After the fight had been in progress for several hours, the _Townshend_ was so terribly “cut up” about her rigging, and had been hulled so frequently by the enemy’s shot that she was almost unmanageable, and in addition to this so many of her small crew had been put _hors de combat_ that to serve the guns any longer was a matter of the greatest difficulty. Soon, with the loss of her bowsprit, jib-booms, steering wheel and other important gear, she was reduced to a sorry wreck. Then she began to take in water faster far than the pumps, even if they could have been manned, would have been able to keep under. The Americans still continued to rake her fore and aft, as they could now easily do owing to her helpless condition; but still the _Townshend_ and her commander refused to strike the English flag. The water rose so rapidly that the carpenter, who was sent down into the hold to ascertain the worst, reported the vessel actually sinking. Half the crew were killed, or wounded so seriously that they were no longer able to render the slightest assistance, and in the end, with tears in his eyes, the English captain, to save other gallant and valuable lives, which would only be uselessly sacrificed by further resistance, hauled down his colours.[G] [G] See _The History of the Post-Office Packet Service between 1793 and 1815_ (Macmillan & Co.) So ended one of the most notable of many engagements in which the Falmouth packet boats of the end of the eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth century took part. Often, however, though attacked by vessels of superior force they, by courage and skill, managed to avoid capture, and, indeed, both French and American privateers often found they had “caught a Tartar” in a Falmouth post-office packet ship. Such was the historic case of the _Jeune_ (or _Jean_) _Richard_, a heavily armed French privateer carrying a crew of close upon a hundred, which, falling in with the packet boat _Windsor Castle_, Captain W. Rogers, with a crew of twenty-eight, and “only light guns,” almost on the same spot as that destined to be the scene of the _Townshend’s_ engagement five years later, attacked her, doubtless expecting to gain an easy prize. The commander of the _Jeune Richard_ had, however, “reckoned without his host,” for not only did Captain Rogers and his crew gallantly repulse each attempt made by the privateer to board them, but a happy idea of loading one of his 9-pounders with grape and musket bullets occurred to the skipper’s mind.