worth of British merchandise. With Captain J.
Ordronaux on the quarterdeck, she was near Nantucket Shoals at noon on
October 11, 1814, when a strange sail was discovered. As this vessel
promptly gave chase, Captain Ordronaux guessed-and as events proved
correctly--that she must be a British frigate. She turned out to be the
Endymion. The privateer had in tow a prize which she was anxious to
get into port, but she was forced to cast off the hawser late in the
afternoon and make every effort to escape.

The breeze died with the sun and the vessels were close inshore.
Becalmed, the privateer and the frigate anchored a quarter of a mile
apart. Captain Ordronaux might have put his crew on the beach in boats
and abandoned his ship. This was the reasonable course, for, as he had
sent in several prize crews, he was short-handed and could muster no
more than thirty-seven men and boys. The Endymion, on the other hand,
had a complement of three hundred and fifty sailors and marines, and in
size and fighting power she was in the class of the American frigates
President and Constitution. Quite unreasonably, however, the master of
the privateer decided to await events.

The unexpected occurred shortly after dusk when several boats loaded to
the gunwales with a boarding party crept away from the frigate. Five
of them, with one hundred and twenty men, made a concerted attack
at different points, alongside and under the bow and stern. Captain
Ordronaux had told his crew that he would blow up the ship with all
hands before striking his colors, and they believed him implicitly. This
was the hero who was described as "a Jew by persuasion, a Frenchman by
birth, an American for convenience, and so diminutive in stature as
to make him appear ridiculous, in the eyes of others, even for him to
enforce authority among a hardy, weatherbeaten crew should they do aught
against his will." He was big enough, nevertheless, for this night's
bloody work, and there was no doubt about his authority. While the
British tried to climb over the bulwarks, his thirty-seven men and boys
fought like raging devils, with knives, pistols, cutlases, with their
bare fists and their teeth. A few of the enemy gained the deck, but
the privateersmen turned and killed them. Others leaped aboard and were
gradually driving the Americans back, when the skipper ran to the hatch
above the powder magazine, waving a lighted match and swearing to drop
it in if his crew retreated