Tag:

Old Ironsides

The War of 1812 and How To Win When Outnumbered: Perspective

The past is a foreign country. Once upon a time I drove up through Maine and across the border into the wilds of Canada to take part in a bicentennial War of 1812 conference at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John. The event was great fun, in part because it was surreal to hear people who mainly look and talk like you refer to you as The Other, a once and—perhaps—future foe.

Old Ironsides

It’s hard to imagine what happened back then. For example, British Loyalists who fled the United States after the Revolution stormed back across the border to sack Bangor, Maine. U.S. Army forces burned York, which is now Toronto. Britain’s Royal Navy blockaded the East Coast, shutting down crucial seaports like Boston and Newport. Redcoats landed in the Chesapeake Bay and burned the executive mansion, which we now know as the White House.

In our lifetimes the United States has always been top dog in the world. Canada has always been a close friend. And we have always enjoyed a “special relationship” with Great Britain. But it wasn’t always that way.

War of 1812 Redux

I encountered the War of 1812 again in 2015, when I had the privilege to deliver bicentennial remarks at the Charlestown Navy Yard to commemorate the last battle of USS Constitution, when our nation’s most venerated sail frigate defeated two British warships, HMS Cyane and Levant. The story of Constitution’s 1815 “dual victory” is an inspiring one. It shows that ship crews can overcome certain timeless difficulties of naval war through seamanship, gunnery, and sheer entrepreneurship. To the extent that we remember the War of 1812, we tend to remember it as a victory. That’s because the U.S. Navy won a series of one-on-one victories over the Royal Navy during the early going.

Visit Constitution today and the tour guides will tell you the vessel is Boston’s only undefeated sports team, at 33-0! In fact, Royal Navy ships took to cruising in squadrons to avoid being outgunned by 44-gun frigates like Constitution and their excellent crews.

The capture of the Cyane and Levant.

Constitution skipper Capt. Charles Stewart defeated Cyane and Levant one by one rather than blast away at them at the same time. Defeating one fraction of an enemy force, then turning to defeat the other fraction, is a timeless way to prevail when you’re outnumbered. Captain Stewart maneuvered his ship skillfully while taking advantage of a U.S. Navy technical advantage. Namely, American guns had longer range than the British navy’s. British captains liked to get close and blaze away—much as we saw Captain Jack Aubrey, a.k.a. Russell Crowe, do in Master and Commander, the wonderful naval epic that appeared in 2003. Stewart capitalized on that British preference and was able to hurt the British ships at a distance.

Top Gun

Stewart was able to maneuver Constitution to avoid being raked across the bow and stern, where wooden warships were most vulnerable. Instead he crossed ahead of and behind his opponents, raking them from ahead and astern. In one instance he ordered Constitution’s topsails taken aback—taking all way off the ship in a hurry so he could prevent Levant from crossing astern and engage from a position of advantage. The maneuver was reminiscent of Top Gun, when Maverick and Goose hit the brakes so the Soviet MiG will “fly right by” and appear in Mav’s gunsight. The contestant that does something unexpected and unorthodox gains a tactical advantage.

Being nimble and adaptive helps as well. Constitution suffered damage to her mainmast while pursuing the foe, compelling Stewart to order makeshift repairs and change up his tactics on the fly. He improvised and overcame. Both enemy ships struck their colors after a couple of hours of battle.

Theodore Roosevelt

That’s a rousing story, but the bigger picture is not so uplifting. In fact, both Theodore Roosevelt, a one-time assistant secretary of the navy and later a great navy president, and Alfred Thayer Mahan, the second president of the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., and probably the most influential naval historian ever, wrote histories of the War of 1812 precisely to debunk the popular legend that a plucky young United States had thrashed the preeminent sea power of the age. When remembering the War of 1812, no one should wave the foamy We’re Number One finger the way New England fans do in good years.

TR’s ‘Naval War of 1812’

TR wrote his history of the Naval War of 1812 while a senior at Harvard during the 1880s. It remains in print to this day. Mahan followed up with his own chronicle in 1905. For them the War of 1812 wasn’t a parable showing what America ought to do when facing a war at sea; it was a parable about what not to do. They pointed out that the U.S. Navy had success in the early going because the Royal Navy and British Army were fighting Napoleon in Europe. Britain could spare only a small fraction of its military and naval power for a sideshow here in the New World.

