i want to reflect for just a moment on who was. who is this person we're recognize missing here tonight an relevant to the white house historical

association and r birthday and this home that we o of white house historical association. been the eve of the 245th birthday of stephen decatur. he was a hero of the war of 1812. one of those little conflicts that we had from time to time with the british and early history and. this one had a torch connected to it. that's a story an event for a catur was then and is still to ay t youngest to attain the rank of captain in the hi amecan navy. at the age of 25 years old. ndromising future. he and his wife susan built use. the architect was the famous english architect benjamin lso built st john's church just across the and he was a hero

the monetary rewards compensation that was cmon in his day for that service. that heroism with those proceeds he bought this entire city block. there were on this evening and house was built as the closest freestanding home to the president of the united states home across lafayette parhe fooe of.llenge to a duel at the another former naval officer on whose personn had sat and this volley of correspondence went back betwthe correspondence between alexander hamilton and aaron burr. and just the week he accepted the challenge that very week in the historic home that you came through this evening, he hosted stephen decatur. his wife, susan, hosted the weddin party for the daughter of president and mrs. monroe. a happy and wonderful occasion knowing that later that week stephen decatur would meet his

fate an early fate, an early death of an american hero. he left here before dawn one morning, went out to maryland, was rtounded by commodore. baron. he was brought back here to die. and the news repts day say that over 10,000 people gathered in front this home to mourn his. it was believed that he would follow either james monroe or, perhaps andrew jackson as president of the united states. it actually took quite a became president of the united states. actually, that was in the middle of the 20th century before that place. but stephen decatur was a hero whose home left to his wife. it then became the location of the of russia, the united and france. it served as a uniform depot during the american civil for union troops and a number of vice presidents and members of congress lived in this house and

evtually became the possession of the national trust. historic preservation, which have a long term agreement with to. operate this as our headquarters anpriveged to do so and in thatat in that partnership with the national trust, we think it's fitting and proper to life, the leadership, the legacy of stephen decaturou annual commemoration of his birthday. and that's why we tonight. and that's a little about who? stephen decatur tonig tn our program we're honored to have the commander of the dently underway with his crew and it is fratto. he has recorded a greeting for us. afternoon. my name is commander matt, commanding officer, u. as dtg 73. i'm sorry they'll be unab be there in person, but i'm honored to say greetings to the white house. historical association. dedication tolive through its

stewardship at our house. and programs le inspiration to us as we strive to experience legacy to alive by to the same values principles that exefythcourse o. these ii could be here in the room with you today. as we hear of naval operations, alfred petty and the knowledgeable panelists regarding the fascinating history of the relationship between the u.s. happy birthday, commodore here bold and t our distinguished panel will be moderated tonight by diana ancy. she's a reporter for the navy times where she reports on leadership personnel policy and oversees operations, among other maritime issues, prior to covering the united states navy, she was the early brief editor for military times, covering every branch of the military. additionally, she was a breaking news reporter fo washington examiner where she covered the military international aas wl ae

policy. our first panelist is ryan ryan mewett, a permanent military professor, assistant professor of history, the united states naval academy, where he teaches american naval history and british history. in 2020, his published work on the royal navy was recognized with the sir julian corbett prize in modern naval history. he is himself a graduate, the naval academy and before selection as a permanent military professor served for 17 years as a submarine officer. our next panelist is dr. abby mullen. dr. mullen is an assistant professor of history at the teaches courses naval,ademy, maritime and digital history foa national looks at th united states attempted to integrate into the meditne community

while fighting against tripoli. her next project is on the life of henry wadsworth, a young naval officer who served. stephen decatur and was one of the very few casualties of the barbary wars. finally, representing his majesty's navy. and i was so worried i was going to say her majesty, but i i got the his majesty in there to■j■dght is rear admiral tim woods, the united kingdom e atche and head of the british defense staff. u.s. admiral woods career has included four tours. tours of the uk ministry of defense. he joined the royal navy in 88 being promoted to captain in 2013 and commodore in may of 2018. eny, his role of defense attache attache was ikih for his inspiration the

leadership and service in king charles the third recently honored him as a cbe commander most excellent order of the british empire. john grant well, thank you everyone for being here today and thank you so much to our panelists for joining us. i'm really excited to kick off our discussion today. so to start, i wanted to get a sense of what these two naval powers were like at this particular juncture in history during the war of 1812, where we have a very young un at war with, great britain. so first, from the american ive, wanted to ask how the us navy modeled i the royal navy in its early stages. and what similarities they aredt the time of the war of 1812. and then also, how did the brits navy and its own influence upon the us navy at the this this time?

