SCORPION by the Tail: Schooner Days CML (951)

by C. H. J. Snider

WHAT is believed to be he hull of the U.S.S. Scorpion, which fired the first and last shots in the Battle of Lake Erie, Sept. 10th, 1813, has been recovered in the harbor of Penetanguishene, Ont.

How the Scorpion got from Commodore Perry's victorious fleets and became a British flagship is a strange story, told thus in "In the Wake of the Eighteen-Twelvers" by this writer in 1913.

IN the midnight blackness of the third of September, 1814, four boats with padded rowlocks noiselessly surrounded a schooner lying at anchor in the Detour Passage to the Soo. The long pendant which blew from her masthead, distinguishable in the night against the faint light of the stars, marked her a man-of-war, but no high-triced boarding nettings were up. Her crew were secure in the wilderness. They ha destroyed every enemy ship.

Muffled oars brought the boats within ten yards of the doomed craft ere the sentries' challenge roused the crew, sleeping on deck for comfort. Her great 24-pounder swivel gun roared blindly. Its flash showed two boats on either side and a swarm of Canadian voyageurs, British bluejackets, Royal Newfoundlanders, Glengarry Fencibles, pouring over port and starboard bulwarks.

The surprised defenders fought with desperation back to back. There was so little room to fight that the dead were hurled overboard as they fell, and wounded were only saved from following by being pinned to rail and planking by bayonets.

THE GIANT AND THE GUN

Around the swivel-gun amidships the fight was fiercest. A Negro giant rammed the cannon with a bag of slugs and swung the piece around to to clear the deck at a blast. Flash of a pistol showed him in the very act of pulling the lanyard. With the leap of a mountain cat Alexander Mackintosh, sailing master of the late schooner Nancy, which this vessel had helped destroy, sprang from the rail, whirling his cutlass as he came. The blade made a complete circle, and the gunner's head spun bubbling overside. Mackintosh's leap brought him full tilt against the falling trunk.

"Follow yir heid, mon!" he roared, burled the huge body too, over the bulwarks, into the crimsoned water.

The schooner's commander was cut down, two other officers fell, and her seamen were driven into the hold. They killed one of the boarders by firing through the bulkheads, but fearing to be bullet-riddled they surrendered.

The vessel was the Tigress, a veteran of the Battle of Lake Erie, commanded by Sailing-master Stephen Champlin, who had been wounded but not fatally. The victors found three dead bodies on board, and four wounded men. How many had been hurled overboard besides the gunner they could not tell. They made twenty prisoners. The Tigress' complement was thirty-one men.

The captor was Lieut. Miller Worsley, R.N., who had been beaten out of the Nancy three weeks before by an American squadron in which the Tigress was one. Four vessels of the squadron had sailed for Detroit, after failing to re-take Mackinac from the British, but rubbing out other British holdings—the schooner Persevarance at "the Soo," the schooner Mink below it, the British post at St. Josephs, and, lastly, the Nancy, upon which the Mackinac garrison was dependent for daily bread. Flour was now $60 a barrel there, and little to be had at any price. It looked black, for Britain.

To starve Mackinac out this Tigress and her still more destructive consort Scorpion, had been left to blockade the Nottawasaga River, to which supplies came up from the York mills. The cargo of the Nancy had been teamed and portaged from Toronto.

Lieut. Worsley had lost his vessel, but he never lost hope. He eluded the blockade, supplied the Mackinac garrison, and now turned to square accounts.

SQUARING THE YARDS

"Last night," said he to his scout friend Lieutenant Robert Livingstone, "there was not a masthead left to fly the British flag on the Upper Lakes. This morning we are as we were before the Nancy was lost. Surely we can square the yards completely with one more pull!"

"Any man who lives after taking a tigress by the tail might pick up a scorpion by the same handle—but don't be in too great haste to see the good flag flying," said Livingstone, with a glance aloft. The American pendant was still streaming from the Tigress' truck.

It was left there. The other schooner was sure to come back to her consort. In fact Livingstone, in a scouting canoe, discovered her, miles miles off among the islands, slowly beating back in the almost calm. In haste the four boats, strongly manned, were started off for Mackinac with the wounded and prisoners. All day long the Tigress' pendant continued to wave a fatal welcome in the faint air, while her anchor gripped the bottom.

The consort could not have heard the firing, for when she did come in sight at sunset she appeared indifferent. She anchored two miles away when the wind failed utterly, without any attempt at exchanging flag signals or firing a gun. Both vessels had been prowling for a convoy of fur canoes with a $20,000 freight, instead of maintaining their blockade, and did not wish to attract attention. She left her colors flying. So did the Tigress.

CAME THE DAWN

With the dawn wind the Tigress stood down towards her under easy sail, the blue jackets and red or green tunics and white crossbelts of her new crew concealed under greatcoats, as all but the helmsman lay flat on deck.

The gunner of the consort was washing down the decks with the anchor watched the sun peeped over the islands.

"Pass the word the Tigress is standing down!" he called to the boatswain.

The lieutenant-commander, in his beauty-sleep below, made no comment.

"Sheer off, or you'll foul us, first thing you know!" hailed the gunner as the Tigress drew near.

But the Tigress, suddenly hauling down her American colors, as suddenly fired her swivel gun point blank into the consort and ran her aboard. The greatcoats on deck had come to life like a boiling cauldron and seethed over the consort's deck in a flood, bayoneting the barefooted swabbers and penning thirty sailors and soldiers, including the commander, under the hatches.

It was much easier than taking the Tigress. Worsley had only one man hurt.

He had three seamen killed and six soldiers, a gunner, and one of their lieutenants wounded in the other battle. Only two or three of the enemy were killed or hurt in taking this prize. Before the sun was his own breadth above the horizon the meteor flag of England was up to greet him at the mastheads of both vessels, where had flown the Stars and Stripes.

This prize was the Scorpion, Lieut. Daniel Turner commander. Champlin had commanded her in the Battle of Lake Erie, when she fired the first gun at the advancing British flagship Detroit, and the last of all at the fugitive little Chippeway, and brought her to.

The Scorpion was a faster vessel than the Tigress, and more heavily armed. She had been lengthened ten feet in building, and carried a 32-pounder and a twelve. She had been particularly obnoxious in the attack on the Nancy and in the looting of St. Joseph's and St. Mary's. Her commander had worked a poor captive drayhorse all day without drink or rest, loading looted goods, and shut him in the stable and set the stable on fire. Many articles of private property, plunder stolen from St. Joseph's and the Soo, were found in the Scorpion's hold, and were restored to their owners.

The Nancy's commander's idea of requital was broad and free. He took these two vessels, which had all but annihilated British power in the Northwest, and forthwith made of them a fresh British fleet. The Tigress became His Majesty's schooner Surprise, in memory of what had befallen her, and the Scorpion was renamed His Majesty's schooner Confiance. The two prizes were sent to the river mouth of the Nottawasaga, with their original crews in their holds as prisoners of war. On their return trip to Mackinac they brought enough supplies for a twelvemonth; and so the Gibraltar of the north was held for Britain as long as the war flags flew.

"RULE BRITTANIA!

American schooners "SCORPION" and "TIGRESS" thrashing into Mackinac, with British colors above the Stars and Stripes, after destroying the "NANCY," Aug. 14, 1814, and being captured by the Nancy's commander, Lieut. Miller Worsley, R.N., Sept. 6, 1814.