April 28, 2019 Sunday
Bedtime Story
Mid-Atlantic in 1812
Historically Mid-Atlantic has played a very
important role in the development of American culture, commerce, trade and
industry and is sometimes referred to as the “the typically American” region.
It was the region – in contrast to New
England area – that was settled in the sixteenth century by a wide range of European
people like Dutch, Swedes and others besides the English and French.
So it was from this “the typically
American” region that the privateers were waging their war against British Navy
and they had met with far greater success than the official American Navy.
While the U.S. Navy took a mere 254 British
vessels the privateers inflicted a far greater damage by taking 1300 British
merchant vessels.
While these numbers varies from source to
source and historian to historian, the general idea that privateers inflicted
far greater damage in the Atlantic to the Royal Navy remains true.
In spite of this loss incurred by the fleet
of the Royal Navy it did not pose any major threat for them simply because
their total number of fleet was overwhelmingly large.
When converted to percentage of the whole
Navy their loss was a meager 7.5% of the entire fleet.
Though the loss was significant in terms of
finance and human lives tactically and strategically it hardly affected
Britain.
This loss was not so much as to create a
need to divert the existing patrolling vessels in the European borders against
French to the shores of North America as France was a far greater threat to the
interests of Britain than was United States.
After all United States was just another
colony and resource to be exploited.
Furthermore this loss in no way affected
the merchant vessels of Britain and therefore did not cause any effective trade
blockade for them.
British trade remained unaffected – at
least directly – from this war taking place in the Atlantic Ocean and continued
to prosper as before at the cost of colonies.
This was not the case on the American side
as they suffered serious trade reversals.
The large Royal Navy managed to blockade
almost all the major ports of New England and Mid-Atlantic including
Charleston, Port Royal, Savannah, New York City, Delaware River and Chesapeake
Bay.
By the end of May 1814 almost entire east
cost of the United States was under blockade so tight that most of the merchant
vessels and even naval ships had to be confined to their ports.
In 1807 the volume of exports of the United
States – quite ironically to its enemy Britain or British colonies – amounted
to 130 million dollars.
Two years after the War of 1812, that is by
1814, it was drastically slashed down to 7 million dollars.
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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