ng with the praises of the blue-jackets. Indeed, a record of
sixty-four French vessels captured, besides many American vessels
which were recaptured from their captors, was enough to arouse
feelings of pride throughout the nation; and the celerity with which
France seized upon the proposal for peace showed well the reputation
which our navy had gained beyond the ocean. For months after the peace
was signed, the names of Bainbridge, Truxton, Stewart, and Talbot were
household words throughout the nation; and the deeds of the gallant
ships along the Spanish Main were the favorite stories of the boys of
the land. Three of the oaken veterans, however, never came home; but
against their names must be put the saddest of all naval records:
foundered at sea. The captured "Insurgente," the "Saratoga," and the
"Pickering" simply vanished from the ocean. Over fourscore years have
passed; and of them, and the gallant lads that manned them, nothing
has ever been known. Whether they perished by the fury of the tropical
typhoon, whether a midnight collision sent them suddenly to the
bottom, or whether the ships were destroyed and the crews murdered by
the piratical desperadoes of the West Indies, can never be known.
Somewhere on the coral-strewn bed of the blue seas of the tropics lie
the mouldering hulks of those good ships, and the bones of their
gallant crews. There will they lie, unknown and unsought, until
earthly warfare is over for all men, and the sea gives up its dead.

CHAPTER III.

PROPOSED REDUCTION OF THE NAVY. -- RENEWAL OF BRITISH
OUTRAGES. -- THE AFFAIR OF THE "BALTIMORE." -- ATTACK ON THE
"LEANDER." -- ENCOUNTER BETWEEN THE "CHESAPEAKE" AND
"LEOPARD."

Not many months had elapsed after the close of the war between the
United States and France, when the pride of the nation in the navy
that had won such laurels in that conflict began to wane. In the place
of poems and editorials singing the praises and pointing out the value
of the navy, the newspapers began to be filled with demands for its
reduction. It was an unwarrantable expense, exclaimed the critics of
the press, for a nation so young, and so far from the warring peoples
of Europe, to maintain a navy at all. A few gunboats to guard the
coast would be enough. All the consequences of the reduction of the
navy at the close of the Revolution were forgotten in an instant. A
penny-wise and pound-foolish spirit came over all the political