To James Madison from William Jones, 30 July 1814
From William Jones
July 30. 1814
Dear sir
The northern mail which ought to have arrived yesterday has been received but not a line from Sacketts Harbor.
You will perceive by Captain McDonnoughs letter enclosed that the enemy at the Isle au Noix had not on the 13th. Inst. began to plank their Ship.1 (Col Gardner says she is a 16 Gun Brig).
I almost regret commencing the new Ship at Vergennes—God knows where the money is to come from!2 You will also observe that the account of one of the frames having been received at Isle au Noix was not true.
You will observe in the papers an account of the Capture of the Rattlesnake by the Leander—this I think cannot be true.3 The former sailed from Cape Fear on the 2d May—was to cruise three weeks to the So. of Burmuda thence pass close to the Azores to the Irish Channel and round the West of Ireland to the north and when necessary put into Brest or Lorient for supplies. The Leander has only been between Halifax and Boston Bay. Very Sincerely yours
W Jones
RC (DLC). Docketed by JM. For enclosure, see n. 1.
1. Jones enclosed Master Commandant Thomas Macdonough’s 13 July 1814 letter to him (2 pp.; DNA: RG 45, Letters from Commanders), which stated that the unfinished British ship would reportedly carry “upwards of thirty Guns.” Macdonough added that his Lake Champlain fleet would be overpowered by the British unless the United States built additional ships there soon, and inquired whether he should plan to do so.
2. JM’s papers in the Library of Congress include the following one-page undated memorandum in his hand, dated 1814 in the Index to the James Madison Papers but more likely written sometime in 1827, when JM defended Jones’s record of service in his administration to Henry Lee (see Lee to JM, 2 Feb. and 12 Mar. 1827, and JM to Lee, 16 Feb. 1827, DLC).
Extract of a letter from Mr. Jones, Secretary of the Navy to J.M. July 30. 1814.
‘I almost regret commencing the new Ship at Vergennes—God knows where the money is to come from.’
The Secretary hoping that the Ship Saratoga, which had been launched in thirty five days from the laying of her Keel, and able to sail on the 26 of June in pursuit of the Enemy, would secure the command of the Lake, and despairing of the practicabily [sic] of providing another Ship with the deficient resources of the Department, had relinquished all efforts for the purpose.
Finding this to be the case, and feeling intensely the critical importance of preventing the enemy from gaining a naval supremacy to cooperate with the Land forces in that quarter, I had an interview with the Secretary; and knowing the energy of his character made it a point, that he should make the experiment for reenforcing our little squadron with a new Ship. His patriotism acquiesced, and notwithstanding the despondence manifested in his letter, his indefatigable efforts succeeded in creating the Ship of 20 Guns which shared & perhaps decided the critical victory of Macdonough on the 11th. of Sepr. 1814.
3. The Baltimore Patriot & Evening Advertiser of 29 July 1814 was among numerous newspapers that reported the capture of the U.S. brig Rattlesnake. The news was true: the ship’s commander, Lt. James Renshaw, had written Jones from Halifax on 18 July to inform him of the fact (DNA: RG 45, Letters from Commissioned Officers below the Rank of Commander). Purser Joseph Wilson Jr. also reported the loss of the ship in a 29 July 1814 letter to Jones (ibid.; extract published in the Daily National Intelligencer, 4 Aug. 1814).