 I'm going to talk about two books. The first one is 1812, The Navy's War. This is the paperback version that came out in October, last October. And the second book is The Shining Sea, which came out at the same time. So I'm going to talk about them both. And the thing I'm going to talk about the War of 1812 is why I think the War of 1812 was important. You know, when you mention the words 1812, War of 1812, it's always the forgotten war. It's a war that is not taught anymore, or it's not important. Obviously if it's not taught and it's forgotten, it couldn't be important. But to my mind, the War of 1812 was very important. Important in this country's future and for the history of the world as well. So let me tell you briefly why I think it was important. And then I'm going to go on and talk about the second book, The Shining Sea, and then answer whatever questions that you have. So why do I think the War of 1812 should not be forgotten and was so important? Number one, it changed the whole relationship between England and the United States. At the end of the war, British policy towards America underwent a complete reversal, a complete change. It took a while for American leaders to understand that the British had a different approach to us, but eventually we understood it and took advantage of it. As a consequence, the two great English-speaking countries were never at war again. There was never a war between them again. And a hundred years later, just think of it, in August of 1914, August of 1914, the world went into war. Looking back on it, one of the most senseless wars in world history and one of the most destructive went into it. And the United States would become a vital to the British at that point. And as a matter of fact, in August of 1914, the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, he wanted to stay neutral because he thought the war was insane. He didn't think there was any reason for it. He was opposed to it and he certainly didn't want to get the United States involved in this war. But at the same time, there was enormous sympathy in this country for the British and the French, but particularly the British. Now, if the statesmen of 1814 in England had known what the situation would be in August of 1814, they would have felt that their new policy towards the United States was a success. Who were these statesmen? Well, the principal one was Castle Ray. He was the foreign minister of Great Britain. The prime minister was Liverpool. Castle Ray is very well known to historians and Liverpool much less so. But Liverpool was very important because he was the political leader who could get Castle Ray's ideas enacted. And this was Castle Ray's new approach to the United States. Keep in mind, Castle Ray didn't like the United States, didn't like anything about us, didn't like our politics, didn't like our culture, didn't like our economics. They were capitalist, of course, but a much different form of capitalism than we have. So it wasn't out of some sort of sympathy with us. This was a hard-headed decision on his part to seek a rapprochement with the United States. The basis, the new basis of British policy would be to settle the inevitable disputes with the United States in a peaceful way and do whatever they could to avoid hostilities with the United States. Why did Castle Ray adopt this new policy? Why? Because he thought that if the basic policy of Great Britain towards the United States was not one of friendship, the two countries would be fighting each other for another hundred years. And when you think, and when he thought of all the potential areas of disagreement between these two countries, all the various ways in which they could come to blows, he thought it could go on endlessly. It didn't. When August 1914 came around, there was great sympathy for the British, and we eventually became involved in World War I, and we tipped the balance. If it wasn't for American intervention in World War I, Germany probably would have won. I think they would have won myself. So it was of enormous importance that we had not spent the last hundred years fighting each other. Can you imagine where we would have been in August of 1814 if we had spent the last hundred years fighting each other? Think of all the things we could have fought about. Just the Canadian boundary, 3,000 miles of boundary between these two countries. There was a lot to fight about. Think about having an arms race on the Great Lakes and all the trouble that that could have bought. And that was just one area. Also at the same time, in 1814, 1815, the great Spanish empire that had existed since Columbus' time was collapsing everywhere. The entire hemisphere that Spain controlled was in revolt. Who was going to supplant her? Think of all the mischief, all the conflict that could result from the United States and England competing over this territory. Instead of that, we had something called the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. What happened between 1814 and 1823 to bring about a situation where you had the Monroe Doctrine and had the English supporting it? Well, what happened was that England had changed its policy and Castle Way had won the day because Liverpool supported him and so did the rest of the country. So I could go through, and if we had two or three hours, I would go through the whole 19th century and