yes, that's a really great question. of course, the us navy is found inrom the there is a continental navyurin the revolution, but then it is completely disbanded and it doesn't geteford 1794. so that's really navy we're talking about. here is the one that gets founded in 1794 and we know for a fact the us navy modeelf on royal navy for a lot of reasons. one, because the first secretary of the navy, benjamin's daughter says it out loud. he says, we're going to try to follow the royal navy in so far as we can. of course there are significant differences between the royal navy and the us navy. the fact that there's no aristocracy, that the officer corps is very different. the fact that it's not an imperial navy means very different for the united states. but we can actually seehe us navy models itself, the royal navy, by looking at the way that th tout what navy is supposed to look like and. the most prominent way they do this is in regulations.

so the royal navy has a set of regulatian instructions. if you compare those he us navy produces in theto 1790s and then in the early we that about of the us instructions are exact atesplf things that come from the royal navy. so there's no question that the royal navy ia model for the us navy and. that's not just about regulations. there's also a customary practice is that are folded in from thek, from the royal navy into the us navy. we can see it very c the sources. so i'll stop talking about that and you can talk about one of you can talk about something else. so i'd say the that the royal navyhought about us navy in the run up to the war 1812 and at the beginning oe war, i hate to say, but they didn't think much about us at all because. they they were actually locked in this war for for as they

thought of it, sort of the existence, western liberal civilization against napoleon. they were at this point 20 years, nearly the french revolutionary and napoleonic wars. and that was what had consumed essentially all their attention for the previous 20 years. they had with the battle trafalgar seven years before, established a sort of fairly firm command oth sea over the french. but at that point in 1812, britain was the only nation that stood alone against against. and so they were french in terms of thinking about the americans. i think the british at that point had a sort of racial, cultural thinking that in which they thought, wl the americans, at least they have the right sort of stock to to be good at this navy thing. they they knew that the american navy had, at least in some ways model itself, after them.

there was not reallyin minds thy was the wayhe royal navy, navy. so i think fair to say that they thought of the americans as sort of provincials that they probably had the to be a good but there wasn't a ton of evidence it yet. wi the americans. te i can talk, i think, a little more about this inhe mediterranean during the first barbary war and the west indies, during the quasi war wh in the 1790s. so they thought that the americans had the pti they knew that the americans had very good. but it remain to be hebegiing of whether the united states navy would be able to live up that l or not. i think it's a very good point that if you look back to 1e fosn europe and you had, you knowrt d wellington doing his thingeast you had sort of napoleon getting bogged down around moscow whilst

the royal navy was trying to contain napoleon, france at the time. so you had you always had some leftovers on the western atlantic at that particular point where i would sayt e us navy had modeled on the royal navy was in the fighting spit icwas epitomized so much by stephen decatur, you know, in numerons■[ghou his life, whether was in 1884, which got that apocryphal quote fromal ld nelson of bolton daring or or evee,you kne macedonian. i think that is where you saw the differenctw navies. and that's where whether they were provincial claim is true. i don' know. but certainly the provincial us navy proved that it could outgun. the royal navy, which seven years earlier, trafalgar would have been unheard of, a navy rided itself on its training seemed be losing its way. and if looked at the story of the 19th century, you would have seen a navt much in physical decline, bue

