"DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP!"
The second year of the war by sea opened brilliantly enough to satisfy
the American people, who were now in a mood to expect too much of their
navy. In February the story of the _Wasp_ and the _Frolic_ was repeated
by two ships of precisely the same class. The American sloop-of-war
_Hornet_ had sailed to South America with the _Constitution_ and was
detached to blockade, in the port of Bahia, the British naval sloop
_Bonne Citoyenne_, which contained treasure to the amount of half a
million pounds in specie. Captain James Lawrence of the _Hornet_ sent in
a challenge to fight, ship against ship, pledging his word that the
_Constitution_ would not interfere, but the British commander, perhaps
mindful of his precious cargo, declined the invitation. Instead of this,
he sensibly sent word to a great seventy-four at Rio de Janeiro, begging
her to come and drive the pestiferous _Hornet_ away.
The British battleship arrived so suddenly that Captain Lawrence was
compelled to dodge and flee in the darkness. By a close shave he gained
the open sea and made off up the coast. For several weeks the _Hornet_
idled to and fro, vainly seeking merchant prizes, and then off the
Demerara River on February 24, 1813, she fell in with the British brig
_Peacock_, that flew the royal ensign. The affair lasted no more than
fifteen minutes. The _Peacock_ was famous for shining brass work,
spotless paint, and the immaculate trimness of a yacht, but her gunnery
had been neglected, for which reason she went to the bottom in six
fathoms of water with shot-holes in her hull and thirty-seven of her
crew put out of action. The sting of the _Hornet_ had been prompt and
fatal. Captain Lawrence had only one man killed and two wounded, and his
ship was as good as ever. Crowding his prisoners on board and being
short of provisions and water, he set sail for a home port and anchored
in New York harbor. He was in time to share with Bainbridge the carnival
of salutes, processions, dinners, addresses of congratulation, votes of
thanks, swords, medals, prize money, promotion--every possible tribute
of an adoring and grateful people.
One of the awards bestowed upon Lawrence was the command of the frigate
_Chesapeake_. Among seamen she was rated an unlucky ship, and Lawrence
was confidently expected to break the spell. Her old crew had left her
after the latest voyage, which met with no success, and other sailors
were reluctant to join her. Privateering had attracted many of them, and
the navy was finding it difficult to recruit the kind of men it desired.
Lawrence was compelled to sign on a scratch lot, some Portuguese, a few
British, and many landlubbers. Given time to shake them together in hard
service at sea, he would have made a smart crew of them no doubt, as
Isaac Hull had done in five weeks with the men of the _Constitution_,
but destiny ordered otherwise.
In the spring of 1813 the harbor of Boston was blockaded by the
thirty-eight-gun British frigate _Shannon_, Captain Philip Vere Broke,
who had been in this ship for seven years. In the opinion of Captain
Mahan, "his was one of those cases where singular merit as an officer
and an attention to duty altogether exceptional had not yet obtained
opportunity for distinction. It would probably be safe to say that no
more thoroughly efficient ship of her class had been seen in the British
navy during the twenty years' war with France."
Captain Broke was justly confident in his own leadership and in the
efficiency of a ship's company, which had retained its identity of
organization through so many years of his personal and energetic
supervision. Indeed, the captain of the British flagship on the American
station wrote: "The _Shannon's_ men were trained and understood gunnery
better than any men I ever saw." Every morning the men were exercised at
training the guns and in the afternoon in the use of the broadsword,
musket, and pike. Twice each week the crew fired at targets with great
guns and musketry and the sailor who hit the bull's eye received a pound
of tobacco. Without warning Captain Broke would order a cask tossed
overboard and then suddenly order some particular gun to sink it. In
brief, the _Shannon_ possessed those qualities which had been notable in
the victorious American frigates and which were lamentably deficient in
the _Chesapeake_.
