94     LIGHT SQUADRONS AND SINGLE SHIPS     1812

24 of her best seamen ; thus leaving herself with only 250 men and 19 boys.

On the 19th of August, at 2 a.m., latitude, by her reckoning, 40° 20' north, longitude 55° west, standing by the wind on the starboard tack under easy sail, with her head about west-southwest, the Guerrière discovered a sail on her weather beam. This was the Constitution ; who, after her escape from the Guerrière and her consorts on the morning of the 19th of July, finding herself cut off from New-York, had proceeded to Boston ; where she arrived on the 26th. On the 2d of August Captain Hull again set sail, and stood to the eastward, in the hope of falling in with the British 38-gun frigate Spartan,- Captain Edward Pelham Brenton, reported to be cruising in that direction. Having run along the coast as far as the bay of Fundy without discovering the object of her pursuit, the Constitution proceeded off Halifax and Cape Sable, and then steered to the eastward in the direction of Newfoundland. Passing close to the isle of Sable, the American frigate took a station off the gulf of St.-Lawrence, near Cape Race, for the purpose of intercepting vessels bound to, or from Quebec and New-Brunswick. On the 15th Captain Hull captured, and on account of their small value burnt, two merchant brigs and a bark ; and on the 17th recaptured from the British ship-sloop Avenger, the American brig Adeline, on board of which he placed a prize-master and six or seven men, to take her to Boston. Having received intelligence that the squadron which, by a display of so much skill and perseverance, the Constitution had already once evaded, was off the Grand Bank, Captain Hull changed his cruising ground, and stood to the southward. On the 18th, at midnight, an American privateer gave information, that she had the day before seen a British ship of war to the southward. The Constitution immediately made sail in that direction ; and, in the course of a few hours, Captain Hull found he had not been misinformed.

The Guerrière, when she arrived on the North-American station, was armed the same as the other frigates of her class, with 46 guns, including 16 carronades, 32-pounders, and two long nines on her quarterdeck and forecastle. Like most French ships, the Guerrière sailed very much by the head ; and, to assist in giving her that trim, as well as to obviate the inconvenience of a round-house which intervened between the foremost and bridle ports on each side, and prevented the gun stationed at the former port from being shifted to the latter when required to be used in chase, two additional 18-pounders, as standing bow-chase guns, were taken on board at Halifax ; thus giving the Guerrière 48 guns, including 30 long 18-pounders on the main deck. The mere fact, that, for any use they could be in either broadside, these bow guns might as well have been in the hold, is not the principal point cleared up by the explanation. Those who are aware, that no frigate in the British navy, except the Acasta and

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