Medal awarded to Lewis Warrington after the capture of the Epervier by the Peacock.
The Epervier was brought into port by Lieutenant John B. Nicholson. Congress voted a gold medal to Warrington and the usual silver medals and swords to the other officers. Nicholson was transferred to the Siren, of which something will be told presently. The Peacock sailed on another cruise on June 4th. Crossing the Banks of Newfoundland she cruised on the coasts of Ireland for a time and then sailed to the Bay of Biscay and finally back via the Barbadoes to New York, where she arrived on October 29, 1814. In all she took fourteen merchantmen, most of them on the Irish coast. They were manned by one hundred and forty-eight men and they were valued at $1,493,000. She was distinctly a lucky ship.
An interesting little story showing somewhat of sailors’ superstitions is told of Lieutenant John B. Nicholson, who brought the Epervier into port. He was transferred to the little sixteen-gun brig Siren, of which Lieutenant George Parker was commander, and she was sent to cruise on the coast of Africa. Off the Canaries Parker died, and after putting his body into a coffin it was put overboard with the usual funeral services. The coffin sank out of sight, but as soon as the brig filled away on her course the coffin came to the surface, where it floated like a cork.
Knowing that this event, though due entirely to the carpenter’s failure to properly weight the coffin, was regarded as an ill omen by the seamen, Lieutenant Nicholson, who was now captain by right of succession, called the men to the capstan and let them decide whether to continue the cruise, or return to port. They decided, with cheers, to cruise on.
For a time everything seemed to go well. An English frigate was dodged by hanging out false lights on a raft of casks. Two English merchantmen were taken and destroyed, but in the Senegal River another one escaped after the brig had given her a broadside, and about two months after leaving home the Siren fell in with the British liner Medway. Anchors, cables, guns, and shot were thrown overboard, but she was taken after all. It was a disastrous cruise.
CHAPTER IV
MYSTERY OF THE LAST WASP
A TYPICAL NEW ENGLAND YANKEE CREW—YOUTHFUL HAYMAKERS AND WOOD-CHOPPERS—SEA-SICK FOR A WEEK—FROM FLAILS TO CUTLASSES, FROM PITCHFORKS TO BOARDING-PIKES, FROM A NIGHT-WATCH AT A DEER-LICK TO A NIGHT BATTLE WITH THE BRITISH—AFTER BRITISH COMMERCE IN BRITISH IN-SHORE WATERS—MET BY THE BRITISH SLOOP-OF-WAR REINDEER—MAGNIFICENT PLUCK OF THE BRITISH CAPTAIN WITH A CREW THAT WAS “THE PRIDE OF PLYMOUTH”—SHOT TO PIECES IN EIGHTEEN MINUTES—A LINER THAT COULD NOT CATCH HER—WONDERFUL NIGHT BATTLE WITH THE AVON—SHOOTING MEN FROM THE ENEMY’S TOPS AS RACCOONS ARE SHOT FROM TREE-TOPS—THE ENEMY’S WATER-LINE LOCATED BY DRIFTING FOAM—NOT CAPTURED BUT DESTROYED—THE MYSTERY.
Well-manned, but ill-fated at the last, were all the Yankee Wasps. They were swift of wing for their day, and the pain of their stings still rankles. But the first, the little Baltimore clipper of eight guns, was burned at Philadelphia to keep her out of the hands of the British invaders. The second, she that deluged the decks of the British brig Frolic with blood, was captured by a British liner, and then with a British crew sailed from port and never returned. The story of the third shall now be told.
She was a beautiful ship, a sloop-of-war called large and heavy in that day. Like her sister ships, the Peacock and the Frolic, of whose deeds something was told in the last chapter, she was designed to outsail and outweigh, and so conquer with ease, the sloops-of-war of the British navy. Her keel was stretched on blocks beside that of her sister, the Frolic, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On the day the Epervier, the first prize of her sister, the Peacock, reached Savannah on May 1, 1814, the new Wasp winged her way through the British blockaders that lay off Whaleback Reef, and headed away to the east, bound for the coast of England.