Four
“One of the Most Brilliant Things on Record”

T HE SUN HAD been down for hours by the time Jackson and his small entourage rode into town. The general was to stay that first night at the impressive home of Bernard de Marigny on the Champs-Élysées, the principal avenue of the virtually all- creole Faubourg Marigny neighborhood immediately below the older Spanish town. Marigny, who sat on the legislature’s defense committee, eagerly anticipated the honor of hosting the general, but Jackson was ill, having suffered from dysentery for weeks, and at times found it difficult to stay astride his horse. ¹ Needing a physician’s care immediately, his staff took him instead to Dr. David Kerr’s house on Conti Street in a mixed section of Americans and creoles . ²

The next morning, rested but hardly well, Jackson emerged to join an escort of local officers and leading citizens to ride to Fort St. Charles at the foot of Champs-Élysées, where he would stay until permanent quarters were ready. It was within sight of Marigny’s home, and the creole regarded Jackson’s move as a rejection of his proffered hospitality, a resentment soon shared by the French citizens. Nevertheless, Jackson’s arrival inspired calm. ³ Privately, he feared the enemy might seize Mobile behind him, march to the Mississippi’s left bank above New Orleans, severing the city’s upstream communications, and thus isolate and squeeze it into submission, but he kept that to himself, publicly presenting the face of confidence. ⁴ William Kenner was buoyed to hear him speak of beating back the British, although privately Jackson confessed that his expressions were “somewhat more than I felt.” ⁵

Once in his headquarters on Royal Street, Old Hickory almost immediately began filling out his staff. ⁶ He had brought a few along with him, including adjutant general Colonel Robert Butler and his confidential aide, young Major John Reid. Knowing little of the polyglot population, Jackson still had some grasp of the need for what Reid called “delicate attentions” to ethnic sensibilities, and met with leading men from all factions to assemble a cadre of local volunteer aides. ⁷ Leaning heavily on Livingston’s advice, he made Captain Henry Chotard an assistant adjutant, and appointed Pierre Duplessis and Livingston’s brother-in-law Auguste Davezac as aides. Recognizing Davezac’s legal acumen, Jackson shortly made him judge advocate general and the two quickly became intimate friends. ⁸ Livingston also recommended the French engineer Arsène Lacarrière Latour, then working on Fort St. Leon below English Turn. Jackson immediately commissioned him major and chief engineer, making Livingston’s son Lewis an assistant to Latour. ⁹

There were a few complaints with those appointments, Claiborne’s aide Shaumburg dismissing Davezac as an “ugly profligate fellow,” but greater disappointment grew from all other staff assignments going to Americans. ¹⁰ The Laffites’ friend lawyer John Grymes and planter Abner Duncan became aides, likely because they were Livingston’s political and social allies. ¹¹ Livingston himself long wanted a place on Jackson’s staff. They had known each other in Congress but had not seen each other for sixteen years. Old Hickory had encouraged the lawyer to correspond with him as chairman of the defense committee, and Livingston sent him information and charts, including the 1806 Lafon map and perhaps a map of his own making that detailed the levees, roads, and plantations a few miles below the city. ¹² To prepare himself, Livingston studied books on tactics and military history and read biographies of Napoleon, Nelson, and even Wellington. Jackson did not disappoint him. ¹³ He already leaned on him as translator, so it seemed logical to make Livingston his principal aide. ¹⁴ Unfortunately, many in the French community and some Americans like Claiborne loathed Livingston, suspicious of the man’s connection to the Laffites. Before long a few even believed that Livingston manipulated and directed Old Hickory. ¹⁵

