According to British measurements, the “Argus” was ninety-five and one-half feet long; the “Pelican,” one hundred. The “Argus” was twenty-seven feet, seven and five-eighths inches in extreme breadth; the “Pelican” was thirty feet, nine inches. The “Argus” carried eighteen twenty-four-pound carronades, and two long twelve-pounders; the “Pelican” carried sixteen thirty-two-pound carronades, four long six-pounders, and a twelve-pound carronade. The number of the “Argus’s” crew was disputed. According to British authority, it was one hundred and twenty-seven,[421] while the “Pelican” carried one hundred and sixteen men and boys.[422] At six o’clock in the morning, according to American reckoning,[423]--at half-past five according to the British report,--the “Argus” wore, and fired a broadside within grape-distance, which was returned with cannon and musketry. Within five minutes Captain Allen was struck by a shot which carried away his left leg, mortally wounding him; and five minutes afterward the first lieutenant was wounded on the head by a grape-shot. Although the second lieutenant fought the brig well, the guns were surprisingly inefficient. During the first fifteen minutes the “Argus” had the advantage of position, and at eighteen minutes after six raked the “Pelican” at close range, but inflicted no great injury on the enemy’s hull or rigging, and killed at the utmost but one man, wounding only five. According to an English account,[424] “the ‘Argus’ fought well while the cannonading continued, but her guns were not levelled with precision, and many shots passed through the ‘Pelican’s’ royals.” The “Pelican,” at the end of twenty-five minutes, succeeded in cutting up her opponent’s rigging so that the “Argus” lay helpless under her guns. The “Pelican” then took a position on her enemy’s starboard quarter, and raked her with eight thirty-two-pound carronades for nearly twenty minutes at close range, without receiving a shot in return except from musketry. According to the report of the British captain, the action “was kept up with great spirit on both sides forty-three minutes, when we lay her alongside, and were in the act of boarding when she struck her colors.”[425] The “Argus” repeated the story of the “Chesapeake,” except that the action lasted three quarters of an hour instead of fifteen minutes. During that time, the “Pelican” should have fired all her broadside eight or ten times into the “Argus” at a range so close that no shot should have missed. Sixty thirty-two-pound shot fired into a small brig less than one hundred feet long should have shivered it to atoms. Nine thirty-two-pound shot from the “Hornet” seemed to reduce the “Peacock” to a sinking condition in fifteen minutes; yet the “Argus” was neither sunk nor dismasted. The British account of her condition after the battle showed no more injury than was suffered by the “Peacock,” even in killed and wounded, by one or at the utmost two broadsides of the “Hornet.”