t New Orleans, and the delay due to the injuries
they received, made them too late to aid in that expedition, and may have
thus contributed to General Jackson's success.

The "General Armstrong" had always been a lucky craft, and her exploits in
the capture of merchantmen, no less than the daring of her commander in
giving battle to ships-of-war which he encountered, had won her the
peculiar hate of the British navy. At the very beginning of her career,
when in command of Captain Guy R. Champlin, she fought a British frigate
for more than an hour, and inflicted such grave damage that the enemy was
happy enough to let her slip away when the wind freshened. On another
occasion she engaged a British armed ship of vastly superior strength, off
the Surinam River, and forced her to run ashore. Probably the most
valuable prize taken in the war fell to her guns--the ship "Queen," with a
cargo invoiced at L90,000. Indeed, such had been her audacity, and so many
her successes, that the British were eager for her capture or destruction,
above that of any other privateer.

In September, 1814, the "General Armstrong," now under command of Captain
Samuel G. Reid, was at anchor in the harbor at Fayal, a port of Portugal,
when her commander saw a British war-brig come nosing her way into the
harbor. Soon after another vessel appeared, and then a third, larger than
the first two, and all flying the British ensign. Captain Reid immediately
began to fear for his safety. It was true that he was in a neutral port,
and under the law of nations exempt from attack, but the British had never
manifested that extreme respect for neutrality that they exacted of
President Washington when France tried to fit out privateers in our ports.
More than once they had attacked and destroyed our vessels in neutral
ports, and, indeed, it seemed that the British test of neutrality was
whether the nation whose flag was thus affronted, was able or likely to
resent it. Portugal was not such a nation.

All this was clear to Captain Reid, and when he saw a rapid signaling
begun between the three vessels of the enemy, he felt confident that he
was to be attacked. He had already discovered that the strangers were the
74-gun ship of the line "Plantagenet," the 38-gun frigate "Rota," and the
18-gun war-brig "Carnation," comprising a force against which he could not
hope to win a victory. The night came on clear, with a bright moon, and as
the American captain saw boat