Chesapeake-Leopard incident was a hostile encounter between British and United States warships in 1807. The British frigate Leopard fired on the American frigate Chesapeake after the Chesapeake’s captain refused to allow the British to search his ship for deserters from the British Royal Navy . The British then removed four men they claimed were deserters and hanged one of them. The incident provoked a widespread public outcry in the United States against the British policy of impressment of seamen, coupled with demands for war. The practice of impressment involved forcing certain seamen on American ships to serve in the British navy. Lingering resentment about the incident, coupled with further disagreements over maritime trade, led to the War of 1812 (1812-1815).
In the early 1800’s, the British were engaged in a drawn-out military struggle with France. The British destroyed the French navy in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The French, under the emperor Napoleon I , then set about trying to ruin the United Kingdom’s economy by shutting off its export markets in Europe. The British declared a blockade of French ports. Both sides then enacted policies discouraging neutral nations—such as the United States— from trading with the enemy. The policies had disastrous effects on American shipping.
The British Royal Navy was in need of personnel, in part because hundreds of deserters from the British navy had found work on American ships. The British government claimed the right to stop neutral ships at sea, remove sailors of British birth, and impress them into British naval service. The United States objected to this practice. Many native-born Americans were impressed, either mistakenly or intentionally.
In 1806, British warships followed two damaged French ships into the harbor of Norfolk , Virginia, on the Atlantic coast of the southern United States. A number of sailors aboard the British ships deserted their posts as their vessels lingered off the Norfolk shore. They included three Americans—Daniel Martin, John Strachan, and William Ware—who had been impressed earlier, and Jenkin Ratford, a British sailor from London. The men, who were monitored by British authorities, enlisted on the American frigate Chesapeake, which was preparing to sail to the Mediterranean Sea .
On June 22, 1807, the British warship Leopard, captained by Salusbury Humphreys, followed the Chesapeake off the coast of Virginia. Aboard the Chesapeake, Commodore James Barron refused Humphreys’s demand to let members of the Leopard search his ship for deserters. The Leopard then directed a broadside attack (fire from all the guns on one side of a ship) against the Chesapeake. Three American sailors were killed and 18 were wounded. Barron had not prepared for battle and had no choice but to let the British board his vessel. The British removed the four men they claimed were deserters. Barron had apparently been unaware of the true identity of Ratford, who had enlisted under an assumed name. The four later underwent a trial at Halifax in Canada. The Americans were sentenced to prison, and Ratford was hanged.
Anti-British feeling in the United States rose sharply as a result of the incident. U.S. President Thomas Jefferson ordered all British naval vessels out of American harbors, and Congress voted to expand the U.S. Army. The British later apologized for the incident and paid for the damage they caused. The United Kingdom’s King George III , however, insisted that his navy increase its impressment efforts. The United States enacted embargoes and other measures in an effort to convince the British to change their policies on neutral shipping and impressment. These efforts failed, however, to exert pressure on either the British or French to change their shipping policies. Instead, they severely damaged the American export trade. Eventually, continued friction between the Americans and the British led to the War of 1812.