Governor Claiborne, who daydreamed of glory, surely mindful of how it would play at the polls in future years, saw opportunity in Jackson’s appointments. ¹⁶ The legislature had just asked him to lead local volunteers personally, and he intended to do so if invaders came. While he did not want to challenge Jackson, he resolved not to recognize the authority of any officer of any rank, regular army or militia, to command his militia. He soon asked Secretary of War James Monroe, who would succeed Jackson in the event of his incapacity or departure, blatantly hinting that Monroe should direct Old Hickory to acknowledge Claiborne as his successor. ¹⁷ The two seemed destined to compete, and it showed in Jackson’s staff appointments. Most were Claiborne’s political enemies, and he privately complained that Jackson had surrounded himself with men who would try to undermine him with the general. From the moment of those appointments, the governor felt his relations with Jackson start to deteriorate, beginning with Jackson’s failure to give him an important position as he organized his forces. ¹⁸ Old Hickory was not about to make him a second-in-command. ¹⁹

As he built his volunteer staff, the gaunt and jaundiced general began learning what he could of the city’s defenses and was astonished to see scant preparation. ²⁰ There was a good stock of big guns in the artillery yard on Levee Street, but Fort St. Charles was pitiful. It commanded the river with seventeen embrasures for cannon, but their rotting wooden platforms dated back to the late 1700s and many would likely collapse at the first firing. Manpower was almost as discouraging. The only regulars were Captain Alexander White’s 528-man detachment of the 7th United States Infantry and 395 soldiers of the 44th Infantry, both trying to recruit more men with mixed success. ²¹ Although the 44th was still saddled with the inebriate Ross, it could at least boast of a captain who had done something unique in that garrison. In 1803, Nathaniel Pryor enlisted with Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore and map the new Louisiana Purchase. He had been to the great Pacific and back. ²²

Before inspecting defenses downstream from the city, Jackson addressed the vulnerability of its land side via the lakes. The coastline he saw on his journey to New Orleans convinced him that the British could not land for an overland march anywhere west of Mobile. They would come via Lake Borgne, he believed, and most likely pass through the Rigolets channel to Pontchartrain, and thence to the Bayou St. John road, or else across the lake for the short march to the Mississippi. ²³ However, just in case they should attempt the Chef Menteur pass seven miles southwest of the Rigolets instead, he sent Captain Pierre Jugeat and his small company of Choctaw volunteers with Major Pierre Lacoste’s battalion of free men of color to guard it, and ordered Colonel Jacques Plauché’s white militia to Fort St. John and Fort Petites Coquilles to watch the Pontchartrain approaches. ²⁴ At the same time General Villeré took command of units near Lake Borgne. ²⁵

While his public activity boosted enthusiasm, Jackson’s private demeanor won him favor. ²⁶ On his second evening in town he dined at the home of Edward Livingston, whose wife, Louise, had been expecting a rude and rustic Tennessean, but Old Hickory surprised them and conducted himself as a perfect gentleman. “Is this your backwoodsman?” Louise asked her husband after the general escorted her to dinner on his arm. “He is a prince!” ²⁷ In succeeding days the optimism spawned by his arrival continued. Seeing the regulars and militia on parade, few as they were, inspired confidence, and rumor helped by grossly exaggerating the numbers of Kentucky and Tennessee volunteers coming. After just three days the citizens were taking renewed heart in their security. ²⁸

If Jackson’s first days in New Orleans were any measure, the legislature was going to be less cooperative, although relations commenced well enough. On December 3 it passed a unanimous joint resolution of thanks to Jackson for coming and sent a committee including General Morgan to present the honor. ²⁹ In the ensuing week, however, Governor Claiborne’s calls for more volunteers and other measures to aid Jackson and Patterson got lost in committees. Some wanted to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, declare martial law, and embargo all vessel departures so Patterson could draft experienced seamen. Others disagreed, and hence they debated without passing any of Claiborne’s defense proposals. ³⁰

