April 26, 2019 Friday
Bedtime Story
The Atlantic Naval Warfare of 1812
In 1812 British Navy ruled the oceans with
a fleet of 600 cruisers in its commission along with smaller boats.
Most of them though were deployed in
Atlantic on the European side against its arch rival France with whom United
Kingdom had direct conflict of interest regarding trade (they both had colonial
ambitions over the world making them threat to each other).
Even taking that French factor into account
the Royal Navy still had at least 85 cruisers posted to patrol the American
waters that included the Caribbean.
All United States had was a tiny fleet – it
could hardly be called that – comprising of mere 8 frigates and few sloops and
brigs.
That would change soon as United States would
launch into a major ship-building program that would include construction of
frigates that would be far larger and powerful than the British possessed.
Powerful in the sense that each frigate
would carry more cannons numbering 50 or 60 with 24-pounder artillery battery
in contrast to the British that had a standard 38 guns with 18-pounder
artillery.
America was into arms race with the United
Kingdom and other European imperialistic power houses.
Such serious Naval warfare is exemplified
by the single ship action 400 miles southeast of Halifax that took place between
USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere.
Even though the British Navy was far more
powerful and superior whereas American Navy was barely twenty years old and
untested it was American who proved to be victorious.
After a 35-minute battle with firepower and
cannons Guerriere had been dis-masted, captured and later burned.
Overall, while in single ship battle United
States met with greater success than the British and raised their morale it was
the Royal Navy’s blockade that had the greater crippling affect on the shipping
economy of the United States.
In one sense the task of the Royal Navy was
far simpler in contrast to that of the small fleet of United States.
Whereas the budding American Navy had to
engage with the Royal Navy and battle with each of them all the Royal Navy had
to do was to block the American merchant ships from leaving the coast thereby crippling
the American economy.
Even more simple than that was to create a
fear among the merchants that any venture into Atlantic would prove ruinous for
them; after all we know how markets panic by mere sentiments or bad news.
The war game in the Atlantic was inherently
skewed in favor of the British.
It is not surprising therefore that while
the United States Navy captured a mere 165 British merchants the Royal Navy had
captured 1,400 American merchants after engaging them in the oceanic warfare.
Americans were not all that naïve as they
were keenly aware of the might of the Royal Navy and knew they had little
chance to prevail over them.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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