Some of the worst disasters as well as the greatest triumphs of the war occurred after the treaty of peace had been signed. The battle of New Orleans was followed by the loss of Fort Bowyer. At about the same time a British force occupied Cumberland Island on the southern edge of the Georgia coast, and January 13 attacked the fort at the entrance of the St. Mary’s, and having captured it without loss, ascended the river the next day to the town of St. Mary’s, which they seized, together with its merchandise and valuable ships in the river. Cockburn established his headquarters on Cumberland Island January 22, and threw the whole State of Georgia into agitation, while he waited the arrival of a brigade with which an attack was to be made on Savannah. The worst disaster of the naval war occurred January 15, when the frigate “President”--one of the three American forty-fours, under Stephen Decatur, the favorite ocean hero of the American service--suffered defeat and capture within fifty miles of Sandy Hook. No naval battle of the war was more disputed in its merits, although its occurrence in the darkest moments of national depression was almost immediately forgotten in the elation of the peace a few days later. Secretary Jones retired from the Navy Department Dec. 19, 1814, yielding the direction to B. W. Crowninshield of Massachusetts, but leaving a squadron ready for sea at New York under orders for distant service. The “Peacock” and “Hornet,” commanded by Warrington and Biddle, were to sail with a store-ship on a long cruise in Indian waters, where they were expected to ravage British shipping from the Cape of Good Hope to the China seas. With them Decatur was to go in the “President,” and at the beginning of the new year he waited only an opportunity to slip to sea past the blockading squadron. January 14 a strong westerly wind drove the British fleet out of sight. The “President” set sail, but in crossing the bar at night grounded, and continued for an hour or more to strike heavily, until the tide and strong wind forced her across. Decatur then ran along the Long Island coast some fifty miles, when he changed his course to the southeast, hoping that he had evaded the blockading squadron. This course was precisely that which Captain Hayes, commanding the squadron, expected;[79] and an hour before daylight the four British ships, standing to the northward and eastward, sighted the “President,” standing to the southward and eastward, not more than two miles on the weather-bow of the “Majestic,”--the fifty-six-gun razee commanded by Captain Hayes.