Battle of San Domingo, 1806 naval engagement in the Napoleonic Wars

By 1814, when the Napoleonic Wars were winding down, it could send much more of the Royal Navy’s fleet. After that the United States saw its navy and its merchant fleet—and thus most of its economy—shut down by an overpowering British blockade. American frigates like Constitution had a hard time even getting out to sea. The United States had unwisely failed to build a battle fleet in peacetime. Americans improvised a navy at the outbreak of war and talked themselves into believing they had won, on the cheap, with that makeshift navy.

No More Blockades

Not so, said Roosevelt and Mahan. They implored Congress, presidential administrations, and the American people to construct a modern battle fleet in peacetime so that no hostile power could again blockade U.S. shores in wartime. The U.S. Navy didn’t need to be a “navy second to none”—that came much later, during World War I—but it did need to be big and strong enough to be the master of the western Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea.

A modest fleet of 74-gun capital ships—the aircraft carriers or battleships of their day—could control waters here in the Western Hemisphere, American home turf. The United States didn’t need to outbuild Great Britain or anyone else. Britain presided over an empire on which the sun never set, and had lots of demands on its navy. All the United States needed was enough to handle whatever the British were likely to send to the New World.

A Pick-up Navy Won’t Do

So the two historians concluded that America didn’t need to bankrupt itself maintaining a navy—but it did need to invest enough to safeguard its coastlines, and thus the maritime trade that flowed through seaports like Boston and Newport. A pick-up navy will not suffice.

Lord Palmerston

Some good news comes out of the War of 1812 to go with the bad. British prime minister Lord Palmerston once declared that nations have no permanent allies, only permanent interests. That may be true, but the former members of the British Empire—the United States, Canada, Australia, India, and Britain itself—come awfully close to being permanent friends and allies. English-speaking alliances certainly date to World War II, seventy-five years ago. They arguably date to 1917, when the United States joined the Allied Powers to beat imperial Germany in World War I.

John Quincy Adams by George Peter Alexander Healy

And these nations have been able to work together on matters of common purpose for even longer than that. Animosity lingered for awhile after the War of 1812, but not for long. For instance, President James Monroe’s 1823 message to Congress—the same document that announced the Monroe Doctrine, demanding that Europeans keep their hands off Latin American republics that had won their independence—also reported that the U.S. Navy and Royal Navy were jointly patrolling the Caribbean Sea to quash the slave trade. (The Monroe Doctrine was really the handiwork of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, another eminent New Englander.) Monroe’s message came just eight years after the Peace of Ghent, which brought the War of 1812 to a close.

Lady Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher, one of Britain’s longest-serving prime ministers, spoke at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., in 1997. Lady Thatcher rued the “rough patch” Britain went through during the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Fortunately, the erstwhile combatants soon smoothed out that rough patch.

Margaret Thatcher visiting the Kennedy Space Center in 2001.

The past may be a foreign country, but exploring it shows that peoples need not remain captive to old enmities.

The author of this story, James Holmes, Ph.D., is the J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. He is the author of two books, Maritime Strategy and Red Star Over the Pacific. You can read his blog, The Naval Diplomat, here. This story was updated in 2022.

0 comment 371 views

Timothy Leary Gets the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act Overturned

Timothy Leary found out just how screwy America’s cannabis laws were when he got busted for violating the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act.

Leary faced a 30-year prison sentence, so he hired a team of lawyers to defend him in court. They argued the law violated his Fifth Amendment right protecting him against self-incrimination. They reasoned he had to tell federal authorities he possessed pot so they could tax it. But state laws made cannabis possession a crime.

Timothy Leary.

In 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with Leary and ruled the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act unconstitutional. Leary then went on to run for governor of California. (He didn’t win.) He had a campaign song called Come Together, which his friend John Lennon wrote.

Then in 1970, Congress further complicated the laws governing cannabis by making possession of it a crime.

It was a funny way to treat a plant that the early colonists were required to cultivate and which doesn’t always get you high.

