Before continuing the story of the frigates, the fate of the little “Wasp” needs to be told. Her career was brief. The “Wasp,” a sloop-of-war rated at eighteen guns, was one of President Jefferson’s additions to the navy to supply the loss of the “Philadelphia;” she was ship-rigged, and armed with two long 12-pounders and sixteen 32-pound carronades. She carried a crew of one hundred and thirty-seven men, commanded by Captain Jacob Jones, a native of Delaware, lieutenant in the “Philadelphia” when lost in the war with Tripoli. The “Wasp” was attached to Rodgers’s squadron, and received orders from the commodore to join him at sea. She sailed from the Delaware October 13, and when about six hundred miles east of Norfolk, October 17, she fell in with the British 18-gun brig “Frolic,” convoying fourteen merchantmen to England. The two vessels were equal in force, for the “Frolic’s” broadside threw a weight of two hundred and seventy-four pounds, while that of the “Wasp” threw some few pounds less; the “Frolic” measured, by British report,[336] one hundred feet in length, the “Wasp” one hundred and six; their breadth on deck was the same; and although the “Wasp’s” crew exceeded that of her enemy, being one hundred and thirty-five men against one hundred and ten, the British vessel had all the men she needed, and suffered little from this inferiority. The action began at half-past eleven in the morning, the two sloops running parallel, about sixty yards apart, in a very heavy sea, which caused both to pitch and roll so that marksmanship had the most decisive share in victory. The muzzles of the guns went under water, and clouds of spray dashed over the crews, while the two vessels ran side by side for the first fifteen minutes. The British fire cut the “Wasp’s” rigging, while the American guns played havoc with the “Frolic’s” hull and lower masts. The vessels approached each other so closely that the rammers of the guns struck the enemy’s side, and at last they fell foul,--the “Wasp” almost squarely across the “Frolic’s” bow. In the heavy sea boarding was difficult; but as soon as the “Wasp’s” crew could clamber down the “Frolic’s” bowsprit, they found on the deck the British captain and lieutenant, both severely wounded, and one brave sailor at the wheel. Not twenty of the British crew were left unhurt, and these had gone below to escape the American musketry. The “Wasp” had only ten men killed and wounded. The battle lasted forty-three minutes.