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Lt SEA COAST ECHO__________________________
' Battle - the British & Jackson
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began to drag. Both were being carried out of the gunboat line toward the advancing British. No. 156 was displaced a little over a hundred yards. In addition, the movement hampered the ability of No. 156?s guns to bear fully on the advancing barges. Even if he could, Lt. Jones could not realign his gunboats, the vessels at either end had become grounded. Despite these difficulties, he prepared No. 156 to meet the British barges.
Captain Lockyer quickly seized the opportunity offered by Nos. 156 and 163?s predicament and concentrated a large portion of his attack on Lt. Jones? No. 156. He had his barge lead an attack of fifteen barges against the single gunboat. The gunfire from No. 156 was extremely fierce, and as Captain Lockyer drew up beside No. 156, he was seriously wounded. Most of the other officers aboard with him were either wounded or killed.
The British persevered, however, and, despite the intensive fire from the Americans, British marines, cutting away the boarding nets protecting No. 156, forced their way aboard. Using cutlasses and pistols, the boarders engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the defending Americans. Lt. Jones, leading the defense, fell, seriously wounded. The fighting was fierce but short-lived and the British immediately turned No. 156s guns on the other gunboats.
In the heat of seizing the ship and turning the guns, the British made a grave naval faux pas that generated a great deal of bitterness among the American survivors of the action. The American flag aboard No. 156 was never struck by its captors. This may have been unintentional on the part of the British as most of their officers had been killed or wounded.
Whatever the reason, seeing American flag still in position completely confused the other American gunboats as to the exact situation aboard No. .156. For several precious ? mtn?utes
they did not return the British fire.
The other British barges, using the bulk of the No. 156 as a shield, crowded behind her and then raced on the next gunboat, the captured guns of No. 156 giving them covering fire. Again the action was fierce, and the British paid heavily before capturing this second boat. But now they had the firepower of the two gunboats to add to that of the barges swarming in among the other gunboats.
By noon, the battle, fought stiffly all the way, was over and the British were in possession of the American vessels. Six Americans were dead and 35 wounded; a third of the American force.
The British officially gave their losses as 17 dead and 77 wounded. However, witnesses to the wounded and dead carried back to the British mooring at Ship Island indicated the toll may have been closer to 200 killed and wounded.
The British had paid dearly, but they now had complete control of the waters in the Mississippi Sound and Lake Borgne, and could move unchallenged toward their main objective, the city of New Orleans. They could now (with a great deal of ferrying back and forth) bring the bulk of their Army from the barrier islands to the shores of Lake Borgne and prepare for their major assault on the city.
14	DECEMBER 1814 -27 JANUARY 1815: THE BRITISH AND GENERAL JACKSON
Th6 small naval action had given General Andrew Jackson the alarm and much needed time to gather troops and complete the fortification needed for the defense of New Orleans. He defeated the British in a decisive battle at Chalmette on
7	January 1815.
The British tried a few fol-low-up actions, but finally faced up to the fact that their campaign was lost and retreated to their ships lying in wait outside
the barrier islands of the Mississippi Sound.
And so, in addition to witnessing the battle of the American and British boats from our roost in the limbs of Miss Heidi, we could have also witnessed the naval movement involved in porting the large invading British army as it proceeded toward the assault of New Orleans.
Then a few weeks later, we could have watched their return in bitter defeat to the large ships waiting for them at Ship and Cat Islands. The British sailed away on 27 January 1815.
When I was a young man working in New Orleans, I came across some untended graves in the rear of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. The inscriptions on the stone described the buried as seamen from a naval skirmish that preceded the battle of New Orleans. I wondered about the small naval action seeming so long ago that caused the deaths of the men that were buried there.
THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS AND THE WAR OF 1812
There are many reasons given for the American and British conflict in the War of 1812. However, all of these break down to the fact that, as a new republic, the United States was trying to assert itself as an equal among the nations of the world, and Britain, embarrassed that the nation even existed, was determined to squelch any such idea.
After a series of humiliating affronts at sea, the United States declared war on Britain in 1812, and a series of battles took place over the next two-years, mostly in the northern and eastern states. A peace treaty was signed as part of the Treaty of Ghent on 24 December 1814. But at the time of the signing, the military actions described here that would eventually lead to the Battle of New Orleans had already commenced.
They would proceed to their violent conclusion without either of the participants knowing that the war was over.
The British invasion plan was an ambitious one. Its core was the capture of New Orleans. With this city as a base, the British would then be able to proceed to establish a strong land link with Canada and lay claim to the west?s fur-rich territories.
Thus, the armada that assembled in the Gulf of Mexico in front of Ship and Cat Islands was the forefront of an invasion that was to take permanent possession of not only the city of New Orleans but ultimately all of the western lands of the continent. If they succeeded, the United States would be restrained to having the Mississippi River as its western boundary, stifling the already burgeoning dream of an ocean-to-ocean nation.
So positive were the British of their success that they brought with them civil officials to assume the reigns of government, once they were victorious. Many of the British officers brought their wives as well, anticipating a long and socially gay sojourn in the captured city. Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochran, commanding the British forces, was quoted as saying that he would be eating his Christmas dinner in New Orleans.