Cannabis

Some strains of cannabis have compounds that alter the mind, while others don’t.

Humans have bred cannabis plants in Asia since as early as 8000 B.C. They cultivated hemp for fiber to make clothes and rope. Later they bred strains for medicine and for getting stoned.

Cannabis

The English colonies passed the first cannabis law in 1639. The Massachusetts General Court ordered every household to plant the weed. Connecticut then followed the next year. They did it because of a rope shortage — they needed the hemp.

The early New England farmers grew plenty of cannabis. For example, 220,000 pounds of fiber from the cannabis plant went into the rigging of Old Ironsides.

Patent Medicines

Cotton eventually surpassed cannabis as the agricultural fiber of choice. But patent medicine makers continued to use cannabis as an active ingredient in over-the-counter remedies. People used it as a tincture or an oil to cure gonorrhea and asthma, and to ease the pain of childbirth.

Drug stores also sold dried marijuana in one-ounce packages. Two cigarettes cost a dollar.

By the turn of the 20^th century, things began to change. States passed poison laws, which required medicine makers to label certain kinds of ingredients. In 1905, poison laws in both Vermont and Maine mentioned cannabis. But Rhode Island’s didn’t.

Then in 1906, the federal Pure Food and Drug Act required products with cannabis to carry labels.

Massachusetts went even further in 1911, making cannabis possession a crime. Lawbreakers paid a fine and served a three- to six-month prison sentence. The law had an exception, though, for doctors, nurses and veterinarians with a license to prescribe the stuff.

The Massachusetts law, like others, didn’t distinguish between cannabis that produced a high and cannabis that didn’t. Other states soon followed and made all cannabis possession a crime.

Immigration

Drug laws also began to take on an anti-immigrant taint. Since the American Revolution, medical doctors freely gave opium to their patients. Then the Civil War caused widespread drug addiction. Doctors gave large quantities of opium and morphine to wounded soldiers and, later, to sickly women.

That was okay. But it wasn’t okay when Chinese immigrants on the West Coast started opening opium dens. So Congress decided to step in. The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1915 banned opium for non-medical reasons. It also required doctors who prescribed opium to register with the federal government.

A San Francisco opium den

In the American Southwest, the 1910 Mexican Revolution drove immigrants into the United States. Some of them liked to smoke cannabis recreationally. People viewed them as the “marijuana menace.”

The 1937 Marijuana Tax Act

That set the stage for the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. A hard-nosed FBI agent named Harry Anslinger wrote the bill, and he testified cannabis could cause violent delirium. He called it “marijuana’ rather than cannabis. After all, “marijuana” sounded foreign and therefore more sinister.

Anslinger claimed a 20-year-old “axe-murdering marijuana addict” named Victor Licata had killed his entire family. In truth, Licata suffered from mental illness and didn’t smoke pot.

Anslinger also ignored a doctor who looked at 2,216 criminal cases and found cannabis had influenced exactly zero. And he paid no attention to the American Medical Association, which strongly opposed the bill.

Evidence suggests that powerful corporations had an interest in suppressing cannabis. Dupont, which made nylon and rayon, feared competition from hemp fiber. Newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who owned paper mills, thought hemp might be used to make paper.

Harry Anslinger

And so Congress passed the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. Then in 1951, Congress passed the Boggs Act, which imposed a mandatory minimum prison sentence of two to 10 years for possession of cannabis. Two months after President Harry S Truman signed the bill, 500 people were arrested for marijuana possession in one day.

Timothy Leary

Timothy Leary, a leader of the ‘60s drug counterculture, was born into a well-to-do Springfield, Mass., family in 1920. A great uncle, another Dr. Timothy Leary, served as Boston’s medical examiner, and his grandfather was believed to be the richest man in western Massachusetts.

The grandfather, however, squandered his money, and when his son found out he abandoned his family when Timothy was 13. That perhaps explains Timothy Leary’s behavior problems. He got kicked out of high school, expelled from Holy Cross, silenced at West Point, expelled from the University of Alabama and fled to Europe — twice. But he did manage to earn a PhD from the University of California by the time he reached 40.

