A few days later the "Essex," being then disguised as a merchantman, with her ports closed and her upper masts housed, made a strange sail, which proved to be the enemy's sloop-of-war "Alert." The English sloop ran down for her, deceived by the disguise. The "Alert" was not a good ship for her size, and her size was only half that of her antagonist; but when she found out what the "Essex" was, she made no effort to escape. No doubt the English, who were accustomed, in fighting Frenchmen and Spaniards, to engage a ship of almost any force, thought that the Americans would be so frightened by an Englishman's attack that they would strike immediately; for this was before the "Guerrière" had surrendered to the "Constitution." But they received a needed lesson from this engagement, for in ten minutes after the firing had begun they found their ship in a sinking condition, with seven feet of water in her hold; and after a resistance so feeble that the encounter could hardly be called a battle, they yielded her a prize. She was the first vessel of the enemy's navy that was captured in the war. The "Essex" now ran in to the Delaware, where she remained some time, making preparations for a more extended cruise. This cruise was a cherished plan of the captain's own devising, and the scene of it was to be a hitherto untried field,--the Pacific Ocean. At that day the Pacific, with its vast stretches of sea-coast, and the innumerable islands studding its broad surface, was almost unknown, except to the English and American whalers. The United States had no settled territory bordering on the great ocean, and our ships-of-war had hardly been seen at all upon its waters. The "Essex," on her first cruise in 1798, under Captain Preble, had gone as far as Batavia, by way of the Cape of Good Hope; and she was now to be the first vessel of the navy to go around Cape Horn.