Lawrence's men were unknown to each other and to their officers, and
they had never been to sea together. The last draft came aboard, in
fact, just as the anchor was weighed and the _Chesapeake_ stood out to
meet her doom. Even most of her officers were new to the ship. They had
no chance whatever to train or handle the rabble between decks. Now
Captain Broke had been anxious to fight this American frigate as
matching the _Shannon_ in size and power. He had already addressed to
Captain Lawrence a challenge whose wording was a model of courtesy but
which was provocative to the last degree. A sailor of Lawrence's heroic
temper was unlikely to avoid such a combat, stimulated as he was by the
unbroken success of his own navy in duels between frigates.
On the first day of June, Captain Broke boldly ran into Boston harbor
and broke out his flag in defiance of the _Chesapeake_ which was riding
at anchor as though waiting to go to sea. Instantly accepting the
invitation, Captain Lawrence hoisted colors, fired a gun, and mustered
his crew. In this ceremonious fashion, as gentlemen were wont to meet
with pistols to dispute some point of honor, did the _Chesapeake_ sail
out to fight the waiting _Shannon_. The news spread fast and wide and
thousands of people, as though they were bound to the theater, hastened
to the heights of Malden, to Nahant, and to the headlands of Salem and
Marblehead, in hopes of witnessing this famous sight. They assumed that
victory was inevitable. Any other surmise was preposterous.
These eager crowds were cheated of the spectacle, however, for the
_Chesapeake_ bore away to the eastward after rounding Boston Light and
dropped hull down until her sails were lost in the summer haze, with the
_Shannon_ in her company as if they steered for some rendezvous. They
were firing when last seen and the wind bore the echo of the guns, faint
and far away. It was most extraordinary that three weeks passed before
the people would believe the tidings of the disaster. A pilot who had
left the _Chesapeake_ at five o'clock in the afternoon reported that he
was still near enough an hour later to see the two ships locked side by
side, that a fearful explosion had happened aboard the _Chesapeake_, and
that through a rift in the battle smoke he had beheld the British flag
flying above the American frigate.
This report was confirmed by a fishing boat from Cape Ann and by the
passengers in a coastwise packet, but the public doubted and still hoped
until the newspapers came from Halifax with an account of the arrival of
the _Chesapeake_ as prize to the _Shannon_ and of the funeral honors
paid to the body of Captain James Lawrence. The tragic defeat came at an
extremely dark moment of the war when almost every expectation had been
disappointed and the future was clouded. Richard Rush, the American
diplomatist, wrote, recalling the event:
I remember--what American does not!--the first rumor of it. I
remember the startling sensation. I remember at first the universal
incredulity. I remember how the post-offices were thronged for
successive days by anxious thousands; how collections of citizens
rode out for miles on the highway, accosting the mail to catch
something by anticipation. At last, when the certainty was known, I
remember the public gloom; funeral orations and badges of mourning
bespoke it. "Don't give up the ship"--the dying words of
Lawrence--were on every tongue.
It was learned that the _Chesapeake_ had followed the _Shannon_ until
five o'clock, when the latter luffed and showed her readiness to begin
fighting. Lawrence was given the choice of position, with a westerly
breeze, but he threw away this advantage, preferring to trust to his
guns with a green crew rather than the complex and delicate business of
maneuvering his ship under sail. He came bowling straight down at the
_Shannon_, luffed in his turn, and engaged her at a distance of fifty
yards. The breeze was strong and the nimble American frigate forged
ahead more rapidly than Lawrence expected, so that presently her
broadside guns had ceased to bear.
