d Broke, "we have
always been an _unassuming_ ship!"

And yet, this unromantic English sailor had a gleam of Don Quixote in
him. On this pleasant summer morning he was waiting alone, under easy
sail, outside a hostile port, strongly fortified and full of armed
vessels, waiting for an enemy's ship bigger than himself to come out
and fight him. He had sent in the previous day, by way of challenge, a
letter that recalls the days of chivalry. "As the _Chesapeake_," he
wrote to Laurence, its captain, "appears now ready for sea, I request
that you will do me the favour to meet the _Shannon_ with her, ship to
ship." He proceeds to explain the exact armament of the _Shannon_, the
number of her crew, the interesting circumstance that he is short of
provisions and water, and that he has sent away his consort so that the
terms of the duel may be fair. "If you will favour me," he says, "with
any plan of signals or telegraph, I will warn you should any of my
friends be too nigh, while you are in sight, until I can detach them
out of the way. Or," he suggests coaxingly, "I would sail under a flag
of truce to any place you think safest from our cruisers, hauling it
down when fair, to begin hostilities. . . . Choose your terms," he
concludes, "but let us meet." Having sent in this amazing letter, this
middle-aged, unromantic, but hard-fighting captain climbs at daybreak
to his own maintop, and sits there till half-past eleven, watching the
challenged ship, to see if her foretopsail is unloosed and she is
coming out to fight.

It is easy to understand the causes which kindled a British sailor of
even Broke's unimaginative temperament into flame. On June 18, 1812,
the United States, with magnificent audacity, declared war against
Great Britain. England at that moment had 621 efficient cruisers at
sea, 102 being line-of-battle ships. The American navy consisted of 8
frigates and 12 corvettes. It is true that England was at war at the
same moment with half the civilised world; but what reasonable chance
had the tiny naval power of the United States against the mighty fleets
of England, commanded by men trained in the school of Nelson, and rich
with the traditions of the Nile and Trafalgar? As a matter of fact, in
the war which followed, the commerce of the United States was swept out
of existence. But the Americans were of the same fighting stock as the
English; to the Viking blood, indeed, they added Yankee ingenuity and
r