An echo to the prolonged salute which the ships of Sir George Collier fired, in the harbor of Porto Praya, to the honor of Yankee pluck and seamanship, comes from a giant mountain rising in the lonely wastes of the South Atlantic—from the island of Tristan d’Acunha. On a line from the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Horn, and 1,500 miles west of the Cape of Good Hope, can be found three rugged islands, which, though small in diameter, rise at one point to a height of no less than 8,300 feet above the rollers that crash against their precipitous walls. No more lonely and no more impressive rocks than these are found in all the world.

But, though far away from civilized habitations, the group was itself inhabited by sealers and whalers even as early as 1791, when a Yankee, one Jonathan Lambert, “by a curious and singular edict declared himself sovereign proprietor” of the group. For it was a breeding resort for seals and sea lions, and it had also a climate and some soil fit for a comfortable human habitation, and this enterprising Yankee had settled there with associates and had “cleared about fifty acres of land, and planted various kinds of seed, some of which, as well as the coffee-tree and sugar-cane, were furnished by the American Minister at Rio Janeiro.”

At the time of the War of 1812 it was a very well-known group to Yankee seamen, and seemingly out of the way as it looked when glancing at a chart of that sea, it was nevertheless but a little to one side of what was counted the best route from New York to the East Indies. Accordingly, when Decatur was ordered to take the President, the Hornet, the new Peacock, and the store-ship Tom Bowline for a voyage against British commerce in the East Indies, he appointed the Tristan d’Acunha group as the rendezvous where all the ships should meet, replenish their water, stretch the legs of the seamen in a chase after wild goats and hogs on shore, and then sail away in search of English men-of-war to conquer.

As has been told, Decatur, when leaving New York, took the natural course along the Long Island coast, instead of the bolder and therefore safer course down the Jersey beach, and “was fairly mobbed” by the British fleet. His consorts, the Hornet, the Peacock, and the Tom Bowline, sailed a few days later (January 22d), without having learned that the President was captured, and having escaped the blockaders, they sailed away to the meeting-point.

When a few days out, the Hornet separated from her consorts and thereafter proceeded without incident worth mention until, on March 23, 1815, she arrived at the group of Tristan d’Acunha. An action which followed on the day she arrived was the next to the last one of the war. Allen, in beginning his description of the two last, says: “Two actions of a disgraceful character to the Americans remain to be recorded.” He then tells that Captain Biddle, commanding the Hornet, spoke to a neutral ship on March 20th, when the neutral captain said he had heard that peace had been declared. “Information coming in this questionable shape was not binding,” says Allen, but “it was Captain Biddle’s duty to have acted cautiously before setting it at defiance.” He did not act as cautiously as Allen thinks he should, and so the action was “of a disgraceful character to the Americans.” As to the facts, there is no dispute, save in the minor matters of the number of each crew and the size of a couple of guns, so the reader is able to decide for himself how far the action disgraced the American flag.

Having reached the anchorage off the tiny settlement on the main island of the group at about 11 o’clock in the morning of March 23, 1815, the sheets of the head-sails on the Hornet were let go preparatory to swinging her up into the wind and dropping her anchor. But no sooner had the sails begun to flap than the lookout announced a sail in sight, and hauling aft the sheets once more the Hornet stood out to sea for a look at the stranger.

As it happened, the strange vessel was the British brig sloop Penguin, Captain James Dickenson, a new vessel on her first cruise. She had sailed from England to the Cape of Good Hope. When there, news arrived that a heavy Yankee privateer called the Young Wasp had been making prizes of British Indiamen, using Tristan d’Acunha as a retreat when water and fresh meat were needed. Accordingly, Admiral Tyler, commanding the squadron, sent the Penguin to the lonely group to capture the venturesome privateer, placing on board of her twelve marines from his own ship, the Medway, to make sure that she had enough men.

