It is not to glorify war nor to rekindle an ancient feud that
such episodes as these are recalled to mind. These men, and
others like them, did their duty as it came to them, and they
were sailors of whom the whole Anglo-Saxon race might be proud.
In the crisis they were Americans, not privateersmen in quest of
plunder, and they would gladly die sooner than haul down the
Stars and Stripes. The England against which they fought was not
the England of today. Their honest grievances, inflicted by a
Government too intent upon crushing Napoleon to be fair to
neutrals, have long ago been obliterated. This War of 1812
cleared the vision of the Mother Country and forever taught her
Government that the people of the Republic were, in truth, free
and independent.

This lesson was driven home not only by the guns of the
Constitution and the United States, but also by the hundreds of
privateers and the forty thousand able seamen who were eager to
sail in them. They found no great place in naval history, but
England knew their prowess and respected it. Every schoolboy is
familiar with the duels of the Wasp and the Frolic, of the
Enterprise and the Boxer; but how many people know what happened
when the privateer Decatur met and whipped the Dominica of the
British Navy to the southward of Bermuda?

Captain Diron was the man who did it as he was cruising out of
Charleston, South Carolina, in the summer of 1813. Sighting an
armed schooner slightly heavier than his own vessel, he made for
her and was unperturbed when the royal ensign streamed from her
gaff. Clearing for action, he closed the hatches so that none of