By that time Old Hickory was already touring defenses downriver. He had been advised by Colonel Hayne that obstructing the multiple entrances from the Gulf into the Mississippi was impractical. ³¹ Instead, Hayne suggested Fort St. Philip was the spot to defend against a river approach, with English Turn as backup. Accompanied by Latour, Patterson, and a few aides, Jackson sailed downriver to Fort St. Philip on December 4. He found it in excellent condition and well manned under Major William Overton, a fellow Tennessean known to Jackson and regarded as an intelligent and courageous man by some of his officers, although others thought him cold and aloof. Perhaps less well regarded was Overton’s executive officer, who commanded the fort’s artillery, Englishman Captain Charles Wollstonecraft. He came from a nonconformist family that included his deceased sister Mary, who published in 1792 a pioneering tract on feminine equality titled A Vindication of the Rights of Woman . ³²

Still, Old Hickory felt confident in both Overton and Wollstonecraft. Their fort’s guns commanded the river, and there was no place below it for an enemy to land and bypass it by marching overland. After ordering more guns mounted on its parapet, and its field of fire on an approaching foe enlarged by cutting timber some distance downstream, Jackson moved on to English Turn. There he found militia finally obeying Claiborne’s order to build a defensive line from the river back to the swamp. Pleased with that, the general stayed barely five minutes before departing, which the major commanding took as an insult to a regiment already suffering poor morale, in part because a number of its men were Spaniards unwillingly drafted into the militia. Just days earlier one of them verbally abused the colonel commanding, who sentenced him to “ten slaps on the bear but [ sic ] with a paddle.” ³³

Jackson returned to Fort St. Philip, where he ordered Latour to design a gun emplacement across the river to give Overton a cross fire on enemy vessels coming upstream, and another battery half a mile farther up. He also considered enhancing old Fort St. Leon, commanding English Turn, which could impede a fleet coming upriver or a land force marching along the west or “right” bank. Since Bayou Terre-aux-Boeufs entered the river at the upper end of the Turn, Fort St. Leon could protect that avenue as well. The New Orleans Navy Yard had a good inventory of artillery of all calibers, and Patterson offered to loan as much naval ordnance as he could spare for the defenses. ³⁴ Chief engineer Major Howell Tatum was so encouraged by what he saw at English Turn that he concluded no invader could get past it even if it successfully sailed by Fort. St. Philip. ³⁵

Jackson agreed, or pretended to agree, although he still had private doubts about all the forts but St. Philip. ³⁶ Returning to New Orleans on the evening of December 9, he told Claiborne the next day that he believed both banks of the river were defensible. ³⁷ He asked the governor to requisition planters’ slaves to dig earthworks at Fort St. Philip and English Turn, and to ask the legislature for appropriations to cover the expense. “Not a moment is to be lost,” Old Hickory warned. “With energy and expedition, all is safe—delay, and all is lost.” ³⁸ The batteries at and above Fort St. Philip, English Turn, and Fort St. Leon would give him a defense in depth, each in succession battering any invader trying to come up the river. ³⁹ That same day he got the good news that Coffee’s mounted Tennesseans were nearing Baton Rouge, prompting him to send Coffee a rather flippant message that by Christmas they “may or may not have a fandango” with the British. ⁴⁰

The general returned on December 9 to a citizenry almost smug in their conviction of safety: “This country is more secure than any part of the United States”; “Every thing convinces me that the British will be glad enough to sheer off should they have the temerity to attack us”; “I don’t believe we have any thing to fear from the enemy in this place.” ⁴¹ One merchant had already sealed his letter but felt moved to write outside the packet that “all apprehensions of an attack have subsided.” ⁴² Claiborne echoed those words, writing that night to Fromentin to say that “the apprehensions of Invasion seems to have subsided.” ⁴³

Still, some men in the city felt sufficiently convinced that the British would come that they openly speculated on their avenue of approach. ⁴⁴ Most expected Cochrane to land infantry on the Lake Pontchartrain shore to advance by Bayou St. John but believed Jackson could close that route with 1,000 men behind a breastwork of cotton bales. If the enemy got past that, there would still be four miles to march on a narrow built-up road surrounded by deep swamp on either side. The great fear was that the enemy would strike there and send his fleet up the Mississippi to pinch the city between two fires simultaneously. ⁴⁵ Despite such musings and more, onlookers saw that New Orleans’s people seemed bent on defending their home to the last. ⁴⁶