While Lawrence was trying to slacken headway and regain the desired
position, the enemy's shot disabled his headsails, and the _Chesapeake_
came up into the wind with canvas all a-flutter. It was a mishap which a
crew of trained seamen might have quickly mended, but the frigate was
taken aback--that is, the breeze drove her stern foremost toward the
_Shannon_ and exposed her to a deadly cannonade which the American
gunners were unable to return. The hope of salvation lay in getting the
ship under way again or in boarding the _Shannon_. It was in this moment
that the battle was won and lost, for every gun of the British broadside
was sweeping the American deck diagonally from stern to bow, while the
marines in the tops of the _Shannon_ picked off the officers and seamen
of the _Chesapeake_, riddling them with musket balls. It was like the
swift blast of a hurricane. Lawrence fell, mortally wounded. Ludlow, his
first lieutenant, was carried below. The second lieutenant was stationed
between decks, and the third forsook his post to assist those who were
carrying Lawrence below to the gun deck. Not an officer remained on the
spar deck and not a living man was left on the quarter deck when the
_Chesapeake_ drifted against the _Shannon_ after four minutes of this
infernal destruction. As the ships collided, Captain Broke dashed
forward and shouted for boarders, leading them across to the American
deck. No more than fifty men followed him and three hundred Yankee
sailors should have been able to wipe the party out, but most of the
_Chesapeake_ crew were below, and, demoralized by lack of discipline and
leadership, they refused to come up and stand the gaff. Brave resistance
was made by the few who remained on deck and a dozen more followed the
second lieutenant, George Budd, as he rushed up to rally a forlorn hope.
It was a desperate encounter while it lasted, and Captain Broke was
slashed by a saber as he led a charge to clear the forecastle. Yet two
minutes sufficed to clear the decks of the _Chesapeake_, and the few
visible survivors were thrown down the hatchways. The guns ceased
firing, and the crew below sent up a message of surrender. The frigates
had drifted apart, leaving Broke and his seamen to fight without
reinforcement, but before they came together again the day was won. This
was the most humiliating phase of the episode, that a handful of British
sailors and marines should have carried an American frigate by boarding.
It must not be inferred that the _Chesapeake_ inflicted no damage
during the fifteen minutes of this famous engagement. Thirty-seven of
the British boarding party were killed or wounded and the American
marines--"leather-necks" then and "devil-dogs" now--fought in accordance
with the spirit of a corps which had won its first laurels in the
Revolution. Such broadsides as the _Chesapeake_ was able to deliver were
accurately placed and inflicted heavy losses. The victory cost the
_Shannon_ eighty-two men killed and wounded, while the American frigate
lost one hundred and forty-seven of her crew, or more than one-third of
her complement. Even in defeat the _Chesapeake_ had punished the enemy
far more severely than the _Constitution_ had been able to do.
Lawrence lay in the cockpit, or hospital, when his men began to swarm
down in confusion and leaderless panic. Still conscious, he was aware
that disaster had overtaken them and he muttered again and again with
his dying breath, "Don't give up the ship. Blow her up." Thus passed to
an honorable fame an American naval officer of great gallantry and
personal charm. Although he brought upon his country a bitter
humiliation, the fact that he died sword in hand, his last thought for
his flag and his service, has atoned for his faults of rashness and
overconfidence. The odds were against him, and ill-luck smashed his
chance of overcoming them. He was no more disgraced than Dacres when he
surrendered the _Guerrière_ to a heavier ship, or than Lambert, dying on
his own deck, when he saw the colors of the _Java_ hauled down.
