What wild hurrahs were heard when Decatur, clad in a sailor's pea-jacket, and begrimed with powder, sprang on board and shouted, "Didn't she make a glorious bonfire, and we didn't lose a man!"
In telling the story afterwards, the men said it was a superb sight. The flames burst out and ran rapidly up the masts and the rigging, and lighted up the sea and the sky with a lurid glare. The guns soon became heated and began to go off. They fired their hot shot into the shipping, and even into the town. Then, as if giving a last salute, the Philadelphia parted her cables, drifted ashore, and blew up.
As a popular saying goes, "Nothing succeeds like success." So it was with Decatur's deed. His cool head and the fine discipline of his men won success. The famous Lord Nelson, the greatest naval commander of his time, said it was "the most bold and daring act of the age."
Decatur was well rewarded. At twenty-five he was made a captain, and given the command of "Old Ironsides," probably the finest frigate at that time in the world.
CHAPTER XII
"OLD IRONSIDES"
| "Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky." |
In 1833, when the old war ship Constitution, unfit for service, lay in the navy yard in Charlestown, the Secretary of the Navy decided to sell her or to break her up. On the appearance of this bit of news in a Boston paper, Oliver Wendell Holmes, a law student at Harvard, scribbled some verses and sent them to the editor.