the moral component of fighting had lost its way. and i think that's relearned that from the us navy certainly. through 1812 to 1814, i. excellent. well, given the influence of the royal napo us, what did each of these navies expect? the onset of the war of 1812? going head to head against another, especially since the us only had 16 warships at the time, whereas britain had roughly 500. so what were kind of the expectations going into the war and then how did t change as so in?r continued and went o i thinkrst all, it's important to know that the us navy and the royal navy on a personal knew each other very well because. there are royal navy ships stationed right off coast of the uned states. they make port calls in ari deca conversation and even has e captain of the macedonia, which he later takes as the

captain of tth know each other and they're familiarght e force, the fighting spirit, all of that stuff. bu that. reasonably the royal navy is not expecting much from the us navy and i and i think that's borne out actually aside from these frigate battles that happened at the beginning of the war. it very quickly becomes evident that the royal navy actually is the superior force and is very capable of loiny into port and blockading the entire coastth seaboard. so yeah, i think, theyewach othe royal navy was a little risesuat some of the successes. but then quickly its dominance. yeah, i think i'd like the second that that as i said before i the royal navy thought that the united states navy potential certainly had good ships had officers with with a

strong fightingor had shown. americans the great thing about the war of 1812 is it gives a litybody. everybody can think that they want it. there are three different countries that think they won the war of 1812. the canadians, even a country yet because we have this early stagef about six months when there are three famous frigate victories, a couple of other smaller ship duels that the united wins and. and so the united states the population of the united states is very encouraged by that. and the potential of what the navy could do and that it can stand up against most powerful nation in the world that has fighting this war almost single handedly against the french for 20 years. that does a lot american morale. and for the morale within, the american navy on the british side, it is certainly damaging to the morale of many britnaval. but to the public, more than it to the officers of the navy,

because the officers of the navy know a thing that as americans don't talk about very much, whic is the material mismatch involved. these three duels that the americans won was significant. the the three british ships that were defeated by american frigates were about crews that were about 50% smaller had broadside weight of metal that was about 50% smaller. so while we say that the an american frigate be beat a british frigate, we're really talking about sort of two different types of ship. and so the admiralty and the british officers while found it distasteful to lose to the americans they didn't necessarily view those individual battles as the outcome being particularly unexpected. that doesn't mean that they didn't want to revenge themselves, and they did very much so that that personal desire to sort restore the navy's good name drove many individual naval officers, including brooke, who sort of set the record straight between chesapeake and shannon, 1813.

yeah. i mean numerical superiority one that one won the day in the end, but it was a wake up call and it was it against, as i said, the superior gunnery in 1812 that led hehe macedonian, which would have horrified nelson. the wake up call was there and and in the like y, you know, three natns won a bit like at jutland years victory.ere both sidla excellent. well, as you mentioned, one pivotal event during the war of 1812 was when the u.s. frigate united states, led by commodore decatur, engaged the british frigate macedonia. and in october of 1812. could you speak a little bit about the significance, this event that led to the surrender of the macedon inn, and then t shaped the course of events afterwards for the rest of the war?

i probably have the least to say about .so 'll start it in this t this was very clearly as the admiral a case of superior gunnery, superior training. but as abby mentioned, captain carden and, captain commodore, decatur had dinnerehand. they actually knew each other quite well. carden underestimated the ans underestimated both ns and the 24 pounds guns on united states versus, the 18 pounds gon macedonian would make and. he simply was not prepared for the level of training that the americans brought to the fight. he expected that that years of fighting experience in the royal navy make it a walkover and it and it proved not to be. yeah and i think the other thing that's important to know about this battle is the thing significant about it is the second of the three main frigate

ctories for the united states, the first one being constitution carrier, which was awesome and people thought it was great and it was a redemption for theitedn a general hull essentially surrender fort detroit without a shot and the same day that that news arrived in washington and luckily ne constitution carrier also arrived in washington, which great because the person won victory was captain hull who happened to be th of hull, who had just surrendered for detroit. so it all kind of, you know, made everybody feel a little better about this war that they had just declared. but then macedon in the united states was the second one of those. and what significant about that battle is that garrison had been sunk? it was not recoverable, but madonian able to be brought into the us fleet, which was impressive and unusual. and it took captain decatur about two weeks to refit it so

