1814     EPERVIER AND PEACOCK     293

the whole of her fire at her opponent's hull, and presently reduced the Epervier's three waist guns to the disabled state of the others. At 11 a.m., as if the defects in the fighting-bolts were not a sufficient disaster, the breeching-bolts began to draw. There being no immediate remedy here, an effort was made to get the brig round, in order to present a fresh broadside to the enemy ; but it was found impracticable, without falling on board the Peacock.

As a last resource, and one which British seamen are generally prompt to execute, Captain Wales called the crew aft, to follow him in boarding ; but these gentlemen declined a measure so fraught with danger. The Epervier having now one gun only wherewith to return the fire of the 11 guns of her antagonist ; being already with four feet and a half water in her hold, and her crew falling fast beneath the heavy and unremitting fire of the Peacock, no alternative remained but to strike the colours, to save the lives of the few remaining good men in the vessel. This was done at 11 h. 5 m. a.m., after the firing had lasted an hour; during three quarters of which the vessels lay close together, and during more than half of which, owing to the defects in the brig's armament, the successful party had it all to himself.

Besides the damages already detailed, the Epervier had her fore rigging and stays shot away, her bowsprit badly wounded, and her foremast cut nearly in two and left tottering, and which nothing but the smoothness of the water saved from falling. Her hull, as may be imagined, was pierced with shot-holes on the engaged or larboard side, both above and below water. The brig's loss, out of a crew of 101 men and a passenger, and 16 boys, amounted to eight killed and mortally wounded, and 15 wounded severely and slightly, including among the former her very gallant first lieutenant, John Hackett ; who, about the middle of the action, had his left arm shattered, and received a severe splinter-wound in the hip, but who yet would hardly suffer himself to be carried below. Captain Warrington states, we believe with truth, that the Peacock's principal injury was the wound in her fore yard. Not a shot, by his account, struck the ship's hull ; and her loss, in consequence, out of a crew of 185 picked seamen, without a boy among them, amounted to only two men wounded, neither of them dangerously.

A statement of comparative force would, in this case, be next to a nullity ; as how could we, with any show of reason, confront eight carronades that overset the moment they were fired, with 10 carronades that remained firm in their places to the last. For any damage that such a vessel as the Epervier could have done to her, the Peacock might almost as well have fought with the unarmed Russian ship that had just quitted the former 's company, and then have boasted, as Captain Warrington did,

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