Timothy Leary, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and others singing ‘Give Peace a Chance’

He won an appointment as a lecturer in clinical psychology at Harvard University. While at Harvard, he studied the effects of psychedelic drugs on personality. But Leary also used drugs recreationally, and in 1962 Harvard fired him.

Monstrosity

In 1965, he got busted for cannabis possession in Laredo, Texas, and charged under the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. In developing his defense, he learned about the federal weed law. Leary called it “a bizarre monstrosity from the bureaucratic standpoint and unconstitutional from the legal standpoint.”

A revenue stamp for cannabis

Under the law, people couldn’t buy tax stamps without providing details about the amount and location of their marijuana. And marijuana, of course, was illegal.

The high court sided with Leary in 1969, and Congress repealed the law the next year. But Congress also passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. The law put cannabis in the most restrictive category of controlled substances.

Lawmakers reasoned cannabis was dangerous because of its “high potential for abuse,” “no currently accepted medical use” and a “lack of accepted safety.”

Since then, researchers have concluded cannabis does have therapeutic effects. Opinion vary, though, on how addictive and dangerous it is. By 2021, 36 states and the District of Columbia have made cannabis possession legal, at least for medicinal purposes.

And in 2018, the federal Farm Bill legalized cannabis for industrial use. That “unleashed a potential economic dynamo for American farmers,’” according to Forbes magazine.

Images: Harry Anslinger By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34928390. Timothy Leary with John and Yoko By Roy Kerwood – Originally uploaded to English Wikipedia by Roy Kerwood, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44122819. This story was updated in 2022.

3 comments 465 views

When Annapolis Moved to Newport, RI

The United States Naval Academy is and was located in Annapolis, Md., and that posed a problem with the advent of the Civil War in 1861.

Maryland, a border state with many Southern sympathizers, was plausibly within striking distance of Confederate forces. To protect and continue the Naval Academy, the U.S. Navy moved it from Annapolis to Newport, R.I., for the duration of the Civil War.

Though the Naval Academy only spent four years in Newport, its presence would have a lasting impact on the city. One of the academy’s instructors noted the advantages of Narragansett Bay while there, and he later established the Naval War College in Newport.

Annapolis History

The U.S. Naval Academy had existed for only about 15 years when the Civil War broke out. It was the brainchild of George Bancroft, a historian and statesman appointed Secretary of the Navy in 1845. While serving in that post, he saw the need for training naval officers and founded the U.S. Naval Academy.

The academy began classes on Oct. 10, 1845 in Annapolis with Commander Franklin Buchanan as its first superintendent. It had seven professors and 50 midshipmen. Interestingly enough, that same Buchanan resigned his commission when the Civil War started, and he went on to command the Confederate Naval Force at Mobile, Ala.

On a brighter note, Bancroft must have been delighted to see the Naval Academy move to Newport even temporarily. Since 1852 he had spent his summers at Rose Cliff, literally down the street on Bellevue Avenue from the newly transferred school. A mansion called Rosecliff replaced Bancroft’s cottage, and the movie The Great Gatsby, starring Robert Redford, was filmed there.

Leaving Annapolis

Capt. George S. Blake, the Academy’s superintendent, made the decision to move the Naval Academy to a northern site. Not only did he have concerns about the safety of his staff and officer candidates, he knew the Academy’s training ship was a tempting target for the Confederates. For the Naval Academy had been using as a training vessel the most famous ship in the Navy – Old Ironsides, the U.S.S. Constitution.

Old Ironsides during the Civil War

Just weeks after the firing on Fort Sumter, the midshipmen and the academy staff packed up lock, stock and barrel. Then 130 midshipmen boarded Old Ironsides and were towed to safety in New York by the steamer Baltic.

They arrived in Newport Harbor by May 8, 1861. The townspeople gave a warm musical welcome to Superintendent Blake, his staff and the student body. Fort Adams gave Old Ironsides a 24-gun salute as she sailed past, and she returned their salute.

The Ladies of Newport

John C. Pegram was a midshipman at the Naval Academy in Annapolis when they packed up Old Ironsides and sailed north. Pegram wrote about his experience in a book, Recollections of the U.S. Naval Academy.

According to his account, they passed Beavertail in Jamestown and then arrived at their destination: Fort Adams. A flotilla of people in small boats met them.

