For instance, there were several flotillas of them along the coast from Newport, where Perry was in command early in the war, through Long Island Sound to New York. These were kept travelling to and fro convoying the coasting merchantmen, who were thus protected from British privateers and, at times, even from frigates, as well as from the attacks of British naval seamen in the small boats of the blockading squadrons. Moreover, the knowledge that a fleet of boats carrying a large gun each lay within a harbor, naturally kept the British from bringing their big ships, which needed plenty of sea-room for manœuvres, inside. But the first encounter between gun-boats and a frigate demonstrated the inefficiency of the boats. On June 20, 1813, the British frigates _Junon_ and _Barossa_, with the sloop _Laurestinus_, were becalmed in Hampton Roads. Seeing them helpless, Captain Tarbell, with a fleet of gun-boats, rowed out to attack them. The bay was smooth, and every condition favored the Yankee boats, but instead of having forty gun-boats to attack one frigate, as the gun-boat theory had proposed, Captain Tarbell had but fifteen. However, on arriving within long range (he did not dare try short range because grape-shot would sink a gun-boat), he anchored his fleet in the form of a crescent around the _Junon_. But no sooner did he come to anchor than the boats swung around with the tide, and he could not fire a gun at the frigate without shooting away his own masts; so he up anchor again, and swinging around almost broadside on to the frigate with his sweeps, began blazing away. The first shot made some of his men wish they hadn’t fired it, and the reason they wished so can be made plain even to a landsman. The boats, as told, were perhaps fifteen feet wide. The cannon each carried was a long thirty-two pounder. This gun was nine feet long, weighed five thousand pounds, and was mounted amidships, with its centre of gravity directly above the boat’s keel. In that position, even when it was swung around to fire over either rail, it did not materially interfere with the stability of the boat if the water was smooth. But the instant it was fired it had to recoil and the whole two and a half tons of iron was hurled with a tremendous thump toward the rail of the boat, and over rolled the boat under the weight and shock of the recoil until “all hands thought she was done for sure enough.” However, although the danger was imminent, no boat did actually turn over in this fight. But the rolling that was started kept the crew busy with the sweeps for several minutes before another shot could be fired.