The Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815) tested the mettle of the navies of the combatants; and the British navy proved to be of the hardest kind. It became all powerful on the seas, a fact determined with the outcome of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. There then followed for Franklin, as for most of those in the British navy, tedious years of patrol work. France, on the other hand, for the next ten years, up to the land battle at Waterloo, was all powerful on the European continent. With the outbreak of The War of 1812 Franklin was again to see, sea action.

During The War of 1812, there was much naval activity off the eastern seaboard of America, as individual duels broke out between the ships of the young American navy and those of the British which could be spared from blocking duty off the shores of Europe. Though I have yet to discover if Franklin played a part in these eastern seaboard battles; he was at the Battle of New Orleans.