Blyth had nailed his flag to the mast, telling his men that it should never be struck while he had life in his body. And he kept his word. As the "Enterprise" ranged up, her crew gave three cheers, and opened on the enemy at half-pistol shot. At the first fire a round shot passed through the body of the gallant English captain. The "Boxer" returned the fire. A moment later Captain Burrows, encouraging his men, seized a tackle to help the crew in running out their carronade; and as his leg was raised to brace it against the bulwark, a canister-shot struck it, and glancing upwards to his body, gave him a frightful wound. In an agony of pain he lay on the deck, crying out that the colors must never be struck, and refusing to be taken below.
The two ships were now fought by their lieutenants. McCall, the lieutenant of the "Enterprise," finding that he ranged ahead, sheered across the "Boxer's" bow, pouring in a raking broadside. Presently the "Boxer" lost her main-topmast, and McCall, hanging on her bow, kept up his raking fire. There could now be but one result, and soon the "Boxer" hailed to say that she had surrendered. The flag which had been nailed to the mast was now lowered, but Blyth had already breathed his last. Burrows kept his place on the deck until he had received the sword of his adversary. Then he exclaimed, "I am satisfied; I die contented," and with that word breathed his last.
The next of the sloop actions was in the spring of the following year. The "Peacock," one of the new sloops, named after the British vessel which the "Hornet" had sunk in the Demerara River, was cruising in April under the command of Capt. Lewis Warrington, when she met the enemy's brig-sloop "Epervier" off the coast of Florida. Though the "Peacock" had the larger crew, the ships were not far from a match in guns. But the "Epervier's" battery was not in fighting condition, and she had practised so little with her carronades that her officers did not know of their defects; or if they did, they had not done anything to remedy the difficulty. Indeed, the whole service of the "Epervier," both at the guns and in other ways, was most slovenly, and far behind what one would expect in a British sloop-of-war. The vessels as they neared opened on each other, but at the first broadsides the "Epervier's" carronades were dismounted, the bolts giving way. For three quarters of an hour the fight continued, the guns of the brig getting worse and worse, until she could hardly fire a shot. At length the English captain gave the order to board, but his men showed no zeal or courage, and even refused to follow him; so he gave up and struck his colors.
CAPTAIN LEWIS WARRINGTON.
There was hardly any other action in the war in which the enemy did so poorly as in this. The "Epervier" had twenty-two men killed or wounded in the battle; the "Peacock" had none killed and only two wounded. The enemy was almost a wreck. Her hull was riddled, her main-topmast and boom were shot away, her foremast was nearly cut in two, her sails tattered, her bowsprit badly wounded, her battery disabled, and there were four feet of water in her hold; while the "Peacock," except for the loss of the foreyard, was as fresh as ever, and not a shot had struck her hull. It was a profitable hour's work for her crew; for a large amount of specie was found on board the enemy, and the Government bought the captured sloop for more than fifty thousand dollars. The two vessels made for Savannah, where, though several times chased by the enemy, they arrived safely a few days after the battle.
On the day that the "Epervier" entered the Savannah River, the new sloop-of-war "Wasp"—named for that other "Wasp" which had captured the "Frolic"—sailed from Portsmouth on a cruise. She was commanded by Capt. Johnston Blakely, a most resolute officer, and had as fine a crew of stanch New Englanders as ever trod the deck of a Salem clipper. Running the blockade off the coast, the "Wasp" stood over toward the English channel, and soon she was burning and sinking merchantmen as actively as the "Argus" had done before her. But when it came her turn to meet the enemy in battle, her crew showed themselves to be made of different stuff from the sailors of that unlucky brig.