yar's report. Porter states that considerable injury was done to the Essex; and in particular the spring which he was trying to get on the cable was thrice shot away, thus preventing the bringing of her broadside to bear. The Phabe and Cherub then wore, and stood out again to sea. During this cannonade the Essex, with three 12pounders run out of her stern ports, had deprived the Phabe of "the use of her mainsail, jib and mainstay." On standing in again Hillyar prepared to anchor the Phabe, but ordered the Cherub to keep under way, choosing a position whence she could best annoy their opponent.

At 5.35 P. M., by Hillyar's report, the attack was renewed; the British ships placing themselves on the starboard-seawardquarter of the Essex. Before the Phabe reached the position in which she was to anchor, the Essex was seen to be under way. Hillyar supposed that her cable had been severed by a shot; but Porter states that under the galling fire to which she was subjected, without power to reply, he cut the cable, hoping, as the enemy were to leeward, he might bring the ship into close action, and peinaps even board the Phabe. The decision was right, but under the conditions a counsel of desperation; for sheets, tacks, and halyards being shot away, movement depended upon sails hanging loose. He was able for a short time to near the enemy, and both accounts agree that hereupon ensued the heat of the combat; "a serious conflict," to use Hillyar's words, to which correspond Porter's statement that "the firing on both sides was now tremendous." The Phœbe, however, was handled, very properly, to utilize fully her tactical advantage in the greater range of her guns, and in power of manoeuvring. She maintained from her opponent a distance at which his guns were useless and her own effective.

Seeing success out of the question, and suffering great loss of men, Porter next sought to destroy his vessel and to save the crew from captivity. The Essex was pointed for shore; but when within two hundred yards of the beach, the wind, which had so far favored her, shifted ahead. Still clinging to every chance, a kedge with a hawser was let go, to hold her where she was; perhaps the enemy might drift unwittingly out of range. But the hawser

parted, and with it the frigate's last grasp upon the country which she had honored by an heroic defence. Porter then authorized those who might so wish, to swim ashore; the colors being kept flying to warrant a proceeding which after striking them would be a breach of faith. At 6.20 the flag was lowered. Out of 255 men, with which she sailed in the morning, 58 were killed, or died of their wounds, and 65 were wounded. The missing were reported at 31. By agreement between Hillyar and Porter, the Essex Junior was disarmed and neutralized, to convey to the United States, as paroled prisoners of war, the survivors who remained on board at the moment of surrender. These numbered 132. It is an interesting particular, linking those early days of the United States Navy to a long subsequent period of renown, and worthy therefore to be recalled, that among the combatants of the Essex was Midshipman David G. Farragut, then thirteen years old. His name figures among the wounded.

The disaster to the Essex is connected by a tragical link with the fate of an American cruiser of like enterprise, in seas far distant from the Pacific. After the defeat at Valparaiso, Lieutenant McKnight and Midshipman Lyman of the United States frigate were exchanged as prisoners of war against a certain number of men belonging to one of the Essex's prizes; thus having undergone no change of belligerent relation by the capture of her captor. When the Essex Junior sailed, these officers, by amicable arrangement, remained behind to go in the Phabe to Rio Janeiro, there to give certain evidence needed in connection with the prize claims of the British frigate; which done, they would return to their own country. The first convenient opportunity offering from Rio was by a Swedish brig for Falmouth, England, in which they sailed August 23, 1814. On October 9th the brig fell in with the United States sloopof-war Wasp, in mid-ocean, three hundred miles west of the Cape Verde Islands. The two passengers transferred themselves to her. Since then nothing further has ever been heard of the American ship.

The Wasp had sailed from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, May 1, 1814, under Commander Johnstone Blakeley. Among his instructions was to remain for thirty days

in a position on the approaches to the English Channel, about 150 miles south of Ireland, in which neighborhood occurred the most striking incidents of the cruise. On the outward passage was taken only one prize, June 2d. The second, from Limerick for Bordeaux, June 13th, shows the Wasp on her station; on which, Blakeley reported, it was impossible to keep her, even approximately, being continually drawn away in pursuit, and often much further up the English Channel than desired. Most of the sails thus chased were found to be neutrals. Seven British merchant vessels were taken; all which were destroyed, except one given up to carry prisoners to England.

