laid, in a great measure, at his door: they will not give up the horn and by selecting the bugle-man for their scape-goat, they have exalted an abject wretch on a lofty pedestal, who, pointed to as the author of the discomfiture, aggravates, by his scandalous character, the national indignity. However formidable may be an American Court of Inquiry composed of Commodores, Justice presumes to arraign their decision, and to declare that Brown's horn is made a pretext to cover a defeat, which, superior to all vain and frivolous subterfuge, they ought, with a noble unity of sentiment, to have attributed to the early fall of Captain Lawrence: for when he was no more, confusion and terror had already prepared the submission of the crew, and not the martial music of bugles, drums, and trumpets, would have quickened the circulation of their blood and spirits into sufficient bravery to resist the tide of boarding directed and impelled by the voice and eye of the British commander. The bugleman being unable, from trepidation, to sound his horn, Captain Lawrence presented himself at the break of the quarter-deck, and called with earnest importunity down the hatchway for the boarders. The shot from the Shannon's aftermost guns had now a fair range along the Chesapeake's decks, beating in her stern-ports, and sweeping the crew from their quarters, while the fire from the foremost guns entering the ports of the main and quarter decks from the gangway aft, produced a dreadful carnage among the officers. A grape-shot fired from a maindeck gun of the English ship's starboard tier, struck the medal which Captain Lawrence wore suspended on his * breast in commemoration of his former naval victory, and he fell on the quarter-deck, fainting with the profusion of blood that flowed from the wound. The cry soon spread fore and aft that the Captain was killed, and Lieutenant Cox, who commanded the foremost division of guns on the main-deck, swayed probably by affection, ran immediately up the ladder that communicated with the quarter-deck, and lifted his bleeding commander in his arms. Captain Lawrence had now recovered his spirit, and raising his eyes towards the colours flying at the peak, with a steady look, though a faultering voice, he uttered, as his attendants were bearing him down to the cockpit, his last broken, though articulate words: DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP: and heroically expired in the arms of his men. Thus fell, at the age of 34, Capt. Jas. Lawrence. He had been formed under that great naval commander Preble, in the war between the American Republic and the Barbary States, and accompanied Decatur in the celebrated enterprize of cutting out the Philadelphia frigate from under the batteries of Algiers. No one ever disputed the ardour and brilliancy of his courage: bold and decisive in action, he could not confine himself to hold a middle course, but sought to bring it to a speedy issue.* His gentle and unassuming manners displayed that simplicity which so often accompanies greatness of character; and he possessed a native dignity of sentiment which kept him free from every taint of falsehood: The impetuosity with which he attacked both the Chesapeake and Peacock, bears ample testimony to this part of his character. nor could he endure it in others. When Paul Hamilton, the Secretary of the Navy, partially promoted young Allen, Decatur's first Lieutenant, over his head, Lawrence, with the proud consciousness of his own merit, and eminent services to the Republic, would have thrown up his commission without deigning to remonstrate, had not the Legislature, appreciating his worth, and tacitly applauding his manly spirit of independence, cancelled the appointment, and redressed the indignity. His bold and intrepid public spirit tempered with the utmost affability, gave his character the milder glory of the house of Valerii; he was a noble Roman born two thousand years after his time. In person he was somewhat above the middle height, and his fine figure indicated extraordinary strength and agility: in exercises that require activity and address he had no competitor in a numerous crew of picked seamen; for, standing in the main-chains, he has been known to heave the hand-lead over the fore-yard arm. An American might be tempted to regret that he had not survived to augment the animation of the scene that followed: and, from the expectations formed of him, his countrymen are sanguine enough to believe that a crew of Americans acquiring unity and consistence from the presence of such a leader, would either have sunk in heaps of slain on the deck, or compelled the assailants to retrace their steps back to their own ship. Had he not fallen so early in the action, he might have exclaimed without the imputation of arrogance; αμφί δε τῇ μὴ νηί μελαίνη Ἕκτορα, καί μεμαῶτα, μακης (χησεσθαι οἴω. at my own ship And on my own ship's gunwale, it may chance By the same broadside that deprived the Chesapeake of her commander, fell likewise Mr. White, the master, Mr. Broom, the officer of marines, and Mr. Ballard, the fourth lieutenant; they were all killed. The seamen on the quarter-deck became dispirited at the fall of their captain and officers. Confusion and dismay spread from gun to gun, till at length the captains of the guns, forgetful of their duty, threw down the handspikes with which they pointed the cannon, and, followed by their comrades, fled ignominiously towards the hatchway. Lieutenant Ludlow, the only officer left alive on the quarter-deck, employed authority, threats and entreaties to stop them in the pusillanimous and criminal desertion of their quarters. "Whither," seamen, he cried aloud, "whither do ye fly? what is there in your enemy to in"spire this terror? we have beaten him before, and we 66 can beat him again; let us not sully our naval glory, "but add another trophy to the flags of the Guerriere, "the Macedonian and Java." It was to no purpose that he strove, by his example and exhortation, to rally the discomfited sailors; the English crew was now in the act of boarding, and they abandoned without a struggle the The deck at their approach. Ludlow, perceiving with amazement the guns deserted abaft, advanced to the waist, where he hoped to find the men not forgetful of their fame; but the mutual confidence on which the union and strength of a ship's company depend, was now undermined; the terror had become general on the spar-deck, and the panic was rapidly spreading among a disorderly crowd of seamen, who, in their promiscuous eagerness to escape from the glittering cutlasses of the British boarders, prevented each other from getting down the hatchway; a few, with more presence of mind, fled over the bows and reached the main-deck through the bridle-ports. two ships had now so altered their position that the English had free access to the Chesapeake's quarter-deck; she had fallen off and lay close alongside of the Shannon with her main-mast nearly in a line with her adversary's taffarel. At this juncture Captain Broke determined to make a bold effort for victory, by assaulting the enemy on his own deck. He immediately called out" Board!" and, heading the assailants, rushed from his own ship on board the American, followed by his first lieutenant, Mr. Watts, an officer of great gallantry, and the choicest of his sailors, raising a British cheer. The moment was decisive; they found the guns on the quarter-deck,* together with the wheel, abandoned, and their passage abaft intercepted only by the dead bodies of officers and seamen: at the gangway they were encountered by Lieu "On the quarter-deck not an officer or man was to be seen." James, p. 217. |