Having seen to defenses downriver, Old Hickory turned to the lakes. An anonymous letter from Pensacola reached Patterson on December 7 warning that Admiral Cochrane had been off Apalachicola the day before and was bound for New Orleans. In response, Patterson sent six gunboats and an armed sloop to watch the waters around Ship Island just east of the entrance to Lake Borgne. ⁴⁷ That revelation made it all the more vital that Jackson visit the forts protecting the lakes. After just one night in the city he set off again with Tatum, Latour, Livingston, and others for Chef Menteur. A bayou no more than 150 yards wide flowed into the pass at a spot where the water ran just five feet deep. Jackson set Latour to work designing a small battery emplacement for the mouth of the bayou to stop small boats getting through to Lake Pontchartrain. The Gentilly road ran alongside that bayou to the eastern outskirt of New Orleans, but fortunately it was too narrow and marshy for British artillery should they attempt that approach. ⁴⁸

Moving five miles southwest along the coast of Lake Borgne, they found the mouth of the bayou of many names, Bienvenue. The ground was marshy there, too, but Tatum feared it might still support an invader’s landing. Wherever Jackson went, he took the Lafon map with him; but it had its limitations, and no one on the ground seemed fully to understand the terrain between the lake and the Mississippi. ⁴⁹ Rather, the inhabitants showed an infuriating want of curiosity about anything beyond the boundaries of their own plantations, and some pretended to know almost nothing even of their own property. Jackson was astonished at everyone’s ignorance of the topography. “The numerous bayous & canals communicating with the lakes appear to be almost as little understood by the inhabitants as by the citizens of Tennessee,” he complained. “Every man will undertake to give an exact description of the whole of them; & every man gives an erroneous one.” ⁵⁰ Major Tatum suspected that their feigned ignorance was really to protect private smuggling passages from discovery. ⁵¹

Having seen and learned what he could, Old Hickory returned to the city on December 11 and ordered the obstruction of all the bayous, canals, and creeks that small boats might use to approach New Orleans by felling trees into or across them. Large earth-filled wooden frames were to be sunk in the channels of the wider streams. ⁵² Particularly concerned about the complex of bayous between Lake Borgne and the river, including Mazant and Bienvenue, he gave three successive orders for their blockage—first to Captain White and the 7th, then to militia colonel Denis de La Ronde, and finally to Villeré. ⁵³ Villeré’s own plantation canal connected with Bayou Bienvenue, hence it seemed logical that he would be most familiar with the stream and where best to block it. ⁵⁴ In response to his call, planters offered thousands of enslaved men to perform the labor, moved by patriotism and the fear of an enemy-inspired slave uprising. ⁵⁵ At the same time Jackson ordered guards and picket parties out on all routes to provide early warning of enemy sighting, and sent reinforcements to Fort St. Philip, while Claiborne put General Morgan in command of the militia at Fort St. Leon. ⁵⁶ He did not intend to be surprised. ⁵⁷

There was much more to do, and none could guess how much time they would have. In fact, it would be just hours. The same day he returned to the city, word arrived that Cochrane’s ships had been seen near the Chandeleur Islands. The British were coming.

