the manufacture of powder, or in the manner of loading.

It is in vain to treat the matter lightly, or seek to conceal from ourselves the extent of the evil. Our naval superiority is destroyed!"

I explain the mystery thus: The naval glories of England were chiefly won in combat with the fleets of Spain and France, - nations not at home upon the sea. America is the only antagonist that England ever encountered upon the ocean which has a natural turn for seamanship equal to her own. Besides this equality in natural gift, we had the advantage of a quicker brain, and an inveterate habit of improving upon old methods. Our navy, too, was not officered from the younger sons of aristocrats, with whom it was a rule, as Captain Marryatt says, to send to sea "the fool of the family."

His hold being crowded with prisoners, Lawrence made all sail for the United States, where the acclamations of the nation welcomed him. The government promoted him, at the age of thirty-one, to the rank of captain, the highest grade then existing in our navy, and Congress voted him thanks and a gold medal. After enjoying a few weeks on shore the society of his wife and child, he was assigned to the command of the frigate Chesapeake, then lying in Boston harbor, preparing for a cruise against the enemy's whaling fleet off the coast of Greenland.

The British frigate Shannon was blockading Boston harbor. On the morning of June 1st, 1813, this ship came into the bay, as if challenging the Chesapeake to an engagement. Captain Lawrence, with a crew dissatisfied from the non-payment of their prize money, his first lieutenant sick on shore, his officers few, young, and inexperienced, had determined to avoid, if possible, an encounter with the Shannon; but this bold defiance was too much for his resolution, and he put to sea. Thirty miles from shore, late in the afternoon, the well-known battle occurred, one of the shortest, fiercest, and most destructive engagements that ever took place between single ships. After eight minutes of furious cannonading at very close quarters, in which the American ship gave more damage than she received, an anchor of the Shannon caught the rigging of the Chesapeake,

which exposed her to a raking fire, that swept her decks. Both captains instantly ordered boarders to be called; but the bugle man of the Chesapeake, a negro, had hid himself, and when he was found, he was so paralyzed by terror that he could not sound a note.

This delay at the critical moment was fatal. Captain Lawrence, already wounded in the leg, received a mortal wound through the body, and was carried below; and when the English crew cautiously came on board, there was not a commissioned officer unhurt to make head against them. Every officer in the ship, except two midshipmen, mere boys, was either killed or wounded. In fifteen minutes from the moment of the first broadside, the Chesapeake was in the hands of the enemy. Both ships, as Cooper remarks, were "charnel-houses." On board the Chesapeake were forty-eight killed and ninety-eight wounded; on board the Shannon, twenty-three killed and fiftysix wounded.

With regard to the words uttered by Captain Lawrence after he had received his mortal wound, different accounts have been given. The popular version is, "Don't give up the ship." Cooper says the words were, "Don't strike the flag of my ship." I have been positively assured by a venerable surgeon of the navy, who was in the cockpit when the hero was brought below, that he heard Captain Lawrence say, "Fight the ship till she sinks." Nothing is more probable than that he used all these expressions, and that" Don't give up the ship" obtained currency merely because it was the shortest and handiest.

Lawrence lingered four days after the battle, receiving from the British officers the tenderest care, who also bestowed upon his remains the respect due to so brave a man. From Halifax,

to which both ships sailed, his body was brought to New York, where it was followed to the grave by vast numbers of officers and civilians. The nation mourned his loss, and will forever honor his memory.

DEATH OF COMMODORE DECATUR.

I SUPPOSE we all use more freedom in speaking of one another than we do in speaking to one another. Consequently, almost any person can destroy a friendship or embitter an enmity by reporting to one man what another man has said of him. To do this is justly esteemed one of the meanest of all actions, as it is assuredly one of the most mischievous. The duel in which Commodore Decatur fell was directly caused by this bad, dastardly practice.

Stephen Decatur, born in Maryland, in 1779, was the FARRAGUT of his time. His father before him was a gallant officer in the infant navy of the United States, captured several British ships in the revolutionary war, and was retained in the service after the peace. In the year 1800, he was the Commodore of the American fleet of thirteen vessels cruising about the West Indies; but when Mr. Jefferson reduced the navy, in 1801, Commodore Decatur was retired, and he became a merchant in Philadelphia, where he died in 1808. The old commodore, however, lived long enough to see his son a captain in the navy, and the darling of his countrymen.

