Johnston Blakeley was a South Carolinian, and won renown by a remarkable cruise in the Wasp.  The Wasp was a stout and speedy sloop, carrying twenty-two guns and a crew of one hundred and seventy men, and in 1814 she sailed from the United States, and headed for the English Channel, to carry the war into the enemy’s country, after the fashion of Paul Jones.  The Channel, of course, was traversed constantly by English fleets and squadrons and single ships-of-war, and here the Wasp sailed up and down, capturing and destroying merchantmen, and, by the skill and vigilance of her crew and commander, escaping an encounter with any frigate or ship-of-the-line.

But one June morning, while chasing two merchantmen, she sighted the British brig Reindeer, and at once prepared for action.  The Reindeer accepted the challenge, and after some broadsides had been exchanged, the ships fouled and the British boarded.  A desperate struggle followed, in which the English commander was killed.  Then the boarders were driven back, and the Americans boarded in their turn, and in a minute had the Reindeer in their possession.  Her colors were hauled down, she was set afire, and the Wasp continued her cruise.

Late one September afternoon, British ships of war appeared all around her, and selecting one which seemed isolated from the others, Captain Blakeley decided to try to run alongside and sink her after nightfall.  She was the eighteen-gun brig Avon, a bigger ship than the Wasp, but Blakeley ran alongside, discharged his broadsides, and soon had the Avon in a sinking condition.  She struck her flag, but before Blakeley could secure his prize, two other British ships came up and he was forced to flee.

Soon afterwards, he encountered a convoy of ships bearing arms and munitions to Wellington’s army, under the care of a great three-decker.  Blakeley sailed boldly in, and, evading the three-decker’s movements, actually cut out and captured one of the transports and made his escape.  Then she sailed for home, and that was the last ever heard of the Wasp.  She never again appeared, and her fate has never been determined.  But when she sank, if sink she did, there went to the bottom one of the gallantest ships and bravest captains in the American navy.

All of the battles which we have thus far described were fought on salt water, but two great victories were won on inland waters, and of one of these Thomas Macdonough was the hero.  He had entered the navy in 1800, at the age of seventeen, served before Tripoli, and accompanied Decatur on the expedition which burned the Philadelphia.  At the outbreak of the second war with England, he was sent to Lake Champlain, and set about the building of a fleet to repel the expected British invasion from Canada.  The British were also busy at the other end of the lake, and on September 9, 1814, Macdonough sailed his fleet of fourteen boats, ten of which were small gunboats, and the largest of which, the Saratoga, was merely a corvette, into Plattsburg Bay, and anchored there.