neath their feet.
Captain Isaac Hull could truthfully report: "In less than thirty minutes
from the time we got alongside of the enemy she was left without a spar
standing, and the hull cut to pieces in such a manner as to make it
difficult to keep her above water."

Captain Dacres struck his flag, and the American sailors who went aboard
found the guns dismounted, the dead and dying scattered amid a wild
tangle of spars and rigging, and great holes blown through the sides
and decks. The _Constitution_ had suffered such trifling injury that she
was fit and ready for action a few hours later. Of her crew only seven
men were killed and the same number hurt. She was the larger ship, and
the odds in her favor were as ten to seven, reckoned in men and guns,
for which reasons Captain Hull ought to have won. The significance of
his victory was that at every point he had excelled a British frigate
and had literally blown her out of the water. His crew had been together
only five weeks and could fairly be called green while the _Guerriere_,
although short-handed, had a complement of veteran tars. The British
navy had never hesitated to engage hostile men-of-war of superior force
and had usually beaten them. Of two hundred fights between single ships,
against French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Danish, and Dutch, the
English had lost only five. The belief of Captain Dacres that he could
beat the _Constitution_ was therefore neither rash nor ill-founded.

The English captain had ten Americans in his crew, but he would not
compel them to fight against their countrymen and sent them below,
although he sorely needed every man who could haul at a gun-tackle or
lay out on a yard. Wounded though he was and heartbroken by the
disaster, his chivalry was faultless, and he took pains to report: "I
feel it my duty to state that the conduct of Captain Hull and his
officers toward our men has been that of a brave and generous enemy, the
greatest care being taken to prevent our men losing the smallest trifle
and the greatest attention being paid to the wounded."

When the Englishman was climbing up the side of the _Constitution_ as a
prisoner, Isaac Hull ran to help him, exclaiming, "Give me your hand,
Dacres. I know you are hurt." No wonder that these two captains became
fast friends. It is because sea warfare abounds in such manly incidents
as these that the modern naval code of Germany, as exemplified in the
acts of her submarine commanders