"SHE LAY A HELPLESS WRECK IN THE TROUGH OF THE SEA."
All thoughts of boarding were now given up, but there was no need of it. Hull kept up his heavy fire, and in ten minutes more the "Guerrière's" foremast and mainmast had also gone, and she lay a helpless wreck in the trough of the sea, rolling her main-deck guns under water. The "Constitution," knowing that the enemy was at her mercy, now hauled off for half an hour to repair the slight injuries she had received; and after completing this task in a leisurely way, and making everything shipshape, she came back to receive the enemy's surrender. It was a bitter task for Captain Dacres to acknowledge himself beaten in the first frigate fight between the veteran navy of England and the derided vessels of the young Republic; but it was all that he could do, for he had fought his ship until she was little better than a dismantled hulk, and it was vain to think of trying to prolong resistance. So the captain came on board the "Constitution" and delivered up himself and all his men as prisoners; and the next day the "Guerrière," being so shattered that it was of no use to take her into port, was burned where she lay, and left to sink in the ocean.
Great were the rejoicings when the "Constitution" arrived at Boston with her trophies and prisoners. Men, women, and children vied with each other in demonstrations of delight. We can hardly realize to-day what the people felt at the news of the destruction of a British frigate. To understand the feeling, we must look back at the twenty years during which American ships and American seamen had suffered repeated outrage at the hands of British ships-of-war,—outrage which had been borne only because the young country felt too weak to cope with those forces which had conquered all the navies of the Continent. At the outset, war with such foes offered a dismal prospect. And to think that in the first real encounter on the seas, a veritable pitched battle, these redoubtable champions of the ocean had been so utterly crushed and annihilated that not one fragment remained of their good ship the "Guerrière," which had harried with impunity our very coasters, was something more than men's minds could at once grasp.
For Hull and his companions no reward seemed too great. Feasted in Boston at a great civic banquet, received with an ovation at every town through which he passed, he was for the moment the country's hero. Congress struck a medal in his honor, and votes of thanks were passed by the legislatures of New York and Massachusetts, and by many municipal bodies. The Society of the Cincinnati elected him an honorary member. The citizens of Philadelphia presented to him a great silver vase, and a golden sword whose engraved hilt bore a picture of the battle; the vase and sword may be seen to-day in the hall of the State Department at Washington. Morris was promoted to the rank of captain; and finally Congress passed an act appropriating fifty thousand dollars as a bounty for the officers and seamen of the "Constitution."
CHAPTER X.
THE FIRST SLOOP ACTION.
