_From an engraving of the painting by Chappel._] On June 7th came a sloop-of-war and a razee to reinforce the enemy. The razee is a style of ship of particular interest to Americans, because it became a favorite with the British in the War of 1812. A razee was a line-of-battle ship with her upper deck cut off. This reduced the number of her guns to about sixty, or perhaps a few less, but the guns left on her were of the heavy kind--long twenty-fours and thirty-twos. The razee became a frigate--_i.e._, a two-deck ship--but with a thickness of timbers and a weight of metal far greater than what the Yankee frigates carried--the “bunches of pine boards” and “the waggons” whose architecture and weight of metal had so amused British writers before the war. Moreover, the razee, having been lightened by removing the upper deck of guns, was said to be a very fast ship. On the arrival of this addition to the British squadron in the Chesapeake, Captain Barney had his gun-boats in the Patuxent River, a branch of the Potomac. On the morning of June 8, 1814, a British frigate, a brig, two schooners, and fifteen barges were seen coming up the river looking for the Yankees. Captain Barney retreated two miles in order to get into water where the frigate could not follow, and then, at the mouth of St. Leonard’s Creek, anchored his boats in a line across the river. By 8 o’clock the enemy had arrived at the head of navigation for his largest vessels, and having anchored there, the British barges, fifteen in number, came up to attack Captain Barney. They had placed their largest barge at the head of their line and armed her with iron-headed rockets, which at one time were in great favor with the British. But when Barney put his men into thirteen barges and started down the river, the British thought best to retreat. A second attempt in the afternoon was abandoned under like circumstances, but on the 9th they really burned gunpowder.