His book is a richly-detailed and clearly written account with chapters devoted to Captains James Biddle, John Downes, Charles Ridgely, and Charles Stewart.

He used the extensive collections of naval records in the National Archives, as well as the relevant diplomatic correspondence of American representatives in Chile and Peru. Washington responded to the pleas for protection and from 1817 until the end of the Wars of Independence kept one or more warships stationed on the Pacific coast of South America.Įdward Billingsley, a retired naval officer, has studied the activities of these naval vessels in what appears to have been his doctoral dissertation. Although the Wars of Independence with their blockades and counter-blockades created profitable opportunities for ambitious Yankee traders, both royalists and patriots found good reasons for seizing American ships on occasion. In 1817 a sloop of war assigned to the Pacific was ordered to look after the welfare of American commerce and shipping on the west coast of South America.

Naval vessels were sent on this mission to remote areas of the Atlantic and Pacific. During the years of peace following the War of 1812 the young American Navy took its commerce-protection role very seriously.

War of 1812 navy