The _Shannon_ took her prize to Halifax, and when the news came back
that the captain of the _Chesapeake_ lay dead in a British port, the
bronzed sea-dogs of the Salem Marine Society resolved to fetch his body
home in a manner befitting his end. Captain George Crowninshield
obtained permission from the Government to sail with a flag of truce for
Halifax, and he equipped the brig _Henry_ for the sad and solemn
mission. Her crew was picked from among the shipmasters of Salem, some
of them privateering skippers, every man of them a proven deep-water
commander. It was such a crew as never before or since took a vessel out
of an American port. When they returned to Salem with the remains of
Captain Lawrence and Lieutenant Ludlow, the storied old seaport saw
their funeral column pass through the quiet and crowded streets. The
pall-bearers bore names to thrill American hearts today--Hull, Stewart,
Bainbridge, Blakely, Creighton, and Parker, all captains of the navy. A
Salem newspaper described the ceremonies simply and with an unconscious
pathos:
The day was unclouded, as if no incident should be wanting to crown
the mind with melancholy and woe--the wind from the same direction
and the sea presented the same unruffled surface as was exhibited
to our anxious view when on that memorable first day of July we saw
the immortal Lawrence proudly conducting his ship to action.... The
brig _Henry_ containing the precious relics lay at anchor in the
harbor. They were placed in barges and, preceded by a long
procession of boats filled with seamen uniformed in blue jackets
and trousers, with a blue ribbon on their hats bearing the motto of
"Free Trade and Sailors' Rights," were rowed by minute strokes to
the end of India Wharf, where the bearers were ready to receive the
honored dead. From the time the boats left the brig until the
bodies were landed, the United States brig _Rattlesnake_ and the
brig _Henry_ alternately fired minute guns... On arriving at the
meeting-house the coffins were placed in the centre of the church
by the seamen who rowed them ashore and who stood during the
ceremony leaning upon them in an attitude of mourning. The church
was decorated with cypress and evergreen, and the names of Lawrence
and Ludlow appeared in gilded letters on the front of the pulpit.
It was wholly reasonable that the exploit of the _Shannon_ should arouse
fervid enthusiasm in the breast of every Briton. The wounds inflicted
by Hull, Decatur, and Bainbridge still rankled, but they were now
forgotten and the loud British boastings equaled all the tales of Yankee
brag. A member of Parliament declared that the "action which Broke
fought with the _Chesapeake_ was in every respect unexampled. It was
not--and he knew it was a bold assertion which he made--to be surpassed
by any other engagement which graced the naval annals of Great Britain."
Admiral Warren was still in a peevish humor at the hard knocks inflicted
on the Royal Navy when he wrote, in congratulating Captain Broke: "At
this critical moment you could not have restored to the British naval
service the preeminence it has always preserved, or contradicted in a
more forcible manner the foul aspersions and calumnies of a conceited,
boasting enemy than by the brilliant act you have performed. The
relation of such an event restores the history of ancient times and will
do more good to the service than it is possible to conceive."
Captain Broke was made a baronet and received other honors and awards
which he handsomely deserved, but the wound he had suffered at the head
of his boarding party disabled him for further sea duty. If the
influence of the _Constitution_ and the _United States_ was far-reaching
in improving the efficiency of the American navy, it can be said also
that the victory of the _Shannon_ taught the British service the value
of rigorous attention to gunnery and a highly trained and disciplined
personnel.
American chagrin was somewhat softened a few weeks later when two very
small ships, the _Enterprise_ and the _Boxer_, met in a spirited combat
off the harbor of Portland, Maine, like two bantam cocks, and the
Britisher was beaten in short order on September 5, 1813. The
_Enterprise_ had been a Yankee schooner in the war with Tripoli but had
been subsequently altered to a square rig and had received more guns and
men to worry the enemy's privateers. The brig-of-war was a kind of
vessel heartily disliked by seamen and now vanished from blue water. The
immortal Boatswain Chucks of Marryat proclaimed that "they would
certainly damn their inventor to all eternity" and that "their common,
low names, 'Pincher,' 'Thrasher,' 'Boxer,' 'Badger,' and all that sort,
are quite good enough for them."
Commanding the _Enterprise_ was Captain William Burrows, twenty-eight
years old, who had seen only a month of active service in the war.
Captain Samuel Blyth of the _Boxer_ had worked his way up to this
unimportant post after many years of arduous duty in the British navy.
He might have declined a tussel with the _Enterprise_ for his crew
numbered only sixty-six men against a hundred and twenty, but he nailed
his colors to the mainmast and remarked that they would never come down
while there was any life in him.