—

T HAT SAME DAY Admiral Cochrane decided that the weather had eased enough to go after the enemy gunboats. Codrington ordered the fleet’s launches, barges, and pinnaces to assemble around Tonnant by one o’clock the following afternoon with water and provisions for three days aboard and up to four marines per boat. Cochrane gave Nicholas Lockyer command and instructed him to board crews, oars, sails, and guns and leave the anchorage to clear the enemy gunboats from the path to Lake Borgne. ⁵⁸ Expecting casualties, Codrington detailed Gorgon to act as a hospital ship once it unloaded its complement of soldiers. ⁵⁹

Lockyer organized the boats into three divisions, himself commanding the first, Captain Henry Montressor from Manly the second, and Captain Samuel Roberts of Meteor the third. The thirty-two-year-old Lockyer had been in the navy since the age of eight, rose to commander’s rank in 1806, and took over the new brig Sophie in the fall of 1809. Since the outbreak of war, she had taken seventeen Yankee privateers and merchantmen, not to mention his mission to Laffite and his part in the attempt to take Fort Bowyer. Everything about Lockyer suggested energy and determination. That same evening he took his flotilla out of the anchorage and rowed west to find the Americans while behind him soldiers and sailors alike cheered from the decks of the towering frigates and ships of the line. ⁶⁰

The fleet itself sailed west the next day into the shallower waters of Cat Island Passage, which offered smaller vessels safe inland and coastal navigation behind a chain of islands paralleling the coast. Arriving at Cat Island itself, about thirty miles from the Rigolets, Cochrane had the fleet run aground on the soft bottom to await Lockyer’s return. ⁶¹ Île au Chat, as the creoles called it, puzzled some as to the origin of its name, for there seemed not to be a cat on it. ⁶² In fact, there was one nearby stalking its mouse: Nicholas Lockyer.

That mouse was every bit Lockyer’s match. Thomas ap Catesby Jones was a precocious young Virginian who retained the Welsh usage “ap,” meaning “son of.” He had been on the New Orleans station as a midshipman since 1808, already commanded several gunboats before the war, and in the late summer of 1812 cruised west of the Mississippi along the Mexican coast. In January 1813 the navy promoted him to lieutenant at the age of twenty-two, after which he patrolled the Gulf through that summer and participated in Wilkinson’s expedition against Mobile. There were four other lieutenants senior to him, but since they chose shore duty, he had the only sea command under Patterson. He took part in the Barataria raid, and thereafter his five gunboats had to combat privateering as well as keep lookout for a British approach. He had been under a cloud this past year after he disciplined a midshipman, and the junior officer retaliated by accusing Jones of homosexuality, although a couple of witnesses seemed to support the accusation. An inquiry loomed over his head even now. ⁶³

When he learned of Armide ’s sighting on December 8, he warned Patterson that New Orleans must be the enemy’s object, and that Cochrane would approach via the lakes. Too weak to offer effective resistance in open water where he was, Jones concluded to withdraw to the Malheureux Islands, the narrowest point of the entrance to Lake Borgne. There he could make a stand, although it could only be a delaying action, considering the odds against him. He probably did not know that malheureux meant unfortunate. ⁶⁴

The next day Jones pulled back toward Bay St. Louis just north of the Malheureuxs to be better posted to meet the enemy, and at the same time better placed to withdraw to Petites Coquilles if necessary. ⁶⁵ Having only five gun vessels did not help. The gunboat fleet on the New Orleans Station was intended to number five times that, but lax funding, inattention, and other delays meant only these five were operational, far too few for the job at hand. ⁶⁶ They varied in design and size, most being single-masted sloops with a couple of twin-masted schooners. Anywhere up to seventy feet long and eighteen feet wide, they carried so much weight in armament and crew that they moved sluggishly and answered their helms slowly. Still, their light draft made them good in shallow waters. ⁶⁷ For maneuverability in unfavorable winds, some were equipped with oars.

