eeded by
well-drilled men to do this is well within, yet accords fairly with,
James' statement, that from the first gun to the second stage in the
action six minutes elapsed. During the first of this period the
"Chesapeake" kept moving parallel at fifty yards distance, but gaining
continually, threatening thus to pass wholly ahead, so that her guns
would bear no longer. To prevent this Lawrence luffed closer to the
wind to shake her sails, but in vain; the movement increased her
distance, but she still ranged ahead, so that she finally reached much
further than abreast of the enemy. To use the nautical expression, she
was on the "Shannon's" weather bow (2). While this was happening her
sailing master was killed and Lawrence wounded; these being the two
officers chiefly concerned in the handling of the ship.

[Illustration: Diagram of the Chesapeake vs. Shannon Battle]

Upon this supervened a concurrence of accidents, affecting her
manageability, which initiated the second scene in the drama, and
called for instantaneous action by the officers injured. The
foretopsail tie being cut by the enemy's fire, the yard dropped,
leaving the sail empty of wind; and at the same time were shot away
the jib-sheet and the brails of the spanker. Although the latter,
flying loose, tends to spread itself against the mizzen rigging, it
probably added little to the effect of the after sails; but, the
foresail not being set, the first two mishaps practically took all the
forward canvas off the "Chesapeake." Under the combined impulses she,
at 5.56, came up into the wind (3), lost her way, and, although her
mainyard had been braced up, finally gathered sternboard; the upshot
being that she lay paralyzed some seventy yards from the "Shannon" (3,
4, 5), obliquely to the latter's course and slightly ahead of her. The
British ship going, or steering, a little off (3), her guns bore fair
upon the "Chesapeake," which, by her involuntarily coming into the
wind,--to such an extent that Broke thought she was attempting to haul
off, and himself hauled closer to the wind in consequence (4),--lost
in great measure the power of reply, except by musketry. The British
shot, entering the stern and quarter of her opponent, swept diagonally
along the after parts of the spar and main decks, a half-raking fire.

Under these conditions Lawrence and the first lieutenant were mortally
wounded, the former falling by a musket-ball through his body; but he
had