On the Ocean 255 



Of all the single-ship actions fought in the war 

 this is the least creditable to the Americans. The 

 odds in force, it is true, were against the Argus, 

 about in the proportion of 10 to 8, but this is neither 

 enough to account for the loss inflicted, being as 10 

 to 3, nor for her surrendering when she had been 

 so little ill used. It was not even as if her antago- 

 nist had been an unusually fine vessel of her class. 

 The Pelican did not do so well as either the Frolic 

 previously, or the Reindeer afterward, though per- 

 haps rather better than the Avon, Penguin, or Pea- 

 cock. With a comparatively unmanageable antag- 

 onist, in smooth water, she ought to have sunk her 

 in three quarters of an hour. But the Pelican's not 

 having done particularly well merely makes the con- 

 duct of the Americans look worse; it is just the 

 reverse of the Chesapeake 's case, where, paying the 

 highest credit to the British, we still thought the 

 fight no discredit to us. Here we can indulge no 

 such reflection. The officers did well, but the crew 

 did not. Cooper says : "The enemy was so much 

 heavier that it may be doubted whether the Argus 

 would have captured her antagonist under any ordi- 

 nary circumstances." This I doubt; such a crew 

 as the Wasp's or Hornet's probably would have 

 been successful. The trouble with the guns of the 

 Argus was not so much that they were too small, as 

 that they did not hit ; and this seems all the more in- 

 comprehensible when it is remembered that Captain 

 Allen is the very man to whom Commodore Decatur, 

 in his official letter, attributed the skilful gun-prac- 



