Within ten minutes the _Guerriere's_ mizzenmast was knocked over the side and her hull was shattered by the accurate fire of the Yankee gunners, who were trained to shoot on the downward roll of their ship and so smash below the water line. Almost unhurt, the _Constitution_ moved ahead and fearfully raked the enemy's deck before the ships fouled each other. They drifted apart before the boarders could undertake their bloody business, and then the remaining masts of the British frigate toppled overside and she was a helpless wreck. Seventy-nine of her crew were dead or wounded and the ship was sinking beneath their feet. Captain Isaac Hull could truthfully report: "In less than thirty minutes from the time we got alongside of the enemy she was left without a spar standing, and the hull cut to pieces in such a manner as to make it difficult to keep her above water." Captain Dacres struck his flag, and the American sailors who went aboard found the guns dismounted, the dead and dying scattered amid a wild tangle of spars and rigging, and great holes blown through the sides and decks. The _Constitution_ had suffered such trifling injury that she was fit and ready for action a few hours later. Of her crew only seven men were killed and the same number hurt. She was the larger ship, and the odds in her favor were as ten to seven, reckoned in men and guns, for which reasons Captain Hull ought to have won. The significance of his victory was that at every point he had excelled a British frigate and had literally blown her out of the water. His crew had been together only five weeks and could fairly be called green while the _Guerriere_, although short-handed, had a complement of veteran tars. The British navy had never hesitated to engage hostile men-of-war of superior force and had usually beaten them. Of two hundred fights between single ships, against French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Danish, and Dutch, the English had lost only five. The belief of Captain Dacres that he could beat the _Constitution_ was therefore neither rash nor ill-founded. The English captain had ten Americans in his crew, but he would not compel them to fight against their countrymen and sent them below, although he sorely needed every man who could haul at a gun-tackle or lay out on a yard. Wounded though he was and heartbroken by the disaster, his chivalry was faultless, and he took pains to report: "I feel it my duty to state that the conduct of Captain Hull and his officers toward our men has been that of a brave and generous enemy, the greatest care being taken to prevent our men losing the smallest trifle and the greatest attention being paid to the wounded."