On the 11th of March the privateer _General Armstrong,_ Captain Guy R. Champlin, of New York, encountered, off Surinam, what she supposed to be an English privateer. The _Armstrong_ bore down upon her, fired the starboard broadside, wore ship and gave her the larboard broadside, and was then about to attempt boarding, but found out that the enemy was a frigate, carrying twenty-four guns. The bat{219}tle lasted three quarters of an hour, when the _Armstrong_ succeeded in getting away. Captain Champ-lin, badly wounded, lay on the cabin floor, directly over the magazine, with a pistol in his hand, when he overheard some talk about striking the colors. He immediately ordered the surgeon to go on deck and tell the men that if any one of them dared to strike the colors, he would discharge his pistol into the magazine and blow them all up together. In his log-book he wrote: "In this action we had six men killed and sixteen wounded, and all the halyards of the headsails shot away; the fore-mast and bowsprit one quarter cut through, and all the fore and main shrouds but one shot away; both mainstays and running rigging cut to pieces; a great number of shot through our sails, and several between wind and water, which caused our vessel to leak. There were also a number of shot in our hull." The privateer _Young Teazer_ met a singular fate. In June she was chased by a British man-of-war. Her lieutenant had been once captured, and released on parole, and had gone into the service again without waiting to be exchanged. When he saw a probability of another capture, he seized a firebrand and ran into the cabin, and in another moment the vessel was blown to fragments, and {220}every man on board perished, except seven sailors who were standing on the forecastle. The privateer _Wasp_, carrying two guns, had a battle of nine hours' duration, on the 31st of July, with the British war-schooner _Bream_, of ten guns. For the last forty-five minutes the action was at close quarters, and the _Wasp_ then surrendered.