So it happened that when the Penguin reached the island and saw a sail there, Captain Dickenson thought he had had the good luck to alight on the saucy privateer. Being fearful that the supposed privateer would run away, the Penguin was handled very carefully. Captain Dickenson did not want the Yankee to see how many guns the Penguin carried and so kept her end on to the Hornet as he came down wind to capture her—came down wind because he was fortunate enough to come into the fight with the wind in his favor.

The Hornet, as the Penguin approached, kept wearing first one way and then the other to keep from getting raked until 1.40 P.M., when the Penguin had arrived within musket-shot. At that the Penguin hauled to the wind with the breeze coming in over her starboard bow, when she “hoisted her colors and fired a gun; whereupon the Hornet hauled up on the starboard tack and discharged a broadside.” The quotation is from Allen. It is a small matter, but the first gun of this “action of a disgraceful character to the Americans” was fired by the British.

The battle that followed was another remarkable exhibit of the superiority of the Yankee gunners. For ten minutes they hurled bar-shot and other missiles at the rigging of the ill-fated Penguin. “In a very short time” these projectiles “had done their work.” And then the Yankee gunners began to load with solid shot, loading swiftly as the gunners had done in the Hornet’s action with the British Peacock, but aiming with deliberation. And so, “notwithstanding a heavy swell prevailed,” every broadside “was taking effect.” The quotations are from Allen. “Taking effect” expressed the result of the Yankee fire but mildly. Captain Dickenson, of the Penguin, described the work much more forcibly. He said to First Lieutenant McDonald: “The fellows are giving it to us like hell.”

They had thought to encounter one of the sea-militia, but they found a well-trained Yankee man-of-war crew instead.

The Penguin having the weather-gage, in spite of her crippled rigging, was steadily drawing down on the Yankee. It was plain that the British gunners were no match for the Yankees, and Captain Dickenson determined to try boarding. Putting up his helm he sent his ship straight at the Hornet. Just then a bullet stretched him dead on the deck, but First Lieutenant James McDonald took his place and bravely called on the men to follow him. The British bow came crashing against the Hornet’s side just abaft the main rigging. The Yankees flocked to the quarter-deck to repel boarders. The blunt cutwater of the British bow sawed up and down on the black waist of the Hornet, rasping the thick planks as if to break them in; but the boarders never came over to the bow.

“We tried,” said McDonald, afterward, “but found the men rather backward—and so, you know, we concluded to give it up.”

The Yankee crew wanted, then, to board the Penguin but Captain Biddle stopped them, because it was “evident from the beginning that our fire was greatly superior both in quickness and effect.”

Moreover, there was no need for that movement. The Hornet forged ahead over the heavy sea, and the bowsprit of the Penguin caught her mizzen rigging and carried it away, and then the boat davits and spanker-boom as well. The broken boom dropped on a marine who had already had his leg broken by a musket-ball and it broke the leg again, yet the eager fellow wriggled around and strove to point his musket at the British in the foretop of the Penguin. The Penguin’s chief officer shouted that he had surrendered, and Captain Biddle, after ordering his men to cease firing, climbed up on the Hornet’s rail. At that two of the British marines, who, very likely, had not heard their chief officer surrender, fired at Biddle and at the man at the Hornet’s wheel. Biddle was severely wounded, and the two marines were instantly killed by a return fire from the Americans.

Then the Penguin drifted clear. Her bowsprit fell into the sea, broken short off above the figure-head, and her foremast fell over the lee rail. Her bow came up into the wind, and with such canvas as was spread on her mainmast flat aback, she drifted stern on, a helpless wreck.

The Hornet wore around before the wind and came back with a fresh broadside ready, but McDonald hauled down the Penguin’s flag and once more shouted that she had surrendered. The first of the two “actions of a disgraceful character to the Americans” was ended. It had lasted but twenty minutes from the first gun.

