Inside the US Navy of 1812-1815 by William S. Dudley

Abstract

Reviewed by: Inside the US Navy of 1812-1815 by William S. Dudley Michael A. Verney (bio) U.S. Navy, Military history, Naval history, War of 1812, Logistics Inside the US Navy of 1812-1815. By William S. Dudley. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. Pp. 348. Cloth, $54.95.) In the vast field of the early U.S. republic, there are few acres better tilled than the naval aspects of the War of 1812. The U.S. Navy's performance in that conflict has fascinated scholars for generations. Given the extensive historiography on the subject, it may be surprising to hear of a historian with a new angle—particularly one who does not examine the topic in terms of race, class, gender, culture, emotions, empire, borderlands, law, or citizenship. Nonetheless, William S. Dudley accomplishes this with his new book, Inside the US Navy of 1812-1815. His central theme is logistics or naval administration. His goal, in his words, is "to explain what it took to build, maintain, man, fit out, provision, and send fighting ships to sea for extended periods of time" (xii). Unlike many naval histories, much of his book stays in port. Inside the US Navy recounts how Madison's three secretaries of the Navy and their commanders managed the Navy's material and human resources. These included recruiting and deploying officers and seamen; constructing and overseeing shipyards; building vessels; and ordering and dispatching weapons, cannons, powder, rations, and medical supplies. Successive chapters detail the organizational and clerical structures of the Navy Department; the challenges of managing the oceanic, Great Lakes, and Gulf Coast theaters of the war; the effects of the British blockade on naval finances and operations; and the lives and hardships of naval seamen. Dudley's central argument is that the outcome of naval battles often hinged on logistics. This was especially true on the Great Lakes and on Lake Champlain, where U.S. and British forces competed to build and launch freshwater navies. While leadership in battle was important, Dudley demonstrates that commanding officers also had to be adept administrators. Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's squadron, for example, [End Page 124] emerged victorious in the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813 not only through Perry's daring change of ship command but also through meticulous planning with the full backing of the Navy Department and U.S. Army officers. In contrast, British shortcomings in supplying their own Lake Erie squadron hampered Commodore Robert Barclay's ability to contend with Perry's forces. Among Barclay's challenges was the diverse array of ordnance aboard his flagship, which made it harder for the gun crews to deliver the right balls and powder bags to each class of cannon during the battle. A similar dynamic was at play on Lake Champlain, where Commodore Thomas Macdonough's ability to surmount a "logistical nightmare in recruiting sailors, ordering provisions, and requisitioning guns" contributed to his success in that theater (205). While Dudley pays close attention to how logistics shaped the U.S. Navy's victories, he also discusses logistical failures. In common with most naval historians, he is critical of Democratic-Republican leaders like Thomas Jefferson and Albert Gallatin for neglecting the Navy in the opening years of the nineteenth century. He recounts how the British blockade contained much of the U.S. Navy, forcing Secretary William Jones to invest in new war machines and in what Benjamin Armstrong has called "guerre de razzia" or war by raiding."1 Dudley believes that naval forces could have contributed much more to the defense of New Orleans in 1814 and 1815 had they been adequately supported. Finally, and most importantly, Dudley narrates how the strains of war led to new modes of naval organization. Managing the logistics of the Navy Department was an onerous, even herculean, task. It broke Madison's first Secretary of the Navy, Paul Hamilton, and wore out his more qualified successor, William Jones. Near the end of his tenure in late 1814, an exhausted Jones drafted a bill to reorganize and expand the Navy Department. Congress acted swiftly on his proposals, establishing a Board of Navy Commissioners in 1815 to assist the Secretary with...