Captain Garden stated (in Marshall's "Naval Biography") that the
_States_ measured 1,670 tons, was manned by 509 men, suffered so
from shot under water that she had to be pumped out every watch,
and that two eighteen-pound shot passed in a horizontal line through
her main-masts; all of which statements were highly creditable to
the vividness of his imagination. The _States_ measured but 1,576
tons (and by English measurement very much less), had 478 men aboard,
had not been touched by a shot under water-line, and her lower masts
were unwounded. James states that most of her crew were British,
which assertion I have already discussed; and that she had but one
boy aboard, and that he was seventeen years old,--in which case 29
others, some of whom (as we learn from the "Life of Decatur") were
only twelve, must have grown with truly startling rapidity during
the hour and a half that the combat lasted.

During the twenty years preceding 1812 there had been almost
incessant warfare on the ocean, and although there had been
innumerable single conflicts between French and English frigates,
there had been but one case in which the French frigate, single-handed,
was victorious. This was in the year 1805 when the _Milan_ captured
the _Cleopatra_. According to Troude, the former threw at a broadside
574 pounds (actual), the latter but 334; and the former lost 35 men
out of her crew of 350, the latter 58 out of 200. Or, the forces
being as 100 to 58, the loss inflicted was as 100 to 60; while the
_States'_ force compared to the _Macedonian's_ being as 100 to 66,
the loss she inflicted was as 100 to 11.

British ships, moreover, had often conquered against odds as great;
as, for instance, when the _Sea Horse_ captured the great Turkish
frigate _Badere-Zaffer_; when the _Astrea_ captured the French