skipper until offered the command of a privateer.

Touching at the Azores for water and provisions in September,
1814, he was trapped in port by the great seventy-four-gun ship
of the line Plantagenet, the thirty-eight-gun frigate Rota, and
the warbrig Carnation. Though he was in neutral water, they paid
no heed to this but determined to destroy a Yankee schooner which
had played havoc with their shipping. Four hundred men in twelve
boats, with a howitzer in the bow of each boat, were sent against
the General Armstrong in one flotilla. But not a man of the four
hundred gained her deck. Said an eyewitness: "The Americans
fought with great firmness but more like bloodthirsty savages
than anything else. They rushed into the boats sword in hand and
put every soul to death as far as came within their power. Some
of the boats were left without a single man to row them, others
with three or four. The most that any one returned with was about
ten. Several boats floated ashore full of dead bodies . . . . For
three days after the battle we were employed in burying the dead
that washed on shore in the surf."

This tragedy cost the British squadron one hundred and twenty men
in killed and one hundred and thirty in wounded, while Captain
Reid lost only two dead and had seven wounded. He was compelled
to retreat ashore next day when the ships stood in to sink his
schooner with their big guns, but the honors of war belonged to
him and well-earned were the popular tributes when he saw home
again, nor was there a word too much in the florid toast:
"Captain Reid--his valor has shed a blaze of renown upon the
character of our seamen, and won for himself a laurel of eternal
bloom."