Turning then, to look at the enemy, he saw the men climbing aloft and with eager haste furling everything, while their boats were left to shift as they might in the foaming sea. They had supposed from what they saw of the effect of the squall on the Constitution that it was even worse than it looked, and they snugged down their ships accordingly.
And then, as the friendly rain and vapor of the squall veiled the wily Yankee, he spread his sails—sails that had not been furled—to the gale and “went off on an easy bowline at the rate of eleven knots an hour.”
The race was won. At 7.30 P.M., when the squall had passed and the enemy once more came in view, the leading ship, the Belvidera, was not only a long way astern, but she had the wind in such fashion as to be unable to hold up within two points of the course the Constitution was steering. And yet in their mad efforts to overhaul the Yankee after they felt the weight of the squall, the British captains had cut adrift their small boats, that they might not be obliged to stop and pick them up or be encumbered with the weight.
The winds proved light and baffling all night, but having observed how much better the sails held the air while they were wet, Captain Hull started his force-pumps at work to keep the lower sails wet, and sent men to the highest yards to draw up water in buckets and keep everything drenched to the highest thread. It was a plan that worked admirably. In spite of the baffling zephyrs, the Yankee gained all night, so that at daylight only the loftier sails of the enemy were visible, and at 8.15 on the morning of Monday, July 20, 1812, the British squadron gave it up and squared away for Sandy Hook, leaving the triumphant Constitution to head away to Boston to obtain another supply of water in place of that she had started to decrease her draft. From Friday afternoon until Monday morning the British frigates, including the swift Belvidera that had eluded the President, were in chase of the Yankee clipper. Certainly they showed “great perseverance, good seamanship, and ready invitation,” but “the cool old Yankee” justified the praise which Lord Nelson gave us when he said, in the Mediterranean, that “there is in the handling of those transatlantic ships a nucleus of trouble for the navy of Great Britain.”
The Constitution Bearing Down for the Guerrière.
From an old wood-cut.
CHAPTER V
THE CONSTITUTION AND THE GUERRIÈRE
THE BRITISH CAPTAIN COULD SCARCELY BELIEVE THAT A YANKEE WOULD BE BOLD ENOUGH TO ATTACK HIM, AND WAS SURE OF VICTORY IN LESS THAN AN HOUR, BUT WHEN THE YANKEES HAD BEEN FIRING AT THE GUERRIÈRE FOR THIRTY MINUTES SHE WAS A DISMANTLED HULK, RAPIDLY SINKING OUT OF SIGHT—“THE SEA NEVER ROLLED OVER A VESSEL WHOSE FATE SO STARTLED THE WORLD”—SUNDRY ADMISSIONS HER LOSS EXTORTED FROM THE ENEMY—A COMPARISON OF THE SHIPS.
Having noted, in the stories of the actions hitherto described, somewhat of the training, skill, and good-will of the American seamen in the use of naval weapons, and their masterful knowledge of seamanship, the time arrives for telling how one of these Yankee frigates won the first signal victory of the war—the victory of the Constitution over the Guerrière. But it will add to the pleasure of every American reader if the opinions which the British captain expressed about his ship, both before and after the battle, be told before the battle is described.