Entering the service as midshipman in 1798, when he was nineteen, he was a lieutenant at twenty, and at twenty-three he had reached the rank of first lieutenant of a brig, the captain of which was that very James Barron who afterwards killed him. Two years later, when our brilliant little war with Algiers was at its height, Decatur was in command of the brig Enterprise, one of the vessels of the fleet in the Mediterranean, and it was while commanding the Enterprise that he performed the exploit which made him a favorite hero of the American people.

The reader remembers, of course, that the Algerines had had the luck to catch a fine American frigate, the Philadelphia, aground and helpless, with her guns overboard; and that they captured her and took her into the harbor of Tripoli, where they were fitting her out for a cruise. Bainbridge, her captain, while a prisoner at Tripoli, contrived to send word to Commodore Preble that the Philadelphia was carelessly guarded and could easily be surprised and burnt. The Commodore consulted Lieutenant Decatur upon the project, and Decatur, the bravest of the brave, supported it with all the enthusiasm of his age and character. Commodore Preble came into the scheme, and named young Decatur commander of the expedition. Lieutenant Decatur called for volunteers, and every man and boy on board his brig expressed a willingness to join. Sixty-two of the best men were picked from the eager crew, who, with twelve officers, were transferred to a small Algerian vessel belonging to Tripoli, captured a few days before, and now rechristened the Intrepid.

It was a still, fine evening in February, 1803, at ten o'clock, when the Intrepid glided slowly and noiselessly into the harbor, Decatur at the helm, a Greek pilot at his side, and the crew lying along the deck. So complete was the surprise, and so well concerted the attack, that in just ten minutes from the time the Intrepid touched the frigate the Americans had possession of her. Decatur was the second man to reach her deck, Charles Morris, midshipman, having jumped two seconds before him. Everything having been provided beforehand for burning the ship, the fire burst forth with such unexpected rapidity that the Intrepid narrowly escaped catching. The work having been accomplished, a light breeze from shore sprang up in the nick of time and wafted the little vessel gently out of the harbor, lighted on her way by the flames, and saluted by the harmless thunder of Algerian guns.

This gallant exploit made Decatur a captain. Without dwelling on his subsequent career, I can truly say that it was all of a piece with this brilliant opening.

Far different was it with James Barron. Barron, a native of Virginia, and, like Decatur, the son of a revolutionary commc

dore, entered the navy in the same year as Decatur, and outstripped him in the race for promotion. A year after he entered the service, being then thirty-one years of age, he was a captain, and he continued to rise in the esteem of his countrymen until the year 1807, when a sad misfortune befell him, which cast a shadow over all his subsequent life.

June 22d, 1807, the United States being at peace with all the world, the American frigate Chesapeake, thirty-eight guns, under command of Commodore Barron, left her anchorage in Hampton Roads, and stood out to sea, bound for the Mediterranean. About the same hour the British frigate Leopard, fifty guns, which had been lying for some time at the same anchorage, also put to sea, and being in better trim than the Chesapeake, and much better manned, got ahead of her some miles. But at three in the afternoon she wore round, bore down upon the Chesapeake, and sent a boat to her, with a despatch demanding to search the American ship for four deserters from the English navy. Commodore Barron replied that he knew of no such deserters, and that his orders did not allow his crew to be mustered by any officers but their own. No sooner had the boat returned with this reply, than the British ship fired a broadside full into the American at short range. The Chesapeake, her decks littered with stores and animals, her crew undisciplined, her warlike apparatus all unready for use, could not fire a shot in her defence; and consequently, when, by the continuous fire of the Leopard, three of the American crew had been killed and eighteen wounded, one of whom was the commodore himself, and when there were twenty-one shot in the hull of the Chesapeake, Barron struck his colors. The English captain made the search, took away the four alleged deserters, and sailed off, leaving the crippled Chesapeake to get back to Hampton Roads as best she could.

Commodore Barron was tried by a court-martial for going to sea unprepared to defend his ship, and the public clamored for his punishment. His defence was that his captain had informed him in writing that the ship was ready to sail, and that, the United States and Great Britain being at peace, the attack was not to have been anticipated. The aourt pronounced the defence