American Phoenix, Pt. 3 of 6: Danish Prey & 300 Trapped Americans #Russia
Excerpts from my book American Phoenix, about John Quincy and Louisa Adams, who forged a relationship with the tsar of Russia to save American independence during the War of 1812.
As you read part 3, think about how John Quincy and Louisa Adams came face-to-face with threats to America and Americans on their sea journey around Norway and Denmark to Russia. They carried with them an America-first posture while literally sailing on a global stage. This voyage helped them to realize the stakes that America faced in 1809. How well do American politicians today prioritize the true interest of the Americans they are supposed to serve?
Danish Prey
The storm continued, throwing waves over the rowboat.
Captain Beckford’s clarity of thinking prevailed. Abandoning the ridiculous scheme of trying to reach the brig, he reversed course and safely returned the rowboat to the Horace.
“All this time the boat and people were in the most imminent danger but got on board at last,” Louisa wrote with relief.
From the Horace’s helm, a thoroughly soaked captain hailed the brig again. No answer. Within a few minutes, the anonymous boat gave up. Beckford waited until the ship was as far away as the moon before resuming the Horace’s route.
Mystery lurked behind the masts in Norway, which was then ruled by Denmark. Because this brig never hoisted its colors, they were left to question its identity. Was it Danish or English? English, John decided, because no other armed ships would dare monitor that particular coast. He knew British nautical ways all too well. In fact, it was an English ship that had exiled him from the US Senate, at least indirectly.
Two years earlier, the HMS Leopard had caused a major international incident when it bombarded the USS Chesapeake, an American naval vessel, off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia. Three Americans were killed, eighteen wounded.
“The Chesapeake-Leopard incident was the most important naval confrontation between the United States and Britain” since the American Revolution.
Though on a different scale of destruction, the emotional impact on the nation was similar to the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
The British seized four sailors from the Chesapeake on June 22, 1807. Claiming a right to do so, the Leopard’s captain said he was merely recovering British navy deserters. Americans viewed his actions very differently, believing his real aim was to impress or take Americans from the Chesapeake and force them to serve in the British navy—potentially against their homeland.
How dare the British spit on American sovereignty! President Thomas Jefferson secretly retaliated by asking Congress to pass an embargo preventing US merchant ships from trading with Great Britain and other European nations. New England merchants traded with English merchants more than any other foreign entity. Already suffering from the war between commercial Britain and agricultural France, those Americans dependent on the shipping trade for income would lose their livelihoods from an embargo.
In addition, Jefferson learned that the British government released a proclamation to continue its policy of impressment. This allowed British captains and generals to seize English subjects or anyone that they thought was English and force them to serve in the British military. Thus, they could ignore a sailor’s citizenship papers from America.
John was a US senator from Massachusetts at the time and a member of the committee that recommended the embargo to the full Senate. When he read the committee’s intelligence reports, he knew what he must do. Impressment must stop. He concluded that an embargo on foreign trade—all of it—would save the lives of hundreds of merchant sailors. Supporting Jefferson’s embargo was the most agonizing decision of his public career.
Many people in Massachusetts were so angry about the embargo that they threatened to secede from the Union. Federalists couldn’t understand why John—one of their most favorite native sons—supported Jefferson’s embargo. After all, Jefferson defeated his father for the presidency in 1800.
Adams wrote his mother, saying these trials “have been severe beyond any that I ever was before called to meet.”
He was more concerned about keeping the American people safe than angering Boston merchants or aligning himself with his father’s political rival.
“I was sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, and I thought it was my duty to support the existing administration in every measure that my impartial judgment could approve.”
John later told a friend that he needed to take a stand against the English bullies and their kidnapping ways. He put the greater needs of the Union ahead of the economic needs of his commonwealth.
The Chesapeake-Leopard affair turned a topsy-turvy trade situation into a trajectory for future battles. If successful, the embargo might prevent war. John’s decision cost him. Back then citizens did not vote directly for their US senators; instead, members of state legislatures made the choice.
When the Massachusetts legislature decided not to support his reelection in June 1808 and chose someone else, John immediately resigned his Senate seat rather than wait out his term.
As he explained in his resignation letter, he supported the embargo “to preserve from seizure and depredation the persons and property of our citizens.”
