Another test of relative intelligence was furnished by the battles at sea.  Instantly after the loss of the Guerriere the English discovered and complained that American gunnery was superior to their own.  They explained their inferiority by the length of time that had elapsed since their navy had found on the ocean an enemy to fight.  Every vestige of hostile fleets had been swept away, until, after the battle of Trafalgar, British frigates ceased practice with their guns.  Doubtless the British navy had become somewhat careless in the absence of a dangerous enemy, but Englishmen were themselves aware that some other cause must have affected their losses.  Nothing showed that Nelson’s line-of-battle ships, frigates, or sloops were, as a rule, better fought than the Macedonian and Java, the Avon and Reindeer.  Sir Howard Douglas, the chief authority on the subject, attempted in vain to explain British reverses by the deterioration of British gunnery.  His analysis showed only that American gunnery was extraordinarily good.  Of all vessels, the sloop-of-war—­on account of its smallness, its quick motion, and its more accurate armament of thirty-two-pound carronades—­offered the best test of relative gunnery, and Sir Howard Douglas in commenting upon the destruction of the Peacock 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.