HMS Confiance (1814) - The Battle of Plattsburgh

The Battle of Plattsburgh

For all intents and purposes, the vessel was still unfinished at the time of the battle, with some workmen, including riggers and carpenters, still laboring on her completion right up to the days before. According to one source, at the time of the battle, the Confiance mounted 37 guns but actually carried 39, with two additional cannon aboard but having not yet been mounted. Admiralty records show that in reality, she mounted only 16 12-pounders when she went into battle.

Her crew was made up of a large number of untrained provincials. A company of the 39th Foot augmented the incomplete crew.

Shortly before 8 am, as the British squadron approached the northern tip of Cumberland Head, Downie ordered the guns of his ship scaled. This was a pre-arranged signal to the British land forces announcing his presence and his intent to engage the American fleet, basically informing them they could begin their offensive operations. At about 9 am, the British squadron rounded Cumberland Head close-hauled in line abreast with the large ships to the north initially in the order Chubb, Linnet, Confiance (flying a 23 foot British Naval White Ensign), Finch, and the gunboats to the south.

Macdonough had cleverly anchored his vessels in a line, each bow to stern, across the entrance of Plattsburgh Bay from Cumberland Head at the north, to Crab Island at the south. This forced Downie either to engage his vessels in the confusing winds of the Bay, or try to sail south around Crab Island, risking being caught between the guns of the American fleet and the guns of U.S.-held Fort Scott on the shore. The wind was light, and Downie was unable to maneuver Confiance across the head of Macdonough's line. As Confiance suffered increasing damage from the American ships, he was forced to drop anchor between 300 and 500 yards from Macdonough's flagship, the corvette USS Saratoga. Downie then proceeded deliberately, securing everything before firing a broadside that killed or wounded one fifth of Saratoga's crew. It was at this point, within a mere fifteen minutes after the opening of the engagement, that Commodore Downie was killed. He had been standing behind one of his vessel's 24-pounders, sighting it, when a round shot fired from the Saratoga struck the muzzle. This in turn had dismounted the 2,000 pound cannon from its carriage and sent it tipping up on end before sprawling on top of the Commanding Officer, crushing him to the deck and killing him instantly. One eyewitness later recorded how Downie appeared when the heavy gun was removed from his body:

His skin was not broken, a black mark about the size of a small plate was the only visible injury. His watch was found flattened, with its hands pointing to the very second at which he received the fatal blow.

Both flagships fought each other to a standstill. It has been surmised that the Confiance had also been equipped with a "shot furnace," a stove where solid iron round shot could be heated red hot before being quickly fired at an enemy vessel with the intention of setting it alight. The British apparently attempted this tactic several times during the engagement as the men on Saratoga had to extinguish on board fires at least three times. After Downie and several of the other officers had also been killed or injured, Confiance's fire became steadily less effective. Still, aboard Saratoga, almost all the starboard-side guns had been dismounted or put out of action.

At this critical moment, Macdonough ordered the bow anchor cut, and he hauled in the kedge anchors he had laid out earlier to spin Saratoga around. This allowed Saratoga to bring its undamaged port battery into action. The British flagship withered in the face of the renewed American fire, with one shot smashing a gaping 7-foot hole in her hull below the waterline. The Confiance began to list badly to starboard. Below decks, crewman scrambled to move weight to the port side in hopes of keeping the damaged planking above water. Likewise, men scurried to move her already amassing wounded to prevent them from being drowned by the rising water. Mr. Cox, the ship's carpenter, was later praised for having "drove in sixteen large shot plugs under the water line" during the action. The vessel's surviving Lieutenant, James Robertson, tried to haul in on the springs to his only remaining anchor that hadn't been shot away to make a similar maneuver, but succeeded only in presenting the vulnerable stern to the American fire. Helpless, and now being raked by fresh broadsides from the American ship, Confiance could only surrender. She was forced to strike after a fierce two hour and five minute gun duel, during most of which she had been engaged with Macdonough's flagship. The last vestige of the British Squadron, the HMS Linnet, itself barely a floating hulk, continued to fire defiantly for an additional fifteen minutes following the flagship's surrender. Macdonough simply hauled in further on his kedge anchors to bring his broadside to bear on the Linnet, which also could only surrender, after being pummeled almost to the point of sinking.

In his after action report to Secretary of the Navy William Jones, Commodore Macdonough estimated that during the battle the Confiance had sustained at least 105 hits from round shot. Daniel Records, assigned by Macdonough as the Confiance's prize master, later reported the extent of the damage to be "250 to 300 cannon shot in the hull and grape without number." Forty-one of her crew were killed, including Downie, and another eighty-three wounded. The loss of their Commanding Officer so early in the battle, arguably the most experienced officer in the British Squadron, had no doubt greatly improved the odds of an American victory. A local area judge, Julius Caesar Hubbel, was allowed to visit the ships of the American and British squadrons immediately following the action and later recounted the grisly scene he witnessed aboard Confiance:

... here was an absolutely horrible sight. The vessel was absolutely torn to pieces; the decks were strewed with mutilated bodies lying in all directions, and everything was covered with blood.