THE _CONSTITUTION_ AND THE _GUERRIÈRE_
THE BRITISH CAPTAIN COULD SCARCELY BELIEVE THAT A YANKEE WOULD BE
BOLD ENOUGH TO ATTACK HIM, AND WAS SURE OF VICTORY IN LESS THAN AN
HOUR, BUT WHEN THE YANKEES HAD BEEN FIRING AT THE _GUERRIÈRE_ FOR
THIRTY MINUTES SHE WAS A DISMANTLED HULK, RAPIDLY SINKING OUT OF
SIGHT--“THE SEA NEVER ROLLED OVER A VESSEL WHOSE FATE SO STARTLED
THE WORLD”--SUNDRY ADMISSIONS HER LOSS EXTORTED FROM THE ENEMY--A
COMPARISON OF THE SHIPS.
Having noted, in the stories of the actions hitherto described,
somewhat of the training, skill, and good-will of the American
seamen in the use of naval weapons, and their masterful knowledge
of seamanship, the time arrives for telling how one of these Yankee
frigates won the first signal victory of the war--the victory of the
_Constitution_ over the _Guerrière_. But it will add to the pleasure
of every American reader if the opinions which the British captain
expressed about his ship, both before and after the battle, be told
before the battle is described.
At the time the _Guerrière_ went into the fight she was commanded by
Captain James Richard Dacres. In the course of the cruise during which
the squadron under Broke chased the _Constitution_, Captain Dacres
dined on board the _Shannon_. While pacing the deck of the _Shannon_,
after dinner, and talking with Broke, Captain Dacres said emphatically
of his ship:
“I say, she looks beautiful; and more, she’d take an antagonist in half
the time the _Shannon_ could.”
On making full allowance for a captain’s disposition to boast unduly
of the qualities of his ship, it is still fair to say that Dacres
considered her at any rate equal to the _Shannon_, although the
_Shannon_ carried more guns.
To strengthen this conclusion it may be added that Captain Dacres sent
a challenge to Captain Rodgers of the _President_, which was a sister
ship to the _Constitution_. Further than that we have the words of
Captain Dacres when he was court-martialled for losing her: “I am so
well aware that the success of my opponent was owing to _fortune_, that
it is my earnest wish, and would be the happiest moment of my life,
to be once more opposed to the _Constitution_ in a frigate of similar
force to the _Guerrière_.”
These assertions must appear to every reader to be a confession of
faith in his ship. Nor was Captain Dacres alone in his belief that she
was a good one.
“The _Guerrière_ is as fine a frigate as we can boast of,” said the St.
Christopher’s _Gazette_ in the same year, while lamenting her loss.
What the English newspapers thought of the _Constitution_ before this
battle with the _Guerrière_ is also worth repeating. The opinions they
expressed were, of course, a repetition of those expressed by British
naval officers, who had visited her at various times, but notably after
she had called at Portsmouth as related in a preceding chapter. They
spoke of her as “a bunch of pine boards,” and as “a fir-built ship with
a bit of striped bunting at her mast-head,” and “their opinions gave
rise to various excellent jokes that were uttered in and out of the
British Parliament at the commencement of the war.”
To these statements must be added the further fact that the boastful
captain of the _Guerrière_ had taken the trouble to notify the
Americans that his ship “was not the _Little Belt_,” referring to the
affair in which the _Little Belt_ was so severely pounded by a Yankee
frigate.
The _Constitution_ sailed from Boston on August 2, 1812. Captain
Hull had reported his escape from the British squadron in a modest
letter to the Navy Department, but he did not wait for further orders
from the Secretary. He conjectured that his narrow escape would so
frighten the timid officials, who had previously warned him in his
official instructions not to voluntarily engage any superior force,
that they would keep him lying inactive in port. In this conjecture
he was entirely right, for a few days after he had sailed, orders to
that effect did arrive. A good naval authority says that “had the
_Constitution_ been captured on the cruise, Hull would have been
hanged or shot for sailing without orders.” It has often been a
matter of consolation to American naval officers in these last years
of the nineteenth century to read of the incapacity and cowardice of
department officials in the early years of it.
Having taken the risk, Captain Hull coasted along to the north as
far as the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. On August 15th five
vessels were seen in a bunch, and on approaching them, four scattered
away, leaving the fifth, a brig, on fire. One was chased and found
to be an English merchantman in the hands of an American prize crew.
