Part 20 (1/2)

Captain Lambert was mortally injured, his first lieutenant severely hurt, and nearly fifty men were killed and more than one hundred wounded. ”Old Ironsides” came out of the battle with every spar in place.

{181} The wheel of the Java was removed and fitted on the Const.i.tution, to replace the one which had been shot away.

A few years after the war, some British naval officers paid a visit to ”Old Ironsides.”

”You have a most perfect vessel,” said one of them, ”but I must say that you have a very ugly wheel for so beautiful a frigate.”

”Yes,” said the American captain to whom the remark was made, ”it is ugly. We lost our wheel in fighting the Java, and after the battle we replaced it with her wheel, and somehow we have never felt like changing it.”

{182} Bainbridge was a great-hearted and heroic man. When he was told that Captain Lambert was mortally injured, he forgot his own wounds and had his men carry him to the blood-stained quarter-deck, where the British officer lay. He then put into the dying man's hand the sword he had just surrendered.

On Captain Bainbridge's return to Boston, another long procession marched up State Street, and another grand dinner was given. When he traveled by coach to Was.h.i.+ngton, the people along the route turned out in great crowds to honor the naval hero.

The Const.i.tution fought her last battle off the Madeira Islands, on February 20, 1815, under the command of Captain Charles Stewart, one of the hardest fighters in the history of our navy.

”What shall I bring you for a present?” said Captain Stewart to his bride.

”A British frigate,” promptly replied the patriotic young wife.

”I will bring you two,” answered Stewart.

On the afternoon of February 20, two British men-of-war hove in sight. They proved to be the frigate Cyane and the sloop of war Levant.

”Old Ironsides” made all sail to overhaul them.

Stewart's superb seamans.h.i.+p in this sharp battle has excited the admiration of naval experts, even to our own day. It is generally admitted that no American s.h.i.+p was ever better handled. He raked one vessel and then {183} the other, repeatedly. Neither of the enemy's war s.h.i.+ps got in a single broadside.

Just forty minutes after Stewart's first fire, the Cyane surrendered.

A full moon then rose in all its splendor, and the battle went stoutly on with the Levant. At ten o'clock, however, she, too, perfectly helpless, struck her colors.

”Old Ironsides'” last great battle was over. Singlehanded, she had fought two British war s.h.i.+ps at one time and defeated them, and that, too, with only three men killed and twelve wounded. In less than three hours our stanch frigate was again in fighting trim.

With the exception of long periods of rest, ”Old Ironsides” carried her country's flag with dignity and honor for forty years.

Her cruising days ended just before the outburst of the Civil War, in 1861, when she was taken to Newport, Rhode Island, to serve as a school-s.h.i.+p for the Naval Academy. Later, she was housed over, and used as a receiving s.h.i.+p at Portsmouth, New Hamps.h.i.+re. In the fall of 1897, she was towed to the navy yard at Charlestown, to take part in her centennial celebration, October 21, 1897.

The old Const.i.tution has been rebuilt in parts, and repaired many times; so that little remains of the original vessel except her keel and her floor frames. These huge pieces of her framework, hewn by hand from solid oak, are the same that thrilled with the shock of the old guns, {184} before the granite forts of Tripoli. Over them floated the American flag and the pennants of Preble, Hull, Bainbridge, Decatur, Stewart, and many other gallant men, whose heroic deeds have shed l.u.s.ter on the American navy.

It is interesting to know that Commodore Stewart was the last survivor of the great captains of the war of 1812. He served his country faithfully for seventy-one years, and lived to be ninety-one.

He died at his home, called ”Old Ironsides,” in New Jersey, in 1869.

The loss of a few frigates did not matter much to England, but the loss of her naval prestige in the war of 1812 was of importance to the whole world. For the first time, Europe realized that there was a new nation, which was able and willing to fight for its freedom on the ocean, as it had fought for its independence on land.

”Old Ironsides” still survives, a weather-beaten and battle-scarred hull, but a precious memorial of the nation's glory. She has earned a lasting place in the affections of the American people.

{185}

CHAPTER XIII