The merchantman was captured at 3 o’clock in the morning. Before another could be overhauled daylight came. At that, Porter took in the slack of his loose rigging, set up his masts and invited the _Minerva_ to come and try for victory. Captain Richard Hawkins, who commanded her, thought best to tack and sail into the midst of his fleet, where, in case he was attacked, the eight hundred and odd soldiers who were on the transports could render him effective service by sweeping the decks of the _Essex_ with their muskets, and by firing such cannon as the transports carried. James, who is the standard naval historian in the British navy, says of this affair: “Had Captain Porter really endeavored to bring the _Minerva_ to action we do not see what could have prevented the _Essex_, with her superiority of sailing, from coming alongside of her. But no such thought, we are sure, entered into Captain Porter’s head.” David G. Farragut, of lasting fame, was a midshipman on the _Essex_, and was keeping a journal. He wrote: “The captured British officers were very anxious for us to have a fight with the _Minerva_, as they considered her a good match for the _Essex_, and Captain Porter replied that he should gratify them with pleasure if his Majesty’s commander was of their taste. So we stood toward the convoy, and when within gunshot hove to, and awaited the _Minerva_; but she tacked and stood in among the convoy, to the utter amazement of our prisoners, who denounced the commander as a base coward, and expressed their determination to report him to the Admiralty.” But to further explain the difference between long and short guns, it should be mentioned that the _Minerva_ carried on her main deck the long twelves which Porter had wanted, and in a fight she would have been able to riddle the _Essex_ while still far beyond the range of the short thirty-twos with which the American was armed. At pistol range the _Essex_ was much more powerful, and she carried, moreover, fifty men more than the _Minerva_, though Captain Hawkins could not know that, and, doubtless, would have been ashamed to offer that as a reason for declining to fight. [Illustration: Fight of the _Essex_ and the _Alert_. _From an old wood-cut._]