He also wanted to “vindicate the rights essential to the independence of our country, against the unjust pretensions and aggressions of all foreign powers.”
Revenge for his father did not play a role.
“I have been obliged to act upon principles exclusively my own,” he confessed to Abigail, “and without having any aid from the party in power have made myself the very mark of the most envenomed shafts from their opponents.”
He could not sacrifice the peace of the nation or “the personal liberties of our seamen or the neutral rights of our commerce” for the sake of party politics.
“I discharged my duty to my country, but I committed the unpardonable sin against party.”
Union and independence, not allegiance to party, guided his choice.
“It was not without a painful sacrifice of feeling that I withdrew from the public service at a moment of difficulty and danger,” he wrote. They abandoned him, “discarded me for the future, and required me to aid them in promoting measures tending to dissolve the Union.”
He faced his fate. “I was no representative for them. These were the immediate causes of my retirement from public life.”
Indeed, his father’s views on a man’s conscience fit his son’s situation.
“Upon common theaters, indeed, the applause of the audience is of more importance to the actors than their own approbation,” the senior John Adams wrote to a friend years earlier. “But upon the stage of life, while conscience claps, let the world hiss! On the contrary if conscience disapproves, the loudest applauses of the world are of little value.”
A significant change, however, took place between John Quincy’s resignation in June 1808 and his Russian appointment in June 1809. Just before Jefferson left office, he altered his embargo policy. Congress overturned the Embargo Act and replaced it with the Non-Intercourse Act, which allowed American merchant ships to trade with any nation except Britain and France.
Jefferson and the newly elected Madison hoped to keep American trade neutral between those two competing powers while opening the United States to other trading partners such as Portugal, Prussia, and Russia.
Nature does not care about the supremacy of nations or conflicts over trade. She freely throws waves on ships no matter their country of origin. Thus, the Horace sailed along Norway in weather duress. Its captive passengers endured a storm for more than twenty-four hours, an eternity for a heartbroken woman caring for a two-year-old child. The ship rolled and pitched so much that Louisa rightfully feared the Horace would overturn.
The next day gave them the weather break they needed. From a narrow nook, they relaxed and enjoyed the reflection of the morning dew on the pink-and-gray granite rock of the sea mountains towering over them. Norway features hundreds of these fjords, U-shaped valleys cut into the land by enormous glaciers eons earlier. The glaciers polished the rocks, licking them clean of soil. As the glaciers receded, the ocean filled the void, leaving fjords. The deepest fjord in Norway plunges more than four thousand feet. By noon they settled snugly on top of one of these deep sleeves.
At this time, they were traveling east between the coasts of Norway and Jutland, Denmark’s mainland peninsula. Norway was to their north; Jutland south. The North Sea, where they had just passed, was west. To their immediate east was the Kattegat Sea, the narrow water separating Denmark from Sweden.
Captain Beckford’s plan was to swoop southeast through the Kattegat and the straits of Denmark, which connected to the Baltic Sea. From there they would travel hundreds of miles northeast through the Baltic and into the Gulf of Finland. St. Petersburg rested at the far eastern corner of the Gulf of Finland. They had a long way to go but had made good time so far. For now, they were safely tucked in a narrow Norwegian nook.
“We had a quiet night,” Louisa wrote with relief. She soon discovered why she saw so few ships the day before: “We were awakened this morning with the news that an English Cruiser was near us.”
No matter the beauty of Norway, a nuisance now appeared from nowhere. An eighteen-gun brig suddenly lay alongside the Horace. Unlike the previous ship, this new character’s identity was quite clear. She boldly displayed English colors and soon sent a rowboat to the Horace. Four men boarded with so much confidence that they marched around the wooden barrels and riggings as if they were the owners, not guests.
After examining Beckford’s papers, an officer said, “I suppose you may proceed.”
Such a statement proved to be truly generous.
“He said it was fortunate that he had not seen us last night, as he should have fired into us supposing it [the Horace] was [a Danish ship],” Louisa noted. The officer boasted that his English brig chased not one, but two, Danish men-of-war the previous day.
John’s prediction that war did not threaten their voyage was mistaken.
