The other Tripolitan gunboats had scurried back to safety, so Decatur, with his two prizes, made his way out towards the flagship unmolested. His victory had cost him dearly. There was not a man who had not two or three wounds from the scimetars, and some of them had cuts all over the body. The decks were like a slaughter-pen and the scuppers were running blood. But the bodies of the Tripolitans were ruthlessly cast overboard to the sharks; and by the time the Americans had reached the “Constitution” the decks had been scrubbed down and the wounded bandaged and roughly cared for by those of their comrades who had fared less badly.
Decatur, by virtue of his exploit in destroying the “Philadelphia,” already a post-captain at the age of twenty-five, could expect no further immediate honors at the hands of the government; but then, as ever afterwards, he craved nothing but a stanch ship and a gallant crew. The service he could do his country was its own reward.
A DOUBLE ENCOUNTER
The old “Constitution” was out on the broad ocean again! And when the news went forth that she had succeeded for the seventh time in running the blockade of the British squadrons, deep was the chagrin of the Admiralty. This Yankee frigate, still stanch and undefeated, had again and again proved herself superior to everything afloat that was British; had shown her heels, under Hull’s masterly seamanship, to a whole squadron during a chase that lasted three days; and had under Hull, and then under Bainbridge, whipped both the “Guerriere” and the “Java,” two of their tidiest frigates, in an incredibly short time, with a trifling loss both in men and rigging. She was invincible; and the title which she had gained before Tripoli, under Commodore Preble, when the Mussulman shot had hailed against her oaken timbers and dropped harmlessly into the sea alongside, seemed more than ever to befit her. “Old Ironsides” was abroad again, overhauled from royal to locker, with a crew of picked seamen and a captain who had the confidence of the navy and the nation.
Her hull had been made new, her canvas had come direct from the sail-lofts at Boston, and her spars were the stanchest that the American forests could afford. She carried thirty-one long 24-pounders and twenty short 32-pounders,—fifty-one guns in all, throwing six hundred and forty-four pounds of actual weight of metal to a broadside. Her officers knew her sailing qualities, and she was ballasted to a nicety, bowling along in a top-gallant-stu’n-sail breeze at twelve knots an hour.
The long list of her victories over their old-time foe had given her men a confidence in the ship and themselves that attained almost the measure of a faith; and, had the occasion presented itself, they would have been as willing to match broadsides with a British seventy-four as with a frigate of equal metal with themselves. They were a fine, hearty lot, these jack-tars; and, as “Old Ironsides” left the green seas behind and ploughed her bluff nose boldly through the darker surges of the broad Atlantic, they vowed that the frigate’s last action would not be her least. The “Constitution” would not be dreaded by the British in vain.
For dreaded she was among the officers of the British North Atlantic squadron. As soon as it was discovered by the British Admiralty that she had passed the blockade, instructions were at once given out and passed from ship to ship to the end that every vessel of whatever class which spoke another on the high seas should report whether or not she had seen a vessel which looked like the “Constitution.” By means of this ocean telegraphy they hoped to discover the course and intention of the great American, and finally to succeed in bringing her into action with a British fleet. By this time they had learned their lesson. Single frigates were given orders to avoid an encounter, while other frigates were directed to hunt for her in pairs!
Charles Stewart had been one of old Preble’s “school-boy captains” before Tripoli, the second in command. He had been one to suggest the expedition to cut out or destroy the “Philadelphia,” the envied command of which fell to Decatur. But he won distinction enough before the batteries there, and afterwards when he captured the French “Experiment,” of a much heavier force and armament than his own, in a brilliant little action. He had entered the merchant service at thirteen, had been captain of a ship in the India trade at nineteen, and thus from his boyhood had been schooled in the finer points of rough-and-ready seamanship.
He was born in Philadelphia, in 1778, at a time when the blood of patriotism ran hot in the veins of the mothers as well as of the fathers of the race, and he then imbibed the principles he afterwards stood for so valiantly on sea and on land. On the frigate “United States,” that “nursery of heroes,” he had for mess-mates Stephen Decatur and Richard Somers; and Edward Preble gave him ideas of discipline that later stood him in good stead. He was, like Decatur, of an impetuous disposition; but he had learned what quick obedience meant to the service, and among the men on the “Constitution” it was known that infractions of duty would be quickly punished. The men tumbled quickly to the gear and handled the guns so smartly that with his picked seamen Stewart had not been out of sight of land a week before they attained a proficiency in manœuvre rarely surpassed on a man-of-war. It is related that once, having received an order from a superior officer to sail with his ship immediately, Stewart got under weigh, towing behind him his mainmast, which he had not had the opportunity to step.