The frigate actions of 1812 had produced results almost as marked in England as in America. For twenty years English ships had been accustomed to victory over every enemy, even in the face of heavy odds. The nation looked upon them as invincible. About the Americans it knew so little and cared so little that it had hardly felt any general interest or concern in the war. The loss of the "Guerrière" came upon it like a clap of thunder in a clear sky. Of course some reason must be discovered for so extraordinary an event, and it was said that the frigate was old and rotten, and her powder, was bad. But as capture followed capture, as the "Frolic," the "Macedonian," and the "Java" were surrendered in quick succession, the first murmurs of discontent swelled to an angry outcry. The naval administration was bitterly assailed, and called upon to take more energetic measures. It was necessary to devise something to serve as an excuse for defeat. Then arose that foolish clamor that the frigates of the Americans were not frigates at all, but ships-of-the-line in disguise, and that the naval authorities of Great Britain had been hoodwinked by a Yankee trick into sending frigates to fight them. As if they had not had scores of opportunities--in the Mediterranean, on the American coast, and even in their own ports of Southampton and Gibraltar--to find out what the "Constitution" and her sister ships were like; and as if anything but their own folly and arrogance had prevented them from seeing long before that our constructors had built for us superior frigates! CHAPTER XII. CAPTAIN JAMES LAWRENCE. The two earliest actions of importance in the year 1813, though nearly six months apart in time, belong together, for they form the two great events in the career of one of our bravest officers; and unless I am much mistaken, the second of these events, which ended so tragically in defeat and death, was in great measure a consequence and outcome of the first. All our captains who were actively engaged during the first months of the war had carried out their enterprises gallantly, but still with discretion and circumspection, as became them in fighting against the greatest naval power in the world; but Lawrence, borne beyond the bounds of prudence by one brilliant success, risked most where the danger was greatest, and so came to an untimely end.