Meantime word was carried below to the Americans that the British were on the upper deck. Instantly the Portuguese mutineer took the gratings from the hatch leading to the lower hold and climbed down, shouting “So much for not paying men prize-money.”
The Chesapeake and Shannon.—The Shannon’s men boarding.
From an engraving at the Navy Department, Washington.
He was followed by about all the foreigners. Lieutenant George Budd and a dozen veteran American seamen started for the upper deck, but on reaching it Budd was struck and knocked down the hatchway. The “novices held back.” There were not enough veterans to conquer. The Chesapeake swung around and broke clear of the Shannon, leaving no more than sixty of the British on the Chesapeake’s deck, but they had the deck. Two volleys were fired down the hatches and the Americans were entirely demoralized. Going aft, the British hauled down the American flag at 6.05 o’clock and the battle was ended. They had captured the Chesapeake in just fifteen minutes.
On getting the flag down they hoisted it with a white flag to show their victory, but by mistake the sailor doing the work got the white flag under the Stars and Stripes. Seeing this, the men on the Shannon opened fire again and killed and wounded a number of their own men, including Lieutenant Thomas L. Watt.
On the weary road to Halifax Lawrence gradually lost strength and became delirious. It is said that then he kept repeating over and over again his last order on the quarter-deck of the Chesapeake, “Don’t give up the ship.” He died before Halifax was reached. Captain Broke, also wounded almost unto death, also became delirious, but before he became so he startled the crews of both ships by ordering a Scotch piper on the Shannon to play “Yankee Doodle.” “Yankee Doodle” on a Scotch bag-pipe would be startling, at least to Americans, under any circumstances, but this time it was played at night and in a dense fog. It is said that many of the people on both ships supposed at first that one of the Yankee frigates had “happened along.”
The two ships arrived at Halifax on a Sunday morning. “There was a great shout from the people, for they thought our prize was the 44-gun frigate President, which had incurred their cordial dislike, but when they heard that it was the Chesapeake, and that Lawrence, her commander, was dead, not a huzza was heard, except, I believe, from a brig lying at anchor. Captain Lawrence was highly respected for his humanity to the crew of the Peacock, and marks of real grief were seen in the countenances of all the inhabitants, I had a chance to see.” So wrote a British officer.
The body of Lawrence lay on the quarter-deck of the Chesapeake, wrapped in an American flag. It was placed in a coffin and taken ashore “in a twenty-oared barge, to minute strokes, followed by a procession of boats at respectful distances. It was met by a regiment of British troops and a band that played the ‘Dead March in Saul.’” The sword of the American was placed on his coffin, which was then carried away by six of the oldest naval officers in the port. The long procession that followed included many of the wounded of both ships.
