When news reached America of the death of these two officers, Captain George Crowninshield from Salem, Massachusetts, called for their bodies to be brought back to the United States. He was given permission to sail with a flag of truce to Halifax, and on August 13 returned to America with the two bodies. At Salem, a further funeral service took place, attended by thousands of people. The coffins were then taken to New York, where some fifty thousand people watched the procession, and where a third funeral service took place, this time in Trinity Church. Lawrence and Ludlow were buried together in Trinity churchyard. In 1847 their remains were removed closer to Broadway, and a new, imposing mausoleum was erected in the Trinity Church graveyard, where it can still be seen.

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The news had been slow to spread through America, but Richard Rush, comptroller of the treasury, later wrote: “I remember…the first rumor of it. I remember the startling sensation. I remember, at first, the universal incredulity. I remember how the post offices were thronged for successive days with anxious thousands; how collections of citizens rode out for miles on the highway, accosting the mail to catch something by anticipation. At last, when the certainty was known, I remember the public gloom; funeral orations, badges of mourning, bespoke it. ‘Don’t give up the ship!’ the dying words of Lawrence…were on every tongue.”

In Britain, there was widespread public celebration at the news, with guns fired, illuminations, bonfires, and numerous speeches. Broke was knighted and showered with other honors and gifts, and in Parliament, John Croker, secretary of the Admiralty, said that “the action, which he fought with Chesapeake, was in every respect unexampled. It was not—and he knew it was a bold assertion which he made—to be surpassed by any engagement which graced the naval annals of Great Britain.”

Chesapeake was brought to England and served in the Royal Navy until 1819, when it was sold for dismantling. Its final fate was described by a vicar of Fareham, near Portsmouth, who heard the story from Joshua Holmes, a builder: “She was sold by Government to Mr. Holmes for £500, who found he had made a capital investment on this occasion, and cleared £1,000 profit. He broke up the vessel, took several tons of copper from her, and disposed of the timbers, which were quite new and sound, of beautiful pitch pine, for building purposes. Much of the wood was employed in building houses in Portsmouth; but a large portion was sold, in 1820, to Mr. John Prior, a miller, of Wickham, for nearly £200. Mr. Prior pulled down his own mill, and constructed a new one with this timber, which he found admirably adapted to this purpose.” 

The watermill in Wickham became known as Chesapeake Mill and operated until 1970. Extensive historical and archaeological research has recently taken place to investigate the mill, which is one of the finest surviving buildings constructed from old ship timbers.

In America, the British blockade only intensified, but the military, worn out by its exertions against Napoleon, never really mounted an effective invasion. Both nations were eager for peace after half-hearted British attempts were made against Washington and Baltimore in the summer of 1814. The treaty ending the war was signed on December 24, but a British army, unaware of this, made a final, ill-fated assault on New Orleans on January 8, 1815. The British also came to grudgingly respect the U.S. Navy.     MHQ

Although smaller than Chesapeake, Shannon had the best-trained crew in the Royal Navy. U.S. Naval Historical Center.

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