and Avon could only say:--"In these two
actions it is clear that the fire of the British vessels was thrown too
high, and that the ordnance of their opponents were expressly and
carefully aimed at and took effect chiefly in the hull."

The battle of the Hornet and Penguin, as well as those of the Reindeer
and Avon, showed that the excellence of American gunnery continued till
the close of the war. Whether at point-blank range or at long-distance
practice, the Americans used guns as they had never been used at
sea before.

None of the reports of former British victories showed that the British
fire had been more destructive at any previous time than in 1812, and no
report of any commander since the British navy existed showed so much
damage inflicted on an opponent in so short a time as was proved to have
been inflicted on themselves by the reports of British commanders in the
American war. The strongest proof of American superiority was given by
the best British officers, like Broke, who strained every nerve to
maintain an equality with American gunnery. So instantaneous and
energetic was the effort that according to the British historian of the
war, "A British forty-six-gun frigate of 1813 was half as effective
again as a British forty-six-gun frigate of 1812;" and as he justly
said, "the slaughtered crews and the shattered hulks" of the captured
British ships proved that no want of their old fighting qualities
accounted for their repeated and almost habitual mortifications.

Unwilling as the English were to admit the superior skill of Americans
on the ocean, they did not hesitate to admit it, in certain respects, on
land. The American rifle in American hands was affirmed to have no equal
in the world. This admission could scarcely be withheld after the lists
of killed and wounded which followed almost every battle; but the
admission served to check a wider inquiry. In truth, the rifle played
but a small part in the war. Winchester's men at the river Raisin may
have owed their over-confidence, as the British Forty-first owed its
losses, to that weapon, and at New Orleans five or six hundred of
Coffee's men, who were out of range, were armed with the rifle; but the
surprising losses of the British were commonly due to artillery and
musketry fire. At New Orleans the artillery was chiefly engaged. The
artillery battle of January 1st, according to British accounts, amply
proved the superiority of American gunnery on tha