reparations would perhaps be better employed in
providing those articles which may be kept without waste or
consumption, and be in readiness when any exigence calls them into
use. Progress has been made in providing materials for seventy-four
gun ships;" but this commended readiness issued in not laying their
keels till after the war began.

Upon this first recommendation followed the discontinuance of building
ships for ocean service, and the initiation of the gunboat policy;
culminating, when war began, in the decision of the administration to
lay up the ships built for war, to keep them out of British hands. The
urgent remonstrances of two or three naval captains obtained the
reversal of this resolve, and thereby procured for the country those
few successes which, by a common trick of memory, have remained the
characteristic feature of the War of 1812.

NOTE.--After writing the engagement between the "Boxer" and the
"Enterprise," the author found among his memoranda, overlooked,
the following statement from the report of her surviving
lieutenant, David McCreery: "I feel it my duty to mention that
the bulwarks of the 'Enterprise' were proof against our grape,
when her musket balls penetrated through our bulwarks."
(Canadian Archives, M. 389, 3. p. 87.) It will be noted that
this does not apply to the cannon balls, and does not qualify
the contrast in gunnery.

FOOTNOTES:

[128] Broke's Letter to Lawrence, June, 1813. Naval Chronicle, vol. xxx.
p. 413.

[129] Rodgers' Report of this cruise is in Captains' Letters, Sept. 27,
1813.

[130] Captains' Letters, Dec. 14, 1813.

[131] Captains' Letters, June 3, 1812.

[132] The Department's orders to Evans and the letter transferring them
to Lawrence, captured in the ship, can be found published in the Report
on Canadian Archives, 1896, p. 74. A copy is attached to the Record of
the subsequent Court of Inquiry, Navy Department MSS.

[133] James' Naval History, vol. vi., edition of 1837. The account of
the action between the "Chesapeake" and "Shannon" will be found on pp.
196-206.

[134] Secretary to the Admiralty, In-Letters, May, 1814, vol. 505, p.
777.

[135] Naval Chronicle, vol. xxx, p. 413.

[136] Broke, in his letter of challenge, "was disappointed that, after
various verbal messages sent into Boston, Commodore Rodgers, with the
'President' and 'Congress,' had _eluded_ the 'Shannon' and 'Tenedos,' by
sailing the first