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Updated: June 28, 2025
The British officers and crew had, however, made up their minds not to give in while a stick was standing; but the most indomitable bravery cannot always overcome the chances of war. While Captain Moubray, with the master by his side, was eagerly watching every movement of his antagonist, to take advantage of what might occur, a shot from her struck the mizzenmast, already severely wounded.
Suddenly the two lads heard a rending and tearing sound, followed by a crash quite close to them, as something weighty smote the deck; and through the fearful din that raged round them there rang out the scream of a man in agony. "Harry," said Roger, "that is the mizzenmast come down, and it has injured some poor fellow! Let us endeavour to reach him if we can."
'By this time we were pretty close to the ship, and a fearful wreck she looked, with her mainmast and mizzenmast gone, and her bulwarks washed away, and great lumps of timber and planking ripping out of her and going overboard with every pour of the seas.
The men were lashed half-way up the weather rigging of the mizzenmast, and the lifeboatmen shouted to them to come over and drop into the lifeboat. To do this, they, half-frozen as they were, had to unlash themselves from the weather-rigging and, in the awful cold and darkness, climb up to the mast-head, where the lee-rigging or shrouds met more closely the weather-rigging.
While the captains were at dinner on the quarter-deck, however, the frigate blew up, and about 200 men, including five captains, were lost. "I was eating my dinner with the rest," writes the surgeon, Richard Browne, "when the mainmasts blew out, and fell upon Captains Aylett, Bigford, and others, and knocked them on the head; I saved myself by getting astride the mizzenmast."
At last, having lost her fore and maintopmasts, her mizzenmast having been shot away to the deck, and her foreyard lying in two pieces on her shattered forecastle, having been hulled in a hundred places with round shot, the Macedonian was reduced to the last extremity. Captain Garden ordered his signal quarter-master to strike the flag. Never did Sukey hear a command with greater joy.
Scarcely had the words been uttered, when a flash of lightning revealed the ship parting asunder amidships. The mizzenmast fell at the same time, but the mainmast was seen still standing.
She lost her mizzenmast, fore and main topsails and main yard, and was much damaged in the hull. Her official list was, 36 killed and 48 wounded, that of the Americans being 5 killed and 7 wounded. Decatur could have continued his cruise, but was obliged to accompany his crippled prize into port, where she was equipped as an American frigate.
It was thrown from behind the mizzenmast, over which it shot arching its way over the main and foremasts, illuminating every sail and rope, and then diving into the water, piercing the wave, it again shot upwards and vanished in a loud report. To our companion ship the effect must have been very fine.
Day dawned on the savage ocean, and in the cold gray light all that could be seen of the Francis Spaight emerging from the sea were the poop, the shattered mizzenmast, and a ragged line of bulwarks. It was midwinter in the North Atlantic, and the wretched men were half-dead from cold. But there was no place where they could find rest.
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