Apparently not deemed important enough to warrant names, they bore only numbers on their bows. Gunboat #5 , commanded by Lieutenant John D. Ferris, had thirty-six men and five guns; Gunboat #23 carried thirty-nine men and the same complement of artillery answering to Lieutenant Isaac McKeever; Gunboat #162 had five guns and thirty-five men led by Lieutenant Robert Spedden; and Gunboat #163 was in the hands of Master George Ulrich with three cannon and thirty-one men. Jones himself commanded them all from #156 with five guns and the largest crew at forty-one. Sailing Master William Johnson’s schooner Seahorse , with one six-pounder and fourteen men, and Sailing Master Richard Shepperd’s sloop Alligator , mounting one four-pounder with eight men, completed the squadron. ⁶⁸ All of the gunboats had one long-range twenty-four-pounder and McKeever’s mounted a long thirty-two, while the rest of their guns were an assortment of twelve-pounders, six-pounders, five-inch howitzers, and smaller deck-mounted swivel guns for raking an enemy’s decks. ⁶⁹

Jones was still heading for Malheureaux when he saw Lockyer’s flotilla approach out of the morning gloom on December 13. There were forty launches armed with a single carronade, one with a nine-pounder, another with a twelve-pounder, and three gigs with only small arms in the hands of its men—forty-five boats, forty-two cannon, and 1,200 men and officers. ⁷⁰ Jones sent word to New Orleans at once. At ten o’clock they appeared to head for the shore at Pass Christian northwest of Cat Island. By early afternoon, however, they had passed that point and were still coming, convincing Jones that he was the mouse. As he tried to retreat westward toward Malheureaux, the island lived up to its name and the wind turned against him. The water depth was unusually low there, and three of his gunboats had to jettison everything nonessential to keep from grounding. Finally, at 3:30 that afternoon, a flood tide gave them enough water to get under way and tack into the wind.

After only a quarter of an hour Jones saw three enemy boats break away and make for shore at Bay St. Louis, where his Seahorse was busily removing vital stores. Seeing the British barges approach, Master Johnson sent gunners to a bluff overlooking the bay where two old six-pounders protected the storehouse below. As a crowd gathered to watch, the brace of cannon opened fire on the barges. Onlookers soon got something more when they saw Isabella Hutchins Claiborne, the wife of Dr. Thomas A. Claiborne of Natchez, approach the guns. She was just thirty-five, but after four years of declining health looked older; a friend who knew her from Natchez thought she looked as if “the slightest breath would annihilate her very existence.” Ignoring the danger of fire from the guns on the British boats, she helped others carry cartridge bags of powder and shot from the magazine to the gunners . ⁷¹ After twenty minutes the cannon fire drove the barges back to their fleet, giving Isabella a taste of victory, but Johnson had no route of escape for his ship or the stores he hoped to save. At 7:30 that evening he torched stores, storehouse, and Seahorse , setting off an explosion heard for miles across the water. ⁷²

Jones struggled to make headway past midnight, but his wind failed entirely at one a.m., leaving the boats unmanageable, so he anchored the squadron at the west end of St. Joseph’s Island just off the Mississippi coast and directly north of the Malheureuxs. Unless the wind returned, and from the right direction, he would be stuck there in the morning with no option but to fight or yield. ⁷³ That night he considered the virtual impossibility of resisting with any reasonable chance of success. His only advantage was the larger caliber and longer range of most of his cannon, but with now six boats against forty-five, and 190 men against 1,200, he had no hope of victory. Prudence suggested he should destroy his boats rather than risk their capture, then take his men overland to join Jackson’s army. He had sent warning to Patterson, which was all he could reasonably be expected to do now, but he believed he might barter bravery and blood here to delay the enemy for precious hours to allow Jackson to be ready. He could not do much against Lockyer, but he could buy time. ⁷⁴

At dawn on December 14, Jones looked in vain for wind, and an ebbing tide told him he had gone as far as he could. Alligator , returning from taking Jones’s first report of his enemy sighting to Patterson, had already run aground to the south, and Master Shepperd frantically tried to break her free to join the squadron. Summoning his commanders, Jones ordered them to anchor their boats abreast, parallel to each other in a line across the St. Joseph Pass between the mainland and Malheureaux Island, their bigger bow guns pointing forward toward the foe. Ferris’s #5 stood nearest to Malheureaux, then McKeever, Jones in the center to take the brunt of the attack, Spedden above him, and finally Ulrich closest to St. Joseph’s. The men ran rope netting from the decks into the rigging to entangle boarders, loaded their guns, and then waited for the enemy to come at them. ⁷⁵ Jones’s lieutenant’s pay was $80 a month. He intended to earn it. ⁷⁶

