“Her loss (the _Constitution’s_) amounted to 8 seamen and 1 marine killed; the fifth lieutenant, John C. Alwyn, and 2 seamen, mortally; Commodore Bainbridge and 12 seamen, severely, and 7 seamen and 2 marines, slightly wounded; in all 12 killed and mortally wounded, and 22 wounded severely and slightly.... In this action both crews displayed equal gallantry and seamanship.... The manœuvering on both sides was excellent. Captain Lambert used the advantage which his ship possessed in her superior speed most skilfully, always endeavoring to run across his adversary’s bows and rake him when he had fore-reached, and it was only owing to the equal skill which his antagonist displayed that he was foiled, the length of the combat being due to the number of evolutions. The great superiority of the Americans was in their gunnery. The fire of the _Java_ was both less rapid and less well directed than that of her antagonist; the difference of force against her was not heavy, being about as ten to nine, and was by no means enough to account for the almost five-fold greater loss she suffered.... The comparative force and loss: the _Constitution_ measured 1,576 tons, threw 654 pounds of metal, carried 475 men, and lost 34. The _Java_ measured 1,340 tons, threw 576 pounds of metal, carried 426 men, and lost 150. “In hardly another action of the war do the accounts of the respective forces differ so widely; the official British letter makes their total of men at the beginning of the action 377, of whom Commodore Bainbridge officially reports that he paroled 378! The British state their loss in killed and mortally wounded at 24; Commodore Bainbridge reports that the dead alone amounted to nearly sixty! Usually I have taken each commander’s account of his own force and loss, and I should do so now if it were not that the British accounts differ among themselves, and wherever they relate to the Americans are flatly contradicted by the affidavits of the latter’s officers. The British first handicap themselves by the statement that the surgeon of the _Constitution_ was an Irishman and lately an assistant surgeon in the British Navy (“Naval Chronicle,” xxix, 452); which draws from Surgeon Amos A. Evans a solemn statement in the _Boston Gazette_ that he was born in Maryland and was never in the British Navy in his life. Then Surgeon Jones, of the _Java_, in his official report, after giving his own killed and mortally wounded at twenty-four, says that the Americans lost in all about sixty, and that four of their amputations perished under his own eyes; whereupon Surgeon Evans makes the statement (“Niles’s Register,” vi., p. 35), backed up by affidavits of his brother officers, that in all he had but five amputations, of whom only one died, and that one a month after Surgeon Jones had left the ship. To meet the assertions of Lieutenant Chads that he began the action with but 377 men, the _Constitution’s_ officers produced the _Java’s_ muster-roll, dated