up by affidavits of his brother officers, that in all he had but
five amputations, of whom only one died, and that one, a month
after Surgeon Jones had left the ship. To meet the assertions of
Lieutenant Chads that he began action with but 377 men, the
_Constitution's_ officers produced the _Java's_ muster-roll, dated
Nov. 17th, or five days after she had sailed, which showed 446
persons, of whom 20 had been put on board a prize. The presence of
this large number of supernumeraries on board is explained by the
fact that the _Java_ was carrying out Lieutenant-General Hislop,
the newly-appointed Governor of Bombay, and his suite, together
with part of the crews for the _Cornwallis_, 74, and gun-sloops
_Chameleon_ and _Icarus_; she also contained stores for those two ships.

Besides conflicting with the American reports, the British statements
contradict one another. The official published report gives but two
midshipmen as killed; while one of the volumes of the "Naval Chronicle"
(vol. xxix, p. 452) contains a letter from one of the _Java's_
lieutenants, in which he states that there were five. Finally,
Commodore Bainbridge found on board the _Constitution_, after the
prisoners had left, a letter from Lieutenant H. D. Cornick, dated
Jan. 1, 1813, and addressed to Lieutenant Peter V. Wood, 22d Regiment,
foot, in which he states that 65 of their men were killed. James
("Naval Occurrences") gets around this by stating that it was
probably a forgery; but, aside from the improbability of Commodore
Bainbridge being a forger, this could not be so, for nothing would
have been easier than for the British lieutenant to have denied
having written it, which he never did. On the other hand, it would
be very likely that in the heat of the action, Commodore Bainbridge
and the _Java's_ own officers should overestimate the latter's loss.
[Footnote: For an account of the shameless corruption then existing