acterize the operations of great
fleets.

Still, for the writing of this history Cooper was peculiarly fitted. He
had belonged to the navy in his early life. He had never ceased to feel
the deepest interest in its reputation and prosperity. He had
contributed to the "Naval Magazine," a periodical published during 1836
and 1837, a series of papers connected with the improvement of its
condition. He was, moreover, on terms of intimacy with many of the
officers who had won for it distinction; and through them he had access
to sources of information that could not be gained from written
authorities. He had, besides, the characteristic of loving truth for its
own sake, and the disposition to endure any amount of drudgery and
encounter any sort of toil in order to secure it. To this were added the
special qualifications of the historical eye, which enabled him to seize
the important facts in an infinite mass of detail, and the power of
describing vividly what he saw clearly. Under such circumstances it was
reasonable to expect that his work would satisfy all fair-thinking men.
It is, perhaps, correct to say that it did so. But it also gave rise to
a controversy which stretched over a longer period and surpassed, in the
bitter feelings it aroused, any of the wars in which the navy itself had
ever been engaged.

There were special difficulties to be encountered with readers on both
sides of the ocean. On the one hand, Englishmen had usually forgotten to
remember that during the war of 1812 there was any naval combat of
importance fought except between the Shannon and the Chesapeake; (p. 202)
and even at this day it would be difficult to find in an English writer
any account of the naval operations of that war in which that particular
engagement does not play the principal part. If any other was forced
upon their attention it had become an article of their creed that an
American frigate was little else than a line-of-battle ship disguised.
Moreover, the effective force of the American vessel was, according to
their theory, made up of deserters from the British service. These two
explanations of any failure were often combined. It is in this way
Captain Brenton, one of their naval historians, calmly shows how it was
that the Constitution happened to capture the Guerriere. "We may justly
say," he concludes his account, "it was a large British frigate taking a
small one." On her part America was not to be outdone in her estimate