1815	Light Squadrons and Single Ships	366

full account. Her brass 18-pounder on the forecastle, we shall not include in the broadside force, because it could not, by possibility, be used there without displacing one of the 32-pounder carronades. * The boat-carronade we shall also reject, for the reason formerly given. That leaves the Endymion with 24 guns upon her broadside. Her established net complement was 347 men and boys ; but her loss by the Neufchatel, and the deficiency with which she had originally quitted port, left the Endymion with the number already stated.

The President had landed in all, four of her 24 carronades, † one pair at the beginning of the war and the other pair recently; but, like the Constitution, the President now fought one of her two upper-deck 24-pounders through a spare port on her quarterdeck, and the other through a spare port on the forecastle. She mounted also upon a travelling carriage, a brass 8-inch howitzer ; for which there was a spare port at the gangway. We shall consider this gun, although of a 68-pound caliber, merely as a 24-pounder. In her fore top the President mounted two brass 4-pounders, in her main top the same, and one in her mizen top. These guns, although they were evidently used, and must have produced some effect on the Endymion's deck, we shall not reckon as a part of the President's force. This leaves the American frigate 53 guns on her decks, and 28 of them in broadside.

The number of prisoners delivered to the agent at Bermuda was 434. Add to these, beside the 35 acknowledged by the President's officers to have been killed, six or seven too badly wounded to be removed, and we have 475 as the President's complement; just two less than were named in her watch-bill. Yet Commodore Decatur and two of his officers swore before the surrogate, that the President had " about 450, but certainly not 460, men when the action commenced." The consequence of this oath, this American oath, was, that the captors got head-money for 450 men only ; when there was proof positive that 469, and every probability that 477, men were in the ship at the time stated. We shall take the number of which there was that proof, 465 men and four boys. The President's ship's company were a remarkably stout set of men, and a great many British deserters were discovered among them ; but, as the news of the peace very soon arrived, the men were not molested.

On the 17th, in a violent storm from the eastward, the Endymion lost her bowsprit and her fore and main masts ; the latter chiefly from the shrouds giving way where they had been knotted after the action. The ship was also obliged to throw overboard the whole of her quarterdeck and forecastle guns. In the same gale, the President carried away all three of her masts.

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