While thus engaged, the Wasp on June 28th sighted a sail, which proved to be the British brig-of-war Reindeer, Captain Manners. The place of this meeting was latitude 48 north, longitude 11 east; therefore nearly on the cruising ground assigned to Blakeley by his instructions. The antagonists were unequally matched; the American carrying twenty 32-pounder carronades and two long guns, the British sixteen 24-pounders and two long, a difference against her of fifty per cent. The Reindeer was to windward, and retained this advantage; the action beginning with the two vessels on the starboard tack, close hauled, the British sloop on the weather quarter of the Wasp-behind, but on the weather side, which in this case was to the right (1). Approaching slowly, the Reindeer with great deliberation fired five times, at two-minute intervals, a light gun mounted on her forecastle, loaded with round and grapeshot. Finding her to maintain this position, which his guns could not reach, Blakeley put the helm down, and the Wasp turned swiftly to the right (2), bringing her starboard battery to bear. This was at 3.26 P. M. The contest immediately became very hot, at very close range (3), and the Reindeer was speedily disabled. The vessels then came into contact (4), and Captain Manners, who by this time had received two severe wounds, with great gallantry endeavored to board with his crew, reduced by the severe punishment already inflicted, to half their originally inferior numbers. As he climbed into the rigging, two balls from the Wasp's tops passed through his head, and he fell back dead on

his own deck. No further resistance was offered, and the Wasp took possession. She had lost 5 killed and 21 wounded, of whom 6 died. The British casualties were

WIND

Wasp Reindeer

23 killed and 42 wounded. The brig herself, being fairly torn to pieces, was burned the next day.

The results testify to the efficiency and resolution of both combatants; but a special meed of praise is assuredly due to Captaín Manners, whose tenacity was as marked as his daring, and who, by the injury done to his stronger antagonist, demonstrated both the thoroughness of his previous general preparation and the skill of his management in the particular instance.

After the action Blakeley wished to remain cruising, which neither the condition of his ship nor her losses in men forbade; but the number of prisoners and wounded compelled him to make a harbor. He accordingly went into L'Orient, France, on July 8th. Despite the peace with Great Britain, which attended the restoration of the Bourbons, he was here hospitably received, and remained for seven weeks refitting. On August 27th he sailed again. By September 1st the Wasp had destroyed three more enemy's vessels; one of which was burnt under the eyes of the convoying 74gun ship. At 6.30 P. M. of September 1st, four sails were sighted, from which Blakeley selected to pursue the one most to windward; for, should this prove a ship-of-war, the others, if consorts, would be to leeward of the fight, less able to assist. The chase lasted until 9.26, when the Wasp was near enough to see that the stranger was a brigof-war, and to open with a light carronade on the forecastle, as the Reindeer had done upon her in the same situation. Confident in his vessel, however, Blakeley abandoned this advantage of position, ran under his

antagonist's lee to prevent her joining the vessels to leeward, and at 9.29 began the engagement, being then on her lee bow. At 10 the Wasp ceased firing and hailed; but receiving no reply, and the enemy's guns opening afresh, the combat was renewed. At 10.12, seeing her to be suffering greatly, Blakeley hailed again, and was answered that she had surrendered. The Wasp's battery was secured, and a boat was being lowered to take possession, when a second brig was discovered close astern. Preparation was made to receive her, and her coming up awaited; but at 10.36 the two others also became visible, approachThe Wasp then made sail, hoping to decoy the second from her supports; but the sinking condition of the one first engaged detained the new-comer, who, having come within pistol shot, fired a broadside, which took effect only aloft, and then gave all her attention to saving the crew of her consort. As the Wasp drew away she heard the repeated signal guns of distress from her late opponent, the name of which never became known to the captain and crew of the victorious ship.

ing.

The vessel thus engaged was the British brig Avon, of sixteen 32-pounder carronades, and two long 9-pounders; her force being to that of the Wasp as 4 to 5. Her loss in men was 10 killed and 32 wounded; that of the Wasp, 2 killed and i wounded. The Avon being much superior to the Reindeer, this comparatively slight injury inflicted by her testifies to much inferior efficiency. The broadside of her rescuer, the Castilian, of the same weight as her own, though delivered within pistol shot, wholly missed the Wasp's hull; a circumstance which drew from the British historian, James, the caustic remark that, had the action continued, she probably would have done no better than the Avon, which sank two hours and a half after the Wasp left her, and one hour after being rejoined by the Castilian.

The course of the Wasp after this event is traced by her captures. The fight with the Avon was within a hundred miles of that with the Reindeer. On September 12th and 14th, having run south 360 miles, she took two vessels, being then about 250 miles west of Lisbon. On the 21st she seized the British brig Atalanta, a hundred miles east of Madeira. Being of exceptional value, Blakeley decided to send her

in, and she arrived at Savannah November 4th, in charge of Midshipman David Geisinger, who lived to become a captain in the Navy. This was the last tidings received from the Wasp, until the inquiries of friends elicited the fact that the two officers of the Essex had joined her three weeks later, nine hundred miles farther south.

Nearly coincident in time and place with the cruise of the Wasp was that of her sister ship, the Peacock. She swept along the south and west coasts of Ireland, and thence as far north as the Shetlands; a digression which brought her a little behind the Wasp in pursuing the homeward track common to both. A marked feature of the Peacock's experience was the fewness of British vessels to be seen, except near the British Islands. Of nine spoken along the coasts of Spain and Portugal, all but two were neutrals; while from the Cape Verdes to Guiana, and thence to New York, only one capture was made against a dozen in the British waters.

