"You have a most perfect vessel," said one of them, "but I must say that you have a very ugly wheel for so beautiful a frigate." "Yes," said the American captain to whom the remark was made, "it is ugly. We lost our wheel in fighting the Java, and after the battle we replaced it with her wheel, and somehow we have never felt like changing it." {182} Bainbridge was a great-hearted and heroic man. When he was told that Captain Lambert was mortally injured, he forgot his own wounds and had his men carry him to the blood-stained quarter-deck, where the British officer lay. He then put into the dying man's hand the sword he had just surrendered. On Captain Bainbridge's return to Boston, another long procession marched up State Street, and another grand dinner was given. When he traveled by coach to Washington, the people along the route turned out in great crowds to honor the naval hero. The Constitution fought her last battle off the Madeira Islands, on February 20, 1815, under the command of Captain Charles Stewart, one of the hardest fighters in the history of our navy. "What shall I bring you for a present?" said Captain Stewart to his bride. "A British frigate," promptly replied the patriotic young wife. "I will bring you two," answered Stewart. On the afternoon of February 20, two British men-of-war hove in sight. They proved to be the frigate Cyane and the sloop of war Levant. "Old Ironsides" made all sail to overhaul them. Stewart's superb seamanship in this sharp battle has excited the admiration of naval experts, even to our own day. It is generally admitted that no American ship was ever better handled. He raked one vessel and then {183} the other, repeatedly. Neither of the enemy's war ships got in a single broadside. Just forty minutes after Stewart's first fire, the Cyane surrendered. A full moon then rose in all its splendor, and the battle went stoutly on with the Levant. At ten o'clock, however, she, too, perfectly helpless, struck her colors. "Old Ironsides'" last great battle was over. Singlehanded, she had fought two British war ships at one time and defeated them, and that, too, with only three men killed and twelve wounded. In less than three hours our stanch frigate was again in fighting trim. With the exception of long periods of rest, "Old Ironsides" carried her country's flag with dignity and honor for forty years. Her cruising days ended just before the outburst of the Civil War, in 1861, when she was taken to Newport, Rhode Island, to serve as a school-ship for the Naval Academy. Later, she was housed over, and used as a receiving ship at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In the fall of 1897, she was towed to the navy yard at Charlestown, to take part in her centennial celebration, October 21, 1897.