As to the effect of the fire of the two ships, Allen admits that “the Peacock, in a short time, unrigged the Epervier, and cut her sails into ribands. Most of the lower rigging of the Epervier was shot away, and her foremast was left so tottering that the calm state of the weather alone saved it from falling. Her hull was shot in every direction, and she had five feet of water in her hold.” In addition to this she had lost, as already told, her maintopmast and her main-boom, and her bowsprit was badly wounded. There were forty-five shot holes in her hull, of which twenty were within a foot of the water-line and dipped under at every roll to let the water spurt in. To realize the significance of the fact that she had five feet of water in her, it must be known that she measured only fourteen feet in depth of hold (the same depth as the Peacock).
The Peacock and the Epervier.
From an engraving by Strickland of a drawing by Birch.
Allen says that she went into the fight with “a crew of one hundred and two men and sixteen boys.” They are especially careful to specify the number of boys when they are defeated. James is at the pains to announce that “two of her men were each seventy years of age!”
Captain Warrington reported that she had a crew of one hundred and twenty-eight—his list of prisoners numbered one hundred and twenty, including the wounded. It is agreed on both sides that she lost eight men killed and fifteen wounded, and that she had enough men at least to work all of her guns efficiently.
On the other hand, the Peacock did not receive even one shot in her hull, and the only damage aloft worth mention was the disabling of the foreyard. In fifteen minutes from the time her crew began to repair the damages every cut rope had been rove anew, and half an hour later the foreyard was up in place, repaired fit to stand a gale, and the foresail was spread to the breeze. The broken foreyard was actually sent down on deck, fished, hoisted aloft again, and the sail spread in forty-five minutes. The injury to the crew was scarcely worth mentioning, for not one was killed, and only two were wounded, and they but slightly. Allen says she carried “a picked crew of one hundred and eighty-five seamen.” She had, in fact, including captain and powder-monkeys, one hundred and sixty-six.
In view of the fact that the British gunners were unable to hit the broadside of the ship when half a pistol shot away, a comparison of the armament of the two ships is as absurd as it was when the Yankee Hornet shot the British Peacock under water in fourteen minutes. However, it ought to be given to complete the record. The Peacock in this battle had a broadside of ten guns that threw three hundred and fifteen pounds actual weight of metal at a round. The Epervier had one gun less in her broadside and threw two hundred and seventy-four pounds of metal from it. The “relative force” of the two ships was as “twelve to ten;” the damage done to each was not quite as one hundred to nothing, because the Peacock did get a bad cut in the foreyard and the Epervier was not quite destroyed. Perhaps the reader will find amusement and even instruction in considering what the relative damage of the two ships really was.
After the British flag was hauled down the Yankee sailors made haste to repair the captured ship and by nightfall had her sails spread in a run for Savannah in company with the Peacock. En route to that port a British frigate chased the two, but the Peacock drew her off and then outsailed her. The Epervier was carried into Savannah on May 1st, and on the 4th, the Peacock arrived. As the reader will remember the Adams happened to be in port at this time. The Epervier proved a very rich prize to the victorious crew, for in addition to the $120,000 in coin (James would reduce it to $118,000) the Government bought the prize for $55,000. The Epervier was built in 1812.
It is worth telling that in breadth and depth the Peacock and Epervier were exactly alike—32 × 14 feet. The Peacock, however, was 118 feet long, while the Epervier was 107. There are whole fleets of Yankee schooners in this day bigger than either—plenty that can carry more cargo than both put together—which are nevertheless called small coasters; of such a character has been the development of modern ship building.