120     LIGHT SQUADRONS AND SINGLE SHIPS     1812

captain and the American officers gained all the credit, and pocketed the principal part of the cash : while the poor silly Britons, whose prompt attention to the sails, and steady perseverance at the guns, had contributed so mainly to the victory, slunk away in the back-ground, disowned by those whom they had so effectually served, and scorned and scouted by those, against whom they had so traitorously fought.

That a very great proportion of the crew of the United-States were British seamen, will have been assumed from our previous statements on the subject. That such was the fact was proved, by several of the Macedonian's men recognising old shipmates. One of the officers' servants, a young lad from London, named William Hearne, actually found among the hostile crew his own brother ! This hardened traitor, after reviling the British, and applauding the American service, used the influence of seniority, in trying to persuade his brother to enter the latter. The honourable youth, with tears in his eyes, replied : " If you are a d----d rascal, that's no reason I should be one." It appears, likewise, that one of the Macedonian's quartermasters had served his time with many of the crew of the United-States, out of the ports of Sunderland, Shields, and Newcastle. The great proportion of British seamen among the crew of the American frigate accounted for so many of her guns being, named after British ships, and some of the most celebrated British naval victories. " Captain Carden," says Mr. Marshall, " observing 'Victory,' painted on the ship's side over one port, and ' Nelson' over another, asked Commodore Decatur the reason of so strange an anomaly ; he answered, " The men belonging to those guns served many years with Lord Nelson, and in the Victory. The crew of the gun named Nelson were once bargemen to that great chief, and they claim the privilege of using his illustrious name in the way you have seen : The commodore also publicly declared to Captain Carden, that there was not a seaman in his ship, who had not served from five to 12 years in a British man of war, " * After reading this, we naturally take up the " Register," `which has already been so useful to us, to see of what state Commodore Decatur was a native: we find, as we expected, that he did not come so far north as Captain Hull, having been born in Maryland, Virginia.

" The manner," says Mr. M., "in which Captain Carden was received by his generous enemy after the surrender of the Macedonian, is worthy of mention. On presenting his sword to Commodore Decatur, the latter started back, declared he never could take the sword of a man who had so nobly defended the honour of it, requested the hand of that gallant officer, whom it had been his fortune in war to subdue, and added that, though he could not claim any merit for capturing a ship so inferior, he felt assured Captain Carden would gain much, by his persevering

* Marshall, vol., ii., p. 1019.

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