“You said, at your mother’s, that you had never understood why the men on each side kept inquiring if the others had struck.  The truth is, we had it all our own way below.  And, as it proved, when our captain, Pearson, struck, most of his men were below.  I know, that, in all the confusion and darkness and noise, I had no idea, aft on the main deck, that we were like to come off second best.  On the other hand, at that time, the Richard probably had not a man left between-decks, unless some whom they were trying to keep at her pumps.  But on her upper deck and quarter-deck and in her tops she had it all her own way.  Jones himself was there; by that time Dale was there; and they had wholly cleared our upper deck, as we had cleared their main deck and gun-room.  This was the strangeness of that battle.  We were pounding through and through her, while she did not fight a gun of her main battery.  But Jones was working his quarter-deck guns so as almost to rake our deck from stem to stern.  You know, the ships were foul and lashed together.  Jones says in his own account he aimed at our main-mast and kept firing at it.  You can see that no crew could have lived under such a fire as that.  There you have the last two hours of the battle:  Jones’s men all above, our men all below; we pounding at his main deck, he pelting at our upper deck.  If there had not been some such division, of course the thing could not have lasted so long, even with the horrid havoc there was.  I never saw anything like it, and I hope, dear boy, you may never have to.”

[Mem. by Ingham.  I had just made my first cruise as a midshipman in the U.S. navy on board the Intrepid, when the old gentleman wrote this to me.  He made his first cruise in the British navy in the Serapis.  After he was exchanged, he remained in that service till 1789, when he married in Canso, N.S., resigned his commission, and settled there.]

The letter continues:—­

“I have been looking back on my own boyish journal of that time.  My mother made me keep a log, as I hope yours does.  But it is strange to see how little of the action it tells.  The truth is, I was nothing but a butterfly of a youngster.  To save my conceit, the first lieutenant, Wallis, told me I was assigned to keep an eye on the after-battery, where were two fine old fellows as ever took the King’s pay really commanding the crews and managing the guns.  Much did I know about sighting or firing them!  However, I knew enough to keep my place.  I remember tying up a man’s arm with my own shirt-sleeves, by way of showing I was not frightened, as in truth I was.  And I remember going down to the cockpit with a poor wretch who was awfully burned with powder,—­and the sight there was so much worse than it was at my gun that I was glad to get back again.  Well, you may judge, that, from two after-portholes below, first larboard,