Although the United States was not at war, the English and the Danish obviously were. The reason stemmed from a significant event two years earlier, when the British navy captured more than forty large Danish-Norwegian ships and bombarded Copenhagen. Instead of turning the Danes into forced allies as the English hoped, the outcome turned Denmark into an enemy of England and a friend of France. The British navy responded by blockading the water route connecting Denmark and Norway.
Jefferson’s and Madison’s policies of neutrality didn’t matter in these waters. With the US flag topping her rigging, the Horace ventured around Norway with little assurance. Two great white sharks were chasing a red, white, and bluefin tuna.
Sailing with uneasiness, the captain couldn’t dismiss the British officer’s confession that he had nearly fired on the Horace after mistaking her for a Danish ship. To fire without knowing a ship’s colors was as cheeky as it was reckless.
Then again, what else could he expect from the likes of the British? Captain Benjamin Beckford of Beverly, Massachusetts, would never forget the first time he witnessed English arrogance. He was a mere lad, not quite seventeen, when his company, along with William Gray, rushed to Lexington to keep British soldiers from seizing the town’s military supplies. He would always remember the sulfurous smell of gunpowder clouding the rising sun that day, April 19, 1775. Ask anyone from Beverly. It was the redcoats who’d fired those first shots at Lexington and Concord launching the Revolutionary War. As a Massachusetts newspaper recorded, “The troops of His Britannic Majesty commenced hostilities upon the people of this province.”
Two years later Beckford married. In between nearly a dozen voyages to St. Petersburg, he sired eight children. William Gray often paid captains like Beckford a monthly wage of twenty-five dollars with a commission from the sale of cargo. As experienced as the captain was at age fifty-one, he had never carried such valuable cargo as the son of a former US president.
For two hours Beckford sailed the Horace along the Norwegian coast. Finally, he saw it. Another ship came within view. Would she fire freely? Her colors were Danish. Full speed ahead, he ordered. Before he could flee, the brig fired a signal requesting to inspect the Horace. Beckford’s impatience increased with each passing second as the curious ship took thirty minutes to pass the stern. She hailed the usual questions: Where are you from? Why are you in these waters? Where are you going?
After receiving Beckford’s answers, the ship suddenly lowered her Danish flag and hoisted English colors instead. Such mast maneuvering made her even more mysterious—and possibly dangerous. Not believing Beckford’s answer or understanding his signals, the mysterious ship’s captain sent a boat over to the Horace.
When an officer and four men boarded, they confirmed their ship’s identity. The sounds of a British accent were obvious in the officer’s voice. After examining Beckford’s papers, the Englishman notified his captain of the Horace’s identity and mission.
“The boat soon returned with an answer that we might proceed without interruption having a minister onboard,” Louisa documented.
They were allowed to proceed for one reason: John’s position as an envoy. Because the Horace’s mission was to deliver a diplomat to a distant shore, the British captain honored the law of customs and allowed them to continue. How many more times would they have to endure such inspections and intrusions? Would John’s paperwork continue to be their best olive branch? They could only hope.
Beckford’s wavy hair tightly framed his face as if wearing a bowl on his head. Under such duress, the sweat from his brow must have crusted his hair to his forehead as he worried about encountering a ship too cavalier to hold its fire.
Soon they came within sight of Kristiansand, Norway. Beckford made a decision. The horizon again looked troublesome, blackened by another storm. Sailing ships with square sails must head into the wind from forty-five- to sixty-degree angles. Because the process of going into the wind is labor-intensive, Beckford decided that they should put in there or go into the harbor to replenish their supplies while they waited for the storm to pass and catch a more favorable wind. Seeing the shallow waters, he decided to hire help.
“We sent for a pilot,” Louisa wrote in her diary.
In the preindustrial nautical world, a pilot was someone who knew the local waters. Just as regional drivers directed a coach on land from post to post, so pilots temporarily boarded and steered ships through their hometown’s shallow ports and channels, which were also called canals or grounds. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the term pilot to 1481.
A pilot quickly responded to Beckford’s signal and rowed out to the ship, but so did another vessel. Sweeping alongside the Horace was a smaller two-mast boat with a swivel gun. On board were twenty armed sailors.
The swivel boat signaled. Beckford complied. A Danish lieutenant came onto the Horace’s quarterdeck, the area reserved for officers. Instead of asking questions, he issued commands, ordering Beckford to go to Kristiansand.
