The Mentor: The War of 1812

e," was riddled by the enemy, he transferred himself in a small boat to the "Niagara." This ship broke the British line, and then the battle was won. From a painting by Carlton T. Chapman]

In March, 1915, a British squadron captured the German frigate Dresden in the neutral Chilean waters of the Island of Juan Fernandez. A similar episode occurred in 1814, when the United States ship Essex was cornered and destroyed by two British vessels in the harbor of Valparaiso. The American privateer General Armstrong was also cut out and destroyed by the British under the guns of the Portuguese fort at Fayal in the Azores.

EFFECT ON THE AMERICANS

On the face of it there was not much cause for congratulation in a war in which the United States trebled its national debt and lost 30,000 men and 1,500 merchant ships, without gaining any territory and without securing any promise at the end of the war that the disturbance of neutral trade and the impressment of American seamen