Before night the American brig _Adeline_ was overhauled and taken from
the British prize crew found on board of her. On the night of the
18th a third vessel was overhauled after a smart race, and this was
an unfortunate affair, for she proved to be the American privateer
_Decatur_, of fourteen guns, twelve of which had been thrown overboard
in her mad race with the _Constitution_.
From the captain of the _Decatur_ Captain Hull learned that a British
frigate had been seen the day before steering to the southward under
easy sail. On hearing that, Captain Hull crowded the canvas on the
_Constitution_ in chase of her.
There were light westerly breezes during the night and early morning
following, but as the day wore on the breeze canted to the northwest
and freshened until the _Constitution_, with all plain sail set, was
bowling along at little less than the speed she attained in her spurt
away from the fleet off Barnegat. Until after dinner nothing was seen,
but before the 2-o’clock bell was struck the lookout astride the
fore-royal-yard stirred the crew with the prolonged cry of
“Sail-ho!”
It is said that half the men about deck climbed into the rigging in
their eagerness to see the stranger, and within a few minutes their
curiosity was gratified, when it appeared plainly that she was a
large ship steering to the southwest. So, with sheets eased, the
_Constitution_ headed away for her, and by half-past 3 o’clock the
Yankee crew had not only learned that she was a British frigate, but
that her captain was ready to fight, for he set his flag and made no
effort to get away.
The first measure of strength between a British and an American
frigate--the battle between the _Guerrière_ and the _Constitution_--was
at hand.
Over on the _Guerrière_, Captain Dacres, when he first saw the
_Constitution_ boldly bearing down upon him, was doubtful about her
character, and he was good enough to consult in the matter with an
American prisoner whom he had on board--Captain Orne, of the American
brig _Betsey_, captured some time before. The American skipper said it
was a Yankee frigate that was coming. To this Captain Dacres replied
that he thought she came down too boldly for an American, but added:
“The better he behaves the more honor we shall gain by taking him.” A
little later, when the colors had been displayed, he called out to the
crew:
“There is a Yankee frigate; in forty-five minutes she is certainly
ours. Take her in fifteen and I promise you four months’ pay.”
This must have been said at about twenty minutes past 4 o’clock, for
it was at that time that the English officers hoisted flags to every
mast-head and opened fire, “more with a view to try the distance than
for any effectual attack.”
[Illustration: Action between the _Constitution_ and the
_Guerrière_.--I.
_From the painting by Birch, at the Naval Academy, Annapolis._]
At that Captain Hull began to shorten sail on the _Constitution_. The
breeze was steady and fresh, and the water fairly smooth. It was just
the kind of weather he would have chosen for such a battle. All the
light sails, including the top-gallant sails, were furled, the courses
were hauled up to the yards, and the royal-yards were sent down. Then
the top-sails were double-reefed, and as the men came down from the
top-sail-yards the drums beat to quarters. Not many of the crew had
ever been in battle, but “from the smallest boy in the ship to the
oldest seaman not a look of fear was seen.”
The enemy’s first shots fell short, but the second round passed over
the deck of the _Constitution_, though without doing any damage. A
deal of what a yachtsman would call jockeying for position followed.
The enemy squared away before the wind, and wore around until her port
(left side) battery would bear, and then, as the _Constitution_ was
coming down the wind and following close after her, she wore back till
her starboard (right side) battery would bear. As she turned from side
to side she fired on the _Constitution_. The _Constitution_ replied
with an occasional shot from a bow-gun. The enemy was twisting about
to avoid being raked by the _Constitution_, and was firing to cripple
the enemy’s rigging. But all that the twisting amounted to was to keep
the _Guerrière_ at “long balls”--out of range of the shorter guns of
the _Constitution_. To end that kind of work Captain Hull spread his
maintopgallant sail and foresail. Impelled by these, the _Constitution_
began to forge within close range, and the projectiles from the
_Guerrière_ began to come on board. One big shot through the forward
bulwarks knocked no end of splinters across the deck, and some of them
pierced several of a gun’s crew hard by. The men were eager to return
the fire, but Captain Hull paced the quarter-deck, saying nothing. A
rousing cheer from the British crew came over the water as they saw
that they had hulled the _Constitution_. Lieutenant Morris walked aft,
and said to Captain Hull:
“The enemy has opened fire and killed two of our men. Shall we return
it?”
[Illustration: Action between the _Constitution_ and the
_Guerrière_.--II.
