Capture of USS Surveyor

The capture of USS Surveyor at Gloucester Point, Virginia, on the night of 12 June 1813 was a minor cutting-out operation that nonetheless illustrated the aggressive enterprise of British naval officers operating in the Chesapeake. Lieutenant John Crerie led approximately fifty men in boats from HMS Narcissus against a small American revenue cutter that was serving as an auxiliary naval vessel.

Surveyor was a six-gun cutter with a crew of only fifteen men under Sailing Master William Travis. She was anchored at Gloucester Point, opposite Yorktown on the York River. Crerie’s boats approached in darkness, but Travis’s lookouts detected them and the small crew manned their guns.

The defence was spirited beyond what anyone could have expected from a vessel of Surveyor’s size. Travis and his fifteen men fought from their guns until the British boats were alongside, then fought hand-to-hand on deck until overwhelmed by numbers. Travis himself was wounded but continued fighting until his crew was overpowered. British casualties were 3 killed and 7 wounded — significant losses for a force of fifty attacking fifteen men. American losses were 2 killed and 6 wounded.

Crerie was sufficiently impressed by Travis’s defence that he returned the American’s sword to him with a formal letter of commendation praising his “gallant and desperate” resistance. Captain Robert Barrie of HMS Dragon endorsed the gesture. Travis was later promoted. The episode was typical of the professional courtesies that characterised many naval actions of the period — a tradition in which courage earned respect regardless of the flag under which it was displayed.

Surveyor was commissioned into British service for operations in the Chesapeake. The action, while tactically minor, demonstrated the relentless pressure that British naval forces maintained throughout the bay during 1813 — pressure that would culminate in the Washington campaign the following year.