The day was calm, the breeze fitful, and the little brigs drifted about
each other until they lay within pistol shot. Then both loosed their
broadsides, while the sailors shouted bravely, and both captains fell,
Blyth killed instantly and Burrows mortally hurt but crying out that the
flag must never be struck. There was no danger of this, for the
_Enterprise_ raked the British brig through and through until resistance
was hopeless. Captain Blyth was as good as his word. He did not live to
see his ensign torn down. Great hearts in little ships, these two
captains were buried side by side in a churchyard which overlooks Casco
Bay, and there you may read their epitaphs today.
The grim force of circumstances was beginning to alter the naval policy
of the United States. Notwithstanding the dramatic successes, her flag
was almost banished from the high seas by the close of the year 1813.
The frigates _Constellation_, _United States_, and _Macedonian_ were
hemmed in port by the British blockade; the _Adams_ and the
_Constitution_ were laid up for repairs; and the only formidable ships
of war which roamed at large were the _President_, the _Essex_, and the
_Congress_. The smaller vessels which had managed to slip seaward and
which were of such immense value in destroying British commerce found
that the system of convoying merchantmen in fleets of one hundred or two
hundred sail had left the ocean almost bare of prizes. It was the habit
of these convoys, however, to scatter as they neared their home ports,
every skipper cracking on sail and the devil take the hindmost--a
failing which has survived unto this day, and many a wrathful officer of
an American cruiser or destroyer in the war against Germany could
heartily echo the complaint of Nelson when he was a captain, "behaving
as all convoys that ever I saw did, shamefully ill, and parting company
every day."
This was the reason why American naval vessels and privateers left their
own coasts and dared to rove in the English Channel, as Paul Jones had
done in the _Ranger_ a generation earlier. It was discovered that enemy
merchantmen could be snapped up more easily within sight of their own
shores than thousands of miles away. First to emphasize this fact in the
War of 1812 was the naval brig _Argus_, Captain William H. Allen, which
made a summer crossing and cruised for a month on end in the Irish Sea
and in the chops of the Channel with a gorgeous recompense for her
shameless audacity. England scolded herself red in the face while the
saucy _Argus_ captured twenty-seven ships and took her pick of their
valuable cargoes. Her course could be traced by the blazing hulls that
she left in her wake and this was how the British gun brig _Pelican_
finally caught up with her.
Although the advantage of size and armament was with the _Pelican_, it
was to be expected that the _Argus_ would prove more than a match for
her. The American commander, Captain Allen, had played a distinguished
part in several of the most famous episodes of the navy. As third
lieutenant of the _Chesapeake_, in 1807, he had picked up a live coal in
the cook's galley, held it in his fingers, and so fired the only gun
discharged against the _Leopard_ in that inglorious surprise and
surrender. As first officer of the frigate _United States_ he received
credit for the splendid gunnery which had overwhelmed the _Macedonian_,
and he enjoyed the glory of bringing the prize to port. It was as a
reward of merit that he was given command of the _Argus_. Alas, in this
fight off the coast of Wales he lost both his ship and his life, and
England had scored again. There was no ill-luck this time--nothing to
plead in excuse. The American brig threw away a chance of victory
because her shooting was amazingly bad, and instead of defending the
deck with pistol, pike, and musket, when the boarders came over the bow
the crew lowered the flag.
It was an early morning fight, on August 14, 1813, in which Captain
Allen had his leg shot off within five minutes after the two brigs had
engaged. He refused to be taken below, but loss of blood soon made him
incapable of command, and presently his first lieutenant was stunned by
a grapeshot which grazed his scalp. The ship was well sailed, however,
and gained a position for raking the _Pelican_ in deadly fashion, but
the shot went wild and scarcely any harm was done. The British captain
chose his own range and methodically made a wreck of the _Argus_ in
twenty minutes of smashing fire, working around her at will while not a
gun returned his broadsides. Then he sheered close and was prepared to
finish it on the deck of the _Argus_ when she surrendered with
twenty-three of her crew out of action. The _Pelican_ was so little
punished that only two men were killed. The officer left in command of
the _Argus_ laid this unhappy conclusion to "the superior size and metal
of our opponent, and the fatigue which the crew underwent from a very
rapid succession of prizes." There were those on board who blamed it to
the casks of Oporto wine which had been taken out of the latest prize
and which the sailors had secretly tapped. Honesty is the best policy,
even in dealing with an enemy. The affair of the _Argus_ and the
_Pelican_ was not calculated to inflate Yankee pride.
