Bainbridge as a young man was not foolhardy, but he was of that stamp that brooked no interference with his rights, and allowed no insult to pass by unnoticed. While in command of the _Hope_, a little vessel of about one hundred and forty tons’ burden, mounting four guns and having a crew of eleven men, he refused to stop at the hail of an English schooner; whereat the latter fired at him, and Bainbridge, probably to the Englishman’s great astonishment, replied so briskly with his little broadside that the commander of the schooner actually surrendered, although his force consisted of eight guns and thirty men. Several were killed and wounded, and his vessel so much injured in the rigging and hull that he hailed Bainbridge, asking what the latter proposed doing with him. This was in the year 1796. There was no war between this country and England, and Bainbridge contented himself by calling the following message through his trumpet: “I have no use for you. Go about your business, and report to your masters if they want my ship they must either send a greater force or a more skillful commander.” A few days after this event, while on the homeward voyage, the _Hope_ was stopped by a heavily armed British frigate, and one of her crew, an American, was taken out of her on the pretence of his being a Scotchman. Bainbridge offered to make oath to the contrary, but nevertheless the man was impressed. Within the same week Bainbridge fell in with an English brig much larger than his own ship, and, surprising her by rowing alongside with an armed boat’s crew, he took from her one of the English sailors, leaving this message: “Captain--may report that Captain William Bainbridge has taken one of His Majesty’s subjects in retaliation for a seaman taken from the American ship _Hope_ by Lieutenant Norton of the _Indefatigable_ razee commanded by Sir Edward Pellew.” A contemporary adds: “The captured seaman received good wages and was discharged just as soon as he reached an American port, in no way dissatisfied with the service into which he had thus been forced.”