“Take good aim, my lad, and she will be a sloop,” said Captain Decatur. And a sloop she became very soon after, for her main-topmast followed the mizzen.
The injury done to the British ship was in proportion to the number of casualties among her crew. Hardly had the battle opened in earnest before the mizzen-topmast was cut by a round shot, and came crashing down before the wind, to fall with its weight of yards and rigging into the maintop and so hold fast the braces of the main yards. But for almost half an hour Captain Carden kept his ship off at long range. He has been accused of “timidity or bad judgment” for doing so. Certainly he was not timid, and as for his judgment it was simply that of the British Lords of Admiralty. He and they really believed the long eighteens of the Macedonian were superior to the long twenty-fours of the United States. When this belief was knocked out of him by the twenty-four-pound arguments, so to speak, of the Yankees, he endeavored to close in. This has been called rash, but that is not a fair word. The case was desperate. He would surely be whipped where he was, and there might be hope at short range. He grasped at this chance as his duty demanded and the instincts of a brave man directed. Putting up his helm, he headed for the United States, end on, and ordered boarders to be called away. His men were as brave as he was. They responded with cheers, and some who were wounded even came rushing forward. But their courage was all in vain.
As the Macedonian turned, the Yankees braced their main-yards aback to hold the United States in waiting for the enemy and blazed away with a raking fire. The bow-guns of the Macedonian were quickly disabled and she luffed up and fired with her broadside guns as they were brought to bear. But the Yankee filled away and luffed when she did, and eased away again as she eased away, all the time delivering a fire that was fearfully destructive to the British crew. Then, once more the Macedonian was luffed and this time a shot cut her lee fore-brace and the yard at once swung around until the sails came aback and threw the Englishman off to leeward in such a position and at such close range that the Yankee gunners fairly swept her decks with their projectiles from both short and long guns. Her fore-topmast was cut away at the cap. The main-topmast followed. The lower masts were slashed and splintered, and the rigging and sails were rendered almost wholly useless. Only the foresail remained serviceable and that was badly torn. Every gun on the forecastle was disabled, and all but two on the quarter-deck were in like condition, while two of the main-deck battery were destroyed. The Macedonian had become a wreck, wholly unable to continue the fight, and at 11 o’clock the United States ceased firing. She had lost her mizzen-topgallant-mast, but was otherwise so little hurt that she had forged up across the bows of the Macedonian so far that no guns would bear.
At this Captain Decatur eased off to give his sails a good full, and the British crew, seeing him do so, cheered. They supposed another frigate might have appeared and that the United States was running. But their hopes were vain. The United States, having made swift repairs to braces and other rigging, tacked about and came back to the wrecked Englishman. Captain Carden called a council of his officers. The impetuous Lieutenant David Hope urged that they fight till she sank, but more sensible councils prevailed, and as the United States ranged across the stern of the Macedonian the Englishmen hauled down their flag.
The battle had lasted one hour and a half all told, but the actual fighting, excluding the earlier shots fired “more to test the distance than to do injury,” lasted only an hour.
Seeing the enemy’s flag hauled down, Captain Decatur sent Lieutenant John B. Nicholson to take charge of her, and afterward visited her himself. It was a mournful state of affairs that they found, even though they were flushed with victory. The officers and crews were fairly well acquainted with each other, for the Macedonian had been in Norfolk before the war when the United States was there and several visits had been exchanged. Lieutenant Nicholson on going into the ward-room found the surgeon at work there.
“How do you do, Doctor?” he said.
The surgeon looked up quickly at the sound of a familiar voice, and then, recognizing the lieutenant, said:
“I have enough to do. You have made wretched work with us.”
And Captain Decatur, in writing of the scene when he first boarded her, speaks of the “fragments of the dead scattered in every direction, the decks slippery with blood, one continuous agonizing yell of the wounded. A scene so horrible of my fellow-creatures, I assure you, deprived me of very much of the pleasure of victory.”