would not do, keeping the convoy in close order around him. The
transports were all armed and still contained in the aggregate
1,200 soldiers. As the _Essex_ could only fight at close quarters
these heavy odds rendered it hopeless for her to try to cut out
the _Minerva_. Her carronades would have to be used at short range
to be effective, and it would of course have been folly to run in
right among the convoy, and expose herself to the certainty of
being boarded by five times as many men as she possessed. The
_Minerva_ had three less guns a side, and on her spar-deck carried
24-pound carronades instead of 32's, and, moreover, had fifty men
less than the _Essex_, which had about 270 men this cruise; on the
other hand, her main-deck was armed with long 12's, so that it is
hard to say whether she did right or not in refusing to fight. She
was of the same force as the _Southampton_ whose captain, Sir James
Lucas Yeo, subsequently challenged Porter, but never appointed a
meeting-place. In the event of a meeting, the advantage, in ships
of such radically different armaments, would have been with that
captain who succeeded in outmanoeuvring the other and in making
the fight come off at the distance best suited to himself. At long
range either the _Minerva_ or _Southampton_ would possess an immense
superiority; but if Porter could have contrived to run up within
a couple of hundred yards, or still better, to board, his superiority
in weight of metal and number of men would have enabled him to carry
either of them. Porter's crew was better trained for boarding than
almost any other American commander's; and probably none of the
British frigates on the American station, except the _Shannon_ and
_Tenedos_, would have stood a chance with the _Essex_ in a
hand-to-hand struggle. Among her youngest midshipmen was one, by
name David Glasgow Farragut, then but thirteen years old, who
afterward became the first and greatest admiral of the United States.