_From the painting by Birch, at the Naval Academy, Annapolis._]
“Not yet, sir,” replied Captain Hull. The captain was waiting for a
shorter range. Twice more Lieutenant Morris, to ease the minds of the
impatient gunners, walked aft to ask permission to fire, and each
time received the same answer. The _Guerrière_ had meantime steered
away before the wind; the clipper stem of the Yankee was overreaching
the Englishman’s quarter only a few yards away from it; our guns were
brought to bear, and then stooping till “he split his knee-breeches
from waistband to buckle,” Captain Hull straightened up again to his
full height and shouted in a voice heard all over the ship:
“Now, boys; pour it into them!”
With a yell they obeyed. The broadside was as a single explosion.
The crash of the iron balls through the splintering timbers of the
_Guerrière_ came back as an echo, and as she rolled with the swell the
blood of the dead and wounded gushed from her scuppers. The Yankee
gunners had aimed as if feeling still the claws of the British cat in
their backs.
[Illustration: The _Constitution_ in Close Action with the _Guerrière_.
_From an old wood-cut._]
It was at 6.05 A.M. that this first broadside was fired from the
American ship. For fifteen minutes the roar of the cannon and the
rattle of musketry, and the crash of solid shot that struck home were
incessant. The ships were literally yard-arm to yard-arm, rising and
sinking over the long swells as they drove away before the wind. The
British in mad haste pulled their lanyards and fired the moment their
guns were primed. The Americans loaded in haste, but paused each time
until their gun-sights ranged on hull or spar, and then they fired.
At 6.20 A.M. a big round shot from the _Constitution_ crashed through
the mizzen-mast of the _Guerrière_, and away it went, over the rail to
starboard. Snatching off his hat, Captain Hull waved it above his head.
“Hurrah, my boys! we’ve made a brig of her!” he shouted.
[Illustration: Action between the _Constitution_ and the
_Guerrière_.--III.
_From the painting by Birch, at the Naval Academy, Annapolis._]
They had done more. The mast was still held by its rigging, and,
dragging in the water, it brought the _Guerrière_ around partly across
the wind. The _Constitution_ forged ahead, swung her yards, ported her
helm, and ranging across the enemy’s bows gave her a raking broadside.
The _Guerrière’s_ main-yard came tumbling down, shot through at the
mast. Then, swinging around before the wind, the Yankee brought
her port battery to bear and gave the _Guerrière_ a second raking.
So close together were the two ships now that the _Guerrière’s_
bowsprit came poking over the quarter-deck of the _Constitution_.
A man on the _Constitution_ reached out of a cabin port and placed
his hand on the enemy’s figure-head. The _Guerrière’s_ bowsprit
fouled the _Constitutions_ port mizzen rigging and the bow-chasers
of the _Guerrière_ began to play havoc with the cabin of the
_Constitution_, which was soon on fire from blazing wads.
[Illustration:
NOTE.--The accounts of the manœuvres differ widely, but it is agreed
that the real fighting began at 6 o’clock with the _Constitution_ on
the port quarter of the enemy. When fairly abeam, the mizzen-mast of
the _Guerrière_ fell over to port, according to Allen, and dragged
her nose up to the starboard side of the _Constitution_; when the
_Constitution_ drove clear the two remaining masts of the _Guerrière_
fell. The _Constitution_ after repairs to her rigging, returned at 7
o’clock.
]
As the men on the _Constitution_ ran to extinguish this fire Captain
Dacres on the _Guerrière_ called away boarders, intending to climb
along his bowsprit to reach the _Constitution’s_ quarter-deck, but when
he saw the men on the _Constitution_ ready to receive him he thought
differently about it. The Yankees then thought to board, and brave
Lieutenant Bush, of the marines, jumped on the rail for the honor of
leading the way, and there was shot dead by a British marine. For a
few moments the two ships hung together, sawing up and down, while
the bulk of each crew was massed for boarding and the topmen on each
ship poured a galling fire into the other. Lieutenant Morris was
shot through the body and Master Alwyn was but little less severely
wounded. Captain Hull climbed part way upon the rail, but a big Yankee
seaman dragged him back unceremoniously, and begged him not to do that
unless he first took “off them swabs”--pointing to the captain’s gold
epaulets. A sailor who fired a pistol at one of the enemy and missed
him, threw the pistol with better, though not fatal, aim. He hit
the fellow in the breast. And then the flag at the _Constitution’s_
mizzen-truck was shot down. The enemy cheered, but John Hogan shinned
up and replaced it, although a number of British marines fired at him
steadily all the time he was exposed.
