“At this critical moment,” wrote Admiral Warren[418] by a curious coincidence the day before his own somewhat less creditable defeat at Craney Island, “you could not have restored to the British naval service the pre-eminence it has always preserved, or contradicted in a more forcible manner the foul aspersions and calumnies of a conceited, boasting enemy, than by the brilliant act you have performed.” A few days later he wrote again:[419]-- “The relation of such an event restores the history of ancient times, and will do more good to the service than it is possible to conceive.” In Parliament, July 8, John Wilson Croker said:[420] “The action which he [Broke] fought with the ‘Chesapeake’ was in every respect unexampled. It was not--and he knew it was a bold assertion which he made--to be surpassed by any engagement which graced the naval annals of Great Britain.” The Government made Broke a baronet, but gave him few other rewards, and his wound was too serious to permit future hard service. Lawrence died June 5, before the ships reached Halifax. His first lieutenant, Ludlow, also died. Their bodies were brought to New York and buried September 16, with formal services at Trinity Church. By the Americans the defeat was received at first with incredulity and boundless anxiety, followed by extreme discouragement. The news came at a dark moment, when every hope had been disappointed and the outlook was gloomy beyond all that had been thought possible. “I remember,” wrote Richard Rush in later life,--“what American does not!--the first rumor of it. I remember the startling sensation. I remember at first the universal incredulity. I remember how the post-offices were thronged for successive days by anxious thousands; how collections of citizens rode out for miles on the highway, accosting the mail to catch something by anticipation. At last, when the certainty was known, I remember the public gloom; funeral orations and badges of mourning bespoke it. ‘Don’t give up the ship!’--the dying words of Lawrence--were on every tongue.”