Lockyer’s flotilla had rowed and sailed into the night before anchoring. Dawn’s light gave him a glimpse of Jones’s squadron some nine miles distant, and more sun revealed it prepared for action. ⁷⁷ Shortly after nine a.m., Captain Roberts saw Alligator aground and volunteered to take her. With four barges, he soon showed Shepperd that resistance was futile, and at about 9:20 she struck her colors while Jones watched helplessly from the deck of #156 . ⁷⁸ Now Lockyer rowed straight for the American line until about ten o’clock, when he came in range of those twenty-four-pounder bow guns and McKeever’s long thirty-two-pounder. He ordered his boats to anchor while soldiers, sailors, and marines prepared muskets and pistols for action and readied grapnel hooks to throw into enemy rigging to draw boats in for boarding. His crews exhausted from rowing, Lockyer gave them half an hour to eat a breakfast despite being almost under enemy fire.

About eleven o’clock they began rowing again. ⁷⁹ Jones saw them start forward in a single line abreast. With the tidal flow running against them at three miles an hour, it was slow going, but by noon, firing their own bow guns as they came, the British approached the Americans. Jones’s bow guns began firing grapeshot to bring down men and rigging, and solid round shot to smash decking and bulwarks. Lockyer’s lead barge, along with another from Gordon’s Seahorse and two from Tonnant , made straight for Jones in #156 .

The Battle of Lake Borgne, December 14, 1814. Captain Lockyer’s barges approach from the right while Lieutenant Jones’s squadron sits drawn up in a line between the mainland and Malheureux Island. Note that in the action, Jones’s gunboats were not drawn up presenting their broadsides to the attacking barges, but were anchored parallel to one another with their bows facing Lockyer.

The fight for #156 opened the contest and was the fiercest of the engagement. The Yankees first repelled Tonnant ’s barges, mortally wounding Lieutenant James Uniacke by shooting off one of his legs, and costing Midshipman John O’Reilly an eye that he lived to tell of. ⁸⁰ Then Lockyer’s boat ran in but failed to board, suffering several killed and more wounded, including almost all its officers, and Lockyer received the first of three wounds. ⁸¹ One of Tonnant ’s launches sank under fire beside # 156 , but then Lieutenant George Pratt from Seahorse got a boarding party aboard Jones’s gunboat.

It had been Pratt who had set a torch to the United States Capitol building under Admiral Sir George Cockburn’s orders that past summer. Now he tried repeatedly to climb aboard #156 , only to be knocked back by bullet after bullet from American guns. Jones himself aimed a pistol at the Englishman to deliver what he believed to be a death wound, yet, despite being hit fully a dozen times, Pratt would live another three weeks before he died in his friend Captain Gordon’s cabin. Two of Seahorse’ s midshipmen made a try to board the gunboat, but Thomas Moore fell dead while boarding, and a cannon discharge shot away both of John Mills’s legs, while a boarding pike thrust down from Jones’s deck punctured an ensign’s lungs and wounded him mortally. ⁸²

