When the press spoke at all of naval matters, it talked wildly about the American frigates. “Such fearful odds,” said the “Morning Post” in regard to the “Macedonian,” December 26, “would break the heart and spirit of our sailors, and dissolve that charm, that spell, which has made our navy invincible.” “The land-spell of the French is broken, and so is our sea-spell,” said the “Times.” The American frigates were exaggerated into ships-of-the-line, and were to be treated as such, British frigates keeping out of their way. At first, the British naval officers hesitated to accept this view of a subject which had never before been suggested. Neither Captain Dacres nor his court-martial attributed his defeat to this cause; but before long, nearly all England agreed to rate the American frigates as seventy-fours, and complained that the Americans, with their accustomed duplicity, should have deceived the British navy by representing the “Constitution” and “United States” to be frigates. The “Times” protested in vain against this weakness:-- “Good God! that a few short months should have so altered the tone of British sentiments! Is it true, or is it not, that our navy was accustomed to hold the Americans in utter contempt? Is it true, or is it not, that the ‘Guerriere’ sailed up and down the American coast with her name painted in large characters on her sails, in boyish defiance of Commodore Rodgers? Would any captain, however young, have indulged such a foolish piece of vain-boasting if he had not been carried forward by the almost unanimous feeling of his associates?”[10] To the charge that the British Admiralty had been taken unprepared by the war, the Admiralty replied that its naval force on the American station at the outbreak of hostilities exceeded the American in the proportion of eighty-five to fourteen. “We have since sent out more line-of-battle ships and heavier frigates,” added the “Times,” January 4, 1813. “Surely we must now mean to smother the American navy.... A very short time before the capture of the ‘Guerriere’ an American frigate was an object of ridicule to our honest tars. Now the prejudice is actually setting the other way, and great pains seem to be taken by the friends of ministers to prepare the public for the surrender of a British seventy-four to an opponent lately so much contemned.”