uerriere",
though apparently necessary and safe, was followed immediately by a
disaster.

Rodgers was therefore justified in his claim concerning his cruise.
"It is truly unpleasant to be obliged to make a communication thus
barren of benefit to our country. The only consolation I,
individually, feel on the occasion is derived from knowing that our
being at sea obliged the enemy to concentrate a considerable portion
of his most active force, and thereby prevented his capturing an
incalculable amount of American property that would otherwise have
fallen a sacrifice." "My calculations were," he wrote on another
occasion, "even if I did not succeed in destroying the convoy, that
leaving the coast as we did would tend to distract the enemy, oblige
him to concentrate a considerable portion of his active navy, and at
the same time prevent his single cruisers from lying before any of our
principal ports, from their not knowing to which, or at what moment,
we might return."[423] This was not only a perfectly sound military
conception, gaining additional credit from the contrasted views of
Decatur and Bainbridge, but it was applied successfully at the most
critical moment of all wars, namely, when commerce is flocking home
for safety, and under conditions particularly hazardous to the United
States, owing to the unusually large number of vessels then out. "We
have been so completely occupied in looking out for Commodore Rodgers'
squadron," wrote an officer of the "Guerriere", "that we have taken
very few prizes."[424] President Madison in his annual message[425]
said: "Our trade, with little exception, has reached our ports, having
been much favored in it by the course pursued by a squadron of our
frigates under the command of Commodore Rodgers."

[Illustration: THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, SHOWING THE POSITIONS OF THE
OCEAN ACTIONS OF THE WAR OF 1812 AND THE MOVEMENTS OF THE
SQUADRONS IN JULY AND AUGUST, 1812]

Nor was it only the offensive action of the enemy against the United
States' ports and commerce that was thus hampered. Unwonted defensive
measures were forced upon him. Uncertainty as to Rodgers' position and
intentions led Captain Broke, on July 29, to join a homeward-bound
Jamaica fleet, under convoy of the frigate "Thalia", some two or three
hundred miles to the southward and eastward of Halifax, and to
accompany it with his division five hundred miles on its voyage. The
place of this meeting shows that it was