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The stranger was, however, the British ship-sloop Little Belt, mounting 18 32-pounder carronades, and 2 long nines, with a crew of 120 men and boys, commanded by Captain Bingham, who at the same time made out the President. Captain Bingham, finding her signals unanswered, felt assured that the stranger was an American frigate, and continued his course round Cape Hatteras.
Well as I knew every curve and line of her beautiful hull, my glances now dwelt upon her with tenfold loving interest. She was a ship-sloop of 28 guns long 18-pounders with a flush deck fore and aft. She was very long in proportion to her beam; low in the water, and her lines were as fine as it had been possible to make them.
A 50-gun ship had room for three pairs of ports on her poop, one pair on her quarter-deck, and a pair on her forecastle. By similar alterations, a 44-gun ship was made to carry ten carronades, while on board the sixth-rates and the quarter-deck ship-sloop class, by building up bulwarks or barricades, they could be made to carry eight carronades.
The intelligence, however, was of a very meagre character, and simply amounted to this: That large numbers of African slaves were being continually landed on the Spanish West Indian islands; that two boats with their crews had mysteriously disappeared in the Congo while engaged upon a search of that river for slavers; and that a small felucca named the Wasp a tender to the British ship-sloop Lapwing had also disappeared with all hands, some three months previously, after having been seen in pursuit of a large brig that had come out of the river; these circumstances leading to the inference that the Congo was the haunt of a strong gang of daring slavers whose capture must be effected at any cost.
Among the famous ships of the Americans in this war were two named the Wasp. The first was an eighteen-gun ship-sloop, which at the very outset of the war captured a British brig-sloop of twenty guns, after an engagement in which the British fought with great gallantry, but were knocked to Pieces, while the Americans escaped comparatively unscathed.
The "Peacock" was a ship-sloop of twenty-two guns, with a crew of one hundred and sixty-six men. The advantage, therefore, lay with the Americans; but, in the battle that ensued, the damage they inflicted upon the enemy was out of any proportion to their excess of strength.
"I can hardly tell at this distance, sir; the heads of her royals are only just showing above the horizon, but they don't appear to be of any great size." Some four minutes later a second sail was reported, as I had expected; the lookout now expressing an opinion that the new-comer was probably a frigate, whilst the smaller craft, the leader in the race, was either a ship-sloop or a brig.
That evening the ship-sloop Prometheus, Captain Dashwood, joined direct from Algiers, with information that the Algerines were making every preparation to meet the attack.
The British 36-gun frigate Phoebe, Captain James Hillyar, with the 18-gun ship-sloop Cherub, Captain Tucker, which vessels had sailed in search of him, standing towards Valparaiso, on the 8th of February discovered the American cruisers, with several prizes at anchor in the harbour. For a couple of weeks or more Captain Hillyar did his best to draw the American ships out of the port.
Captain Porter had become so clever in disguising his vessel as a merchantman that some days later he lured the British 16-gun ship-sloop Alert to attack him. In the space of eight minutes the Alert was so helplessly crippled that her captain surrendered. The Essex did not suffer the slightest injury and no men were killed on either vessel.
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