[1] In the naval battle of Plattsburgh the American commander “Macdonough himself worked like a common sailor, in pointing and handling a favorite gun. While bending over to sight it, a round shot cut in two the spanker boom, which fell on his head and struck him senseless for two or three minutes; he then leaped to his feet and continued as before, _when a shot took off the head of the captain of the gun crew and drove it in his face with such force as to knock him to the other side of the deck_.”--From _“The Naval War of 1812,” by Theodore Roosevelt_.