already given orders to have the boarders called, seeing that the
ship must drift foul of the enemy (5). The chaplain, who in the
boarding behaved courageously, meeting Broke in person with a
pistol-shot, and receiving a cutlass wound in return, was standing
close by the captain at this instant. He afterwards testified that as
Lawrence cried "Boarders away", the crews of the carronades ran
forward; which corresponds to Broke's report that, seeing the enemy
flinching from their guns, he then gave the order for boarding. This
may have been, indeed, merely the instinctive impulse which drives
disorganized men to seek escape from a fire which they cannot return;
but if Cooper is correct in saying that it was the practice of that
day to keep the boarders' weapons, not by their side, but on the
quarter-deck or at the masts, it may also have been that this
division, which had so far stuck to its guns while being raked, now,
at the captain's call, ran from them to get the side-arms. At the
Court of Inquiry it was in evidence that these men were unarmed; and
one of them, a petty officer, stated that he had defended himself with
the monkey tail of his gun. Whatever the cause, although there was
fighting to prevent the "Chesapeake" from being lashed to the
"Shannon", no combined resistance was offered abaft the mainmast.
There the marines made a stand, but were overpowered and driven
forward. The negro bugler of the ship, who should have echoed
Lawrence's summons, was too frightened to sound a note, and the voices
of the aids, who shouted the message to the gun deck, were imperfectly
heard; but, above all, leaders were wanting. There was not on the
upper deck an officer above the grade of midshipman; captain, first
lieutenant, master, marine officer, and even the boatswain, had been
mortally wounded before the ships touched. The second lieutenant was
in charge of the first gun division, at the far end of the deck below,
as yet ignorant how the fight was going, and that the fate of his
superiors had put him in command. Of the remaining lieutenants, also
stationed on the gun deck, the fourth had been mortally wounded by the
first broadside; while the third, who had heard the shout for
boarders, committed the indiscretion, ruinous to his professional
reputation, of accompanying those who, at the moment the ships came
together, were carrying below the wounded captain.

[Illustration: THE CAPTURE OF THE _CHESAPEAKE_ BY THE
_SHAN