“My lads, that ship is coming up with us. As our ship won’t sail we’ll go on board of theirs, every man and boy of us, and carry her into New York. All I ask of you is to follow me. This is a favorite ship of the country. If we allow her to be taken we shall be deserted by our wives and sweethearts. What! let such a ship as this go for nothing! ’Twould break the heart of every pretty girl in New York.”

The crew responded with three cheers and ran to the braces. The President came around on the other tack. But she did not get on board the Endymion, for her prudent captain tacked her as soon as he saw the sails of the President lift. This is not to say that he was a coward; he merely was not “uncircumspect.” He was “wary” enough to hold the advantage his good ship gave him.

The President Engaging the Endymion, while Pursued by the British Squadron.

From a wood-cut in the “Naval Monument.”

By dusk, however, Decatur found the Endymion broad off to starboard, and a fierce cannonade followed at musket-range. The Americans fired rigging-cutting shot as well as round, and one of the chain-shot stripped the entire foresail from the Endymion. And as for the round shot, they played such havoc with masts and guns that the Endymion was well-nigh wrecked, while her fire was entirely stopped. She was, in short, whipped. Decatur might now have exchanged ships with Captain Hope, without material difficulty, but that would now avail nothing because she was too badly crippled to escape the others. So he had to turn once more to fly.

But this was a hopeless effort, because the President had been crippled too badly on the bar to outsail the others. Moreover, he had lost several of his best officers. First Lieutenant Fitz-Henry Babbitt was standing near a hatch when a cannon-ball took off his right leg and he pitched head-first down the hatch. His leg was broken anew and his skull was fractured, yet he lived two hours and dictated messages to his friends before he died.

Lieutenant Archibald Hamilton (son of the former Secretary of the Navy)—he who had carried the Macedonian’s flag to Washington—was cut in two by another round shot as he stepped to speak to Second Lieutenant John Temple Shubrick. And then as the Endymion’s fire slackened, Lieutenant Edward F. Howell was killed. He was leaning over the rail looking away at the dim outline of the Endymion when he said to Midshipman Emmet:

“Well, we’ve whipped that ship, at any rate.”