1812	Frolic and Wasp	113

pounders, carronades on the topgallant forecastle; making her," says Captain Jacob Jones, " superior in force to us by four 12-pounders. " Unfortunately for Captain Jacob Jones, Lieutenant Riddle, without his privity, wrote a letter to his father in Philadelphia, in these words: " The Frolic was superior in force to us : she mounted 18 32 lb. carronades, and two long nines. The Wasp, you know, has only 16 carronades." Mr. Biddle being a man of some note, got his son's letter into the Philadelphia papers as quickly as Mr. Paul Hamilton, the secretary of the American navy, could get the letter of Captain Jacob Jones into the " National Intelligencer." Here was a business ! Comments are unnecessary. Suffice it that neither letter contained a word relative to the disabled state of the Frolic when the action commenced ; and that the Congress of the United States, willing believers in a matter so flattering to their self-love, voted 25,000 dollars, and their thanks, to Captain Jacob Jones, the officers, and crew of the Wasp ; also a gold medal to Captain Jones, and silver medals to each of the officers, in testimony of their high sense of the gallantry displayed by them in the capture of the British sloop of war Frolic, of " superior force."

On the 8th of October the American Commodore Rodgers, with the same three frigates he commanded before, accompanied by the brig-sloop Argus, Captain Arthur Sinclair, sailed from Boston upon his second cruise against British men of war and merchantmen. On the 10th, at 8 a.m., when in latitude 41� north, longitude 65� west, steering to the westward, with a light northerly wind, the squadron discovered ahead the British 38-gun frigate Nymphe, Captain Farmery Predam Epworth. The Nymphe hauled on the starboard tack in chase : and at noon, finding the private signal not answered, Captain Epworth made out the three ships and brig to be American cruisers. At 4 h 30 m. p.m. the Nymphe boarded a Swedish brig from the island of St: Bartholomew to New-York; and which, at 8 p.m., was boarded by the American squadron. With the intelligence thus gained, Commodore Rodgers proceeded in chase ; but in the course of an hour, lost sight of the British frigate.

On the 12th of October the frigate United-States parted company; and we shall at present follow her fortunes. On the 25th, soon after daylight, in latitude 29� north, longitude 29� 30' west, this American 44, being close hauled on the larboard tack with the wind blowing fresh from the south-south-east, descried on her weather bow, at the distance of about 12 miles, the British 38-gun frigate Macedonian, Captain John Surman Carden. The Macedonian immediately set her fore topmast and topgallant studding-sails, and bore away in chase, steering a course for the weather bow of the stranger.

While the tracks of the two ships are thus gradually

* See p. 30.

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