show you all of the potential disputes between the two countries. And you'd think, boy, this is amazing that war didn't come. And there were plenty of times when hardheads on both sides advocated war, but there's more sober, more serious people, more responsible people sought an agreement instead of war. Of course, the most serious one was the Civil War, and you students of the Civil War know how important Britain was in that war and how critical her decision to stay out, although she never really stayed out, of course, was. So this change in the relationship between the two great English-speaking countries to me began as a result of the War of 1812, and it was enormous importance to our history and to world history. How different the 20th century would have been without the great alliance between these two countries. How different it would be to even today without this great alliance. One of the things that led Cassoway to this conclusion was the strength of the United States. The United States, when we began the War of 1812, was very weak, but by 1814 we were a lot stronger in Cassoway's eyes, in Liverpool's eyes, than we were in 1812. In June of 1812, when we declared war on England, on Great Britain, we had no navy, no army. Our navy was 20 warships, six of them were laid up for repairs, 14 serviceable warships. They had a thousand, probably 600 or so were at sea, the restaurant being repaired or being built. Our army was practically nonexistent. We had 7,000 troops, a country of 8 million had 7,000 troops spread all around the periphery of the United States. And probably just as important, maybe more important, we were deeply divided politically in 1812 between the Federalist Party, who did not want to go to war, and the Republican Party of Jefferson and Madison, who thought it was now time to go to war. The timing was perfect. Timing was perfect because Napoleon was invading Russia at the time, and Madison thought that that would bring England to negotiate grievances that we had with her. Now we showed ourselves during the War of 1812, up to, let's say, the fall of 1813, we had shown ourselves to be inept, in most every respect, inept enough so that the British could fight Napoleon during that time and not have to worry about us over here. So the war in the United States during that time was a holding action. The United States Navy did a lot better than people thought at the beginning of the war, and they were the bright spots, the United States Navy. And in September of 1813, one of our bright spots from Newport, Rhode Island, Perry, won a great victory on Lake Erie, which was usually important in the war in a number of different ways, but not enough to get the British to change their approach in Europe. By 1814, however, Napoleon was gone. Napoleon was abdicated in April of 1814, and the British decided to turn on the United States and settle with us once and for all. And it looked to them like we were so weak that if they took some of their forces that had beaten Napoleon and brought them over here that they could dismember us. It's very controversial among historians whether or not they really meant to dismember us, and I've been studying this for a lot of years, and I've come to the conclusion that they did mean to dismember us if they could do so easily. What they found out in the summer and early fall of 1814 is that they couldn't. They found out that the United States was much stronger than they thought. They thought they were going to succeed when they invaded Washington and burned it in August 24, 1814. They were riding high, but two weeks later they suffered a huge defeat on Lake Champlain, and two days after that they were stopped at Baltimore. And these were huge events, and this changed everything. The British didn't want to get involved in a long war here after they had been involved in a long war with the French. They started fighting the French in January of 1793. So the country was not ready for a long war with the United States. Liverpool and Castle Way recognized this, particularly Liverpool, and that's why the peace treaty came so quickly. And they dropped their whole idea of expanding over here, and the peace treaty was settled on December 24, 1814. And out of that came a new attitude, a new approach to the United States. As far as Castle Way was concerned, we were just too hard to pursue the old policy of dismemberment. They were going to leave the continent in effect to the United States. Very quickly afterwards we won the Battle of New Orleans, January 8th. And the Battle of New Orleans, which is seen as unimportant because it came after the peace treaty, was very important in the sense that it again underscored the fact that the Americans were tough. The British were certainly not going to just work their will over here. So I want to say this in connection with this, that part of the reason that Castle Way and Liverpool felt the United States was too tough to continue with their old policy, too tough, was the United States Navy. The United States Navy came into its own in 1812. You remember there was a debate going on in this country right from the beginning about whether or not we ought to have adequate military forces. Washington and Adams were on one side, Jefferson and I mean Washington and Adams were on one side, Jefferson and Madison were on the other. Washington and Adams said we