“Don’t Give Up the Ship”: How a Naval Order Became a Lasting Motto

On this episode of Our American Stories, it’s not carved into marble or codified into law, but you’ll hear it whispered in cockpits and painted on the walls of Navy offices across the world: “Don’t Give Up the Ship.” The phrase didn’t come from a slogan factory. It came from the dying words of Captain James Lawrence during the Battle of Lake Erie, shouted in defiance as his ship slipped beneath the water. Over time, those words stitched themselves into the culture of the United States Navy. Entrepreneur and America’s Cup champion Bill Koch joins us to explain what it means and why it still matters—especially to his family.

Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, the
story from Bill coch. Bill is an entrepreneur with thirteen
hundred employees, and he's well known for winning the world's
top sailing competition, the America's Cup, on his first try.
That might sound wild at first, but it turns out
that Bill has sailing in his blood. Here's Bill to

(00:31):
tell the story of the War of eighteen twelve, the
Navy's motto, don't give up this ship, and how it
all relates to him take it.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Away, Bill well Mania More of eighteen twelve was really
some people call it the Second Revolutionary War because what
the British did here is they made a calculation it
is better to withdraw than to spend all the money
and entered and stuff trying to keep the colonies intact.

(01:05):
And what started the War of eighteen twelve was two things.
The British were insisting by force that any trade going
from one US port to another had to be done
in a British ship, and also they wanted to govern

(01:27):
all the trade routes going to Europe. And then the
British Navy would then halt a merchant ship in the
United States. Merchant ship and take off the very young
good sailors and essentially make them slaves on the British boats.
In fact, I'll tell you something that's very interesting. You

(01:49):
know where the phrase son of a gun came from,
means you know, a illegitimate child, a bastard. And on
the British ships they would name each cannon Henry, George, Alex, Bill, Charles, Harold, etc.
And that's how they know their gun. Okay, I got

(02:11):
to run to George get on it. And when they
would go into a port to get say a work
done on the boat, they had the Marines on board
and they wouldn't let the people. They'd let the British
crew members off, but they wouldn't let the impress people

(02:34):
off the boat because they knew they would run away.
And so occasionally they would bring on prostitutes to satisfy
the needs of the men, and one of the prostitutes
would occasionally get get pregnant and she would have a baby,
and they would say that's the son of a gun,
because they didn't know whose gun it was. A lot

(03:01):
of people don't know this, but the Royal Navy was
the only meritocracy in the military of England. And the
reason that was a meritocracy is because the captains and
the admirals shared the booty with the king, and a
lot of Lord Nelson's communications back and forth with the

(03:23):
King was arguing over how much what the split was,
and so they wanted the very best captains of their worship.
It's economic. And so there's this one guy by the
name of Captain Bloke who worked his way up from
a cabin boy to be captain of the ship. And
he also was sort of like patent, you know. He said,

(03:45):
don't die for your country and let the other son
die for his country. And he said, don't shoot the ship,
shoot the gunners and shoot the officers. Captain Lawrence, who
was the captain of the Chesapeake, was transferred from the

(04:06):
Hornet that sunk the British Peacock in fifteen minutes in
a battle off Guyana, and then he was transferred to
the little sister ship of the Constitution, and that was
the Chesapeake, and that was made out of lumber in
Boston shipyards that were the leftovers for making these other

(04:26):
big ships. And it was a smaller frigate and whereas
the Constitution was much larger. But his ship was about
the same size as the British ships see. And one
of the reasons that the Constitution once because it was
longer and bigger, it had more guns, and it had
thicker walls so the cannonballs would bounced off of it.

(04:48):
But anyway, this guy, Captain Bloke, was sent over to
teach the Americans a lesson because the Americans had won
so many sea battles. Actually that whole war, British only
won three sea battles of the Americans. Well, anyway, one
of the three that were lost was the Battle and

(05:08):
the Chesapeake and the Shannon. Well, the Chesapeake was in
Boston Harbor and Lawrence Captain Lawrence had a real problem
with the crew because they all wanted to shoin the
privateers because they'd get more money, seeing they didn't want
to get the US Navy Navy pay well. Anyway, Captain

(05:31):
Bloke toured around Boston for two weeks trying to get
Lawrence to come out to do battle. But one of
the Royal crew, and he didn't know the ship very well,
he refused. And then finally Captain Bloke wrote a letter
and said, please, would you come out give me battle
and I promise it'll be a gentleman to gentlemen. I'll

(05:52):
have no other ships awaiting, are lying in secret, and
it'll be it'll be an honorable battle. And we both
respect each other, and we both have duty to our
own countries. And so Lawrence, being a macho guy, immediately
set sail, and Bloke then didn't want to fight off

(06:17):
Boston simply because if he lost, there was so much
anti British sentiment in Boston, then his crew would get
fed to the pigs. And that's how they got rid
of bodies in those days, because the pigs would eat
the whole body and all the bones and everything. So
Captain Bloke set off to go up to Newberry Port
or somewhere up there, and then we got to where

(06:39):
he wanted. He slowed down back to his sails and
slowed down. And then Lawrence his crew was so green
and rebellious he couldn't get them to do all the
maneuvers to cross the tee. You know what crossing the
tea is now, if you have one battleship that's going forward,

(07:00):
another battleship wants to cross perpendicular to it, because all
his guns can fire at the ship that's going forward,
and the forward ship can only fire his two guns forward. See,
but he didn't cross the tee. He just tried to
come right alongside. And as he did, Blokes crew just

(07:20):
started shooting the crew of Lawrence's boat, and they even
shot Lawrence. Well anyway, Lawrence was taken down below and
then they shot the helmsman. So the boat went up
head to win, and then went backwards, got in irons
and went backwards. And when the stern of the Chesapeake

(07:40):
hit the vow of the Shannon, then the Shannon boarded
the Chesapeake and captured the boat. And the battle only
lasted ironically fifteen minutes as well. But Captain Lawrence died
after he was carrying down and his dying words, don't
give up the ship which came the mob on the
American Navy. Now, the reason I collect those is because

(08:03):
that was one of my mother's ancestors. So you know,
of course I fell in love with the sea. I
have a collection of all the paintings that were done
of that battle. And because my ancestor lost and the
English won, only English painters did it. And here come

(08:25):
in here, this is the guy that beat my ancestor.
If you see the painting. He's standing on the American flag,
he's got a medal, he's got this the sword that's
here's his sword, and here's his metal. I say, I'm
getting even with the sob because his family ran out

(08:45):
of money and they were selling all this stuff, so
I bought it all. It was actually his ancestors, or
now his ancestors, So I'm getting even with them. Only
in America.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
And a special thanks to Monte Montgomery for the production
on that piece. And a special thanks to Bill Coke
for sharing his story. What a joy to listen to
him share with us in the end why sailing matters
so much to him? Again, he won the America's Cup
on his first try. That's just astonishing. And it turns
out his affinity for sailing finds its roots in what

(09:27):
he called America's second Revolution, the War of eighteen twelve,
The story of Bill Coke, the story of the War
of eighteen twelve, and our Navy's motto, all here on
our American Stories.