Captain Ordronaux of the privateer had a crew of less than forty men then at quarters, and they suffered severely, only nine men escaping injury. The boarders gained the deck, but were killed as fast as they mounted; and at last more than half the British party were killed or captured. According to the British account, twenty-eight men, including the first lieutenant of the “Endymion,” were killed; and thirty-seven men, including the second lieutenant, were wounded.[313] This report did not quite agree with that of the privateer, which claimed also twenty-eight prisoners, including the second lieutenant, who was unhurt. In any case, more than seventy men of the “Endymion’s” crew, besides her first and second lieutenant, were killed, wounded, or captured; and the “Prince of Neufchatel” arrived in safety in Boston. In the want of adjacent rocks lined with armed Americans, such as Captain Lloyd alleged at Fayal, Captain Hope was reduced to plead the tides as the cause of his defeat. These reports, better than any other evidence, showed the feelings of the British naval service in admitting discomfiture in the last resort of its pride. Successively obliged to plead inferiority at the guns, inferiority in sailing qualities, inferiority in equipment, the British service saw itself compelled by these repeated and bloody repulses to admit that its supposed pre-eminence in hand-to-hand fighting was a delusion. Within a single fortnight two petty privateers, with crews whose united force did not amount to one hundred and fifty men, succeeded in repulsing attacks made by twice their number of the best British seamen, inflicting a loss, in killed and wounded, officially reported at one hundred and eighty-five. Such mortifying and bloody experiences made even the British navy weary of the war. Valuable prizes were few, and the service, especially in winter, was severe. Undoubtedly the British cruisers caught privateers by dozens, and were as successful in the performance of their duties as ever they had been in any war in Europe. Their blockade of American ports was real and ruinous, and nothing pretended to resist them. Yet after catching scores of swift cruisers, they saw scores of faster and better vessels issue from the blockaded ports and harry British commerce in every sea. Scolded by the press, worried by the Admiralty, and mortified by their own want of success, the British navy was obliged to hear language altogether strange to its experience. “The American cruisers daily enter in among our convoys,” said the “Times” of February 11, 1815, “seize prizes in sight of those that should afford protection, and if pursued ‘put on their sea-wings’ and laugh at the clumsy English pursuers. To what is this owing? Cannot we build ships?... It must indeed he encouraging to Mr. Madison to read the logs of his cruisers. If they fight, they are sure to conquer; if they fly, they are sure to escape.”