Naval officer; born in
Southampton, England, in 1782; was an active, but very cautious officer.
Just after the declaration of war (1812) a Federalist newspaper charged
Captain Porter with cruelly treating an English seaman on board the
Essex who refused to fight against his countrymen, pleading, among other reasons, that if caught he would be hung as a deserter from the royal navy.
This story reached Sir James, then a commander on the West India Station, and he sent by a paroled prisoner a message to
Porter, inviting the
Essex to combat with his vessel (the
Southampton), saying he “would be glad to have a tete-à--tete anywhere between the capes of the
Delaware and the Havana, when he would have the pleasure to break his own [Porter's] sword over his d—d head, and put him down forward in irons.”
The challenge was accepted in more decorous terms, but the tete-à--tete never came off. Sir James was too cautious.
Indeed, his conduct on two or three occasions on
Lake Ontario caused the wits of the day to interpret his extreme caution as a specimen of “heart disease” known to cowards.
He commanded the
British naval forces on
Lake Ontario in 1813-14.
He died off the coast of
Africa in 1819.
