At this Captain Lambert of the Java decided to board the Constitution, and headed down toward the Yankee, who was thus brought well under the Java’s lee bow, and it was now the Java’s turn to take a raking. She got it with frightful effect, for she came end on until her jib-boom fouled the mizzen rigging of the Constitution. The Yankee topmen poured their fire into the gathering boarders on the Java. The Yankee gunners hurled round-shot, grape and canister that raked the Java from stem to stern. The sails of the Constitution were backed to hold her where she could continue the fire. The Java’s bowsprit was shot away. It was the first of her spars to go and it dropped under her bows at 3 o’clock precisely. Five minutes later her foremast was chopped off by the Yankee round-shot, and it fell over the lee bow. The Constitution forereached off the Java’s bows, wore around, gave her broadsides from the fresh battery thus brought into play, came back to give her a further broadside, and, as the enemy swung around head on because of the drag of the wrecked foremast, the Constitution wore again and gave her the port broadside. The Java’s main topmast came crashing down from aloft. The gaff and boom of the spanker followed, and last of all, at five minutes before four o’clock her mizzen-mast was cut down as the foremast had been, carrying her last flag with it.
The Battle Between the Constitution and the Java.—I.
(At five minutes past three o’clock as the Java’s foremast fell.)
From an engraving by Havel, after a sketch by Lieutenant Buchanan.
A hearty Yankee “hurrah” rose from the deck of the Constitution. At the sound of it John Cheever, a sturdy Marblehead seaman, who was lying on deck apparently dead from a wound he had received, opened his eyes and, calling to a shipmate, asked what the noise was for, and in reply learned that the enemy had struck. Springing up on one hand he waved the other above his head and gave three cheers. But the last one ended with the death-rattle in his throat and he fell back dead.
In just sixty-five minutes from the time that Commodore Bainbridge decided to risk the Java’s raking fire he had her rolling on the long seas a complete wreck.
And yet the pluck of the British crew was so great that their fire was not wholly silenced until ten minutes later, a fact of which any Anglo-Saxon, whatever his flag, may well feel proud.
Seeing that the enemy was silenced, and his flag nowhere in sight, the Constitution stood up to windward with every spar aloft in place, “ship-shape and Bristol fashion.” She had received one shot through the mizzen-mast, and some other spars had been clipped and grazed by the Java’s fire; some of her running rigging and of her shrouds and stays had been slashed, but for practical purposes she was “fore and fit.” As the British Naval Chronicle put it, “the Java sustained unequalled injuries beyond the Constitution.”
Nevertheless, on returning to the Java the British flag was found waving from the stump mizzen-mast, and the Constitution ranged up to give her another raking broadside. As the Java was then entirely helpless the British flag was hauled down.