264 Naval War of 1812 



guess-work, as he sometimes makes them smaller 

 and sometimes larger than they were according to 

 the official navy lists. Thus, the Constitution, Presi- 

 dent, and United States, each of 1,576, he puts 

 down as of 1,533; tne Wasp, of 450, as of 434; the 

 Hornet, of 480, as of 460; and the Chesapeake, of 

 1,244, as of 1,135 tons. On the other hand the 

 Enterprise, of 165 tons, he states to be of 245; 

 the Argus, of 298, he considers to be of 316, and the 

 Peacock, Frolic, etc., of 509 each, as of 539. He 

 thus certainly adopts different standards of meas- 

 urement, not only for the American as distin- 

 guished from the British vessels, but even among 

 the various American vessels themselves. And 

 there are other difficulties to be encountered; not 

 only were there different ways of casting tonnage 

 from given measurements, but also there were dif- 

 ferent ways of getting what purported to be the 

 same measurement. A ship that, according to the 

 British method of measurement was of a certain 

 length, would, according to the American method, 

 be about 5 per cent longer; and so if two vessels 

 were the same size, the American would have the 

 greatest nominal tonnage. For example, James in 

 his "Naval Occurrences" (p. 467), gives the length 

 of the Cyane's main deck as 118 feet 2 inches. This 

 same Cyane was carefully surveyed and measured, 

 under orders from the United States Navy Depart- 



