1813	Majestic with Atalante and Terpsichore	279

the painful truth came out, that his antagonist was a British packet.

The damages received by the Marlborough, as admitted by Captain Bull and his officers, were of a very serious nature. Two 32-pound shot had passed through just below the water's edge ; and the packet, in consequence, had three and a half feet water in the hold, and by its rapid increase, was reduced to nearly a sinking state. Her masts also were much injured, and her standing and running rigging nearly all shot away. Her loss, on this unfortunate occasion, amounted to Adjutant Andrews of the 60th regiment, and another passenger, killed, and the master and nine or ten men wounded. Except a shot through her mainmast, the principal damage sustained by the Primrose has already been related : her loss amounted to one seaman killed, her master (Andrew Leech, dangerously), one master's mate (Peter Belcher severely), and 12 seamen and marines wounded. At the request of Captain Bull, the carpenter of the Primrose and one of his mates were sent on board the Marlborough, to assist in stopping her leaks.

The facts above detailed differ materially from those we inserted in the first edition of this work ; but we shall be exonerated from blame when we mention, that our first statement was grounded upon an apparently authentic account, already before the English public ; and which account, owing probably to the absence of the Primrose on a foreign station, was not contradicted. The minutes of a court of inquiry, held upon Captain Phillott, on the subject of this unfortunate rencounter, have since been put into our hands ; and it is thus that we have been enabled to give the only correct account of the transaction which has appeared in print.

On the 2d of February, at 8 p.m., latitude at noon that day 36� 41' north, longitude 22� 11' west, the British 56-gun ship Majestic, Captain John Hayes, steering east-half-north with the wind a moderate breeze from the south-south-east, on the lookout for the American frigate Constitution, which had sailed from Boston bay on the 1st of January, discovered on her weather bow a ship, evidently a cruiser, standing towards her. In about 20 minutes the stranger, which, as afterwards ascertained, was the American privateer Wasp, of Philadelphia, mounting 20 guns, found her mistake ; and wearing, stood to the north-east under all the canvass she could set. The Majestic made sail in chase, and continued the pursuit until daylight on the 3d ; when, having got within four miles of the Wasp, she descried, about three leagues off in the south-south-east, three ships and one brig, of a very suspicious appearance, the ships especially. At 7 a.m. the Majestic made the private signal, and, receiving no answer, shortened sail to reconnoitre the strangers. These were not, as

* See p. 143. But the Majestic mounted only one 12-pounder chase-gun.

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