Documentary History of the Naval War of 1812
in the Chesapeake Bay

I propose creating a web site that uses narrative essays and transcriptions of primary sources to document the history of the War of 1812 in the Chesapeake Bay. In particular, I will focus on the interplay between the British depredations of the towns and ports in that region (as reported by the British officers present) and the American naval response (as exemplified by Joshua Barney’s flotilla challenge and detailed by Barney’s correspondence with Secretary of the Navy William Jones).

The following are some of the links I anticipate using:

· a biographical directory of the main participants;
· timelines that cover the entire war and the war in the Chesapeake region;
· interactive maps that detail the overall bay and its estuaries and focus on specific engagements (linking images, explanatory text, and original and transcribed documents);
· links between the British and American accounts that show where perspectives agree and where they differ.

Traditional letterpress documentary editing projects have provided many researchers and students with invaluable compilations of primary source materials that are scattered around the world. Placing such projects on the Web would vastly increase that exposure and thereby increase the possibilities for historical research on more topics. But online editions can offer more than just a wider audience. They can improve on their scholarship by: providing immediate access to maps, timelines, biographies, and bibliographies; cross-linking to specific areas of other documents, and by linking to external sites (for example, military, as opposed to naval sites on the War of 1812).

Currently, there are no sites that provide a scholarly, documentary history of the naval aspects of the War of 1812. This proposed site on the war in the Chesapeake Bay is a small-scale experiment to ascertain the viability of translating a massive documents’ project onto the Web. I would like to use this project as a springboard to adapt the four-volume Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History (Vol. 1 & 2 published; Vol. 3 at the press; Vol.4 expected in 2005) for use on the Naval Historical Center’s web site:

http://www.history.navy.mil/

One as yet unexplored problem that might arise is the possible reluctance of some repositories to grant permission to use on the Web full text transcriptions of documents in their collections. The Naval Historical Center has experienced no problems in obtaining permissions for its letterpress editions, but its print run is a mere 2,400 volumes. It remains to be seen if repositories will grant such permissions for use on the Internet.