Finding her a fair match for the Hornet, Captain Lawrence sent her a challenge to go outside and have a fight. Such challenges were common and popular in those days. Both Lawrence and Commodore Hull gave their word of honor that the Constitution would not interfere, but Captain Greene declined.
It eventually became apparent that he was really a coward, for the Constitution, after destroying the Java, sailed from Bahia for home on January 6, 1813, leaving the Hornet blockading the Bonne Citoyenne. And the Hornet maintained the blockade until the 24th, when a British seventy-four, the Montagu, arrived and the Hornet had to fly.
The Hornet Blockading the Bonne Citoyenne.
From an old wood-cut.
One gets a curious illustration of the character of one British historian in James’s account of this matter. He who constantly called the Americans cowards denies that the Hornet blockaded the Bonne Citoyenne single-handed, and yet tells, on page 277, that the Constitution sailed for home on January 6, leaving the Hornet to cruise alone off the harbor for nearly three weeks.
Meantime, on the day of the Constitution-Java fight, the American ship William, that the Java had taken, tried to make port at Bahia, and fell into the hands of Captain Lawrence who took out her prize crew and sent her on her way under her own.
However, having been driven off at last by a line-of-battle ship sent from Rio Janeiro for the express purpose of raising the blockade, the Hornet cruised to the north along the coast of South America, and having rounded Cape St. Roque, continued to keep along shore. Several prizes were made, one being a brig called the Resolution with $23,000 coin on board, but no incident of greater note occurred until off the mouth of Demerara River.
Here on February 24th a British war-brig called the Espiègle, Captain John Taylor, was seen at anchor in the mouth of the river. As that was British territory there was every incentive to attack her, and as she carried eighteen thirty-twos she was a fair match. Captain Lawrence therefore went hunting her, but while following the channel around Caroband Bank he “at half past three P.M. discovered another sail on our weather-quarter edging down for us. At twenty minutes past four she hoisted English colors, at which we discovered her to be a large man-of-war brig—beat to quarters, cleared ship for action, and kept close by the wind in order, if possible, to get the weather-gauge.” So runs the report of Captain Lawrence.
The enemy was the British man-of-war brig Peacock, Captain William Peake.