need a respectable military force and a respectable military force will not be a threat to our constitution. It will be necessary in order to protect our constitution and Jefferson and Madison said if you had a strong military force you're going to use it. So they were not passivists. They were for a minimal defense to defend our borders. Well, that argument over the type and size of forces that we have ended in the war of 1812 with the victory of Washington and Adams. The country decided that we needed an adequate military force and after the war of 1812 there was no dismemberment of our armed forces as was natural after every war. Madison pleaded with the Congress to continue with an adequate military and they supported him. Okay, so this is number one why the war was so important. The change in British attitude and the change in British attitude based on the fact that the United States was a much stronger military entity than it had been when we entered the war. And guess what? The great disputes between the political parties that had gone on all through that war stopped miraculously in February of 1815 when the peace treaty arrived in Washington and news of New Orleans arrived in Washington and somehow or other the country came together. It's a miraculous time in a nation's history. It's sort of like December 7, 1941 ended the debate in the United States about what we ought to do about the war. It was a time like that when there was a complete turnaround and so the great political divisions that had plagued us for so long disappeared. They came back but they disappeared. Okay, now the second reason why I think this war is important is that President Madison conducted it according to the guidelines of the U.S. Constitution. He didn't seek to amend it. Everybody in Europe, lots of people in the United States thought that Madison would have to become a constitutional dictator or just a plain old dictator in order to conduct the war. He didn't. Madison, the father of the Constitution, was determined to fight this struggle under the strict constraints of the Constitution so that he was not going to end our divided government. He was not going to end freedom of the press. He was not going to in effect make the Congress a rubber stamp. He kept all the constitutional constraints on the presidency and he succeeded. This was a huge triumph for our Constitution which was on trial. A lot of people thought a Constitution like this could not really function in a crisis. Madison proved that his Constitution, our Constitution, was equal to any crisis in this form of government could deal with a war and deal with any other crisis that it needed to. This was of enormous importance in our constitutional history. I'm going to end here with this section of the talk by saying these are the reasons and these are sufficient reasons why this war ought to be studied. It was of enormous importance not only to us domestically but to the world in bringing about a new relationship between the great English-speaking countries. Now, the Shining Sea. This is my latest book. The subtitle of it is David Porter. The woman who runs the publishing house changed the title on me. That's why I have to read the book. And the reason she changed the title was because it didn't quite fit on the... It's a perfectly good reason, right? David Porter and the epic voyage of the USS Essex during the War of 1812. So that's what it was. And I wrote this book for a number of reasons but primarily because I love the story. Guess who also loved the story? Well, a lot of people loved the story. One of them was Samuel Elliott Morrison and so I hear. And maybe if he lived another hundred years, he would have written this story. It went over a period of 17 months. It's one of the great epic stories in the age of sale. And it has a wonderful hero at the center of it, Captain David Porter, who's at the same time flawed. He's a hero and he's an anti-hero. The reason you've never heard of him is because of his defects. He had great strengths. But his great strengths could not overcome his defects. So he's a fascinating character if you're a novelist. But he's also a fascinating character if you're an historian. And he's also unknown to you because he did things that other heroes didn't do. He got carried away with himself and then some. And he was doing it in a famous ship, the USS Essex, which was our smallest frigate during the War of 1812, 32 guns. But for my money, certainly one of, if not the best built of all of our frigates. It was built in Salem, Massachusetts, in the county of Essex. And the county of Essex tried very hard to pay for it. They raised money. They could only raise half the amount that was needed. The total amount was around $160,000. They raised about half of that, $80,000. But nonetheless, it was their ship. And it was a wonderful ship. The first captain was Edward Prebble from Portland, Maine. That's where I'm from. And I remember when I first went to Portland, I said, what's all this Prebble stuff? Prebble Street, Prebble Square, what's all this stuff? Well, I soon found out. Anyway, the Essex was built during the quasi-war with France, 1798 to 1800. Prebble was its first captain. Captain Porter did not become its captain until 1811. And he had been waiting for a promotion to captain, number one. And he'd been waiting for a frigate to captain. And