For a reply the stranger fired a broadside, and so began the first naval battle of the first American squadron. The brave captain of the _Cabot_ returned the fire, in spite of the great superiority of the stranger, and still bravely stood to his duty, even after a second broadside from the stranger had partly disabled his brig, killed a number of his crew, and wounded himself. The _Alfred_, the flagship, soon came ranging up beside the stranger and opened fire, whereat the stranger turned his attention to her; and then came the _Providence_, Captain Hazard, who secured a position on the lee quarter (they were all close hauled) of the enemy, where she opened an effective fire. By this time the _Cabot_ was drifting out of range, but the _Andrea Doria_ came up to take her place. For an hour thereafter the stranger maintained the unequal contest, while the fleet drifted along over the smooth sea. At one time a shot from the stranger cut away the tiller ropes of the Yankee flagship, leaving her to broach to where she could not use her own guns. At that the stranger raked her fore and aft with a number of broadsides. But when repairs had been made the _Alfred_ closed in once more, and then, at about two o’clock in the morning, the stranger found it too hot, and, putting up his helm, he squared away for Newport and safety. Commodore Hopkins pursued the stranger until after daylight. The course lay along the Rhode Island coast, and the people of the region, awakened by the roar of the guns, came hurrying to the cliffs to look away over the smooth water, where one ship, badly cut up aloft, was still able to keep ahead of the fleet that followed, and fired at frequent intervals upon the pursued. But the ships of the American fleet were cargo-carriers deeply loaded with the spoils of New Providence, and the stranger was a man-o’-war well formed and fitted for the sea. So the chase ended when it was found that the stranger steadily gained, and the distance from Newport was growing so short as to warrant the belief that the cannonading would call out the British fleet then lying there. So the Yankee fleet “hauled its wind,” captured a small tender that had been in company with the stranger, and then made port at New London. [Illustration: An English “Seventy-Four” and a Frigate Coming to Anchor. _From an old engraving._] When there Commodore Hopkins learned that the stranger he had encountered was the British sloop-of-war _Glasgow_, Capt. Tyringham Howe, a full-rigged ship (three masts), carrying twenty guns, and a crew of 150, all told. She had lost one man killed and three wounded, while the American loss had been in all twenty-four killed and wounded, of whom the little brig _Cabot_ lost four killed and seven wounded.