that could come back to the united states in functional form. but it was a big deal for the united states to be able to say, not only did we beat garry and that was awesome, but we beat a frigate that we now have and that was a really big deal. i think that also was sort of a tipping point for the british public in some ways. one constitu greer that might have been a fluke, but like two. d now they have one of our ships that's. not so oc. hinkhat was really significant. then when the third one happens, a few months lateron, cons again, hms java, then it really feels like the momentum is moving in the direction of the united, so that's significant even though after that point the blockade of thenited states essentially shuts down all future battles except for chesapeake,hannon which rand mentioned, which was a defeat for the states. so from a the battle maybe wasn't so significant, but from a male standpoint it was huge.

yeah i think tactically it was significant altegically becauses the tipping point. that was really when in london enough, you know, we've got to take this seriously. i think we've underestimateeus . you know, that's that's two, two significant losses. now even though and i' gunnery e two shipsre going to the us navy will outgunning macedonian so the should have not been in any doubt but thatwl that enough's enough got to take this seriously henheblockade anw leading to a suit piece in in 1814 crete. now war of 1812 obviously ended two years later with the british keeping,irian territory and the us with various victories at lake erie among. to a what kind of impact did this war have upon? the future of and royal navy's and how did it drive these two nations to become allies?

so i'll take it back to the timing with respect to world events. once again, the british never ed the in the first place. i think the sense of tion at its end in a in aim as a win.oth si they just wanted to get on with things they had been at war for 20 odd years at this point had financed thatith debt financing hugely were wanted to immethe business of demobilizing the and the navy that the of naonwas got defeat of napoleon they akof the war thatt it over with that was already happening in 1814 and it allowed for british and the americans to come to a treaty in 1816 and another one in 1818. that one of the major steps that it did was demilitarize the great lakes, all of thrt

lakes. the british and the americans both agreed they would not keep more one ship of some nominal 100 tons, i think it was andmort the lakes not be fought over, so that each side did not have to pour a tremendous amount of spending into managing navies on and that was first a real first step to to softening the relationship that had been one of tension forast years on the northern border. or, i should say a warming up of relatiso world that wasn't solidified into a meaningful i don't think yet for another hundred years. but but it was a it was a first ep war. yeah, i think we see two the expansion of the us navy into, places that it hadn't been before 1812. enof squadrons into the pacific, a squadron off of the coast of africa to do

anti-slavery. and those were places where there were for the united states to partner the royal navy sometimes. they partnered with them. sometimes they were a little bit antagonistic toward them, just kind of deedey were. they did anti-piracy stuff together, the caribbean, they d anti-slavery stuff as said off the coast of africa in the pacific it was a little more complicated because there were still some imperial jockeying going on in the pacific. and the united states was kind of the way sometimes. so there was a little friction there, but it was definitely the situation where the us navy and the royal navy on a personal level or a ship level or even squadron to squadron level, were able to work in the sae wih other problems, even if wasn' p. se in the 19th century on sort ofig but on an ad hoc or event to event level, there nie cooperation. and then of course, when we get into the 20th century moving into things like world war one

at the washington naval conference, we see a more stronger solidification of those relationships. k 's probably fair to say that the war established ainlprofessional respect between the two services that made them able work alongside each other in the future. yeah, it was definitely that mutual respect. ow, ere wererwards. frictions, you know, the monroe doctrine every time, you know, was, you know, you get out. but and where i think we saw the development of the royal navy in the 19th century, we had the first ironclad ships. we then had steam propulsion. and so in terms of the technological development, the royal navy was leading the way that the us was very closely keeping up. and we saw both navies developing together to. the point when in the early th t battleships, the treadmill which was folled us in keeping in close point where i y that the royal navy did need to

