page_title: History of the Royal Navy (after 1707)
section_title: War of 1812
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Royal Navy (after 1707) / A united navy and resurgent France 1707-1815 / War of 1812
caption_attribution_description: English: A depiction of the Royal Navy frigate H.M.S. Shannon leading the captured American frigate U.S.S. Chesapeake into Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia, Canada, in June 1813.
context_page_description: The official history of the Royal Navy reached an important juncture in 1707, when the Act of Union merged the kingdoms of England and the Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain, following a century of personal union between the two countries. This had the effect of merging the Royal Scots Navy into the Royal Navy. The Navy grew considerably during the global struggle with France that had started in 1690 and culminated in the Napoleonic Wars, a time when the practice of fighting under sail was developed to its highest point. The ensuing century of general peace saw Britain virtually uncontested on the seas, and considerable technological development. Sail yielded to steam and cannon supplanted by large shell-firing guns, and ending with the race to construct bigger and better battleships. That race, however, was ultimately a dead end, as aircraft carriers and submarines came to the fore and, after the successes of World War II, the Royal Navy yielded its formerly preeminent place to the United States Navy.
context_section_description: In the years following the battle of Trafalgar there was increasing tension at sea between Britain and the United States. American traders took advantage of their country's neutrality to trade with both the French-controlled parts of Europe, and Britain. Both France and Britain tried to prevent each other's trade, but only the Royal Navy was in a position to enforce a blockade. Another irritant was the suspected presence of British deserters aboard US merchant and naval vessels. Royal Navy ships often attempted to recover these deserters. In one notorious instance in 1807, otherwise known as the Chesapeake–Leopard Affair, HMS Leopard fired on USS Chesapeake causing significant casualties before boarding and seizing suspected British deserters.
  In 1812, while the Napoleonic wars continued, the United States declared war on the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and invaded Canada. Occupied by its struggle with France, British policy was to commit only sufficient forces to the American War of 1812 to prevent American victory. On land, this meant a great reliance on militia and Native American allies. On the water, the Royal Navy kept its large men-of-war in Europe, relying on smaller vessels to counter the weak United States Navy. Some of the action consisted of small-scale engagements on the Great Lakes.
  At sea, the War of 1812 was characterised by single-ship actions between small ships, and disruption of merchant shipping. The Royal Navy struggled to build as many ships as it could, generally sacrificing on the size and armament of vessels, and struggled harder to find adequate personnel, trained or barely trained, to crew them. Many of the men crewing Royal Naval vessels were rated only as landsmen, and many of those rated as seamen were impressed (conscripted), with resultingly poor morale. The US Navy could not begin to equal the Royal Navy in number of vessels, and had concentrated in building a handful of better-designed frigates. These were larger, heavier and better-armed (both in terms of number of guns, and in the range to which the guns could fire) than their British counterparts, and were handled by larger volunteer crews (where the Royal Navy was hindered by a relative shortage of trained seamen, the US Navy was not large enough to make full use of the large number of American merchant seamen put out of work, even before the war, by the Embargo Act). As a result of the American frigates being larger some British ships were defeated and, midway through the war, the Admiralty issued the order not to engage American frigates individually.
  The most important aspect of the Royal Navy's involvement of The war of 1812 was the blockade it enforced on America and American shipping. Twenty ships were on station in 1812 and 135 were in place by the end of the conflict. In March 1813, the Royal Navy punished the Southern states, who were most vocal about annexing British North America, by blockading Charleston, Port Royal, Savannah and New York city was well. However, as additional ships were sent to North America in 1813, the Royal Navy was able to tighten the blockade and extend it, first to the coast south of Narragansett by November 1813 and to the entire American coast on May 31, 1814. In May 1814, following the abdication of Napoleon, and the end of the supply problems with Wellington's army, New England was blockaded. The blockade was so significant to British victory at sea that it confined most merchant and naval vessels to port. The American frigates USS United States and USS Macedonian ended the war blockaded and hulked in New London, Connecticut. USS United States and USS Macedonian attempted to set sail to raid British shipping in the Caribbean, but were forced to turn back when confronted with a British squadron, and by the end of the war, the United States had six frigates and four ships-of-the-line sitting in port.
  The blockade resulted in American exports decreasing from $130 million in 1807 to $7 million in 1814. Most of these were food exports that ironically went to supply their enemies in B
caption: An 1830 representation of HMS Shannon leading the captured American frigate Chesapeake into Halifax, Nova Scotia, in June 1813.
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