What could the United States now do with its eighteen ships against nine hundred of the enemy? It seemed a hopeless situation,--so hopeless, that there were some statesmen in the country who thought it would be best to lay up and dismantle our little fleet as the only way to enable it to escape capture. It happened that when this plan was broached, Captain Bainbridge and Captain Stewart were in Washington, and hearing of it they went to the Secretary and implored him not to do so suicidal a thing. "What are our ships for," said they, "if not to fight and attack the enemy when their country goes to war? If when a war comes they are all to be laid up, it would be better to give up altogether this pretence of a navy, which seems to be only used in peace-time, when there is no real work for it to do. No doubt if one of our frigates falls in with the enemy's squadron it will be captured; but English frigates do not always sail in squadrons any more than our own; and if one of us meets one of them alone at sea, we shall be able to give a good account of ourselves. Let the frigates go to sea to show what they can do: at the worst, they can only be captured, and the country will be no worse off than if they were laid up to rot in idleness." Persuaded by these arguments the Government consented, though with many forebodings of disaster, to send the ships to sea; and fortunate it was that this wise decision was reached. For never in the history of the world was a naval war conducted with greater skill and gallantry, and success in proportion to its means, than this which the little navy of America waged in 1812 against Great Britain. Despite the comparative force of the two navies, it often happened, as Bainbridge and Stewart had predicted, that single ships met single ships in naval duels, as it were; and as through the wisdom of our first constructors our frigates and sloops were the best of their class afloat, they were often more than a match in strength of resistance and in power of attack for their antagonists. Besides, under the thorough training of their captains, who had learned what naval warfare meant in the school of Preble at Tripoli, the crews were more careful and more skilful gunners than the enemy, and far exceeded them in their ability to make their firing tell. The English, on the other hand, whose conquests over the French and Spaniards had led them to belittle and despise the navies of other States, thought that they had an easy victory before them,--or, as we might say now, a "walk-over,"--and they ridiculed the American frigates, calling the "Constitution" a "bundle of pine boards under a bit of striped bunting," until they found out to their cost that they had in their enormous list of ships hardly a single frigate that compared with her in all those qualities which a frigate ought to have. * * * * *