story of the United States Navy, D.
Appleton & Co._

Thousands of American seamen were thus impressed, while American vessels
were seized by British cruisers, taken to port and unloaded and searched
for contraband of war. The Leopard-Chesapeake affair was a crowning
outrage on the part of the British, and had it not been promptly
disavowed by the government at London, war would have been declared in
1807 instead of 1812. The Chesapeake, an American frigate of thirty-six
guns, commanded by Captain James Barren, was hailed by the English
fifty-gun frigate, Leopard, Captain Humphreys, in the open sea. The
latter sent a lieutenant on board the Chesapeake, who handed to Captain
Barren an order signed by the British Vice-Admiral Berkeley, directing
all commanders in Berkeley's squadron to board the Chesapeake wherever
found on the high seas, and search the vessel for deserters. Captain
Barren's ship was utterly unprepared for battle, but he gave orders to
clear tor action. So shameful was the lack of preparation on the
Chesapeake that not a gun could be discharged until Lieutenant William
Henry Allen seized a live coal from the galley fire with his fingers and
sent a shot in response to repeated broadsides from the Leopard. The
Chesapeake hauled down her flag after losing three killed and eighteen
wounded. The British then boarded the vessel and carried off four of the
crew, who were claimed as British deserters, although they all asserted
to the last that they were American citizens. One of these men, Jenkin
Ratford or John Wilson, was hanged at the yard-arm of the British
man-of-war Halifax. The other three were sentenced each to receive five
hundred lashes, but the sentences were not carried out, and two of them,
the third having died, were returned on board the Chesapeake. Some
indemnity was paid and the British government recalled Vice-Admiral
Berkeley.

The British continued to impress Americans into their service, and to
annoy American shipping, and the American temper was gradually becoming
inflamed under repeated provocations. Nevertheless there was a powerful
sentiment opposed to war in the State of New York and in New England, and
the people generally hesitated to believe that war would be declared. In
1811 the American frigate President avenged in some degree the Leopard
outrage by severely chastising the British twenty-two-gun ship Little
Belt, which lost eleven killed and twenty-one wounded in the encount