US 44 gun frigates were not twice the size and power of the frigates they fought. The dimensions of USS Constitution and HMS Java are accessible on line. USS Constitution was 23 feet longer(on Gundeck) maybe 3 feet wider in beam, had about 1.5 feet more depth of hold. Java mounted 47 guns, according to Commander Tyrone Martin(A most Fortunate Ship) to Constitution's 54(according to the Wikipedia entry Java mounted 49). Constitution was larger and more powerful, but no where overwhelmingly so. According to Commander Martin, Guerriere mounted thirty 18 pounder guns on her maindeck to Java's twenty eight. One may presume that Guerriere was a bit larger than Java.

According to CS Forrester(The Age of Fighting Sail, pg. 62-63) had James Richard Dacres declined action with the Constitution, he might well have faced a Court Martial, and his action would have gotten him the condemnation of every post captain in the Royal Navy.

I add that Dacres, judging from the accounts in The Age of Fighting Sail and A Most Fortunate Ship, made no attempt to avoid action with the Constitution. He actually backed one of his topsails so Constitution could close. Dacres' challenge to John Rogers is clear and convincing evidence in my opinion that Dacres did not believe his ship was in condition so poor it was unable to fight an American 44.

David Fitz Enz pointed out in Eagle of the Sea, Guerriere's condition did not become an issue until after Constitution had defeated her. At his court martial, acres pleaded that Guerriere was rotten and had rot in her masts. He blamed his defeat on the fall of his mizzen mast. The Court exonerated Dacres, concluding Guerriere's mizzen mast had fallen because of its rotten condition, until then Guerriere had been giving a good account of herself until then. CS Forrester points out, before Guerriere's mizzen mast fell, she had taken significant damage from Constitution but had inflicted no damage on Constitution.

I surmise that Dacres went into his court martial thinking he had disgraced the Royal Navy and was about to be dismissed. He was fabricating an excuse to avoid that. At the same time the Royal Navy was embarrassed by the Constitution and was in denial that Constitution had beaten Guerriere by being a superior ship. So they spun the tale that Guerriere was in no condition to fight and had lost due to ill fortune.

In any event, there is contemporary evidence that Guerriere was not in condition too poor to fight. If she was, then the court martial did not answer the question: if Guerriere was in so poor condition, why did Dacres seek action with a more powerful ship.

The article by Stephen Budiansky on the victory of the Constitution over the Guerrière during the War of 1812 demonstrates several important misconceptions about the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy as well as British global strategy between 1812 and 1815.

British strategy during the War of 1812 included military, naval, economic, and diplomatic elements aimed at protecting British North America. The conquest of the United States was never a goal. North America was of secondary interest to Britain for the first two years of the war; thereafter, Britain adopted an offensive strategy to secure the boundaries of the Canadas. Overall British strategy proved successful: British North America remained intact, and Britain had the flexibility to maintain its Eurocentric focus, as witnessed by its response to the resurgence of the European war in the spring of 1815. As a result, the United States faced only a portion of British military and naval power during the War of 1812.

The Royal Navy was the most powerful naval force of the time. In 1812, it had 145,000 men and 978 ships, of which about 70 percent were in commission. Despite the decisive victory at Trafalgar in 1805, France continued to challenge Britain’s domination of the seas, which kept the Royal Navy in European waters and prevented it from reinforcing the western Atlantic. The worldwide commitments of the Royal Navy also dissipated its strength and expertise; as a result, it sent many poorly constructed vessels with ill-trained crews to sea. Given these challenges, the sheer weight of the navy could not be employed against the United States. Once Napoleon abdicated, the Royal Navy sent additional ships and personnel to American waters and also began the process of demobilization.

Between 1812 and 1815, there were 26 encounters between individual ships or combinations of vessels from both fleets on the high seas. While much is made of the success of the American super frigates against smaller, less well-armed British vessels, the total number of victories was equally divided between the two navies. British losses represented less than 1 percent of their entire fleet, while the American navy lost 20 pecent of its men-of-war.

Despite several setbacks, the Royal Navy continued to dominate the high seas and had free range over the American coastline through most of the war. It was never, as Mr. Budiansky suggests, checked by the U.S. Navy.

Major John R. Grodzinski
Assistant Professor of History
The Royal Military College of Canada
Kingston, Canada

Stephen Budiansky replies:

Major Grodzinski is of course correct that the loss of a single frigate was insignificant—in material terms—to a force the size of the Royal Navy of 1812. But the psychological impact in Britain was enormous, as a reading of contemporary newspapers, debates in Parliament, and internal Admiralty documents makes abundantly clear. In war, expectations, perceptions, and morale often matter more than material factors, and it is no exaggeration to say that the American naval victories in the opening months of the war struck a powerful blow at British self-regard and assumptions of easy victory against this tiny upstart rival.

This is a theme I explore at much greater length in my recent book "Perilous Fight." Following up on the three initial single-ship victories in 1812, American commerce-raiding in 1813 and 1814—extending right into British home waters—likewise played havoc with British naval plans and strategy. This, too, created a psychological and political sensation in Britain far outstripping any actual material losses inflicted.

As I noted in my article, the war ended in what was at best a stalemate. But, as no less an authority than the editor of the British "Naval Chronicle" observed at the war's end, the nations of the world had "looked on with wonder, and seen the mightiest efforts of Britain, at the era of her greatest power, so easily parried, so completely foiled" by this "infant enemy."

While American attempts to invade Canada were an abysmal failure, so too was the British strategy of attempting to force American capitulation on British terms by blockading American ports and carrying out a series of desultory raids along the Chesapeake. Even after the end of Britain's war with Napoleon in the spring of 1814, the Royal Navy was never able to deliver the knockout blow against America that it kept confidently predicting it could deliver. By the fall of 1814, Britain dropped one after another of its once "nonnegotiable" demands for the terms of a peace treaty ending the war. In the end, Britain was as eager to give up the fight as was America.

I should also mention that Major Grodzinski repeats a popular misconception of British apologists for the past 200 years when he emphasizes the superior size and armament of the so-called American "superfrigates" (itself a propagandistic term invented by British jingoists trying to explain away their three humiliating defeats). In fact, it was the consistently superior accuracy of American gunnery and superior sailing tactics that explained the American successes: in the battle between the United States and the Macedonian, for example, each ship fired about 1,200 rounds; 95 cannonballs struck the British ship's hull to only 5 hitting the American.