ven from the upper
decks by the English." This so exasperated the dying man that he
called out repeatedly, "Then blow her up; blow her up."

The fight lasted exactly thirteen minutes--the broadsides occupied six
minutes, the boarding seven--and in thirteen minutes after the first
shot the British flag was flying over the American ship. The _Shannon_
and _Chesapeake_ were bearing up, side by side, for Halifax. The
spectators in the pleasure-boats were left ruefully staring at the
spectacle; those American handcuffs, so thoughtfully provided, were on
American wrists; and the Boston citizens had to consume, with what
appetite they might, their own banquet. The carnage on the two ships
was dreadful. In thirteen minutes 252 men were either killed or
wounded, an average of nearly twenty men for every minute the fight
lasted. In the combat betwixt these two frigates, in fact, nearly as
many men were struck down as in the whole battle of Navarino! The
_Shannon_ itself lost as many men as any 74-gun ship ever lost in
battle.

Judge Haliburton, famous as "Sam Slick," when a youth of seventeen,
boarded the Chesapeake as the two battered ships sailed into Halifax.
"The deck," he wrote, "had not been cleaned, and the coils and folds of
rope were steeped in gore as if in a slaughter-house. Pieces of skin
with pendent hair were adhering to the sides of the ship; and in one
place I noticed portions of fingers protruding, as if thrust through
the outer walls of the frigate."

Watts, the first lieutenant of the _Shannon_, was killed by the fire of
his own ship in a very remarkable manner. He boarded with his captain,
with his own hands pulled down the _Chesapeake's_ flag, and hastily
bent on the halliards the English ensign, as he thought, above the
Stars and Stripes, and then rehoisted it. In the hurry he had bent the
English flag under the Stars and Stripes instead of above it, and the
gunners of the _Shannon_, seeing the American stripes going up first,
opened fire instantly on the group at the foot of the mizzen-mast, blew
the top of their own unfortunate lieutenant's head off with a grape
shot, and killed three or four of their own men.

Captain Broke was desperately wounded in a curious fashion. A group of
Americans, who had laid down their arms, saw the British captain
standing for a moment alone on the break of the forecastle. It seemed
a golden chance. They snatched up weapons lying on the deck, and
leaped upon