“The captain became alarmed and declared he would not put [in] anywhere,” Louisa observed.
Volunteering to go to Kristiansand was one thing; being ordered to do so was another. Beckford directed his crew to turn the Horace around toward the sea.
The lieutenant counter-signaled, ordering the twenty, armed men on the swivel boat to board and take possession of the Horace. Carrying pikes in their tentacles, these sailors crept onto the deck.
Beckford signaled. The Horace’s crew drew their swords. Soon clear-eyed Danes and Norwegians stared into angry-eyed Americans. Sword to sword. Axe to axe. Pike to pike.
“I was perfectly indignant at being taken by this boat,” Louisa said.
What would it have been like for her in this moment? She certainly felt anxious for her own life, but as a mother, she felt even more protective of her son, the only one she had left to care for. Most likely she, Kitty, and Martha made sure the toddler was secured in their cabin. There they could hide him from the intruders. Charles likely didn’t see the drawn swords, but he must have heard the pirate-like shouts above him.
Although shielding her six- and eight-year-old boys would have been even more challenging, Louisa would have gladly done so with the fierceness of the sirens of the sea just to have George and John with her. As single women, Kitty and Martha were at risk of assault. Under these circumstances, their cabin was the safest place of refuge.
“The lieutenant, however, made a signal to them to withdraw—He and the pilot were afraid the captain would carry them out to sea,” she noted.
Beckford was angry enough to drag those Danes into the deep. A near international incident came within a pike’s pointed tip. Imagine what might have happened had the Danes captured or worse, sunk, the very ship carrying the newly appointed minister to Russia and the son of a former US president. War! Indeed.
The confrontation revealed the root problem of American-European relations. Though America was technically an independent power completely separate from England, it was hardly a power, much less a superpower. It was a country in name only, if that. Aye, there was the rub.
Years earlier as a young diplomat to Prussia, which was a German-run kingdom that included Germany and portions of Poland, John experienced a similar dilemma firsthand. When he and Louisa arrived at the gates of Berlin in 1797, a German soldier accosted him.
He wouldn’t let them pass because he didn’t know “who the United States of America were.”
Another soldier intervened, allowing them to enter Berlin. European perceptions apparently had not changed much since then.
The United States had lived under its Constitution only twenty years. Didn’t Americans and Britons speak the King’s English? Of course! Though the accents were different even at this early time, most Europeans considered anyone who spoke English to be British. This was the justification that English captains used to impress American sailors into the British navy and why the Danes were suspicious of US merchant ships.
The Danish lieutenant didn’t believe Beckford’s story for one simple reason. He feared that the Horace’s crew members, mostly local boys from Boston, were really English sailors in disguise.
As clear as the lens of a spyglass, this latest clash revealed the truth that John and Louisa now faced. Storms were not the only danger that might prevent them from reaching St. Petersburg. Pretension was just as powerful a force. Too many English ships paraded as American ones, hoisting the Stars and Stripes instead of Great Britain’s Union Jack flag. Though the Horace was as independent as the bald eagle, to Danish and English sharks, this eagle might as well have been a seagull—prey to be devoured, not respected as an independent creature.
Three Hundred Americans
As soon as the Danish swivel boat sped away, Captain Beckford set sail again, traveling southwest a mere four more miles and docking safely in Flekkerøy. Before them was an oasis: a fishing village set among jagged rocks, white sailing boats, and neat red-and-white wooden houses topped by steep red roofs. The charming sight was a welcome relief from the danger they had just faced.
The next morning Beckford and a few crew members boarded their rowboat and paddled to Kristiansand to present the ship’s papers to local authorities there. Though he returned to the Horace with a pass to proceed, he also brought Adams disturbing news from a man named Isaacson.
“They found the captains of nearly thirty American vessels, which have been brought into Kristiansand since last May by privateers, and are detained for adjudication,” John recorded of the outrage.
Using private boats to capture them, Danish authorities were detaining three hundred American sailors and captains against their will.
“I went immediately to Mr. Isaacson’s.”
Mr. Isaacson lived in one of Kristiansand’s neat wooden fishing houses. Friendly to the Americans detained there, he explained to John what had happened. Over four months, the Danes had captured dozens of US merchant vessels and put their captains and crew on trial. A Danish lower court condemned half of their cargoes. They were waiting on their appeal to the admiralty court. The rest had yet to undergo a trial. Though not imprisoned or chained, no one was allowed to leave.
The reality was strong and clear. No wonder the Danish swivel boat officer ordered them to Kristiansand. That was why he was so quick to command his men to draw swords against them. He wanted to impound the Horace too. Capturing American ships and their valuable colonial cargo was as commonplace in Danish-controlled Norway as ice fishing in winter.
Adams also learned that the detained Americans were waiting for him. After reading about his appointment in newspapers, the captains sent letters addressed to Minister Adams in St. Petersburg. Anticipating he would stop in Norway or Denmark on his voyage, the captains also sent him letters to the US consul in Elsinore, about 250 miles away. In addition, they mailed copies of their papers to Levitt Harris, the US consul in St. Petersburg, and to President Madison in Washington.
Adams’s banishment might be their salvation. He was their best hope. The lawyer in John emerged with all deliberate speed and due process. With the help of his attachés Gray, Everett, and Smith, he immediately sent messages to the governor of the city, the commandant of the garrison, and the admiral of the nearby naval force. He tried to talk to any authority who would listen.
By dusk the final answer came. No one was available for a meeting. That night the Adams party dined at Isaacson’s house.
“Mr. Isaacson, an agent for American seamen, a very gentlemanly man,” Louisa wrote of her refreshing break from her nautical prison cell. “We all had a charming dinner in this little nook in Norway.”
Twenty of the detained Americans joined them that night, which allowed John to see the problem with his own eyes. What he saw horrified him, gripping his patriotic heart as much as the bombardment of the Chesapeake had two years earlier.
Possibly while drinking ale and eating mackerel, a fish common to the area, the captains showed John their condemnation sentences and minutes of their proceedings in the Danish courts. Esquire Adams peppered them with questions, such as: Did you understand the charges against you? No. Did you have a translator? No. Did they think you were British in disguise? Yes.
“The sight of so many of my countrymen, in circumstances so distressing, is very painful and each of them has a story to tell of their peculiar aggravations of ill treatment which he has received,” John wrote of his anguish.
He was indignant. What crime had these US sailors committed? Practicing the merchant trade? He expected to hear of such atrocities by the Brits, but not the Danes. These American sailors were merely guilty of speaking in their native tongue.
What also emerged was the evil side of economics. The Danes were requiring them to pay for their detainment, including their lodging, food, and ship-harboring expenses. All conveniently boosted the local economy. The detainment of these three hundred Americans underscored the great overarching reality. Until the United States was allowed to freely trade with other nations, it would remain a country without true sovereignty.
“The desire of contributing to their relief is so strong in me, that I shall, without waiting for express authority from the government of the United States, use every effort of my power on their behalf to however little purpose it may be as to its success.”
John concluded that if their cases were heard on their merits and appropriately translated, then the captains and crews should be freed from Kristiansand and allowed to resume their trade business.
At dinner he made a decision. He would stop in Elsinore along their planned route through the Kattegat. From there he would travel to Copenhagen by coach. No matter the delay. As much as he needed to reach St. Petersburg, he absolutely must go to Copenhagen.
“They request my interposition with the Danish government in their behalf, and although having no authority from my government to speak officially to the court of Denmark, my good offices may probably be of little or no avail to them. I propose, however, to attempt a representation in their favor at Copenhagen.”
John could hardly wait. He didn’t have to be in St. Petersburg to duel in diplomacy. This protagonist had a new mission: advocate for his fellow countrymen in Denmark.
“We are ready to proceed upon our voyage, and I shall put to sea the first moment that wind and weather will permit,” John wrote with captain-like control.
Louisa was also touched by their plight. She may have been going to St. Petersburg against the wishes of her heart, but the stories of these sailors reminded her of a different truth: she was not under legal confinement. She wasn’t in jeopardy of losing her cargo and only source of income. She wasn’t in danger of becoming a beggar on the street without enough money to pay for a return voyage home.
Weather would not permit an immediate voyage to Elsinore, however. The date was September 21, 1809, near the day “when the sun crosses the line.”