At last the larger spread of canvas on the _Constitution_ pulled her
clear, and then, as she began to swing around into position to open
fire again, both the main and the foremast of the _Guerrière_ that had
been badly cut by the American shot went over the rail with a crash,
and there she lay a helpless hulk.
It was then exactly 6.23 o’clock, or about two hours since the firing
of the first gun from the _Guerrière_. But from the time that the
_Constitution_ fired her first broadside, it was less than thirty
minutes.
[Illustration: Action between the _Constitution_ and the
_Guerrière_.--IV.
_From the painting by Birch, at the Naval Academy, Annapolis._]
Veering off for a brief interval, the _Constitution’s_ crew made hasty
repairs to the rigging, and then came back with guns loaded. They found
the _Guerrière_ in the trough of the sea rolling her main-deck guns
under water with every passing swell.
The _Constitution_ had been at her less than thirty minutes, but all
three of her masts had been shot away, and were dragging over the rail
by such of the shrouds as had not been cut by the shot of the Yankees.
Her hull was knocked into a sieve by the Yankee round-shot. Thirty of
these projectiles had penetrated her more than four feet below the
water-line. The cool Yankee gunner had watched her rolling her side out
of water and then aimed his gun at the copper below the water-line. Out
of a crew of two hundred and seventy-two, twenty-three men were dead or
mortally hurt, and fifty-six were more or less severely wounded--more
than one-fourth of her crew had been hit in that brief time. On the
_Constitution_ seven men had been killed and seven wounded, while her
hull had scarcely been touched below the bulwarks.
The _Constitution_ was ready for an all-night battle. The _Guerrière_
was ready only for the torch. She was “a perfect wreck.” She could not
be carried into port and had to be burned.
There was no flag flying on the _Guerrière_ when the _Constitution_
returned to her, and so Third Lieutenant George Campbell Read was
sent off in a boat to hail her. Pulling under her lee quarter he
found Captain Dacres leaning over the rail, and asked him if he had
surrendered. According to the careful Maclay the following conversation
took place--when Captain Dacres replied:
“I don’t know that it would be prudent to continue the engagement any
longer.”
“Do I understand you to say that you have struck?” asked Lieutenant
Read.
“Not precisely,” returned Dacres, “but I don’t know that it will be
worth while to fight any longer.”
“If you cannot decide, I will return aboard my ship and we will resume
the engagement,” said the American officer.
To this Captain Dacres called out somewhat excitedly: “Why, I am pretty
much _hors de combat_ already. I have hardly men enough left to work a
single gun, and my ship is in a sinking condition.”
“I wish to know, sir,” peremptorily demanded Lieutenant Read, “whether
I am to consider you a prisoner of war or an enemy. I have no time for
further parley.”
Captain Dacres replied with evident reluctance: “I believe now there
is no alternative. If I could fight longer I would, with pleasure;
but--I--must--surrender.”
[Illustration: Sir James Richard Dacres.
_From an English engraving published in 1811._]
Read continued:
“Commodore Hull’s compliments, and wishes to know whether you need the
assistance of a surgeon or surgeon’s mate?”
“Well, I should suppose you had on board your own ship business enough
for all your medical officers,” replied Dacres.
“Oh, no,” said Read, blithely, “we had only seven wounded, and they
were dressed half an hour ago.”
The end of it was that Captain Dacres was carried on board the
_Constitution_. He had been wounded, but was able to climb the
rope-ladder to her deck, and there he found Captain Hull awaiting
him. It was a notable meeting in more ways than one--physically among
the rest. For Hull was short, rotund, and jolly--very much like our
portraits of John Bull--while Dacres was tall, lank, and serious--not
much different from a typical New Englander. Hull helped the beaten
captain to the deck, saying heartily: “Dacres, give me your hand, I
know you are hurt.” A moment later Captain Dacres made a formal offer
of his sword, but Hull refused it.
“No, no,” he said, “I will not take a sword from one who knows so well
how to use it; but I’ll trouble you for that hat.”
This apparently incongruous remark was due to the fact that when Dacres
had met Hull socially before the war he had offered to bet a hat that
the _Guerrière_ would whip the _Constitution_ if they ever met, and
Hull accepted the bet.