To balance this, however, came two brilliant actions by small ships. The
new _Peacock_, named for the captured British brig, under Captain Lewis
Warrington, stole past the blockade of New York. Off the Florida coast
on the 29th of April she sighted a convoy and attacked the escort brig
of eighteen guns, the _Epervier_. In this instance the behavior of the
American vessel and her crew was supremely excellent and not a flaw
could be found. They hulled the British brig forty-five times and made a
shambles of her deck and did it with the loss of one man.
Even more sensational was the last cruise of the _Wasp_, Captain
Johnston Blakely, which sailed from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in May
and roamed the English Channel to the dismay of all honest British
merchantmen. The brig-of-war _Reindeer_ endeavored to put an end to her
career but nineteen minutes sufficed to finish an action in which the
_Wasp_ slaughtered half the British crew and thrice repelled boarders.
This was no light task, for as Michael Scott, the British author of _Tom
Cringle's Log_, candidly expressed it:
In the field, or grappling in mortal combat on the blood-slippery
deck of an enemy's vessel, a British soldier or sailor is the
bravest of the brave. No soldier or sailor of any other country,
saving and excepting those damned Yankees, can stand against
them... I don't like Americans. I never did and never shall like
them. I have no wish to eat with them, drink with them, deal with
or consort with them in any way; but let me tell the whole
truth,--_nor fight_ with them, were it not for the laurel to be
acquired by overcoming an enemy so brave, determined, and alert,
and every way so worthy of one's steel as they have always proved.
Refitting in a French port, the dashing Blakely took the _Wasp_ to sea
again and encountered a convoy in charge of a huge, lumbering ship of
the line. Nothing daunted, the _Wasp_ flitted in among the timid
merchant ships and snatched a valuable prize laden with guns and
military stores. Attempting to bag another, she was chased away by the
indignant seventy-four and winged it in search of other quarry until she
sighted four strange sails. Three of them were British war brigs in hot
pursuit of a Yankee privateer, and Johnston Blakely was delighted to
play a hand in the game. He selected his opponent, which happened to be
the _Avon_, and overtook her in the darkness of evening. Before a strong
wind they foamed side by side, while the guns flashed crimson beneath
the shadowy gleam of tall canvas. Thus they ran for an hour and a half,
and then the _Avon_ signaled that she was beaten, with five guns
dismounted, forty-two men dead or wounded, seven feet of water in the
hold, the magazine flooded, and the spars and rigging almost destroyed.
Blakely was about to send a crew aboard when another hostile brig,
forsaking the agile Yankee privateer, came up to help the _Avon_. The
_Wasp_ was perfectly willing to take on this second adversary, but just
then a third British ship loomed through the obscurity, and the ocean
seemed a trifle overpopulated for safety. Blakely ran off before the
wind, compelled to abandon his prize. The _Avon_, however, was so badly
battered that she went to the bottom before the wounded seamen could be
removed from her. Thence the _Wasp_ went to Madeira and was later
reported as spoken near the Cape Verde Islands, but after that she
vanished from blue water, erased by some tragic fate whose mystery was
never solved. To the port of missing ships she carried brave Blakely and
his men after a meteoric career which had swept her from one victory to
another.
