CONSTITUTION AND GUERRIERE. thing of consequence. 367 The Essex succeeded in cut- CHAPTER XXV. ting out of a convoy a transport filled with troops. She also captured a British sloop of war, the Alert, which 1812. had borne down upon her while disguised as a merchant man. Being dangerously pressed, on her return, by some of Broke's frigates, which cut her off from New York, she escaped into the Delaware. Sept. 6. The Constitution, having followed the coast to the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, while cruising there, discovered a British frigate, the Guerriere, one of Aug. 19. those by which she had lately been chased, and which, now, as if courting an engagement, shortened sail and waited her approach, opening upon her as she came within range. The Constitution held back her fire till she had taken a position yard-arm to yard-arm, a maneuver in which the Guerriere hastened to assist. While thus running side by side, the mizzen-mast of the British frigate soon fell; the Constitution, shooting ahead, luffed across her bows; the ships became entangled, and both crews prepared to board; but this the fierce fire of musketry made impracticable. The sails of the Constitution were then filled, and as she separated from the enemy, his mainmast and foremast both went by the board. The Guerriere thus rendered helpless, the Constitution stood off and repaired the damages to her rigging, after which she took a raking position, when the British flag flying till now at the stump of the Guerriere's mizzen-mast was finally struck. The whole combat had lasted two hours, but the close fighting had not been more than thirty minutes. The Constitution, which had already repaired the slight damage to her rigging and sails, had seven killed and as many wounded. The Guerriere had seventy-nine killed and wounded, and, besides losing her masts, was so much damaged in her XXV. CHAPTER hull as to be in danger of sinking. Among her crew were ten impressed Americans, who, having refused to 1812. fight, had been sent below. The wreck was set on fire and blown up, after which the Constitution returned with her prisoners to Boston, where she was received Aug. 30. with the greatest exultation. Fired by this exploit, Rodgers, leaving the Hornet Sept. 4. behind, sailed soon after on a second cruise, with the President, United States, Congress, and Argus. The Oct. 25. vessels having parted company, the United States, Cap tain Decatur, then to the southward of the Azores, gave chase to a ship, which proved to be the British frigate Macedonian. Having the wind, she foiled for some time Decatur's attempts to bring on a close action. The fight began at too great a distance for the use of carronades with the long guns, twenty-fours in the United States, eighteens in the Macedonian, a bad maneuver for the latter vessel, the greater damage to whose rigging presently enabled Decatur to close, when the British frigate struck, having lost her mizzen-mast, her main and foretop masts, and main yard, with heavy damages to her hull, and having upward of a hundred killed and wounded out of a crew of three hundred men. The United States had only five killed and seven wounded, with considerable, though no serious damage to her rigging. The Macedonian was manned with a prize crew; and with a jury mizzen-mast rigged, was escorted into Newport by the United States, both vessels soon after proceeding by the Sound to New York. The President, meanwhile, cruising alone, captured a packet with $200,000 in specie, and a number of merchant vessels. The Congress took nothing of value. The Argus was chased for three days and nights by a squadron of six ships, from which she escaped only by cutting away WASP AND FROLIC. 369 XXV. 1812. her anchors and throwing her boats overboard. Yet CHAPTER she succeeded, pending the chase, in taking and manning a prize, one of five which she made during the cruise. Just before the capture of the Macedonian, another naval contest had occurred, not less creditable to the American navy, though terminating less fortunately for the captors. The Wasp, Captain Jones, having returned from Europe, had proceeded on a cruise, and when about half way from Cape Cod to the Bermudas, had discovered and chased six British merchantmen, under Oct. 13. charge of the Frolic, a war brig, which shortened sail with the evident intention of giving battle, to cover her convoy. The Wasp ranged up within a short distance, when a furious cannonade began. The enemy's shot, aided by the extreme roughness of the sea, soon brought down the Wasp's main-top-mast, which fell in such a way among the rigging as to render her sails unmanageable, and was followed soon after by the mizzen-top-gallant-mast. Presently the vessels ran foul, the enemy's bowsprit over the Wasp's quarter-deck, thus giving the Wasp an opportunity for a raking fire, which her crew followed up by boarding. They found the Frolic's deck slippery with blood, and strewed with killed. The only man at his post was the man at the wheel, still faithful to his trust, amid the carnage. Two or three wounded officers threw down their swords, and the flag was lowered by the Wasp's lieutenant. Of the crew not twenty remained unhurt, and soon after the vessels separated both the Frolic's masts went by the board. The Wasp had five killed and five wounded; but, before she could be put into a condition to make sail, the Poictiers 74, then on her way to blockade the Delaware, came up and took possession of both vessels, which she carried into Bermuda. The Vixen, also, was presently taken off the XXV. CHAPTER Coast of the Southern States by the British frigate Southampton, Sir James Yeo, after a very hard chase. 1812. Shortly after the capture, both vessels were cast away on the Bahamas, on which occasion the American crew behaved so well as to receive the acknowledgments of Yeo, and his promise to obtain for them every indulgence and the earliest exchange in his power. The effect of these early naval encounters, whether in America or in England, was very striking. While they served to comfort the war party, mortified to the last degree by the imbecility and misfortunes of their incapable generals, the Federalists also joined to extol them as proofs that commerce was best to be defended at sea, and as justifying their ancient partiality for a navy, which now became all at once, in spite of old party prejudices, the general favorite of the nation. It was proclaimed, with many boastings, that the downfall of Great Britain must certainly be near, since at last she had found her match on the ocean; and these exultations and prophecies, however extravagant, seemed to be justified by the astonishment and mortification of the British themselves. Apprehensions were freely expressed in their newspapers of being stripped "by a piece of striped bunting flying at the mast-heads of a few fir-built frigates, manned by a handful of bastards and outlaws"-such being the polite terms in which, with angry flourish, the American navy and people were described-of that maritime superiority, into a confession of which every nation in Europe had been successively beaten. Presently, however, recovering a little from their amazement and terror, explanations and apologies were sought for and found. The victo rious American frigates, it was said, were larger ships than their opponents, with more men, more guns by half a dozen or so, and heavier metal, twenty-fours on the gun EFFECT OF THESE VICTORIES. 371 XXV. deck instead of eighteens; and it was even pretended CHAPTER that they were chiefly manned by runaway British sailors. Except the British sailors, this was all true enough; 1812. but it hardly justified the exaggeration that the American frigates were seventy-fours in disguise; nor did it apply to the case of the Wasp and the Frolic, which were equally matched. The difference, indeed, was not so great as to have been much thought of in contests with ships of any other flag; nor was it at all sufficient to explain, if other things were equal, such speedy and total defeats with such disparity of loss. It was too plain that the American ships were not only larger and stronger, but better handled and better fought-a circumstance, on the supposition of a general equality in skill and courage, natural enough in a few vessels with reputations to make, insults and taunts to revenge, and sailors' rights to fight for; but, even thus explained, breaking much too rudely upon the English dream of naval invincibility to be anywise acceptable. Forethought, and with it a tendency to see the gloomy side, are the characteristics of the English mind. The harm that a few frigates could immediately do might be of little consequence; but who could tell what might hapin the future? And, indeed, even for the present, pen with Bonaparte desperately bent on the destruction of Britain and her commerce, what was not to be apprehended from the springing into existence of a new hostile naval power? A considerable part of the inhabitants of New England, whence in former wars the greater proportion of American privateers had issued, had now serious scruples upon that point. The growing spirit of civilization and commerce had begun to view this species of warfare as little better than robbery. Jefferson had testified against |