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thedrifter
05-19-04, 11:09 AM
Issue Date: May 17, 2004

The Lore of the Corps
Marines helped defend New Orleans against Brits

By Don Burzynski
Special to the Times

The Battle of New Orleans often is remembered as an Army campaign that relied on regular Army, state militias and even pirates brought onto the American side by Gen. Andrew Jackson.
But Marines were part of the action as well, not only in the campaign that began Dec. 28, 1814, but in a lake skirmish and a chaotic nighttime battle in the days leading up to the battle.

Some 35 Marines, along with 1,000 sailors, made up a 45-barge fleet that confronted British ships that managed to flank the main American positions in New Orleans by sailing onto Lake Pontchartrain and a connecting body of water, Lake Borne.

In the battle — which the Americans considered a delaying action while Jackson put his composite army together — three Marines were killed, two wounded and, according to historical accounts, 300 British died.

However, the British broke through and landed on Bayou Bienvenue, sending New Orleans into a panic.

Jackson put the city under martial law and every man who could hold a rifle and had four teeth to bite open a paper cartridge was drafted into the Army. They had no choice, for Jackson vowed he would burn the city before letting it fall to the enemy.

Meanwhile, on the night of Dec. 23, 56 Marines under Lt. Francis de Bellevue joined in an attack on about 1,700 British troops encamped about nine miles from the city. The Marines were part of a larger body that included 800 Tennessee mounted infantry, Creole militia, the 7th U.S. Infantry and a second Tennessee militia in reserve.

In the fighting, the British wrested cannons from the American artillerymen and Marines, but the Marines rallied and, in a counterattack with the 7th, retook the guns. When the fighting ended that night, there were 213 American and 247 British dead.

As the battle lines formed for the city, 58 Marines from the New Orleans Navy Yard took position in the redoubt next to the Mississippi River, where they were commanded by Maj. Daniel Carmick, a veteran of the Quasi War with France. As commander of the Marine detachment assigned to the frigate Constitution, Carmick had led an attack to spike the cannon in the fort at Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo, according to the Navy’s history Web site.

Extending from the Mississippi, along the one-mile-long, 20-foot-wide Rodriguez Canal that led to swamps, stretched the main American line — regular Army and Tennessee militia supported and supplied by Creole volunteers and the pirates of Jean Lafitte.

The British formed 600 yards in front of the American line on the morning of Dec. 28 and advanced, attacking in two columns with artillery and rockets — the latter a new invention used mostly as a scare tactic. The American artillery, loaded with double canister — musket-sized balls — mowed down the British, while the Marines focused their fire on a British column that advanced toward them along the river.

By noon, the British were retreating, but among the American wounded was Carmick, hit in the forehead by a rocket fragment. He died two years later from the wound. Command of the Marines fell to de Bellevue, who held their position with the New Orleans Rifle Company supporting battery No. 1 and with the 7th Infantry on their left.

The British continued to press, day after day, against the American line only to be cut down by the hundreds, until they finally were halted at one of several ditches that ran parallel to the canal and the American line.

In front of the canal, 2,100 British lay dead and wounded. The Americans had 71 casualties. After burying their dead and exchanging prisoners Jan. 18, the British returned to their fleet on the lake.

It was only on Feb. 11 that word reached New York that a peace treaty had been signed in Belgium between the United States and England on Dec. 24 — days before the major bloodletting. The battle had been fought with the war officially over.

Jackson commended the Marines for their valor and, on Feb. 22, 1815 — Washington’s birthday — Congress passed a resolution that “Congress entertain a high sense of the valor and good conduct of Maj. Daniel Carmick, of the officers, noncommissioned officers and Marines under his command, in the defence of the said city, on the late memorable occasion.”

The writer is a War of 1812 Marine re-enactor. He can be reached at dburzynski2003@yahoo.com.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-2777194.php


Ellie