The North Atlantic

• Main Author: Knight, Roger
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Yale University Press 2022
• Subjects: Newfoundland; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300246971.003.0012

This chapter studies Britain's new trade protection war against the United States, after the United States declared war on Britain on June 18, 1812. British North Atlantic convoys had to keep trade flowing, build up naval stores in Halifax to maintain warships, while troops had to be transported to defend British North America, and later take part in raids on United States soil. The conflict in the North Atlantic went through several phases during this short, 2.5-year war, in which 78 convoys escorted 2,661 transports and merchantmen from Britain to and from Halifax, St John's, Newfoundland, and Quebec. In the initial six months of the American war, British convoys to the West Indies and North America were very vulnerable to American warships and privateers because the number of available naval escorts were thin, as they were still engaged in the European war. Ultimately, the end of the American war was a stalemate. In the western Atlantic, the Americans had plenty of seamen, but few warships and no merchant ships which could get to sea because of the British blockade. In the northern and eastern Atlantic, the British had plenty of warships available, but were very short of seamen.