THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 12, 1995 TAG: 9503110207
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
THE AMERICAN FRIGATE Chesapeake, built in 1789 of oak and cedar at what became Norfolk Navy Yard, was an unlucky ship from the outset. She stuck fast on her first launch attempt, and a man was killed on the second. She served in the West Indies and the Washington Navy Yard.
In February 1807 dashing, young Henry Allen of Providence, R.I., was ordered aboard as third lieutenant. He personally signed on 57 sailors of uniform undependability, 47 of whom actually went to sea with him. ``I have never,'' Allen wrote, ``had so much trouble with a pack of rascals in my life.''
A full crew of 340 put out from Norfolk in May under Commodore James Barron of Hampton. Returning from Washington, the men became short-handed and ailing.
Among the Chesapeake's crew were deserters from British ships. Henry Allen heard a rumor that the Brits, who from Lynnhaven controlled Chesapeake Bay traffic, meant to take the deserters back by force. They would.
On the morning of June 22, His Majesty's Ship Leopard, a 50-gun battleship, tacked in parallel with the Chesapeake at the mouth of Lynnhaven Bay. Henry Allen smelled trouble. His sensitive nose was correct.
After an equivocal discussion with a contingent from the Leopard, the Chesapeake sat fatly in the water; and the Leopard opened fire.
The Chesapeake's magazine was in a state of disarray, the gunner was confused and the powder horns hadn't been filled. There were no matches to light the priming powder. Henry Allen seized a hot coal and managed to fire one gun before Commodore Barron ordered the firing stopped.
The Chesapeake was humiliated and boarded. Henry Allen said, ``We have disgraced the flag.'' But he had served it well.
``Two short generations ago,'' writes historian Ira Dye, ``when the teaching of grade-school history included anecdotes of the heroes of the United States as hortatory examples to American youths, everyone was familiar with the story of the young lieutenant who took a coal of fire with his fingers and fired the only gun for the honor of the flag. Boys visualized the searing flesh and wondered how they would perform if faced with a similar challenge. Actually, it is highly improbable that Allen picked up the fiery coal with his fingers. . . .
``With ladles, cups and other utensils available in the galley area, it is more likely that he scooped it up in one of those.''
Or perhaps somebody handed it to him.
``Such,'' notes Dye, ``is the raw material of patriotism.''
The story, the insight and the irony are characteristic of Dye's marvelously researched, marvelously written sea history, The Fatal Cruise of the Argus: Two Captains in the War of 1812 (Naval Institute Press, 368 pp., $35).
Dye, a retired submarine captain and former head of systems analysis for the Department of Transportation, resides on the Virginia Beach Oceanfront about three miles from where the Leopard attacked the Chesapeake. His book traces the fortunes of Henry Allen, who rose to captain, and those of his ultimate adversary, British naval officer John Maples.
The punctiliously documented account reads with the zing of riveting fiction.
Sick with lymphoma cancer at his son's house in San Francisco six years ago, Dye, ``laid up and feeling miserable,'' first put pen to paper. He got well, went home and ``revised and revised and revised,'' Dye says.
His prose is tough and tensile as a taut lanyard. At 76, having turned out his first full-length history, Dye has an agent clamoring for a novel.
``People like Allen,'' the author says, ``created our navy today - young firebrands whose sense of honor was overblown but wouldn't quit.''
Dye, who has been married to his wife, Evelyn, for 53 years, who has three sons, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild and who survived the Depression and World War II to sustain successful careers in military and civil service, reports two lessons that surpass his sense of history:
``I learned to try to be ethical.
``And I learned if I have a strong opinion about something, I'm probably wrong.''
That integrity and humor shine in his work.
- MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Ira Dye's prose is tough and tensile as a taut lanyard.
by CNB