A sober-suited, half-melancholy common-sense was Broke's characteristic, and he had applied it to the working of his ship, till he had made the vessel, perhaps, the most formidable fighting machine of her size afloat. He drilled his gunners until, from the swaying platform of their decks, they shot with a deadly coolness and accuracy nothing floating could resist. Broke, as a matter of fact, owed his famous victory over the _Chesapeake_ to one of his matter-of-fact precautions. The first broadside fired by the _Chesapeake_ sent a 32-pound shot through one of the gun-room cabins into the magazine passage of the _Shannon_, where it might easily have ignited some grains of loose powder and blown the ship up, if Broke had not taken the precaution of elaborately _damping_ that passage before the action began. The prosaic side of Broke's character is very amusing. In his diary he records his world-famous victory thus:-- "June 1st.--Off Boston. Moderate." "N.W.--W(rote) Laurence." "P.M.--Took _Chesapeake_." Was ever a shining victory packed into fewer or duller words? Broke's scorn of the histrionic is shown by his reply to one of his own men who, when the _Chesapeake_, one blaze of fluttering colours, was bearing down upon her drab-coloured opponent, said to his commander, eyeing the bleached and solitary flag at the _Shannon's_ peak, "Mayn't we have three ensigns, sir, like she has?" "No," said Broke, "we have always been an _unassuming_ ship!" And yet, this unromantic English sailor had a gleam of Don Quixote in him. On this pleasant summer morning he was waiting alone, under easy sail, outside a hostile port, strongly fortified and full of armed vessels, waiting for an enemy's ship bigger than himself to come out and fight him. He had sent in the previous day, by way of challenge, a letter that recalls the days of chivalry. "As the _Chesapeake_," he wrote to Laurence, its captain, "appears now ready for sea, I request that you will do me the favour to meet the _Shannon_ with her, ship to ship." He proceeds to explain the exact armament of the _Shannon_, the number of her crew, the interesting circumstance that he is short of provisions and water, and that he has sent away his consort so that the terms of the duel may be fair. "If you will favour me," he says, "with any plan of signals or telegraph, I will warn you should any of my friends be too nigh, while you are in sight, until I can detach them out of the way. Or," he suggests coaxingly, "I would sail under a flag of truce to any place you think safest from our cruisers, hauling it down when fair, to begin hostilities. . . . Choose your terms," he concludes, "but let us meet." Having sent in this amazing letter, this middle-aged, unromantic, but hard-fighting captain climbs at daybreak to his own maintop, and sits there till half-past eleven, watching the challenged ship, to see if her foretopsail is unloosed and she is coming out to fight.