(SlpW: t. 325: b. 29'; dr. 11'; cpl. 100; a. 2 12-pdrs., 18
32-pdr. car.) After short service carrying coal from Newcastle
upon Tyne, England, to various ports in the British Isles,
Oxford—& collier built in England in 1803—was purchased by the
Royal Navy in May 1804, was converted to a 20-gun sloop of war,
and was renamed Alert. Little is known of the sloop of war's
service in the Royal Navy before the War of 1812. Early in that
conflict, in the summer of 1812, Alert—under the command of
Capt. Thomas L. P. Laugharne, R.N.—was cruising in the North
Atlantic west of the Azores about a third of the way between
that island group and the Delaware capes when one of her
lookouts aloft reported sighting an unidentified vessel. The
stranger, which looked like ". . . an English Indianman,
captured by the Americans," immediately began clapping on more
sail in an apparent effort to flee. Despite the fact that the
escaping ship was flying the British flag, Laugharne, hungry for
a prize, set out in pursuit of his question