Another tale of the battle says that after the British captains were in the _Constitution’s_ cabin a midshipman came in to ask Captain Stewart if the men could have their evening grog. As the time for serving it had passed before the battle began, Captain Stewart asked if they had not had it already, and the midshipman replied, to the astonishment of the Englishmen: “No, sir. It was mixed ready for serving just before the battle began, but the older sailors of the crew said they didn’t want any ‘Dutch courage’ on board and capsized the grog-tub in the lee scuppers.” Later still the two Englishmen, according to Gilder, got into a heated dispute, each blaming the other for making manœuvres that lost the battle, but Stewart stopped the quarrel. He said: “Gentlemen, there is no use in getting warm about it; it would have been all the same whatever you might have done. If you doubt that, I will put you all on board again and you can try it over.” As to the relative force, Allen says that the _Cyane_ was of a class known as “donkey frigates,” and that she carried twenty-two short thirty-twos on the main deck and eight short eighteens and two nines on quarter-deck and forecastle. Lieutenant Hoffman, who took charge of her, says she had two more short eighteens. This is no doubt the truth of the matter. It is agreed that the _Levant_ carried eighteen short thirty-twos, two long nines, and a short twelve that could be worked on either side. The two together carried a crew of three hundred and twenty, of whom thirty-nine were boys, according to Allen. The combined crews could fire a broadside of seven hundred and fifty-four pounds to the _Constitution’s_ six hundred and forty-four pounds net weight. Without mentioning the _Constitution’s_ number of men, which was at most four hundred and fifty-six, we can concede what Allen claims, the “immense superiority” of the Yankee. For not only were the long twenty-fours of the _Constitution_ far and away better than the short thirty-twos of the British ships, just as the long guns of the _Phœbe_ and _Cherub_ were superior to the short guns of the _Essex_ at Valparaiso: the crew of the _Constitution_ had been trained very much better than any ordinary British crew. More important still, the force of the _Constitution_ was concentrated in a single ship under the command of one able man. The force of the British was divided between two ships and could not be so well handled. When the British Court of Inquiry at Halifax “applauded” the British officers “for the gallant defence each had made,” it did something which an American writer finds pleasure in placing before American readers. But when, as Allen relates, “the Court also expressed to the remaining crew of the _Cyane_, in the strongest terms, the sense entertained of their determined loyalty in resisting the temptations held out by the enemy to draw them from their allegiance, which they retained also under