he wasn't getting one. One of the reasons he wasn't getting one was that his previous career in the Navy had been a mixed bag. He had been a hero in the quasi-war with France. But during the war with Tripoli, he had been the first officer aboard the Philadelphia when it was captured by Tripoli. And his captain was a man named Bainbridge. And Porter spent 18 months imprisoned in Tripoli. And you can imagine what this did to this guy. He was aggressive. He was ambitious. He was successful. He came from a family of naval officers, a very distinguished family during the Revolutionary War. He had a lot to live up to. And here he was experiencing not only defeat, but 18 months in this prison in Tripoli. So this had an enormous impact on him. And it was obviously affecting his career. But his strengths, the people who knew him, knew what a very fine officer he had. Now, don't forget that during this time, and one of the reasons the United States was so successful, the United States Navy was so successful in 1812, we had a group of officers who were as good as we've ever had in our history. You know, sometimes the Red Sox actually get a group of players who can really do the job. Well, we had them. The officers in the United States Navy who began their careers as midshipmen during the quasi-war with France, lieutenants in the war with Tripoli, 1801, 1805, these were the guys who were captaining the ships who won the famous battles in the War of 1812. And poor to, you have to count him among this group. He was as good as any of them, and the other captains who knew him knew that. So he, like some military people you know, we don't like to talk about this. He was anxious for the war. He was anxious for the war because of his chance to redeem himself for what happened to the Philadelphia and also to move beyond that and acquire the glory which some of the other captains were achieving in that war. So he was very ambitious. All right, he gets his chance when President Madison in August of 1812 decides that, well the United States Navy maybe can be useful in this war. Up to this point, from June of 1812 and long before that, but June of 1812 until August, Madison thought the United States Navy was of no consequence. He really had no strategy for the Navy during the war. He wanted to rely on privateers. And in fact, privateers were an important part of the war. Five and 126 of them set out. And that part of Madison's strategy worked but the Navy, he had no faith, no confidence in. Well, what changed his mind was in August when the USS Constitution beat the guerrilla, he was in political trouble. He was in political trouble because on August 15th he had lost a battle, a land battle at Detroit and this was going to kill him politically. And just a few days later you had the battle between the Constitution and the guerrilla and the Constitution won in a half an hour and this was not supposed to happen. This was a huge event in England but it was also a huge event here. Just two ships but in a battle that had huge political consequences, it saved Madison's election. He thought so and I think so. Of course you can never prove that. So in September the Navy had orders and Porter was to be part of a three-ship squadron to sail to the South Atlantic around St. Helena and attack British commerce. The head of this squadron was Bainbridge in the Constitution along with James Lawrence and the two of them were in Boston and Porter in September was in the Chesapeake, I mean in the Delaware River. So Bainbridge issued orders for them to meet up and I'm going to make a long story short, they never did meet up in the Atlantic. Bainbridge and Lawrence got involved in successful battles before they ever were able to meet up and Porter was left on his own around the area of St. Catherine's Island in the South Atlantic and he had to decide what he was going to do and you can imagine a guy like this, his mind was just racing about where can I go to achieve the great things that I want to achieve. I don't have the ship I really want, it's too small, he didn't like the type of guns that were on it but anyway he decides to go into the Pacific and there was a wonderful Coast Guidesman who asked me this question the other day when I was given a talk and he said, you mean he went into the Pacific without orders and that's exactly what he did do. He made excuses for what he was doing but nonetheless he went into the Pacific, he rounded the horn with the Essex, went and got into the Pacific and it's a little ridiculous saying that this was the first American warship in the Pacific considering how long Spain and all the other European powers had been in the Pacific but nonetheless he was the first American warship in the Pacific and the first place he lands is Valparaiso. And he spends a week in Valparaiso getting his ship ready and he's off to the north and he doesn't know quite what he's going to do but while he was in Valparaiso a whaling captain talked with him and told him about the British whaling fleet that was in the area between the west coast of South America and the Galapagos Islands and it wouldn't be nice if you wiped them out. Why did this American whaling captain want to wipe out the British whaling fleet? Well, they were competitors but they were also intermixed with this whaling fleet of the British were regular warships that were attacking