them was in that moral component. psical component was leading the way and even the conceptualnenteading the way, the navy's high, high watermark ae s probably trafalgar. and after that we saw this not not so muchalaise, we certainly saw a decline. and there was one incident that kind of really, really markedth. and that was in 1893, would become slaves all all rather than the sort of mission command of nelson, which was just get out there, place your ship against the enemy. you know what to do you know your place in my plan, everything was so choreographed by signal telegraph at this point that you remove the free fink thinking flair from commanding officers, which is something that the us navy retained, in the spirit of the carter. and so in 1893 and in the mediterranean you have this sor of mediterranean fleet constantly practicing maneuvering and, stationing at and was all very tightly telegraph.hed by stati and it led to the collision

between flagship hms victoria with the the flag officer boarde other ships. because the turning circaswrongl admiral george ton that he'd got his calculations wrong and the ships collided o suddenly the victoria sank, capsized and sank in 16 minutes with a loss of 358 on board. and so that al t seamanship, that free thinking that disappeared from the royal navy, which culminated actually at jutland, where, you know, the armies of the day said, you know, what's wrong with our ships? so we had a lot of lessons to learn. you know, the royal navy whilst the us navy, you know you had that independentpirit, you had that sort of, you know, you've come you've come from at suddenly you are hot on the heels. and then, as we see in the 20th century, the us navy j comes its own and

great. well, i wanted to talk to about how the us and the uk have become such strong partners. so i know that especially in recent years there's been a lot of work together to enhance could speak what it took to get to this point as allies share more about current operations on today between the us and the uk and what we can anticipate to see in the future. i' defer. okay. yeto s if naval operations is all that. okay. so i mean, obviously, you know, throughout the 20th century we'd been operating together and i'll come back toe but delivering combined sea power is is the present and the future is it's been around for about a decade now. we heard about the four lines of efforts. and i'll just sort say a bit about each of those with the vignettes about where it's actually. so interchangeability is a thing today. so we heard about line of effort

once the carrier strik for yeare we had, you know ship, the sullivans actually the air defense commander of the queen elizabeth carrier strike group one of anti-submarine warfare was driven by captain there. hugh got ie row, who is now embedded in the raf staff here. and what a lot of you wouldn't th hugh drove his ship, the taiwan strait, to demonstrate freedom that particular deployment deployment. my staff, aviation officer or rather roger staff of aviation cen thsame deployment in command of hms defender. that ship detached went into the black sea and sailed through the crimea separation scheme with four russian sukhoi 20 sevens in close attention. you know, we we're sending our re to serve in the unitedficers states, you know, two commanding officers from that particularly

deployment in two pretty pykey t the recent deployment of prince of wales in particular to the deck landings of v two ospreys f-35 bravos, you know us pilots coming on board and also one of the largest uncrewed systems based on the gray eagle was and recovered the largest us outside of the us. so all of this teeability doing and as a thing and then as a submariner i'm really passion as about line of effort to and roger and i earlier last year we were up the commissioning of the high energy rickover now rickover has a speciallace our hearts because it was back 1958 we signed the mutual defense agreement that allowed you to trust us with the stewardship of nuclear propulsion technology and what that meant then forhe navy. and then roger and i were also with a number of usicers

past and present in the paint. it all at greenwich last may, where we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the power sales agreement. and i'm a boomerf, amongst other things, and i've served alongside many us submariners. we were at constant point in octo and we were watching the construction of your future. columbia class common missile compartments. but they're exactly the same. thascomm is because they're exactly the as the ones that we'll put into our dreadnought submarines. so all along the way we've got hand-in-glove on everything we do in the literal ops. we had the marines and the us marines only last o in 1500 operating at high altitude wótogether. so everything we do today, we do together, we do it hand in glove. and then i guess in closing, we're seeing that even tonight in red sea, you know, where you've got diamond with the

three us ships protecting merchant shipping and keeping the global commons open. so that is that is theand that . well bringing it back to dictator himself, i wanted to ask how did his leadership influence, the future of both the us and royal and what kind of legacy he leave upon each from then until so as stuart said, unfortunately his personal legacy didn't last too much longer after the war of 1812, killed commodore james barron in 1820 in a duel.a fighter or to bee be certainlyegacis in that i would more than anything andvil r

with david glasgow farragut and even movin the spanish-american war and many other where that sort of spirit of just going straight at themdt inexplicable is risky. ani think that's certainlyolle something that we see in commanding officers goingrwaras. the second that i have have artilar that i think he also demons real moral courage as well as physical courage. sohet was his acts in 1804, 1812, even trying to escape from the british, the us as president you know, everything he was doing, y was a man of flair and an ound him.on to theic even in his death, you know, accepting a jewel, which i understand aight at the time, you know, the us navy was losing too many cepting of i think it was, you.

