including only a dozen
frigates and sloops of war, won a series of victories against the
English, the hitherto undoubted masters of the sea, that attracted an
attention altogether out of proportion to the force of the combatants
or the actual damage done. For one hundred and fifty years the English
ships of war had failed to find fit rivals in those of any other
European power, although they had been matched against each in turn; and
when the unknown navy of the new nation growing up across the Atlantic
did what no European navy had ever been able to do, not only the English
and Americans, but the people of Continental Europe as well, regarded
the feat as important out of all proportion to the material aspects of
the case. The Americans first proved that the English could be beaten
at their own game on the sea. They did what the huge fleets of France,
Spain, and Holland had failed to do, and the great modern writers
on naval warfare in Continental Europe--men like Jurien de la
Graviere--have paid the same attention to these contests of frigates and
sloops that they give to whole fleet actions of other wars.

Among the famous ships of the Americans in this war were two named the
Wasp. The first was an eighteen-gun ship-sloop, which at the very
outset of the war captured a British brig-sloop of twenty guns, after
an engagement in which the British fought with great gallantry, but were
knocked to Pieces, while the Americans escaped comparatively unscathed.
Immediately afterward a British seventy-four captured the victor. In
memory of her the Americans gave the same name to one of the new sloops
they were building. These sloops were stoutly made, speedy vessels which
in strength and swiftness compared favorably with any ships of their
class in any other navy of the day, for the American shipwrights were
already as famous as the American gunners and seamen. The new Wasp, like
her sister ships, carried twenty-two guns and a crew of one hundred
and seventy men, and was ship-rigged. Twenty of her guns were 32-pound
carronades, while for bow-chasers she had two "long Toms." It was in
the year 1814 that the Wasp sailed from the United States to prey on the
navy and commerce of Great Britain. Her commander was a gallant South
Carolinian named Captain Johnson Blakeley. Her crew were nearly all
native Americans, and were an exceptionally fine set of men. Instead of
staying near the American coasts or of sailing the high seas, the Was