90 Naval War of 1812 



ate; we made a complete revolution in this respect. 

 England had been building only i8-pounder ves 

 sels when she ought to have been building 24-pound- 

 ers. It was greatly to our credit that our average 

 frigate was superior to the average British frigate; 

 exactly as it was to our discredit that the Essex was 

 so ineffectively armed. Captain Porter owed his 

 defeat chiefly to his ineffective guns, but also to hav 

 ing lost his topmast, to the weather being unfavor 

 able, and, still more, to the admirable skill with 

 which Hilyar used his superior armament. The 

 Java, Macedonian, and Guerriere owed their defeat 

 partly to their lighter guns, but much more to the 

 fact that their captains and seamen did not display 

 either as good seamanship or as good gunnery as 

 their foes. Inferiority in armament was a factor 

 to be taken into account in all the four cases, but it 

 was more marked in that of the Essex than in the 

 other three ; it would have been fairer for Porter to 

 say that he had been captured by a line-of-battle 

 ship, than for the captain of the Java to make that 

 assertion. In this last case the forces of the two 

 ships compared almost exactly as their rates. A 44 

 was matched against a 38 ; it was not surprising that 

 she should win, but it was surprising that she should 

 win with ease and impunity. The long 24's on the 

 Constitution's gun-deck no more made her a line-of- 

 battle ship than the 32-pound carronades mounted 

 on an English frigate's quarter-deck and forecastle 

 made her a line-of-battle ship when opposed to a 

 Frenchman with only 8's and 6's on his spar-deck. 



