The exact number of killed on board the Peacock could not be ascertained from her officers. Captain Peake and four men were found dead on board by the Americans; the master, one midshipman, carpenter, captain's clerk, and 29 seamen were wounded, most of them severely, three of whom died of their wounds after being removed. On board the Hornet there was only one killed and two wounded by the enemy, but two men were severely burnt by the explosion of a cartridge during the action, one of whom survived but a few days. Her rigging and sails were much cut, a shot passed through the fore mast, and the bowsprit was slightly injured; her hull received little or no damage.

The Peacock was deservedly styled one of the finest vessels of her class in the British navy. Her tonnage was supposed to be about equal to that of the Hornet. Her beam was greater by five inches; but her extreme length not so great by four feet. She mounted sixteen 24 pound carronades, two long nines, one twelve pound carronade on her top-gallant forecastle as a shifting gun, and one four or six-pounder, and two swivels mounted aft. Her crew consisted of 134 men, four of whom were absent in a prize.

During the engagement, the L'Espiegle, the brig that Lawrence had been endeavouring to reach before the Peacock appeared, which mounted 16 thirty-two pound carronades, and two long nines, lay about six miles distant, and could plainly see the whole of the action. Apprehensions were entertained, that she would beat out to the assistance of her consort, and therefore such exertions were made in repairing damages, that by nine o'clock the boats were stowed away, a new set of sails bent, and the ship completely ready for action. She, however, declined coming out, and at two in the morning the Hornet got under way.

The morning after the action, Lawrence found that he had 277 souls on board, and therefore, as his own crew had been on two-thirds allowance of provisions for some time, and his supply of water was but scant, he determined to make the best of his way to the United States. He arrived at Holmes' Hole on the 19th of March, and a few days after proceeded down the sound to New York.

The kindness and hospitality shown by captain Lawrence and his officers to his unfortunate prisoners, was such as to penetrate them with the most lively gratitude, which the officers expressed shortly after their arrival by a public letter of thanks. "So much," say they, say they," was done to alleviate the distressing and uncomfortable situation in which we were placed when received on I

VOL. II.

board the sloop you command, that we cannot better express our feelings than by saying, 'We ceased to consider ourselves prisoners; and every thing that friendship could dictate was adopted by you and the officers of the Hornet, to remedy the inconvenience we would otherwise have experienced from the unavoidable loss of the whole of our property and clothes by the sudden sinking of the Peacock."

Nor was the crew of the Hornet a whit behind their superiors in that noble generosity which ever accompanies true bravery. As the sailors of the Peacock had lost every thing except what they had on their backs when she went down, our American tars united to relieve them, and made every English sailor a present of two shirts, a blue jacket, and a pair of trowsers.

4. The frigate Chesapeake, commanded by captain Evans, sailed from Boston about the middle of November on a cruize. From Boston she run down by Madeira, the Canary, and Cape de Verd Islands; thence to the equator, between longitude 25° and 15° W., where she cruized six weeks. She then sailed along the coast of South America, and passed within fifteen leagues of Surinam. Thence she passed though the windward islands to the coast of the United States near the capes of Virginia, and thence along the coast to Boston, where she arrived on the 10th of April, after a cruize of 115 days. During this cruize she took an American brig, sailing under an English license, and three British vessels, one of which she burnt after taking out the crew and cargo. On the first of January, off the Western Islands, she discovered two large sail bearing down on her, apparently ships of war, and lay to until near enough to ascertain that they were a 74 and a frigate, when she made all sail and escaped. Off the capes of Virginia, about ten days before her arrival, she gave chase to a sloop of war, and continued chasing for two days, when it escaped in the night.

§ 5. The Chesapeake continued in Boston harbour until the first of June, the day of her unfortunate rencontre with the Shannon. Captain Lawrence, of the Hornet, had a short time previous been appointed to command the Chesapeake, and hardly had he arrived at Boston, when the Shannon, commanded by captain Broke, appeared off the harbour, with the avowed purpose of seeking a combat with her.

"Stung with the repeated disasters of the British frigates, this officer resolved to make an effort to retrieve them; and when he deemed his ship perfectly prepared for that purpose, `sent a formal challenge to captain Lawrence.

"As the Chesapeake,' his letter began, appears now ready for sea, I request you will do me the favour to meet the Shan

non with her, ship to ship, to try the fortune of our respective flags. To an officer of your character, it requires some apology for proceeding to further particulars. Be assured, sir, that it is not from any doubt I entertain of your wishing to close with my proposal, but merely to provide an answer to any objection that might be made, and very reasonably, upon the chance of our receiving unfair support.' After observing that commodore Rodgers had not accepted several verbal challenges which he had given, captain Broke then proceeds to state very minutely the force of the Shannon, and offers to send all British ships out of reach, so that they might have a fair combat, at any place within a certain range along the coast of New England which he specified; if more agreeable, he offers to sail together, and to warn the Chesapeake, by means of private signals, of the approach of British ships of war, till they reach some solitary spot-or to sail with a flag of truce to any place out of the reach of British aid, so that the flag should be hauled down when it was deemed fair to begin hostilities. I entreat you, sir,' he concludes, not to imagine that I am urged by mere personal vanity to the wish of meeting the Chesapeake, or that I depend only upon your personal ambition for your acceding to this invitation. We have both nobler motives. You will feel it as a compliment, if I say that the result of our meeting may be the most grateful service I can render to my country; and I doubt not that you, equally confident of success, will feel convinced that it is only by repeated triumphs in even combats, that your little navy can now hope to console your country for the loss of that trade it can no longer protect.'

