The United States sloop-of-war Wasp, of eighteen guns, commanded by Captain Jacob Jones, sailed from the Delaware, on the 13th of October; and on the 18th of the month, after a long and heavy gale, fell in with a convoy of six merchantmen, four of them strongly armed, under the protection of His Britannic Majesty sloop-of-war Frolic, of twenty-two guns, Captain Whinyates. At half-past eleven in the morning, the action commenced at the distance of about fifty yards. But, during the action, so near did they come to each other, that the rammers of the Wasp’s cannon struck against the side of the Frolic. The fire of the English vessel soon slackened; and after a most sanguinary action of forty-three minutes, every brace of the Wasp being shot away, and the rigging so much torn, that Captain Jones resolved to board the enemy. With this view he wore ship and running down upon the enemy, the vessels struck. The officers surrendered the vessel, and the colors were hauled down by Lieutenant Biddle. The Frolic was in a shocking condition; the berth-deck was filled with dead and wounded. No sooner had the engagement ceased, than the British ship, Poictiers, of seventy four guns, came up, and captured both vessels.
DEATH OF GENERAL PIKE.
ATTACK ON YORK.
General Dearborn, the commander of the United States forces on the Ontario frontier, having resolved to attack York, the capital of Upper Canada, embarked seventeen hundred troops, and left Sackett’s Harbor on the 25th of April. On the 27th, the troops, under the command of General Pike, effected a landing and drove a much superior force of the enemy from the shore. But they returned to the attack, and the contest was renewed. The enemy were again defeated and driven to their works. The whole force of the Americans having reached the shore, and being arranged in the order for attack, General Pike pressed forward, carried one of the enemy’s batteries, and was moving towards the main works, when a sudden and tremendous explosion of the magazine occurred, hurling upon the advancing troops immense masses of stone and timber, and for a time checking them by the havoc it made. General Pike was mortally wounded. But the troops under command of Colonel Pearce, pressed on, and captured the town, with all the land and naval forces in and about it. The total loss of the Americans was three hundred and twenty men. General Pike was greatly lamented. The British loss was four hundred killed or wounded, and three hundred prisoners.
CAPTURE OF FORT GEORGE.