All aghast, and all confounded,
They beheld their champions fall,
And their captain, sorely wounded,
Bade them quick for quarters call.
Then the Monk's proud flag descended,
And her cannon ceased to roar;
By her crew no more defended,
She confessed the contest o'er.
Come, brave boys, and fill your glasses,
You have humbled one proud foe,
No brave action this surpasses,
Fame shall tell the nation so—
Thus be Britain's woes completed,
Thus abridged her cruel reign,
Till she ever, thus defeated,
Yields the sceptre of the main.
Philip Freneau.
The last naval action of the war occurred December 19, 1782, when the American ship, South Carolina, forty guns, was chased and captured, off the Delaware, by the British ships Quebec, Diomede, and Astrea, carrying ninety-eight guns. A few days later a ballad describing the affair appeared in the loyalist papers as a letter "from a dejected Jonathan, a prisoner taken in the South Carolina, to his brother Ned at Philadelphia."
THE SOUTH CAROLINA
[December 19, 1782]
My dear brother Ned,
We are knock'd on the head,
No more let America boast;
We may all go to bed,
And that's enough said,
For the South Carolina we've lost.
The pride of our eyes,
I swear is a prize,
You never will see her again,
Unless thro' surprise,
You are brought where she lies,
A prisoner from the false main.
Oh Lord! what a sight!—
I was struck with affright,
When the Diomede's shot round us fell,
I feared that in spite,
They'd have slain us outright,
And sent us directly to h—l.
The Quebec did fire,
Or I'm a curs'd liar,
And the Astrea came up apace;
We could not retire
From the confounded fire,
They all were so eager in chase.