Nor was the power of the British navy found only in the number and size of her ships and the number and size of the guns. “Since the year 1792 each European nation in turn had learned to feel bitter dread of the weight of England’s hand. In the Baltic Sir Samuel Hood had taught the Russians that they must needs keep in port when the English cruisers were in the offing. The descendants of the Vikings had seen their whole navy destroyed at Copenhagen. No Dutch fleet ever put out after the day when, off Camperdown, Lord Duncan took possession of De Winter’s shattered ships. But a few years before 1812 the greatest sea-fighter of all time had died in Trafalgar Bay, and in dying had crumbled to pieces the navies of France and Spain.” In spite of the infamous system under which the British ships were manned, the personnel of the British navy was--one is tempted to say it was beyond comparison better than that of any other European nation. For the others felt “the lack of habit--may it not even be said without injustice, of aptitude for the sea.” The officers and men who gathered to crush the navy of the young republic came from Aboukir and Copenhagen and Trafalgar Bay. They were veterans in naval warfare--men who preferred short weapons as the Romans did, men who preferred to fight with yard-arm interlocking yard-arm, where short carronades were better than long guns of smaller bore, and where even these might be made more effective through loading with double shot. Luckily for us their long experience had engendered prejudiced conservatism, their many victories had cultivated an overweening confidence, and their bull-dog courage had made them careless of the arts of seamanship. As to the ability of the American crews who were to meet these tar-stained, smoke-begrimed, cicatrice-marked veterans, enough will be told in the descriptions of their battles, for they astounded the whole world. Nevertheless, the war at sea began in a fashion to discourage the nation and humiliate the whole navy. On the day (June 18, 1812) that war was declared, the effective part of the American navy--the only American naval ships ready for a fight--lay in New York Harbor, or else were at sea where they could not hear the news. The ships in New York were the flag-ship _President_, rated forty-four, Captain Rodgers; the _United States_, forty-four, Captain Decatur; the _Congress_, thirty-eight, Captain Smith; the _Hornet_, eighteen, Captain Lawrence, and the _Argus_, sixteen, Lieutenant Sinclair. Nothing more discreditable to the administration of President Madison than this fact can be told. He had seen for months that war was inevitable and yet he had done nothing to gather in the ships and prepare them for the fight. And Monroe was Secretary of State. But for the earnest remonstrances of Captains Bainbridge and Stewart, who repeatedly addressed the Department, every American warship would have been kept in port for harbor defence.