our whalers, regular warships disguised as whalers. Porter thought this was great and he accomplished this in a very short period of time. Most of the damage he did was in the Galapagos Islands. He captured 12 British whalers and the rest of them, there were about 24 of them, the rest of them kept in port just got out of there. He wiped out the British whale fishery in that part of the world and it was important because whale oil was of great importance to the British economy right at that time so it was a significant blow to them and of course these warships, I mean these whalers and their oil were worth a pile of money so Porter was always interested in money and so were his men. So all he had to do now was go from the Galapagos back home and collect the money. He had no interest in doing that. Then whatsoever, what was on his mind? Two things. One, he wanted to go to the Polynesian Islands. He wanted to go to the Marquesas Islands. Why? Not for the women, don't get us wrong folks. It had nothing to do with all those Polynesian women there. We were going to take the Essex, 2,500 miles to the Marquesas in order to restore the ship, which it needed restoring and this is what he did. He went to the Marquesas Islands and spent seven weeks there and then you think, okay, he's restored the ship, he's got his prizes and oil and why not go home now? Because he wasn't interested in going home. What was he interested in doing? He was interested in having a fight with a British frigate and doing what the captain of the Constitution had done. Isaac Howell and defeating in a great battle a British warship. And if the British warship had escorts, all the better. He had big, big dreams. So where does he go after seven weeks in the Marquesas? He goes back to Valparaiso, of course, where he's going to wait for the British and of course the British are coming after him. When they finally got word that what was happening, of course, they went in search of him. And the leader, the man who became the leader of the search was a guy named James Hillier who was one of England's best captains. He had been a protégé of Nelson. You didn't become a protégé of Nelson if you weren't very, very good. And he had a distinguished career and so he was on Porter's tail and he would have been absolutely amazed to find out that Porter wasn't running. Porter wanted to be discovered and that's what he was doing in Valparaiso and he figured that at some point he and Hillier would cross paths in Valparaiso and they did. And when they did, there was a great naval battle and the odds were in Hillier's favor. The odds were in Hillier's favor. His own ship was stronger than the Essex and he had with him an escort. So the two of them were stronger and Porter put up a great fight in Valparaiso harbor and he lost. By that time he had only 255 men aboard his ship and aboard the Essex and 155 of them were casualties, either dead, wounded or missing. That's what kind of a bloody, awful fight this was. And at the end of it, Hillier did everything he could to facilitate help for the wounded and he made an agreement with Porter whereby Porter could take one of his ships. Porter had an escort that was with him which he named Essex Junior. This was the best of the ships that he had captured, the Atlantic. He converted her into a small warship and it was an Essex. The Essex Junior stayed out of the actual battle. Anyway, Hillier allowed Porter to put all of the surviving men and return to the United States instead of having to become a prisoner of war. And this was a wonderful thing that Hillier did. He was a great gentleman, he was a great warrior, really a model of what an English officer should be. And so off Porter goes, he comes back around the horn with Essex Junior and he lands off New York. He gets off New York in July of 1814. And of course, what do you think is on his mind? I've fought this battle, I've lost, I've lost all my men. How am I going to be received? And well, guess what? It's a wonderful story of how he gets ashore and every part of this story has a subplot or an interesting sidelight to it. But anyway, to make a long story short, he discovers that he's a great hero. That his exploits, his exploits before Valparaiso and their terrible defeat, his exploits were so admired here. He had done all this damage to the British whaling fleet. Here's this lone frigate captain sailing out, stretching his orders into the Pacific and doing all these things to the British whaling fleet and succeeding. And one of the biggest, the newspapers all over the country were lauding him except for, you might have guessed it, the Salem Gazette where the ship was built, the Essex was built. They didn't think it was so terrific what he did. They didn't think it was so terrific that he lost his ship and lost two-thirds of his crew and they wondered, what the hell were you doing in Valparaiso after all? Anyway, it was pretty stupid being there. Why were you there? And this is against naval policy at the time because we had so few ships the Secretary of the Navy and the President didn't want you getting into a battle with another warship, never mind two warships and getting yourself defeated and we'd lost, even if you won, you'd be laid up for the rest of the war. So it was specifically against the policy of the Navy for him to doing what he was doing. What were you doing there