This condition coöperated with the convoy system to determine upon the British coasts the efforts of American cruisers, public and private. While Washington was being burned, and Baltimore threatened, New York invaded in the north and Louisiana in the south, the harassment of intercourse between British ports raised a storm of indignation in their mercantile communities. The increase of insurance, over that demanded while at war with all Europe, was variously stated at double, treble, and five-fold; fluctuations which indicate a panic of uncertainty. Remonstrances poured in. "At a time when we are at peace with all the rest of the world, and when, in the plenitude of our power, we have declared the whole American coast under blockade, it is equally distressing and mortifying that our ships cannot with safety traverse our own channels, that insurance cannot be effected but at an excessive premium, and that a horde of American cruisers should be allowed, unheeded, unmolested, unresisted, to take, burn, or sink, our own vessels in our own inlets, and almost in sight of our own shores."

Striking as these results were, they were in no wise due to the United States Government, which, during a dozen years of peace, and five of threatening hostilities,

In grateful acknowledgment I raised her hand to my lips. At the same moment Frieda made an unexpected entrance upon the scene and Alicia, with admirably feigned confusion, drew her hand from mine and ran laughing up the stairway.

After luncheon we went shopping, not shopping as Alicia understands it, but a pilgrimage to the musty bazaar of "Old Mr. Peter," dealer in the lares et penates of the long deceased and a gatherer of strange things from the least known workshops of the world. There we squeezed ourselves in and out among the dusty pieces of furniture-four-posters, high-boys, and a clutter of tables and chairs-to the improvement of their polish, and explored dark corners under "Old Mr. Peter's" eager, fluttering guidance and his reiterated assurance that he had "something very fine" hidden there from the eyes of unappreciative, lesser mortals. Never by any chance did the old man find what he sought in the first black nook, rarely in the second, and not frequently in the third, but we followed him about industriously, commiserated with him in his perturbation, and hastened to agree that someone had surely profaned the venerable arrangement of his establish

ment.

Upon the first anniversary of our wedding-day we had gone to "Old Mr. Peter's" shop in search of something to be borne away and set up in our household as a token of our first voyage. And after another twelve months of sailing over gentle seas we had put in again at this quaint port of a hundred ports and chosen a second token to be reared beside the first. So when the third voyage had ended, and we were joyfully ready to unmoor ship for the fourth, we went to rummage again among the old man's wares. First it had been a Dutch clock, then a table, Russian, and romantic, if we chose to believe the letter from his St. Petersburg commissioner which the old man gave us with its dark hints in diminutive handwriting about spendthrifts and fair adventuresses, high play and tragedy. This day we had carried off a mirror with gilt sconces, and I think we rather disappointed "Old Mr.Peter" with the abruptness of our decision. He was elbow-deep in a drawerful of laces which were evidently very dear to him when we came upon the mirror, and I noted

the reluctance with which he permitted the filmy, yellowed things to drip from his wrinkled fingers, especially as he had striven to arouse Alicia's interest in the flounce of a wonderful gown in which someone had danced at the ball of Governor So-and-So in seventeen hundred and something.

After leaving the old man we had drifted about down-town as on many of the other afternoons when the things in the shops were beginning to be of more interest to us, some for their newly perceived household value, others as happily personal and perhaps not to be commented upon too pointedly. It was a day's little journey which brimmed with reminiscence, and as we picked up the landmarks one by one we forgot our three years' familiarity with them and sighted them as after a long, watchful run. Here was a wide stone doorway, with an endless flow of women over its sill, beside which I had once been bidden to stand "until called for," and had kept my vigil for two mortal hours, provoked and disappointed-and learned afterward that I had gone to the wrong place. There was the mysterious looking shop, with its window display of bonnets and hats suggesting lopped-off heads impaled on spears, into which I had been "dared" one day after an unlucky admission of curiosity as to the head-hunters within. There, too, was the benevolent persuasive old woman with the basketful of rabbits and kittens before whom I had once stopped and, with exaggerated insistence upon imaginary "points," selected for Alicia the kitten which eventually thrived into the gay little cat, Peto, who has made the three voyages with us, standing the mouse-watch occasionally and dividing the remainder of his time between the pleasures of the cabin and the profits of the galley.

Soon the lights began to sparkle along the shore line of stores on each hand, and from the increasing cold we sought a brief refuge in one of our well-remembered havens, the one in which, over her tea, Alicia had listened to many hopeful things from the skipper with whom afterward she went to sea. We had tea, of course, and at the self-same table, and Alicia even asked me how many lumps of sugar I wished. For nearly an hour we sat there, turning back the pages of our log-books, laughing over