As Pratt was falling after Jones shot him, several bullets perforated Jones’s uniform, and a marine on the barge fired at him. The bullet hit his left shoulder, shattering the joint, then coursed downward to lodge between the shoulder blade and ribs. He carried the bullet for the rest of his life as it gradually cost him the use of the arm. ⁸³ Even after he went down, Jones may have taken a sword wound in the same shoulder. ⁸⁴ Meanwhile the wounded Lockyer rowed his barge up again and this time got aboard, taking another wound in the offing. After what he called several minutes of “obstinate resistance,” they took the gunboat and began pivoting her bow gun to fire on the gunboats on either side of them. The other divisions of British barges came up against the Yankee line, Captain Roberts arrived after taking Alligator , and within five minutes the other four gunboats yielded, with little loss on either side. ⁸⁵ Watching through a spyglass from the bluff at Bay St. Louis, Master Johnson thought the fight lasted an hour and believed Yankee fire sank half of the enemy barges, which meant his view was not very clear. ⁸⁶ Cochrane watched from a small boat closer to the scene. ⁸⁷ Back at Ship Island, soldiers and sailors perched atop the mastheads of Tonnant and the other vessels saw little but flashes and smoke as they viewed the battle almost twenty miles away. ⁸⁸ Aboard Seahorse off Cat Island, Captain Gordon confessed feeling “the greatest suspense” as he watched and awaited the names and number of casualties. ⁸⁹ That evening he saw at a distance the procession of trophies as Lockyer’s battered flotilla rowed and sailed back toward the anchorage with five gunboats and the Alligator as prizes, their crews all killed, wounded, or prisoners. The victors were so exhausted from the physical and mental stress of the battle that Lockyer had to drop anchor at eight o’clock at nightfall and wait for dawn to get to their ships. ⁹⁰

When Codrington got confirmation of the success, he granted that the Americans must have made “a very gallant resistance.” ⁹¹ The list of casualties soon confirmed that. Lockyer lost five officers killed or mortally injured and at least fourteen more wounded. Among the seamen, eight were killed and about fifty wounded, no fewer than seventy-seven in all. ⁹² Returning men told of Yankees who climbed their rigging carrying cannonballs to throw down on boarders, the intensity of the combat showing in their own losses. ⁹³ The Americans lost six killed and thirty-five wounded, at least one mortally, and half of them all from the fight for #156 . Their wounded were on barges to Ship Island for transfer to the hospital ship Gorgon , while 141 captured officers and crew went to Bedford for later transfer to the ersatz prison ship Plantagenet . ⁹⁴

There was also a little plunder, more in the way of souvenirs. From #5 they took Lieutenant Ferris’s sextant. ⁹⁵ Then there were silver cups and spoons, some mathematical instruments, a fine writing desk, a pair of dueling pistols and rather an elegant fowling piece, not to mention the more everyday articles of housekeeping aboard ship. ⁹⁶ Another find of a different kind was William Little or Lyddle, a deserter from the British Navy, taken on one of the gun vessels. He would be sent back to England to face court-martial. ⁹⁷

Hearing the details from participants, an officer on the Nymph declared that Lockyer had “performed one of the most brilliant things on record.” ⁹⁸ When Lockyer was back aboard ship, Cochrane personally congratulated him, gave him command of the squadron of captured vessels, and promised that he should have his own thirty-six-gun frigate soon. ⁹⁹ Codrington saw great potential in the captured gunboats. They could be used to take Fort Petites Coquilles, guarding the Rigolets pass, whose loss should demonstrate to the enemy the folly of resistance, and the gunboats promised to give them command of Lake Pontchartrain prior to the landing he still expected to make on its shore. ¹⁰⁰ The admirals already had a meticulously diagrammed plan for that landing, involving eighty-nine flatboats, barges, cutters, and launches, in multiple waves across a broad front. In less than a week, unexpected circumstances would render it unnecessary. ¹⁰¹ That, however, did not dampen the British elation over their complete victory in the first engagement for possession of New Orleans. “It is a most brilliant affair,” Codrington wrote his wife immediately afterward, “and brilliant consequences may attach to this success.” ¹⁰²

Indeed, they might. 1WtFuexJX5aNjB4NiuwjQhITQrCFQMxq1iG/qtUsZnL2gXeStMhiUZou5LzdM2Gr