as the Essex, as the Salem Gazette and he didn't have to answer because the rest of the country didn't feel that way and the President himself didn't feel that way. President Madison greeted him as a hero and in the summer of 1814 things did not look good for the United States. The war itself and this was Madison's frame of mind when he was thinking about how he was going to receive Porter. But he remembered back to the Revolutionary War and how bad things were then sometimes and how difficult it was for someone like George Washington and how Washington nonetheless committed himself to fight on and never give up and that was Madison's attitude in the summer of 1814. He was a little guy in Madison but he had a stout heart. He was not going to give up. He was very much in the tradition of Washington and so when he saw what Porter had done put up this great fight, Porter and his men, put up this great fight against overwhelming odds that this was reminiscent of what, let's say it made Madison feel a kinship with how he felt in the summer of 1814 and he gave a marvelous speech to Congress in which he lauded Porter and his men, his gallant men and never once criticized them. So I'm going to end there. Is that okay? All right. So I'll answer any questions you have. Yes, sir. What was the length of time to go around the horn? He did it in record time and well, the length of time to go around the horn varied tremendously depending on the weather but he was around by February of 1813 and that was like 12 weeks from Statt which would be roughly around from the point where you would think of the Falkland Islands around to that same parallel in the Pacific. So roughly that. Yeah. Wasn't there a Porter class destroyer in World War II? I don't know. I'm sure there was. Was there a Porter class destroyer? What? There's a stepson Porter. I think the ship was named for both of them. Yeah. It was very easy. Yeah. You know, I should say about Porter too, oddly enough, he got home in time to participate in the defense of Washington and Baltimore. He wasn't in time for Washington but he was for Baltimore and he played an important role in delaying the British attack on Baltimore and in that way actually had an effect on the war and of course his peers and Madison recognized that. Yes, sir? The other day at an interesting point when Washington assigned the frigates to their captains in the beginning, he made them find the materials to build them. They couldn't order them to have a goal like one of those islands off of Georgia where they get all those beautiful knees and things. Live oak. Yes, live oak. The Essex was full of live oak. He made them find their own materials to build their own doors. Yeah. Well, it was very hard to do. It was hard to come by the live oak in the south but live oak exists all over the country. I was just out in California and it's full of live oak and they have a disease now and they're losing a lot of their oak. I should say that the Essex after the defeat was really beat up after the defeat in Valparaiso. It was taken back. Hillier took it back to England and it remained in the British Navy until 1837 when it was sold off for scrap and legend has it that it was made into a pub. You told us that Porter was imprisoned in North Africa for 18 months. I understand that the slave trade was very large but I don't think Corsairs, maybe as many as a million were taken and sold into slavery. How did Porter escape that? Was he being held as a negotiating chip? Oh, he and the crew of the Philadelphia were worth a lot of money. Okay, so the... He was more than a slave. Exactly. Exactly. And they didn't get... They got some money for him but not as much as they had hoped. Yeah. It's not the odd topic but relevant to something you said is I heard... I think it was Callaghan who proposed that if the Americans hadn't entered World War I at the point in which they did both sides would have fought themselves through staff still and would probably be John's winning as you suggested and there would not have been a World War II because of the both side treaty would have been a whole different format. And who says that? Who says that? I think it was Callaghan who proposed it once. Well, I think he should go back to the library. I can see that by the point because they were very... In 1917, the government they were almost fought for a stance in the end of the year. Well, in the summer of 1918 if perishing and the Americans don't forget the casualties we suffered were God-awful. Over 100,000 in a single battle but the British and the French sure thought that without the Americans they were going to lose and I think they were right. And then the peace was lost but whether the peace would have turned out differently I don't know but you're going to have a high time convincing me that the United States was an absolutely vital in winning the war. And the Germans would not have light terms for the British and the French if they had entered Paris. My point was different. My point is that they would have pulled themselves to a draw much more reasonable terms which would not have created the size. Right. Well, I don't think the British and the French could have withstood the Germans at that point. And when the Americans came in it was still close and it was decided in the summer of 1918 and in my view and the Germans at some point sort of