"The style of this letter, with the exception of the puerile bravado about commodore Rodgers, is frank and manly; and if the force of the Shannon were correctly stated, would be such a challenge as might well be sent from a brave seamen to a gallant adversary. We, however, are but too well satisfied, that captain Broke studiously underrated the number of his guns and crew; or that, after his challenge, he must have received additions to both. That the Shannon had more guns than the number stated by her commander, we learn from the testimony of the surviving officers of the Chesapeake; who also assert, that she had three hundred and seventy-six men ; that she had an officer and sixteen men from the Belle Poule ; and that the hats of some of her seamen were marked 'Tenedos.' Such as it was, however, this letter, most unfortunately, never reached captain Lawrence. If he had received it; if he had been thus warned to prepare his ship; if he had had an opportunity of selecting his officers, and disciplining his crew;

if, in short, he had been able to place the Chesapeake on any thing like equal terms with the Shannon, the combat might have been more bloody-there might have been such an engagement as has not yet been seen between single ships on the ocean; though we cannot suffer ourselves to doubt the result of it. But he knew nothing of this challenge-he saw only the Shannon riding before him in defiance; he remembered the spirit with which he himself overawed a superior, and he could not brook for a moment, that an enemy, which seemed to be his equal, should insult his flag. Although, therefore, the Chesapeake was comparatively an inferior ship-although his first lieutenant was sick on shore-although three of his lieutenants had recently left her; and, of the four who remained, two were only midshipmen, acting as lieutenants-although part of his crew were new hands, and all of them had lost some of their discipline by staying in port-yet, as he would have gone to sea in that situation had no enemy appeared, he felt himself bound not to delay sailing on that account, and throwing himself, therefore, on his courage and his fortune, he determined at once to attack the enemy. It was on the morning of the 1st of June, 1813, that the Chesapeake sailed out of the harbour of Boston to meet the Shannon. As soon as she got under weigh, captain Lawrence called the crew together, and having hoisted the white flag, with the motto of 'free trade and sailors' rights,' made a short address. His speech, however, was received with no enthusiasm on the contrary, signs of dissatisfaction were evident; particularly from a boatswain's mate, a Portuguese, who seemed to be at the head of the malecontents; and complaints were muttered, that they had not yet received their prizemoney. Such expressions, at the eve of an action, were but illbodings of the result of it; but captain Lawrence, ignorant as he was of the characters of his sailors, and unwilling at such a moment to damp their spirits by harshness, preserved his accustomed calmness, and had prize-checks, at once, given by the purser to those who had not received them. Whilst this scene was passing, the Shannon, observing the Chesapeake coming out, bore away. The Chesapeake followed her till four o'clock in the afternoon, when she hauled up and fired a gun, on which the Shannon hove to. They manœuvred for some time, till, at about a quarter before six, they approached within pistol shot and exchanged broadsides.

"These broadsides were both bloody; but the fire of the Shannon was most fortunate in the destruction of officers. The fourth lieutenant, Mr. Ballard, was mortally wounded-the sailing-master was killed, and captain Lawrence received a mus

ket ball in his leg, which caused great pain, and profuse bleeding, but he leaned on the companion way, and continued to order and to animate his crew. A second, and a third broadside was exchanged, with evident advantage on the part of the Chesapeake; but, unfortunately, among those now wounded on board of her was the first lieutenant, Mr. Ludlow, who was carried below-three men were successively shot from the helm, in about twelve minutes from the commencement of the action; and, as the hands were shifting, a shot disabled her foresail, so that she would no longer answer her helm, and her anchor caught in one of the after ports of the Shannon, which enabled the latter to rake her upper deck. As soon as Lawrence perceived that she was falling to leeward, and that by the Shannon's filling she would fall on board, he called his boarders, and was giving orders about the foresail, when he received a musket ball in his body. The bugleman, who should have called the boarders, did not do his duty; and, at this moment commodore Broke, whose ship had suffered so much that he was preparing to repel boarding, perceiving, from this accident, how the deck of the Chesapeake was swept, jumped on board with about twenty men. They would have been instantly repelled; but the captain, the first lieutenant, the sailing-master, the boatswain, the lieutenant of marines, the only acting lieutenant on the spar-deck, were all killed or disabled. At the call of the boarders, lieutenant Cox ran on deck, but just in time to receive his falling commander, and bear him below. Lieutenant Budd, the second lieutenant, led up the boarders, but only fifteen or twenty would follow him, and with these he defended the ship till he was wounded and disabled. Lieutenant Ludlow, wounded as he was, hurried upon deck, where he soon he received a mortal cut from a sabre. The marines who were engaged fought with desperate courage; but they were few in number; too many of them having followed the Portuguese boatswain's mate, who exclaimed, it is said, as he skulked below, 'so much for not paying men their prize-money.' Meanwhile the Shannon threw on board sixty additional men, who soon succeeded in overpowering the seamen of the Chesapeake, who had now no officers to lead or rally them, and took possession of the ship; which was not, however, surrendered by any signal of submission, but became the enemy's only because they were able to overwhelm all who were in a condition to resist.

"As captain Lawrence was carried below, he perceived the melancholy condition of the Chesapeake, but cried out,' Don't surrender the ship.' He was taken down into the ward-room, and, as he lay in excruciating pain, perceiving that the noise