Peacock and the USS Hornet made it to the rendezvous in the South Atlantic, but with the President already captured it was too late. The USS Hornet (20 guns) managed to sink the HMS Penguin (19 guns.) USS Peacock (22 guns) managed to capture several British merchant ships in the Indian Ocean before receiving confirmation the war had ended.