Of the frigates, only three saw action during the last two years of the
war, and of these the _President_ and the _Essex_ were compelled to
strike to superior forces of the enemy. The _Constitution_ was lucky
enough to gain the open sea in December, 1814, and fought her farewell
battle with the frigate _Cyane_ and the sloop-of-war _Levant_ on the
20th of February. In this fight Captain Charles Stewart showed himself a
gallant successor to Hull and Bainbridge. Together the two British ships
were stronger than the _Constitution_, but Stewart cleverly hammered the
one and then the other and captured both. Honor was also due the plucky
little _Levant_, which, instead of taking to her heels, stood by to
assist her larger comrade like a terrier at the throat of a wolf. It is
interesting to note that the captains, English and American, had
received word that peace had been declared, but without official
confirmation they preferred to ignore it. The spirit which lent to naval
warfare the spirit of the duel was too strong to let the opportunity
pass.
The _President_ was a victim of a continually increased naval strength
by means of which Great Britain was able to strangle the seafaring trade
and commerce of the United States as the war drew toward its close.
Captain Decatur, who had taken command of this frigate, remarked "the
great apprehension and danger" which New York felt, in common with the
entire seaboard, and the anxiety of the city government that the crew of
the ship should remain for defense of the port. Coastwise navigation was
almost wholly suspended, and thousands of sloops and schooners feared to
undertake voyages to Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Charleston. Instead of
these, canvas-covered wagons struggled over the poor highways in
continuous streams between New England and the Southern coast towns.
This awkward result of the blockade moved the sense of humor of the
Yankee rhymsters who placarded the wagons with such mottoes as "Free
Trade and Oxen's Rights" and parodied _Ye Mariners of England_ with the
lines:
Ye wagoners of Freedom
Whose chargers chew the cud,
Whose wheels have braved a dozen years
The gravel and the mud;
Your glorious hawbucks yoke again
To take another jag,
And scud through the mud
Where the heavy wheels do drag,
Where the wagon creak is long and low
And the jaded oxen lag.
Columbia needs no wooden walls,
No ships where billows swell;
Her march is like a terrapin's,
Her home is in her shell.
To guard her trade and sailor's rights,
In woods she spreads her flag.
Such ribald nonsense, however, was unfair to a navy which had done
magnificently well until smothered and suppressed by sheer weight of
numbers. It was in January, 1815, that Captain Decatur finally sailed
out of New York harbor in the hope of taking the _President_ past the
blockading division which had been driven offshore by a heavy northeast
gale. The British ships were struggling back to their stations when they
spied the Yankee frigate off the southern coast of Long Island. It was a
stern chase, Decatur with a hostile squadron at his heels and unable to
turn and fight because the odds were hopeless. The frigate _Endymion_
was faster than her consorts and, as she came up alone, the _President_
delayed to exchange broadsides before fleeing again with every sail set.
Her speed had been impaired by stranding as she came out past Sandy
Hook, else she might have out-footed the enemy. But soon the _Pomone_
and the _Tenedos_, frigates of the class of the _Shannon_ and the
_Guerrière_, were in the hunt. Decatur was cornered, but his guns were
served until a fifth of the crew were disabled, the ship was crippled,
and a force fourfold greater than his own was closing in to annihilate
him at its leisure. "I deemed it my duty to surrender," said he, and a
noble American frigate, more formidable than the _Constitution_, was
added to the list of the Royal Navy.
[Illustration: _A FRIGATE OF 1812 UNDER SAIL_
The _Constellation_, of which this is a photograph, is somewhat smaller
than the _Constitution_, being rated at 38 guns as against 44 for the
latter. In general appearance, however, and particularly in rig, the two
types are very similar. Although the _Constellation_ did not herself see
action in the War of 1812, she is a good example of the heavily armed
American frigate of that day--and the only one of them still to be seen
at sea under sail within recent years. At the present time the
_Constellation_ lies moored at the pier of the Naval Training Station,
Newport, R.I.
Photograph by E. Müller, Jr., Inc., New York.]