any thing. Hitherto there had been a strong feeling, especially
in England, that an 18-pound gun was as effective as a 24- in
arming a frigate; we made a complete revolution in this respect.
England had been building only 18-pounder vessels when she ought
to have been building 24-pounders. It was greatly to our credit
that our average frigate was superior to the average British frigate;
exactly as it was to our discredit that the _Essex_ was so
ineffectively armed. Captain Porter owed his defeat chiefly to his
ineffective guns, but also to having lost his topmast, to the
weather being unfavorable, and, still more, to the admirable
skill with which Hilyar used his superior armament. The _Java_,
_Macedonian_, and _Guerriere_ owed their defeat partly to their
lighter guns, but much more to the fact that their captains and
seamen did not display either as good seamanship or as good gunnery
as their foes. Inferiority in armament was a factor to be taken
into account in all the four cases, but it was more marked in that
of the _Essex_ than in the other three; it would have been fairer
for Porter to say that he had been captured by a line-of-battle
ship, than for the captain of the _Java_ to make that assertion.
In this last case the forces of the two ships compared almost
exactly as their rates. A 44 was matched against a 38; it was not
surprising that she should win, but it _was_ surprising that she
should win with ease and impunity. The long 24's on the
_Constitution's_ gun-deck no more made her a line-of-battle ship
than the 32-pound carronades mounted on an English frigate's
quarter-deck and forecastle made _her_ a line-of-battle ship when
opposed to a Frenchman with only 8's and 6's on his spar-deck.
When, a few years before, the English _Phoebe_ had captured the
French _Nereide_, their broadsides were respectively 407 and 258
pounds, a greater disparity than in any of our successful fights;