James Monroe, of Monroe Doctrine fame, was then American
minister in London. Canning, the British foreign minister,
who heard the news first, wrote an apology on the spot,
and promised to make 'prompt and effectual reparation'
if Berkeley had been wrong. Berkeley was wrong. The Right
of Search did not include the right to search a foreign
man-of-war, though, unlike the modern 'right of search,'
which is confined to cargoes, it did include the right
to search a neutral merchantman on the high seas for any
'national' who was 'wanted.' Canning, however, distinctly
stated that the men's nationality would affect the
consideration of restoring them or not. Monroe now had
a good case. But he made the fatal mistake of writing
officially to Canning before he knew the details, and,
worse still, of diluting his argument with other complaints
which had nothing to do with the affair itself. The result
was a long and involved correspondence, a tardy and
ungracious reparation, and much justifiable resentment
on the American side.

Unfriendliness soon became Hostility after the _Chesapeake_
affair had sharpened the sting of the Orders-in-Council,
which had been issued at the beginning of the same year,
1807. These celebrated Orders simply meant that so long
as Napoleon tried to blockade the British Isles by
enforcing his Berlin Decree, just so long would the
British Navy be employed in blockading him and his allies.
Such decisive action, of course, brought neutral shipping
more than ever under the power of the British Navy, which