So far as the service was concerned, Barron’s punishment was not likely to stimulate its caution, for no American captain, unless he wished to be hung by his own crew at his own yard-arm, was likely ever again to let a British frigate come within gunshot without taking such precautions as he would have taken against a pirate; but though the degradation could do little for the service, it cost Barron his honor, and ended by costing Decatur his life. Meanwhile, Captain Humphreys reported to Captain Douglas on the “Bellona,” and Captain Douglas reported the whole affair to Admiral Berkeley at Halifax, who received at the same time accounts from American sources. The admiral immediately wrote to approve the manner in which his orders had been carried out. “As far as I am enabled to judge,” he said[11] in a letter to Captain Humphreys, dated July 4, “you have conducted yourself most properly.” The inevitable touch of unconscious comedy was not wanting in the British admiral, whose character recalled Smollett’s novels and memories of Commodore Hawser Trunnion. “I hope you mind the public accounts which have been published of this affair as little as I do,” he continued; “we must make allowances for the heated state of the populace in a country where law and every tie, both civil and religious, is treated so lightly.” No broader humor could be found in “Peregrine Pickle” than in one breath to approve an act so lawless that no man of common-sense even in England ventured to defend it as lawful, and in the next to read the Americans a moral lecture on their want of law and religion; yet grotesque as this old-fashioned naval morality might be, no man in England noticed either its humor or its absurdity. As though to show that he meant no humor by it, the admiral, August 25, called a court-martial, which the next day sentenced Jenkin Ratford to be hanged, and the three American deserters from the “Melampus” to receive five hundred lashes each. The last part of the sentence was not carried out, and the three Americans remained quietly in prison; but August 31, Jenkin Ratford was duly hanged from the foreyard-arm of his own ship, the “Halifax.” FOOTNOTES: [1] James’s Naval History, iv. 329. [2] Barron’s Court-martial, p. 241. [3] Barron to Gordon, May 1, 1807; Court-martial, p. 239. [4] Captain Gordon to the Secretary of the Navy, June 22, 1807; Court-martial, p. 259. [5] Barron to the Secretary of the Navy, June 6, 1807; Court-martial, p. 371. [6] Gordon to Barron, June 19, 1807, p. 367. [7] James’s Naval History, iv. 329. [8] Court-martial, p. 101. [9] James’s Naval History, iv. 330. [10] Court-martial, pp. 337-350. [11] Marshall’s Naval Biography, iv. 895. CHAPTER II.