It was on the afternoon of August 21, 1812, that the wreck of the
_Guerrière_ was fired and blown to the four winds of heaven by the
triumphant Yankees, and from that day to this the naval writers of
both England and America have been trying to tell how it was that
the _Guerrière_ was so badly beaten in so short a time. A half-dozen
different explanations may be found in the books of any great nation,
and all are very much alike, even though written by partisans. They
give the details of the battle, how the ships approached each other;
how they veered and wore; how the crews cheered; how they fired
the guns; how the splinters flew; how the blood flowed from the
scuppers--of one ship; how with great reluctance the one surrendered.
Then with one accord the writers set to work to examine the hulk of
the _Guerrière_. Was it sound or rotten? They counted the guns. How
many did each ship have in a broadside? They measured the calibres
of the guns. They weighed the projectiles. “Why, blow me, sir! The
_Constitution_ had long twenty-fours to our eighteens!” “All right, but
by gosh, our shot were seven per cent. under weight!” They considered
the gunpowder chemically to see whether or not it had deteriorated on
the _Guerrière_. They counted the crews. They considered every little
detail.
As we look back at a distance of eighty-five years upon the battle it
must seem to a candid student of naval matters that the excuses and the
explanations were hardly worthy of the great peoples engaged in making
them. Nevertheless, because it is the conventional thing, these details
shall be given here:
The _Constitution_ measured (Roosevelt’s account) 1,576 tons;
the _Guerrière_, 1,338. The _Constitution_ could fire 27 guns in
a broadside, throwing 684 pounds of metal (actual weight); the
_Guerrière_, 25 guns, throwing 556 pounds of metal. The _Constitution_
carried 456 men; the _Guerrière_ but 272. The _Constitution_ lost, as
already told, 7 killed and 7 wounded; while the _Guerrière_ lost 23
killed and 56 wounded--over one-fourth of her crew. The comparative
force of the ships rated by these standards, was as 100 to 70; the
comparative casualties were as 18 to 100. To this may be added that the
relative injury to the ships was as 100 to nothing.
Arguing from these figures the British writers say that the
_Constitution_ was “a seventy-four-gun ship of the line in disguise.”
“Why should not any American feel proud of that assertion?” For if
it be so, the old Quaker ship-builder of Philadelphia was not only
the greatest ship-builder in America, but in the whole world. When
the British officers called her so they confessed that when they had
called her “a bunch of pine boards” they were mistaken. They confessed
that they had been utterly incapable of judging the fighting worth of
the _Constitution_, although they had gone over her and examined her
carefully.
The British point to the fact that our most powerful projectiles came
from twenty-four pounders, while theirs were from eighteens. Here again
they confess their own inability to arm a ship. They had for twenty
years been fighting the navies of Europe. Out of the experience there
gained they had decided that the long eighteens were the best calibre
for the main-deck battery of a frigate. The last frigates launched
from British ship-yards previous to this battle were armed with long
eighteens. The British officers who inspected the _Constitution_ from
time to time before the war of 1812 ridiculed the idea of trying to
fight with long twenty-fours. The long twenty-fours were “too heavy!”
But when their best frigates had been defeated by the Yankees they
began to weigh the projectiles and learned that their defeat was due to
the much ridiculed twenty-fours.
If the British had carried their investigations into the size of the
shot a trifle further--to the mechanism of the guns, for instance--they
would have learned something of real significance. They would have
seen that the cannon of the _Constitution_ were _furnished with
sights_. The _Guerrière_ lost her masts not by accident, but because
_the cool Yankee gunners could aim their weapons accurately_.
But the most important--rather the most pleasing of all the
confessions in the British explanations after defeat is that relating
to the superior numbers of the American crews. The count showed 456
individuals on the _Constitution_, and 272 on the _Guerrière_. To
contend, as the British writers do contend, that the “superiority on
the American side “was” in number of men as--nine to five,” is to admit
that man for man, an American naval seaman, in spite of his lack of
experience, was the equal of the tar-stained, cicatrice-marked British
seaman; and that was a confession which Americans in those days (not
now) were most anxious to extort.
But the British writers did not stop at this confession. They went
further and admitted all the most boastful Yankee could have wished.
They said (_vide_ the British _Naval Chronicle_), that “the few on
board an American ship-of-war that are designated as _boys_ are as old
and stout as most men employed in our service.”
