When Captain Lawrence read this challenge, he was as willing to go out and fight the duel as the British captain was anxious to have him do so; but he knew that his vessel was not nearly so well prepared as was the "Shannon." The British ship had been at sea for a long time, she was manned by a crew of brave sailors, and her captain was well acquainted with his ship and his men. The case was very different with the "Chesapeake." Lawrence had been on board scarcely long enough to find out what sort of a ship she was, but he had been on board long enough to discover that her crew was a very poor one. Many of them were Portuguese, they had not been well drilled, and, worse than that, they did not want to fight. Few of them had been in the service long enough to have a taste for naval warfare; and if they had had their way, they would have let the "Shannon" lie outside until her captain grew gray, before they would go out and accept his challenge. The harbor was much more to their mind. But Captain Lawrence had no such idea. He accepted the challenge without hesitation, and prepared to go out and fight the duel. He would have been glad enough if he had had a good crew, but he would do his best with the crew he had. He put his ship in fighting trim, and his men in the best order possible, and early on a summer afternoon the "Chesapeake" went out to meet the "Shannon," which was boldly flying the flag of St. George. In those days, when men-of-war, as well as all other ships, were sailing vessels, the tactics of naval combats were very different from what they are now. Each of the commanders of vessels was obliged to think, not only of what his enemy was about, but what the wind was about. A steamer can take what position she pleases; she can steam far away from her enemy, or she can use her long-range guns, or dash down upon her to break in her sides with her ram. But in the old sailing times, maneuvers were very much more difficult, and if the winds ever desired to stop a sea fight, it often happened that they could do it simply by dying away themselves. The two ships sailed this way and that, each trying to get a position which would be good for herself and bad for the other; and at last, when they were very close, so near that their captains might have talked with each other, their cannon began to speak. From their mouths came rolling of thunder. From each ship, volleys of great shot swept the decks of the other, while the rattle of musketry became incessant. This tremendous fire was kept up for nearly ten minutes, and in this short time the "Chesapeake" lost nearly one hundred men, killed and wounded, on her upper deck.