r were
accurately placed and inflicted heavy losses. The victory cost the
_Shannon_ eighty-two men killed and wounded, while the American frigate
lost one hundred and forty-seven of her crew, or more than one-third of
her complement. Even in defeat the _Chesapeake_ had punished the enemy
far more severely than the _Constitution_ had been able to do.

Lawrence lay in the cockpit, or hospital, when his men began to swarm
down in confusion and leaderless panic. Still conscious, he was aware
that disaster had overtaken them and he muttered again and again with
his dying breath, "Don't give up the ship. Blow her up." Thus passed to
an honorable fame an American naval officer of great gallantry and
personal charm. Although he brought upon his country a bitter
humiliation, the fact that he died sword in hand, his last thought for
his flag and his service, has atoned for his faults of rashness and
overconfidence. The odds were against him, and ill-luck smashed his
chance of overcoming them. He was no more disgraced than Dacres when he
surrendered the _Guerriere_ to a heavier ship, or than Lambert, dying on
his own deck, when he saw the colors of the _Java_ hauled down.

The _Shannon_ took her prize to Halifax, and when the news came back
that the captain of the _Chesapeake_ lay dead in a British port, the
bronzed sea-dogs of the Salem Marine Society resolved to fetch his body
home in a manner befitting his end. Captain George Crowninshield
obtained permission from the Government to sail with a flag of truce for
Halifax, and he equipped the brig _Henry_ for the sad and solemn
mission. Her crew was picked from among the shipmasters of Salem, some
of them privateering skippers, every man of them a proven deep-water
commander. It was such a crew as never before or since took a vessel out
of an American port. When they returned to Salem with the remains of
Captain Lawrence and Lieutenant Ludlow, the storied old seaport saw
their funeral column pass through the quiet and crowded streets. The
pall-bearers bore names to thrill American hearts today--Hull, Stewart,
Bainbridge, Blakely, Creighton, and Parker, all captains of the navy. A
Salem newspaper described the ceremonies simply and with an unconscious
pathos:

The day was unclouded, as if no incident should be wanting to crown
the mind with melancholy and woe--the wind from the same direction
and the sea presented the same unruffled surface as was exhibited
t