And the last of all is the confession of the same periodical that “had
the _Guerrière’s_ men been half as well skilled in the use of great
guns as the _Constitution’s_ were, the proportion of killed and wounded
would not have been so great nor one ship made a complete wreck of
while the other suffered no material injury in hull or rigging.”
Isaac did so maul and rake her
That the decks of Captain Dacre
Were in such a woful pickle
As if Death, with scythe and sickle,
With his sling or with his shaft
Had cut his harvest fore and aft.
Thus, in thirty minutes, ended
Mischiefs that could not be mended;
Masts and yards and ship descended
All to David Jones’s locker----
Such a ship, in such a pucker!
So sang the old-time Yankee rhymester of the ship that “was not the
_Little Belt_.”
The British Admiralty boards eventually threw aside their prejudices,
and adopted long twenty-fours with sights on them in place of unsighted
long eighteens. They have done even more than that, for when in these
last years the swift armored cruiser _New York_, with her eight-inch
rifles in turrets, was added to the American navy, giving us the most
powerful cruiser in the world, they at once laid down four armored
cruisers that were larger in displacement and carried more powerful
engines, thicker turrets, and a more powerful armament than the _New
York_.
During the night after the battle the boats were kept busy transferring
the prisoners from the wreck to the _Constitution_. Ten kidnapped
Americans were found among her crew, but the humane Dacres had
not compelled them to fight against their own flag. A sail was
seen steering south at twenty minutes past two o’clock, and the
_Constitution_ cleared for action, but the vessel passed on, and soon
disappeared. At daylight the lieutenant in charge of the wreck hailed
to say she had four feet of water in her hold and appeared to be in
danger of sinking, but she kept afloat until afternoon, when she was
set on fire, and at 3.15 P.M., on August 21, 1812, the flames reached
her magazine and she was blown to pieces. “A huge column of smoke arose
and stood for a long time in the calm atmosphere, and then slowly
crumbled to pieces, revealing only a few shattered planks to tell where
the proud vessel had sunk. The sea never rolled over a vessel whose
fate so startled the world.”
It is worth noting, perhaps, that the father of Captain Dacres of the
_Guerrière_ was the Captain James Richard Dacres who commanded the
schooner _Carleton_ on Lake Champlain at the time of the fight with
Arnold’s haymakers, and that both father and son became admirals in the
service.
As it happened, the _Constitution_ reached Boston most opportunely.
Detroit had been surrendered to the British without a single shot
having been fired in its defence. Fort Dearborn, too, that stood
where Chicago now stands, had been taken by the Indian allies of the
British and the garrison massacred. Instead of triumphantly wresting
Canada from the British Crown, as the foolish politicians in Congress
had proposed to do, the American militia had been beaten back and the
Canadians seemed in a fair way to annex all the United States domain
lying west of the longitude of Lake Erie. The people had hoped for
nothing from the navy. The Administration had even sent orders to
Captain Hull to remain in port, but Hull had sailed before the orders
arrived, and now returned with the crew of the _Guerrière_--the British
frigate that had sailed up and down the coast, kidnapping American
citizens and flaunting her identity in the face of all America by
painting her name across her foretopsail.
[Illustration: Medal Awarded to Isaac Hull, after the Capture of the
_Guerrière_ by the _Constitution_.]
The _Constitution_ appeared off Boston Light on August 30th, dressed
in fluttering bunting. Look-outs along shore saw and understood these
signals, and horsemen, wild with enthusiasm, galloped into the city.
Cannon roared from every fort as she sailed up the harbor, and flags
were flung to the breeze from every mast-head. The people in thousands
gathered at the long wharf to welcome her. A banquet was given to the
officers in Faneuil Hall, where the venerable John Adams, the first
advocate of a national navy in the old Colonial Congress, presided.
Congress voted a gold medal to Captain Hull and silver medals to the
commissioned officers, and $50,000 to the whole crew. A piece of
plate was given to Lieutenant Morris by his townsmen. The citizens of
Portland, Maine (Falmouth), gave a sword to their townsman, Lieutenant
Alexander Scammel Wadsworth. Virginia gave swords to Midshipmen Morgan
and Taylor. The people had looked upon the navy with doubt; they had
seen with anxious fear the _Constitution_ sail away. But now the whole
nation went wild, and the song of the exultant poet rang wherever the
people gathered:
Ye tars of Columbia, whose glory imparts
New charms to the blessings your valor secures,
Oh! high be your hopes and undaunted your hearts,
For the wishes and prayers of a nation are yours.