Don't Give Up the Ship!: Myths of the War of 1812

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

The War of 1812 has been largely ignored by historians. For the British,
it was a backwater sideshow to the “real” conflict—the Napoleonic
Wars in Europe. For the Americans, it was mostly an embarrassment after
several amateur American armies were destroyed by a handful of British
regulars, Canadian militia, and their Native allies. After two years of
bloodshed and barbarism, the war ended in a draw with both sides
claiming victory.

In Don’t Give Up the Ship! Donald Hickey attempts to cut through
nearly two centuries of historical spin to establish what really
happened. Perhaps to prove that this book is not yet another attempt at
spin, the foreword is written by Donald E. Graves, one of Canada’s
leading War of 1812 experts, and the manuscript was vetted by several
other prominent Canadian historians.

Hickey examines both the micro and the macro view of the war. Using
primary sources and official statistics, he investigates the popular
belief that the Americans were forced to declare war because the Royal
Navy was kidnapping American citizens, and that the British Blockade was
crippling the American economy. He then explores the British/Canadian
view that the Americans were merely land-hungry adventurers who saw
Britain’s struggle with Napoleon as their opportunity to gobble up the
remaining British colonies in America. Hickey also looks at the minor
details that give this conflict its human face. Did General Brock really
have a sweetheart back home? Which side took the first scalp? Why did
“Don’t Give Up the Ship!” become the motto of the U.S. Navy even
though the crew of the USS Chesapeake gave up their ship?

Given the vast scope of the project and the huge morass of
contradictory documents to wade through, this book could have easily
turned into a tedious and confusing shambles. Instead, Hickey presents
the reader with a well-organized and entertaining book. With the 200th
anniversary of the War of 1812 just a few years away, this book is an
invaluable and timely resource.