Then the men on the gun-boats had to fight out on an open deck, as did Perry’s men on Lake Erie, while those of a frigate fought behind thick timber bulwarks. And because the gun-boats were built with thin plank, a single shot could sink one, as happened to the sloop in the first fight on Lake Champlain, during this war, while a frigate could still float, as the brig _Boxer_ did after it had received many shot below the water-line in the fight with the _Enterprise_. More important still was the fact that even the best (widest) gun-boats needed absolutely still water when making a fight--the swell of an ordinary windy day in the lower bay of New York proved enough to destroy their efficiency, while the narrow boats rolled so under the recoil of their own guns even in smooth water that the crews had to wait, after each discharge, for the rolling to cease before firing again. And then as to the cost, while it was perhaps true that the price of a frigate would have built seventy-five boats, a frigate required a crew of but four hundred or four hundred and fifty men, while a flotilla of the forty boats needed to match a frigate required, on the whole, 2,000 men, including three commissioned officers to each boat. Besides, forty gun-boats were never got together in a fleet to attack a frigate. To all of this must be added the difficulty of finding forty gun-boat captains who would act together in battle, and the trouble in caring for the wounded when a ship had but four feet of head-room below its deck, and the wretched quarters there afforded to the men who had to man the boats. And if there was lack of concert among the captains of the flotillas in battle, there was a worse lack of discipline on the vessels at all times. Captain Jacob Lewis, previously of the privateer _Bunker Hill_, was made Commodore of the fleet in New York Harbor. He was as efficient as any man of his experience could be, but his boats were manned by river boatmen; men who, though afraid to go to sea, were yet anxious to get the bounty and the good pay offered to naval seamen--waifs from the streets of the metropolis. “The temptations to insubordination and vice were much greater” in the gun-boats than in any other service. In short, there was every opportunity for drunkenness and the lowest forms of debauchery. Nevertheless, in spite of the disreputable character of the gun-boat service as a whole, some few of the boats did actually burn gunpowder to the honor of the flag, and in some respects they were valuable, even though they did not fire their big guns once.