This was the autumn equinox, the time of year when the days and nights grow closer and closer in length until equal. Then they slowly switch, with nights becoming longer and days shorter. Unfavorable sailing winds or “equinoctial gales” prohibited the Horace from sailing immediately. Heavy wind and continual rain confined them. As anxious as they were to leave Norway, nature now imprisoned them.
“Mr. Isaacson to his great inconvenience accommodated us all with lodgings, where we were compelled to stay until the next evening,” Louisa explained.
John was so ready to sail that by 2:00 p.m. the next day, he decided they were leaving Isaacson’s house anyway, despite the wily weather.
“Mr. Adams obliged us to return to the ship in a heavy gale, and that night we sailed,” she wrote of his Noah-like determination.
Hence, they set sail under poor weather conditions into one of the most difficult waterways in the world, the Kattegat Sea. The name comes from the Dutch words for cat and hole, called a gat. Kattegat simply means “cat hole.” During medieval times captains described these straits and their many reefs as so narrow and shallow that not even a cat could squeeze through them. Not long after their departure, Louisa made an interesting observation: “We saw four or five vessels ashore.” No one else was out gallivanting in the cat hole. She was not surprised at her husband’s skipper-like decision to go forward. Public service was more important to him than anything else. John was as predictable as his timepiece.
His purpose in life, his very existence, was to be useful to mankind. Serving the public, especially seeking justice for others, was paramount. Mrs. Adams understood her husband’s motivation to get to Copenhagen. Justice was a respectable ambition, something the son of John Adams could not refuse.
As the Horace sailed for Elsinore, the pounding of the ship was greater than at any previous time in their voyage. The ship rolled, pitched, and heaved all at the same time. Once again turbulence tossed them about as if they were as light as sand. Unknown to the impassioned diplomat, whose wife’s anxiety and physical suffering increased with each crashing wave, a more stubborn headache was ahead.
“In the midst of the passage of the sound, we saw a ship of war at anchor— And a sloop with several other vessels anchored near them,” Louisa recorded. Instead of waiting to be stopped, Beckford hailed the man-of-war. Soon a British officer and a few sailors rowed to them. “And a lieutenant from her soon came on board.”
With the audacity of a pirate, the English officer ordered the crew of the Horace to line the deck. One by one as if inspecting prisoners, he compared each sailor with the ship’s paperwork and written descriptions of the crew. Cameras, of course, did not exist in 1809. The sailors didn’t carry photographic identification cards or even pencil sketches of their faces.
One of Beckford’s written descriptions didn’t match, at least in the lieutenant’s view. Silence filled the boat as the Brit questioned the young sailor.
Where are you from? Charlestown, the young man may have answered. Charlestown was the hallowed site of the Battle of Bunker Hill during the Revolutionary War, which John watched burn from a distance when he was eight years old. No matter if the towns were adjacent, if the paperwork said Boston and the lad answered Charlestown, then the lieutenant had what he wanted—a discrepancy and justification to haul off the young man.
The interrogation could have continued with more “discrepancies.” What, blond hair? Says here, brown. Say that again? Your English smacks of Liverpool. “[The lieutenant]—who on examining the papers of the crew was very troublesome and threatened to take one of them off,” Louisa recalled.
They were witnessing the practice of impressment. For all they had endured, so far no one had questioned the nationality of an individual sailor or threatened to kidnap him.
Would the crewman from Charlestown be taken off? Hadn’t his hair simply lightened with exposure to the sun? Worse, would he be impressed to serve in the British navy? Is this what the crew of the USS Chesapeake had suffered?
Seeing Mr. Adams, suddenly the lieutenant had a bigger fish to catch than a freckled-face crab from Charlestown. The officer became even more indignant as he questioned John.
What? No passport? An American commission to Russia? Hardly a substitute. A diplomatic mission? The smell of coffee beans below deck is stronger than your pathetic story. Why would a merchant ship be going to Russia on a diplomatic mission? Didn’t the United States have military boats for that purpose? All are highly suspicious.
John’s paperwork seemed as foreign to this English officer as the Russian alphabet. As he bombarded John with questions and threatened them with a pirate’s pike, all the passengers could do was watch, wait, and pray.