Capture of USS Nautilus

The capture of USS Nautilus on 16 July 1812 was an insignificant event in military terms and a profoundly significant one in strategic terms: it was the first American warship taken during the War of 1812, and it was accomplished without a shot being fired.

Nautilus, a small 12-gun brig-schooner under Lieutenant William Crane, was intercepted off the New Jersey coast by Captain Philip Broke’s blockading squadron — the same squadron that included HMS Shannon, whose encounter with Chesapeake a year later would transform the naval war. Against seven warships, Crane had no option. He surrendered without resistance.

The capture was unremarkable as a military action. But it established a pattern that would repeat itself throughout the war: American warships that encountered the Royal Navy in anything resembling fleet strength were helpless. The frigate victories that followed — Constitution’s triumph over Guerriere a month later, the United States’ capture of Macedonian in October — were all single-ship actions, fought when an American frigate caught a British ship alone and unsupported. Whenever the Americans encountered a British squadron, the result was flight or capture.

Nautilus was recommissioned into the Royal Navy as HMS Emulous and served for the remainder of the war. Her capture, though unremarked in most American accounts, illustrated the mathematical reality that Lambert places at the centre of his analysis: the American navy could win duels; it could not contest the sea.