Captain George Rodgers, aboard the Constitution, recognized one older man and two young ladies. He hailed them saying, “How are the ladies of Newport?” To which the man in the small boat replied,” The ladies are for the union, to a man.”

‘Wretched’

Once they moved into Fort Adams, the midshipmen conducted a dress parade each morning on the parade ground. That attracted many onlookers. Old Ironsides also attracted considerable attention. So much so that the onlookers developed into an annoying distraction to the students who took classes on her gun decks. They especially annoyed the plebes – the youngest class — who slept aboard the old ship.

The onlookers weren’t the worst of it. As Midshipman Park Benjamin, a member of the class of 1867, wrote,

Nothing could be more desolate to the plebe whose first experience brought him to these school ships. During the day he sat and studied at one of the desks, long rows of which extended up and down the gun deck, and occasionally marched ashore to the windy recitation rooms, where he contracted bad colds along with a knowledge of arithmetic. The commissary department was always more or less out of gear, and the meals eaten in the blackness of the birth deck by the light of a few ill smelling oil lamps were wretched.

Fort Adams itself proved such a dark and dank environment that the staff and midshipmen soon started moving to homes scattered about the city. As a result, the Naval Academy negotiated to lease the state-of-the-art Atlantic House Hotel at the corner of Pelham Street and Bellevue Avenue.

Move to Luxury

The hotel overlooked the Touro Park and the famous Newport Viking Tower. By September 20, the students left the fort, took up residence at their newfound home and went to work the next day.

The move must have been a godsend. Pegram described it as a move into luxury. Two men to a room, iron framed beds, bureaus, a table and two chairs. A far cry from sleeping in hammocks aboard the ship. They moved in their books, instruments and arms. Their campus boundaries were Touro Park and the surrounding streets, a small world.

Each day they went to open fields on the outskirts of Newport to conduct their parade marches. Pegram said it was not uncommon for the city’s people to see midshipmen doing a double-quick pace down Bellevue Avenue back to their hotel residence.

Midshipmen pose in front of the Atlantic House.

In October 1862, the USS Santee arrived in Newport to serve as a working school for the academy. And later still, the Navy assigned the schooner/yacht America to Newport as a training vessel.

At the conclusion of the Civil War and after four years in Newport, the Naval Academy moved back to its original home in Annapolis, Md., on Aug. 9, 1865.

Luce

One man by the name of Stephen B. Luce had arrived in Newport in January 1862. A lieutenant commander, he received an appointment as head of the Department of Seamanship. Luce became well acquainted with Newport and its harbor.

In 1881, Luce, then a commodore, returned to Newport to command the Navy Training Squadron. Having seen the advantages of Narragansett Bay, he was instrumental in establishing the Newport Naval Training Center. Then in 1884, he founded the Naval War College and served as its first president.

Stephen Luce

Today, Newport remains a major facility for training and the home of the Naval War College, where naval officers come from all over the world for advanced education.

The Atlantic House Hotel was torn down in 1877 and the Parkgate Building was constructed in its place. The Parkgate today has a plaque commemorating the Naval Academy’s presence in Newport.

Leo Caisse, the author of this story about the Naval Academy’s move from Annapolis, passed away in 2020. He had published The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. Leo earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lived in East Providence, R.I.

This story was updated in 2022.

2 comments 1.3k views

Old Ironsides Earns Her Nickname

On August 19, 1812, the crew of the USS Constitution caught sight of the British HMS Guerriere at sea off Nova Scotia. The American vessel would soon win its nickname, Old Ironsides.

Captain Isaac Hull of the Constitution and Captain James Dacres of the Guerriere were eager for a fight.

The battle between the USS Constitution vs HMS Guerriere, by Michel Felice Corne

Slo-Mo Chase

Hull, a native of Derby, Conn., had spent much of the prior month searching for a battle in which he could put the Constitution to work. His first encounter with a British squadron resulted in a slow-motion chase out of New York in light wind. The Constitution finally pulled from her pursuers by lowering her boats and having seamen pull the frigate by towing it. Hull also using kedging, a technique where a small boat carried the Constitution’s anchor ahead of it, dropped it and allowed the ship to pull itself forward by hauling in the anchor line.

