breakfasts.
The troops cooked away while Downie fought desperately with a fleet
which, as a whole, was superior in strength to his, and which was
rendered eminently superior by the shameful defection of the gun-boats
manned by Canadian militia and soldiers of the 39th regiment. Downie
kept up a terrific fire, with only his own frigate, a brig and sloop,
wholly surrounded as he was, by the American fleet. The brig _Finch_
had taken the ground out of range, and the whole of the gun-boats,
except three and one cutter, had deserted him. He was, nevertheless, on
the very point of breaking the enemy's line, when the wind failed. As
before stated, he cast anchor, and with his first broadside had laid
half the crew of the _Saratoga_ low. The _Chubb_ was soon, however,
crippled and became unmanageable. She drifted within the enemy's lines
and was compelled to surrender. The whole fire of the enemy was now
concentrated upon the _Confiance_, and still the latter fired broadside
after broadside with much precision and so rapidly that every gun on
board of the _Saratoga_ on one side was disabled and silenced, although
she lay at such a distance that she could not be taken possession of.
But Captain Downie had fallen. The _Confiance_ was now commanded by
Lieutenant Robertson, who was entirely surrounded and raked by the
brigs and gun-boats of the enemy, while the _Saratoga_, out of range,
had cut her cable and wound round so as to bring a new broadside, as it
were, to bear upon the _Confiance_. It was in vain that the _Confiance_
attempted to do as the _Saratoga_ had done. Three officers and
thirty-eight of her men had been killed, and one officer and
thirty-nine men had been wounded. Lieutenant Robertson was at last
compelled to strike his colours, and Captain Pring, of the _Linnet_,
was reluctantly obliged to follow the example. In all one hundred and
twenty men had fallen, and the cheering of the enemy informed the
British army that the fleet for the co-operation of which Sir George
Prevost had so unnecessarily waited, was annihilated. "You owe it, Sir,
to the shameful conduct of your gun-boats and cutters, said the
magnanimous American Commodore, McDonough, to Lieutenant Robertson,
when that officer was in the act of presenting his sword to him, that
you arc performing this office to me; for, had they done their duty,
you must have perceived from the situation of the _Saratoga_ that I
could hold out no longer; and, indeed, nothin