Decatur and Somers

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Have licked ’em both together!”

At this “Old Wagoner’s” deck fairly shook with the thunders of cheers from the Americans, the midshipmen joining in with leather lungs, the grave Somers yelling like a wild Indian, while Decatur executed a war-dance of triumph.

The Thetis, as if disgusted with the turn of affairs, set her royals and all her studding sails, and began to leg it at a lively pace. “Old Wagoner” followed her example, and the men sprang into the rigging and set exactly the same sails. But they found within five minutes that the American could sail better, both on and off the wind, as she followed the Thetis in her tacks. The Thetis then, keeping her luff, furled sail on the mizzen and took in royals and studding sails. The American did precisely the same thing, and, as she still sailed faster, an old sail containing kentledge was ostentatiously hung astern and acted as a drag, keeping the two ships together.

This evidently infuriated the British, but they had found out that the American could walk around the Thetis like a cooper around a cask. They did not care to test it further, and the Thetis therefore sailed sullenly along for half an hour more. The Americans were delighted, especially Commodore Barry, who handled his trumpet as gayly as if he were a midshipman on his first tour of duty as deck officer. He next ordered the topsails lowered. This brought the American down very slow indeed, and she rapidly fell astern of the Thetis. The English thought that their tormentors were now gone. The Americans, suspecting some ruse of the commodore’s, were all on the alert. Presently the commodore cried out jovially:

“Now’s the time for carrying all hard sail!” and in five minutes “Old Wagoner” seemed literally to burst into one great white cloud of canvas from truck to rail. Everything that would draw was set; and the breeze, which was every moment growing stronger, carried her along at a perfectly terrific pace. She shot past the Thetis, her gigantic spread of canvas eating the wind out of the Englishman’s sails and throwing them aback, and as she flew by another roaring cheer went up from the Americans.

The fun, however, was not over yet. Having got well in advance of the Thetis, “Old Wagoner” bore up, and, hauling her wind, dashed directly across the forefoot of the English ship as the Englishman came slowly on.

All the cheering that had preceded was as nothing when this neat manœuvre was accomplished. The old Commodore, giving the trumpet back to the officer of the deck, was greeted with three cheers and a tiger, and every officer and man on board gloried in the splendid qualities of the ship and her gallant old commander.

The brilliant visions of the midshipmen of yardarm-and-yardarm fights with French frigates, with promotion, and prize money galore, failed to materialize, although they had several sharp encounters with fleet French privateers that infested the waters of the French West Indies. With them it was a trial of seamanship, because, if ever a privateer got under the guns of “Old Wagoner,” small was her chance of escape. But the American proved to be a first-class sailer, and nothing that she chased got away from her. Several privateers were captured, but the midshipmen groaned in spirit over the absence of anything like a stand-up fight.

It did not seem likely that they would make a port for some time to come. Early in February, cruising to windward of Martinique, they ran across the French privateer Tartuffe—and Tartuffe she proved. She was a beautiful little brigantine, with six shining brass guns, and her captain evidently thought she could take care of herself; for when the United States gave chase and fired a gun from her bow-chasers, the saucy little privateer fired a gun back and took to her heels.