![]() ![]() ![]() “The battle had taken only eleven minutes, timed by the Shannon's gunner who was working in the powder room away from the carnage of the gun decks. The battle was over.īroke was victorious and Britain finally had its first significant success over the US Navy in the war. His last order before slipping into unconsciousness was “Don't give up the ship!” But it was too late: the British were already on board Chesapeake and were cleaning out the last pockets of resistance. ![]() At that point, he was shot for a second time and carried down to the cockpit. Lawrence, desperate to recover victory from disaster, ordered his men to prepare to board the British ship. Soon Chesapeake came crashing into Shannon and got stuck in an anchor's fluke. The British aimed for this – the most vulnerable part of the ship – and proceeded to shred it to pieces. The Americans fought with courage but within minutes, Chesapeake's wheel was shot off and she started drifting helplessly, stern-first, towards Shannon. Soon the British carronades started clearing the upper deck. Lawrence corrected course as best he could but his ship was hit badly and he was himself wounded in the thigh by a musket ball. At such a short distance between the two frigates, not a shot could miss. As she passed Shannon's side, Broke's guns showered the crowded Chesapeake's gun deck – to kill as many crewmen as possible – with cannonballs and grapeshot. The first broadsides were exchanged at 5:40 am but Chesapeake came in too fast and was unable to manoeuvre in a proper firing position. At the break of dawn, both opponents began to close in on each other. He sailed out of Boston harbour and on June 1, 1813, at around three in the morning, Shannon came in sight of the American frigate. Nonetheless, Lawrence was confident in his own ability and in the quality of his men and thus decided to face Broke. Lawrence's opponent, on the other hand, had been in command of Shannon for seven years, relentlessly and carefully training his crew at naval gunnery. Young midshipmen were acting as lieutenants and her crew had barely come together. Just back from a four-month cruise during which she had captured the richest prize-ship of the war (the merchantman Volunteer, worth $350, 000), Chesapeake was still in the midst of shaping herself as a fighting unit: Lawrence had just taken command his first, third and fourth officers were also newly commissioned. The light frigate he would take into combat had itself become some sort of an “icon” of the US Navy: the newly refitted 36-gun USS Chesapeake, the very ship the British had battered in 1807. A young officer of impressive physical stature and who possessed a fierce sense of personal honour, Lawrence had won three ship-to-ship actions against the British in the previous year and was on his way to becoming some sort of a navy hero, being extremely popular among the ranks. However, one stayed behind and agreed to come out and meet with Broke's ship, the 36-gun HMS Shannon: Captain James Lawrence. The Americans simply ignored Broke's bravado and, one by one, went out at night on faraway raiding ventures. ![]() While on patrolling duties in front of Boston harbour in the spring of 1813, one Captain Sir Philip Broke even issued a polite challenge to the US Navy captains he blockaded there to come out and meet with him, ship against ship, in a duel at sea. For many Royal Navy captains, the war had now become a personal question of redeeming the “lost honour” of the Fleet during the preceding year. ![]()
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