Chapter 1: | Educating Stockton |
Ashore
With the abdication of Napoleon in the spring of 1814, Great Britain was free to throw her entire strength against the United States. Thus in mid-August, British Admiral Sir George Cockburn sailed up the Chesapeake with twenty warships and a long train of transports with General Robert Ross’ veteran army aboard. He landed Ross’ army on the Patuxent River, threatening both Washington and Baltimore.61 In response, the secretary of the navy summoned Rodgers and his crew, including Stockton, to Baltimore, where the seamen received training as infantry soldiers. This was only the second time in the history of the U.S. Navy that sailors were used as infantry,62 and these “drills” (described by a Baltimore newspaper article in 1814) gave nineteen-year-old Midshipman Stockton his first practical lessons in land warfare fought by sailors: