1812	Minerva and Essex	87

acquainted with that officer, can judge of his feelings upon reading an account of the ill-treatment of a British sailor. Some expression, marking his abhorrence of the act and his contempt for the author, did very likely escape Sir James ; and that, in the hearing of one or more of the American prisoners then on board the Southampton. Through this channel, which was none of the purest, the words probably became what they appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper, the " Democratic Press," of the 18th of September, 1812, a sort of challenge, couched in vulgar terms, from the Southampton to the Essex. It has been thought that Mr. Binns himself was at the bottom of it, to give his friend (but not countryman) Captain Porter an opportunity of blustering himself into more creditable notice, than the affair of John Erving was calculated to gain for him. At all events, a formal acceptance, by Captain Porter, of the alleged challenge, went the round of the American newspapers.

Although, according to the best of our inquiries on the subject, no such message was sent by Sir James Yeo, the Southampton cruised, for several weeks, along the southern coast of the United States, in the hope of falling in with the Essex, the nature of whose armament Sir James fully knew. The Southampton had 212 men and boys, and in reference to the quality of her crew, was well manned. All that her captain and his officers wanted was the weather-gage, to enable the Southampton to choose her distance, and bring her long 12s into fair competition with her opponent's short 32s : or else to afford the British seamen an opportunity of getting on board the American ship early in the action, and of deciding the contest by their favourite mode, a hand-to-hand struggle.

It was on the 3d of July that the Essex sailed from New York. On the 11th at 2 a.m., in latitude, by her reckoning, 33�, longitude 66�, the Essex fell in with a small convoy of seven British transports, going from Barbadoes to Quebec, under the protection of the British 12-pounder 32-gun frigate Minerva, (same force as Southampton,) Captain Richard Hawkins, and succeeded in cutting off the rearmost vessel, a brig, No. 299, having on board 197 soldiers. At 4 a.m., observing a strange ship very close to one of the brigs of her convoy, the Minerva wore to reconnoitre the intruder. Finding, however, after a while, that, by continuing in chase of the American frigate and her newly made-prize, he would run the risk of losing the remaining six vessels of his convoy, Captain Hawkins left the brig (captured, by the Minerva's reckoning, in latitude 34� 3' north, longitude 66� 39' west) in the quiet possession of the Essex, and resumed his course towards Quebec.

Captain Porter was discreet, as well as shrewd, enough to chuckle at this : and, disarming and paroling the soldiers, and ransoming the vessel, he allowed the latter to proceed with the intelligence of the outrage she had suffered. He of course

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