So both sloops took to their heels. The swift Peacock had no trouble in getting out of the way, but the Hornet was slow, and the liner chose to follow her. About the time the liner made the choice (she was the seventy-four Cornwallis, Admiral Sir George Burleton, K.C.B.) she lost a man overboard, and stopped to pick him up, but she soon made up the time so lost, and at 9 o’clock, seven hours after learning the character of the enemy, the Hornet’s crew began to lighten ship. At 2 o’clock on the morning of the 29th the enemy was forward of the Hornet’s lee beam and outfooting the Yankee rapidly, so the Yankee went about. The enemy followed, and at daylight, though still to leeward, was within gunshot, and her bow-chasers gave tongue.
The Hornet’s Escape from the Cornwallis.
From a wood-cut in the “Naval Monument.”
That set the Yankees working for life. The anchors and cables, the spare spars, the ship’s launch, and the six cannon and some hundreds of round shot were tumbled into the sea. The Hornet drew out of range then, but the wind hauled to the east, favoring the enemy, and once more the crew went at the work of lightening ship. They were sure they would be captured, but they would not give up. Three of the enemy’s shot had come on board, but these had done no injury. All the guns but one were now dumped into the sea, and so was everything else that could be spared. “Many of our men had been impressed and imprisoned for years in their horrible service, and hated them and their nation with the most deadly animosity, while the rest of the crew, horror-struck with the narration of the sufferings of their shipmates who had been in the power of the English, and now equally flushed with rage, joined heartily in execrating the present authors of our misfortune.” So wrote one of the Hornet’s officers. This letter shows not only why the crew made every endeavor to escape; it shows why the fire of the Hornet had been more effective than that of the Penguin. Their work, however, would have been vain but for another shift of wind. It came in a freshening gale from the west, and the Hornet drew ahead. By sunset of the 29th the enemy was four miles astern. By sunrise of the 30th, after a squally night, the liner was twelve miles astern, and at 9.30 she abandoned the chase. The Hornet reached home on June 9th. She escaped because her commander was not one of the kind to give up until he had not a plank that would swim.
The Peacock continued on the original cruise. Four rich Indiamen, with crews aggregating two hundred and ninety-one men, were captured, and then on June 30th she fell in with the East India Company’s cruiser Nautilus, Lieutenant Charles Boyce, a brig of less than half the size of the Peacock, and carrying four long nines and ten short eighteens. The Nautilus was at anchor off Fort Anjers, in the Straits of Sunda. A boat from the Nautilus took her purser on board the Peacock to announce, according to Allen, that peace had been declared. Allen says that the purser “was instantly sent below, without being suffered to ask a question.” The Peacock continued approaching the Nautilus, and the British captain “hailed and asked if the captain (of the Peacock) knew that peace had been declared.”
Captain Warrington fully believed this hail was a ruse to enable the brig to escape to the protection of the fort, and ordered the brig to surrender. Captain Boyce refused, and one or two broadsides (accounts differ) were exchanged, when the brig, having lost seven men killed and eight wounded, and having been badly cut up as well, while the Peacock was not even scratched, the British flag was lowered. The gallantry of the British captain was as praiseworthy as the marksmanship of his gunners was execrable.
Allen says that Captain Warrington, in firing on the British brig, after Boyce’s hail, exhibited a “savage barbarity unworthy of a Red Indian.”
Roosevelt says: “I regret to say that it is difficult to believe he (Warrington) acted with proper humanity.” Cooper says it was an “unfortunate mistake.” No writer on this subject seems to have asked himself seriously what he would have done had he been in command of a little sloop in the Straits of Sunda, with all the fleets of the mighty British Empire between him and a home-port—what he would have done had he found a legitimate prize just beyond the guns of a powerful fort of the enemy. Did a legitimate desire for self-preservation in that situation warrant the Yankee in taking every advantage possible of the enemy, and in doubting what the enemy, apparently caught at a disadvantage, might say?
But if Warrington, the Yankee, showed “savage barbarity,” what shall be said of the act of Captain Bartholomew, of the British ship Erebus, in firing a broadside at the Yankee gun-boat Number 168, commanded by Sailing-master Hurlburt, after learning officially that peace had been declared? “Peace having been declared and having been known to exist for over three weeks,” the gun-boat, en route to deliver despatches to the British admiral off Tybee Bar, Georgia, did not heave to when ordered to do so as he was passing the Erebus. Instead, he told the British his errand. Captain Bartholomew, cursing like a pirate, said he would sink the gun-boat if a boat from her were not sent on board the Erebus instantly, and when Mr. Hurlburt began to reply the British marines opened fire with muskets, and he was ordered to haul down his flag. He refused and the big ship fired a broadside. Hurlburt returned the fire as best he could and then surrendered. He was soon allowed to proceed.