flipped around. They didn't know what effect the American forces would be. They didn't even know if Pershing was going to commit them in the way he did. But when he did and when they did not succeed the way they had hoped they flipped around and they knew that they were going to lose. So the Americans were the key factor. There was not going to be in their mind any let's say stalemate between them and the British and the French. The British and the French were in terrible shape at that point. Didn't the French want to divide our troops up among themselves so that old Pershing stood fast and that's when it was a step forward. Sometimes he did and sometimes he didn't. He did what he thought was necessary depending on the situation in the battlefield. He said one thing and did another sometimes in order to succeed. But primarily his approach was to keep the Americans together. That's right. Were we talking about the war of 1812? But no, we're going to later on how things happen. No different uniforms. Did I bring this up? I think I did. Go ahead. You were going to ask a question? Could the Essex have out sailed the British had they been on the open sea? Yes. They won the battle? Yes, the Essex proved that it was much faster than the British ships. It's a good point because Porter actually tried to get away from Hillier and his escort before the battle and he almost succeeded but he had some bad luck. A wind came up and damaged his ship and he had to put back into Valparaiso and he couldn't get back into the harbor actually. He had to go to the eastern part of the harbor and not a very good spot and he became duck soup for Hillier. David Farragut. You probably never heard of David Farragut, right? David Farragut was a midshipman aboard the Essex during this whole episode and later wrote his reminiscences about this and he thought it was a big mistake on Porter's part to have turned back when the ship was damaged and try to get back into what he thought would be a neutral port in Valparaiso. He should have kept on going. That was Farragut's estimate that Porter made a big strategic tactical error right then. Who's to say? It's one of those questions that you can't answer. So Porter did try to escape. That was another wrinkle on this but I wanted to simplify it. That's my job is to be simple. Not simple-minded. Yes, sir? Just a comment about your book, 1812. I thought that was one of the most fascinating books that I've ever read. Well, of course, yes. What is your name? What an intelligent man. What I was going to say is simply the realization that the Revolutionary War wasn't over until after the War of 1812 and it was really the battle of New Orleans that nailed it down because of the excellence in that battle that occurred under Jackson. But this follow-on with the Essex, you know, the Essex, if you look at the Constitution, sort of in the south Atlantic, it disappeared. And yes, there was a discussion about the various acts and so forth. But it was interesting to see that, again, it was a logistics that made a big dent in the various decision process. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Your first point about this war and what I've thought for a long time is that I think the two countries are going to fight again at some point. The British policy towards North America was unsettled. The whole collapse of the Spanish Empire here was drawing them here. They had to think about the extent of Canada, of how big that entity was going to be. The United States was the most dynamic society in the world. The only thing holding us back was our stupid slavery, if we could ever have gotten rid of slavery. But that was the only thing that was holding us back and they were worried about us. We were rivals. Until they changed their mind about their approach to us, if they continued on and saw us as rivals and wanted to contest our expansion in this hemisphere and they wanted to do more in South America than they were doing, there was going to be a conflict between them. I don't think the 19th century would have been a happy one or as happy as it turned out to be. In some ways, in my mind, the War of 1812 happening when it did was a blessing that made both sides wake up to the fact that they were better off together than they were apart. What was the other question you had? I just want to comment that the fact that the war was so important to Great Britain, it was one of the factories that caused everything to go off again so there were forces from the Atlantic. Oh, sure. Yeah, it was very important to them. There was one ship over there. Right, it was, yeah. Let's see, someone else said... One last question. Yeah, good. Why the Essex Union's injuring a plane? What? Why the Essex Union injuring a plane? Too small, too small. The captain was a guy named Downes who was Porter's right-hand man, a remarkable officer, and I have a lot to say about Downes. One quick thing, yeah, we'll go quickly. Yeah. Why didn't he use his own set of orders just to take a look? Well, because the president decided that he needed him as a hero. And it was really for political reasons. And then he was a factor in the British defeat at Baltimore. And so that was, you know... Great book. Yeah, and so after that they just forgot about it. He, of course, they had a court martial, all arranged and so on, they just forgot about it. So that's the end.