With this escape from superior forces behind him, Hull was eager for a better match-up. And then he encountered Guerriere.

Old Ironsides

The two ships approached each other, and the Guerriere began firing at the Constitution while it largely sailed out of range. As one shot bounced off the hull of the Constitution, a seamen reportedly gave her the nickname that would last until this day. “Huzza,” he shouted, “her sides are made of iron!”

Isaac Hull

A relatively one-side fight followed. The Constitution, with a tougher hull, more and bigger guns and a better captain, quickly bested the Guerriere. During a 35-minute battle, Old Ironsides shot the Guerriere to pieces with her masts crashing on her decks.

With little choice, Dacres signaled surrender and struck his flag. With the British sailors transferred to the Constitution, Hull tried to keep the Guerriere afloat so that he could tow it home as a prize. But he had no hope of success. He ordered the vessel torched and he sailed toward Boston.

Hull had no practical reason to return to port, but he wanted the American public to learn of his victory. He thought it would shore up support for the war, which had proceeded badly for the American side. A defeat against the formidable Royal British Navy was welcome news.

The Constitution would go on to win four battles against British ships during the war. The battles had an immaterial effect on Britain, with its enormous navy. But the victories had a huge emotional impact, both in England and America. The Times of London summed it up after the defeat of the Guerriere:

It is not merely that an English frigate has been taken, after, what we are free to confess, may be called a brave resistance, but that it has been taken by a new enemy, an enemy unaccustomed to such triumphs, and likely to be rendered insolent and confident by them. … how important this triumph is in giving a tone and character to the war. Never before in the history of the world did an English frigate strike to an American.

No Surrender?

The newspaper went on to suggest that Dacres should have perhaps gone down with his ship rather than surrender.

The Times was using a bit of hyperbole, as British ships were lost to American’s during the Revolution. Technically, though, it was an unprecedented blow that did much to bolster American morale.

Dacres would go on to face court martial for the loss of his ship, and he was cleared of any wrong doing. Hull, facing family pressures, would request and receive a transfer to run the Washington Navy Yard.

This story was updated in 2022.

5 comments 534 views

Old Ironsides: The Poem

On Sept. 16, 1830, the Boston Daily Advertiser published the poem “Old Ironsides,” by a 21-year-old student named Oliver Wendell Holmes. Two days earlier, Holmes read in the Advertiser that the Navy would scrap the U.S.S. Constitution.

Old Ironsides. Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones collection.In a burst of emotion he wrote the Old Ironsides poem in a day and submitted it to the newspaper. The poem was reprinted in newspapers around the country, earning Holmes national fame.

The article was erroneous, actually. The Navy had simply requested estimates for repairing the Constitution. But with the outcry after the poem, it’s doubtful there was any choice but to restore her.

The ship was finally decommissioned in 1881, and towed to Charlestown. Once there, she sank into disrepair. Once again, publicity had to rescue her. The secretary of the Navy injudiciously suggested in 1905 that the Navy tow her to sea and use her for target practice.

That prompted the final, successful campaign to raise money to convert the ship into a museum. The Leslie Jones photo above shows workers raising the anchor on the vessel in the 1930s after her conversion to a museum.

Meanwhile, Holmes did not feel that writing poetry was a productive enough pursuit to make a career of. He went on to medical school and ultimately prove a better doctor than a poet.

Old Ironsides Poem

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!

   Long has it waved on high,

And many an eye has danced to see

   That banner in the sky;

Beneath it rung the battle shout,

   And burst the cannon’s roar;—

The meteor of the ocean air

   Shall sweep the clouds no more!

Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood

   Where knelt the vanquished foe,

When winds were hurrying o’er the flood

   And waves were white below,

No more shall feel the victor’s tread,

   Or know the conquered knee;—

The harpies of the shore shall pluck

   The eagle of the sea!

O, better that her shattered hulk

   Should sink beneath the wave;

Her thunders shook the mighty deep,

   And there should be her grave;

Nail to the mast her holy flag,

   Set every thread-bare sail,

And give her to the god of storms,—

   The lightning and the gale!

This story was updated in 2022.

2 comments 558 views