s buried with
military honors at Halifax. In Portland, Maine, the two young
commanders were borne to their graves together, in a common funeral,
with all the observance possible in a small coast town; business being
everywhere suspended, and the customary tokens of mourning displayed
upon buildings and shipping.

After this engagement, as the season progressed, coastwise operations
in this quarter became increasingly hazardous for both parties. On
October 22, Hull wrote that neither the "Enterprise" nor the
"Rattlesnake" could cruise much longer. The enemy still maintained his
grip, in virtue of greater size and numbers. Ten days later comes the
report of a convoy, with one of the brigs, driven into port by a
frigate; that the enemy appear almost every day, and never without a
force superior to that of both his brigs, which he fears to trust out
overnight, lest they find themselves at morning under the guns of an
opponent of weightier battery. The long nights and stormy seas of
winter, however, soon afforded to coasters a more secure protection
than friendly guns, and Hull's letters intermit until April 6, 1814,
when he announces that the enemy has made his appearance in great
force; he presumes for the summer. Besides the danger and interruption
of the coasting trade, Hull was increasingly anxious as to the safety
of Portsmouth itself. By a recent act of Congress four seventy-fours
had been ordered to be built, and one of them was now in construction
there under his supervision. Despite the navigational difficulties of
entering the port, which none was more capable of appreciating than
he, he regarded the defences as so inadequate that it would be
perfectly possible to destroy her on the stocks. "There is nothing,"
he said, "to prevent a very small force from entering the harbor." At
the same moment Decatur was similarly concerned for the squadron at
New London, and we have seen the fears of Stewart for Norfolk. So
marked was Hull's apprehension in this respect, that he sent the
frigate "Congress" four miles up the river, where she remained to the
end of the war; her crew being transferred to Lake Ontario. New York,
the greater wealth of which increased both her danger and her capacity
for self-protection, was looking to her own fortifications, as well as
manning, provisioning, and paying the crews of the gunboats that
patrolled her waters, on the side of the sea and of the Sound.

The exposure of the coasting trade