The Shannon taking the Chesapeake into Halifax Harbor.
From an engraving at the Navy Department, Washington.
A song that was published in the British Naval Chronicle some months before the battle contained this stanza:
And as the war they did provoke,
We’ll pay them with our cannon;
The first to do it will be Broke.
In the gallant ship the Shannon.
The British Historians unite in asserting that this battle proved conclusively that “if the odds were anything like equal, a British frigate could always whip an American, and that in a hand-to-hand conflict such would invariably be the case.”
A French historian, who is accepted as authority by all nations, says of this action:
“Captain Broke had commanded the Shannon for nearly seven years; Captain Lawrence had commanded the Chesapeake for but a few days. The Shannon had cruised for eighteen months on the coast of America; the Chesapeake was newly out of harbor. The Shannon had a crew long accustomed to habits of strict obedience; the Chesapeake was manned by men who had just been engaged in mutiny. The Americans were wrong to accuse Fortune on this occasion. Fortune was not fickle, she was merely logical. The Shannon captured the Chesapeake on June 1, 1813, but on September 14, 1806, when he took command of his frigate, Captain Broke began to prepare the glorious termination of the bloody affair.”