retiring from it about the
time you state Commodore Bainbridge was expected to sail. Commodore
Owen, who had preceded Admiral Beauclerk in this station, with a ship
of the line and three other vessels, is not yet returned from the
cruise on which the appearance of the enemy near the Azores had
obliged their Lordships to send this force; while the 'Colossus' and
the 'Elephant' [ships of the line], with the 'Rhin' and the 'Armide,'
are but just returned from similar services. Thus it is obvious that,
large as the force under your orders was, and is, it is not all that
has been opposed to the Americans, and that these services became
necessary only because the chief weight of the enemy's force has been
employed at a distance from your station."[513]

The final words here quoted characterize exactly the conditions of the
first eight or ten months of the war, until the spring of 1813. They
also define the purpose of the British Government to close the coast
of the United States in such manner as to minimize the evils of widely
dispersed commerce-destroying, by confining the American vessels as
far as possible within their harbors. The American squadrons and
heavy frigates, which menaced not commerce only but scattered ships of
war as well, were to be rigorously shut up by an overwhelming division
before each port in which they harbored; and the Admiralty intimated
its wish that a ship of the line should always form one of such
division. This course of policy, initiated when the winter of 1812-13
was over, was thenceforth maintained with ever increasing rigor;
especially after the general peace in Europe, in May, 1814, had
released the entire British navy. It had two principal results. The
American frigates were, in the main, successfully excluded from the
ocean. Their three successful battles were all fought before January
1, 1813. Commodore John Rodgers, indeed, by observing his own precept
of clinging to the eastern ports of Newport and Boston, did succeed
after this in making two cruises with the "President;" but entering
New York with her on the last of these, in February, 1814, she was
obliged, in endeavoring to get to sea when transferred to Decatur, to
do so under circumstances so difficult as to cause her to ground, and
by consequent loss of speed to be overtaken and captured by the
blockading squadron. Captain Stewart reported the "Constitution"
nearly ready for sea, at Boston, September 26, 1813. Three months
aft