The comparison between the ships, their armament and their crews, is exceedingly pleasing to an American. Rarely have two vessels so nearly equal met in deadly conflict. Under the arbitrary rule of measuring ships the Yankee was three tons larger than the Englishman, but the Englishman had “a slightly greater breadth of beam, stouter sides, and higher bulwarks.” That is to say, the British sailors were protected better than the Americans were. The Yankee carried eighteen short thirty-twos and two long twelves, making an actual-weight broadside of two hundred and seventy-nine pounds of metal. The Penguin, according to Captain Biddle, carried sixteen short thirty-twos, one short twelve on the forecastle, and two long twelves arranged so that both could be fired on one side, but James says she had long sixes instead of long twelves. It is certain that before this war the British vessels of the class of the Penguin did usually carry long sixes for bow-chasers, but the Penguin, was a new vessel, built after the effectiveness of the larger guns carried by the Yankees had been abundantly demonstrated. The new British frigates carried long twenty-fours instead of long eighteens, as the older frigates had carried, so it is entirely reasonable to believe that Captain Biddle told the truth when he reported on the size of the Penguin’s guns. Moreover, Biddle was a careful man. He put a tape-line on the Penguin’s hull to get at her dimensions, and no one disputes the measurements he made there.

However, the later American writers have not been disposed to insist on this point. They can afford to be generous. They allow the figures of James to go into their tables of comparison, for even with but one long six on the engaged side, the Penguin threw two hundred and seventy-four pounds of metal to the Yankee’s two hundred and seventy-nine.

But to a student of history at the end of the nineteenth century there never was a sea-duel where the comparison of the weights of metal in the two broadsides was more ridiculous than in this one between the Hornet and the Penguin. For not one solid shot from the Penguin struck the Yankee—not one; and what is worse still, not one solid shot struck the Yankee’s spars. Moreover, the storm of British projectiles was hurled so high that the injury to the Yankee’s rigging was worse above the top-sails than below them. On the other hand, the Yankees, in ten minutes’ firing, in spite of the heavy swell, had destroyed the sail-power of the British boat (by Allen’s own account), and in five minutes more (not including the time after the ships drifted apart, when no great guns were fired) the Yankees had riddled her hull until she was not worth saving. It is not the weight of metal carried, nor the weight of metal thrown; it is the weight of metal driven home into the enemy that wins the battle.

This, although not the last encounter, was the last real battle of the War of 1812; like the first of the war (Constitution-Guerrière), and like every other in which the Americans won, and like that between the Shannon and the Chesapeake, where the British were victorious, it proved, beyond dispute, that the most important art known to a naval ship is the art of aiming guns accurately.

The Hornet lost two killed and nine wounded; the British lost fourteen killed and twenty-eight wounded—nearly one-third of her crew.

The numbers of the crews cannot be stated beyond dispute. It is admitted that the Penguin had twelve marines beyond her full complement—she had more men than she needed to work her guns. The Yankees admit that they had enough in spite of the fact that eight had been sent away on a prize, and that nine were too sick to leave their beds. By showing the utmost generosity toward British writers, we find that the Penguin had one hundred and thirty-two in her crew, including “seventeen boys.” The Yankee had at most one hundred and forty-two on board, of whom nine were sick in their hammocks. There were one hundred and thirty-three Yankees at the quarters.

A few days after the battle the Yankee Peacock and the store-ship Tom Bowline arrived. The store-ship was sent to Rio Janeiro with the prisoners, and then, after waiting until April 13th for the President to come, the two sloops sailed away to continue the war in the East Indies. On April 27th a sail was seen and both vessels went in chase, and the next morning the Peacock drew rapidly ahead of her older consort. Eventually, when the Peacock was about six miles ahead, she suddenly hauled her wind and signalled that the stranger was a line-of-battle ship. This was at 2 P.M. of April 28, 1815.

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.

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.

Perhaps it is worth noting that although the gun-boat was within easy musket range, the gunners of the Erebus did not hit her with even one shot save in the rigging.