Not a breath of wind stirred. Captain Hull called away his boats, and the sailors tugged at the oars, towing the Constitution very slowly ahead. Captain Broke of the Shannon promptly followed suit and signaled for all the boats of the squadron. In a long column they trailed at the end of the hawser; and the Shannon crept closer. Catspaws of wind ruffled the water, and first one ship and then the other gained a few hundred yards as upper tiers of canvas caught the faint impulse. The Shannon was a crack ship, and there was no better crew in the British navy, as Lawrence of the Chesapeake afterwards learned to his mortal sorrow. Gradually the Shannon cut down the intervening distance until she could make use of her bow guns.
At this Captain Hull resolved to try kedging his ship along, sending a boat half a mile ahead with a light anchor and all the spare rope on board. The crew walked the capstan round and hauled the ship up to the anchor, which they then lifted, carried ahead, and dropped again. The Constitution kept two kedges going all through that summer day, but the Shannon was playing the same game, and the two ships maintained their relative positions. They shot at each other at such long range that no damage was done. Before dusk the Guerrière caught a slant of breeze and worked nearer enough to bang away at the Constitution, which was, indeed, between the devil and the deep sea.
Night came on. The sailors, British and American, toiled until they dropped in their tracks, pulling at the kedge anchors and hawsers or bending to the sweeps of the cutters which towed at intervals and were exposed to the spatter of shot. It seemed impossible that the Constitution could slip clear of this pack of able frigates which trailed her like hounds. Toward midnight the fickle breeze awoke and wafted the ships along under studding sails and all the light cloths that were wont to arch skyward. For two hours the men slept on deck like logs while those on watch grunted at the pump-brakes and the hose wetted the canvas to make it draw better.
The breeze failed, however, and through the rest of the night it was kedge and tow again, the Shannon and the Guerrière hanging on doggedly, confident of taking their quarry. Another day dawned, hot and windless, and the situation was unchanged. Other British ships had crawled or drifted nearer, but the Constitution was always just beyond range of their heavy guns. We may imagine Isaac Hull striding across the poop and back again, ruddy, solid, composed, wearing a cocked hat and a gold-laced coat, lifting an eye aloft, or squinting through his brass telescope, while he damned the enemy in the hearty language of the sea. He was a nephew of General William Hull, but it would have been unfair to remind him of it.
Near sunset of the second day of this unique test of seamanship and endurance, a rain squall swept toward the Constitution and obscured the ocean. Just before the violent gust struck the ship her seamen scampered aloft and took in the upper sails. This was all that safety required, but, seeing a chance to trick the enemy, Hull ordered the lower sails double-reefed as though caught in a gale of wind. The British ships hastily imitated him before they should be overtaken in like manner and veered away from the chase. Veiled in the rain and dusk, the Constitution set all sail again and foamed at twelve knots on her course toward a port of refuge. Though two of the British frigates were in sight next morning, the Constitution left them far astern and reached Boston safely.
Seafaring New England was quick to recognize the merit of this escape. Even the Federalists, who opposed and hampered the war by land, were enthusiastic in praise of Captain Hull and his ship. They had outsailed and outwitted the best of the British men-of-war on the American coast, and a general feeling of hopelessness gave way to an ardent desire to try anew the ordeal of battle. With this spirit firing his officers and crew, Hull sailed again a few days later on a solitary cruise to the eastward with the intention of vexing the enemy's merchant trade and hopeful of finding a frigate willing to engage him in a duel. From Newfoundland he cruised south until a Salem privateer spoke him on the 18th of August and reported a British warship close by. The Constitution searched until the afternoon of the next day and then sighted her old friend, the Guerrière.
To retell the story of their fight in all the vanished sea lingo of that day would bewilder the land-man and prove tedious to those familiar with the subject. The boatswains piped the call, "all hands clear ship for action"; the fife and drum beat to quarters; and four hundred men stood by the tackles of the muzzle-loading guns with their clumsy wooden carriages, or climbed into the tops to use their muskets or trim sail. Decks were sanded to prevent slipping when blood flowed. Boys ran about stacking the sacks of powder or distributing buckets of pistols ready for the boarding parties. And against the masts the cutlasses and pikes stood ready.
Captain John Dacres of the ill-fated Guerrière was an English gentleman as well as a gallant officer. But he did not know his antagonist. Like his comrades of the service he had failed to grasp the fact that the Constitution and the other American frigates of her class were the most formidable craft afloat, barring ships of the line, and that they were to revolutionize the design of war-vessels for half a century thereafter. They were frigates, or cruisers, in that they carried guns on two decks, but the main battery of long twenty-four-pound guns was an innovation, and the timbers and planking were stouter than had ever been built into ships of the kind. So stout, indeed, were the sides that shot rebounded from them more than once and thus gave the Constitution the affectionate nickname of "Old Ironsides."
Sublimely indifferent to these odds, Captain Dacres had already sent a challenge, with his compliments, to Commodore Rodgers of the United States frigate President, saying that he would be very happy to meet him or any other American frigate of equal force, off Sandy Hook, "for the purpose of having a few minutes' tête-à-tête." It was therefore with the utmost willingness that the Constitution and the Guerrière hoisted their battle ensigns and approached each other warily for an hour while they played at long bowls, as was the custom, each hoping to disable the other's spars or rigging and so gain the advantage of movement. Finding this sort of action inconclusive, however, Hull set more sail and ran down to argue it with broadsides, coolly biding his time, although Morris, his lieutenant, came running up again and again to beg him to begin firing. Men were being killed beside their guns as they stood ready to jerk the lock strings. The two ships were abreast of each other and no more than a few yards apart before the Constitution returned the cannonade that thundered from every gun port of her adversary.
Within ten minutes the Guerrière's mizzenmast was knocked over the side and her hull was shattered by the accurate fire of the Yankee gunners, who were trained to shoot on the downward roll of their ship and so smash below the water line. Almost unhurt, the Constitution moved ahead and fearfully raked the enemy's deck before the ships fouled each other. They drifted apart before the boarders could undertake their bloody business, and then the remaining masts of the British frigate toppled overside and she was a helpless wreck. Seventy-nine of her crew were dead or wounded and the ship was sinking beneath their feet. Captain Isaac Hull could truthfully report: "In less than thirty minutes from the time we got alongside of the enemy she was left without a spar standing, and the hull cut to pieces in such a manner as to make it difficult to keep her above water."