'yo going to be kicked out if you accept a jewel or something like that or discharged. but you know, even thereou this is not a man who would shrink back from from a duel would turn away from a fight. and that was inspirational to o i ink it was it was that and also mission command i talked about earlier which was justst and, delegating and expecting, you know, your men and now they know that place in the plan and therefore you trust them to get on and do right. great. well, we're going to open up the estions from the audience. so please raise your hand. and we have microphones that oinground so you can use those. ask your question of the panelists. thanks i was going to ask my name's kevin wincing, retivy ct. i was going to ask sort of the decatur how he treated histhe sailors, how theoy navy treated their sailors and so forth, because nelson had a great legacy of of, you know, g ted by his by his crew. so what was the leadership stthe

days? so i think there's something to the ecific to united states versus macedonia, the oil which that captain carden had just recently taken command macedonid the was sort e had been a kind of reign of terror on the ship that the crew really really bad relationship with their previous captain mostly because the evus captain allowed the first lieutenant, the contempora e t executive to to do what he and be an extremely harsh disciplinarian. and he captain carden had n anyf repair that since he had come to co and but that was a thingies n that macedonian did not fight probably to its capabilities. the crew didn't trust their captain anything like the way that united that the men that ed united trusted dictator. and i think that goes back even

further with dictator in particular was well known for being liked by his crews and i think we can see that most the expedition that he led in 1804 to burn the uss ia itripoli harbor. he was a lieutenant the time he was not a captain. ande was given this very important of trust by commodore edward preble. but then he asked for volunteers, join the missionnd pretty much everyone on his ship the constitution volunteered and he had to tellome of them like, sorry, you can't. you can't come. we can only take 80. so i think even back when was very young, 25, he had the respect his men and they were willing to him into something that could have been incredibly dangerous and very much life threatening. so i think from the beginning, he had a really strong relationship with his crew and with the officers in the squadron as well. i mean opposite agree i mean, he was inspiration and as stuart

said at the start, you know on his death in with within hours you had 10,000 people mourning, warning his death. so so that that was the kind of individual we're talking about. wasn't a british versus american thing to there he se time who were not atptains all well-known for having a good tionip who were regarded as tyrants. so it was, i think, actually one of the other frigateaptas of constitution and constitution was java. m dinot have a similarly good relationship with his crew, wasn't just like everybody in the united states was awesome terrible, wasn't like that at all. dictator was a remarkable dictator. it was a relationship yeah, yeah. right next. question anybody in the room? okay, right overere. did tre a time going back your early years, the 19th

century? did youompparent the internal tensions and the political pressures generated by slavery began to ewa at the unity an discipline of the american navy? that's a really great question. yes, not in the very early 19th century, so not in even the era when stephen decatur was serving serving, but definitely by the time we move into the 1830s, 1840 and certainly in the 1850s, we see southernfficers having a hard time serving on the same ship as northern officers. and then, ofrse, everything breaks. in 1861. you have extremely us naval officers who join the confederacy. chief among them being franklin buchanan, naval academy who joined the confederacy, then was the

captain of the uss virginia. so there are certainly were tensions in the navy and out how to manage all of those tensions was a real challenge for the secretary of the navy. and of course then question is still afterwards the confederacy is no longer. what do you do with all those confederate naval officer them wanted to come back and i think rightfully so. the us navyecided no, if you served in the confederate navy, you're not welcome in the us navy, right. we'll take one final question. neas one. perfect. all right. well, i think that that concludes our panel fo today. you so much for being here. and thank you so much to our panelists.