The first to sail was the “Frolic,” from Boston, in February. She captured only two prizes before she was herself taken, April 20, off Matanzas, after a chase by the thirty-six-gun British frigate “Orpheus,” assisted by a twelve-gun schooner. The second sloop-of-war, the “Peacock,” commanded by Lewis Warrington, sailed from New York in March. Warrington was a Virginian, thirty-two years old and fourteen years in the service, with the rank of master-commandant in 1813. Cruising down the coast, the “Peacock” first ran in to St. Mary’s on the Florida frontier; and then continuing southward, on the morning of April 29, off the Indian River Inlet, she discovered a small convoy on its way from Havana to Bermuda, under charge of the British eighteen-gun brig “Epervier.” The British brig was no match for the American ship. She was smaller, and carried only sixteen thirty-two and two eighteen-pound carronades, with a crew of one hundred and three men and fifteen boys.[290] The inferiority was something like four to three; but Captain Wales of the “Epervier” gallantly brought his vessel into action at the usual close-range of these murderous combats. Captain Wales told the result in an official report, dated May 8, to Vice-Admiral Cochrane.[291] The report was not published, the British Admiralty having become sensitive to the popular outcry against their naval management. “At eight A. M.,” reported Captain Wales, “the wind being about east-south-east, I saw a strange sail in the southwest apparently in chase of us; at nine, perceiving her to near very fast and to be a square-rigged vessel-of-war, I shortened sail and hauled to the wind on the larboard tack to be between her and the convoy, being rather ahead of them. The wind at this time veering round to the southward enabled the stranger to lay up for us.... At 9.50 A. M. we weathered her and exchanged broadsides; having passed her beam, we tacked, shortened sail, and continued in close action until eleven A. M., when--five of our larboard guns being disabled by the breeching-bolts giving way, and three others by shot, and unable to manœuvre so as to get the starboard guns to bear in consequence of the rigging and sails being cut to pieces in the early part of the action by star-shot, the main boom shot away, the foremast wounded in several places, and several shot between wind and water, with four-and-a-half feet of water in the hold, and the enemy seemingly in a state to continue the action--I deemed it prudent to surrender.” The giving way of the breeching-bolts did not wholly disable the guns, for Captain Wales specially commended “Mr. Lawrence Kennedy the Purser, who rendered much service in his exertions at the after-guns by getting them in a fighting state again when unshipped by the fighting-bolts coming out of their places.”