June 22 the orders were sent according to Gallatin’s wish. They directed Rodgers with his part of the squadron to cruise from the Chesapeake eastwardly, and Decatur with his ships to cruise from New York southwardly, so as to cross and support each other and protect with their united force the merchantmen and coasters entering New York harbor, the Delaware, and the Chesapeake. Rodgers and Decatur were then beginning their private cruise across the ocean, and never received these orders until the commerce they were to protect either reached port in safety or fell into British hands. Probably this miscarriage was fortunate, for not long after Rodgers and Decatur passed the Banks the British Vice-Admiral Sawyer sent from Halifax a squadron to prevent the American navy from doing what Secretary Hamilton had just ordered to be done. July 5 Captain Broke, with his own frigate the “Shannon,” 38, the “Belvidera,” 36, the “Africa,” 64, and “Æolus,” 32, put to sea from Halifax and was joined, July 9, off Nantucket by the “Guerriere,” 38. Against such a force Rodgers and Decatur, even if together, would have risked total destruction, while a success would have cost more than it was worth. The Americans had nothing to gain and everything to lose by fighting in line-of-battle. As Broke’s squadron swept along the coast it seized whatever it met, and July 16 caught one of President Jefferson’s 16-gun brigs, the “Nautilus.” The next day it came on a richer prize. The American navy seemed ready to outstrip the army in the race for disaster. The “Constitution,” the best frigate in the United States service, sailed into the midst of Broke’s five ships. Captain Isaac Hull, in command of the “Constitution,” had been detained at Annapolis shipping a new crew, until July 5,[329]--the day when Broke’s squadron left Halifax;--then the ship got under way and stood down Chesapeake Bay on her voyage to New York. The wind was ahead and very light. Not till July 10 did the ship anchor off Cape Henry lighthouse,[330] and not till sunrise of July 12 did she stand to the eastward and northward. Light head-winds and a strong current delayed her progress till July 17, when at two o’clock in the afternoon, off Barnegat on the New Jersey coast, the lookout at the masthead discovered four sails to the northward, and two hours later a fifth sail to the northeast. Hull took them for Rodgers’s squadron. The wind was light, and Hull being to windward determined to speak the nearest vessel, the last to come in sight. The afternoon passed without bringing the ships together, and at ten in the evening, finding that the nearest ship could not answer the night signal, Hull decided to lose no time in escaping.