We cannot know what was in the minds of these British captains, but we do know that the British Admiralty had warned the captains of British frigates to take a reef in their “uncircumspect gallantry,” so to speak. They were, as the captain of the _Phœbe_ said when after the _Essex_, to capture the Yankee frigates with the least possible danger to themselves. They were to take no risks. Granting that these two British captains really made an honest mistake in supposing a little sloop was a big Yankee frigate--granting it, although James called Rodgers a coward for making, as James says he did, a similar mistake--they abandoned the ship which they fully believed to be a frigate to chase _a manifestly smaller ship_, a ship that we may grant they imagined was the “_Congress_ or _Macedonian_.” It is very likely presumptuous for a landsman to tell what lesson is taught by any event at sea, but if the action of these three big British frigates shows anything, it shows the tremendous influence for evil which such orders as that of the British Admiralty are sure to have. Nothing more impressive is to be found in Mahan’s learned work on the influence of the sea power than what he says about the demoralization that followed, among the French naval officers, when a very similar order was issued by the French Marine Department. For the head of a navy department to warn the captains of the naval ships to be prudent--to in any way mention to them any such word as prudence--is to give a shield to those who are by nature cowards, and a blow in the face to those who are by nature brave and ambitious and enterprising. The most serious blunder made by any American in authority during the War of 1812 was made by the Secretary of the Navy when he sent an order to Boston for the _Constitution_ to remain in port after her escape from Broke’s squadron. Had not Captain Hull, with an enterprise and daring that will never be sufficiently praised, taken her to sea without waiting for further orders, these stories of American victories afloat would never have been written, and the war would have ended--who can say how it would have ended? It remained for the British Admiralty to make the blunder which our Secretary tried to make--and so the _Constitution_ escaped from the British squadron off the Cape de Verde, and the great British squadron chased the little _Levant_ back into the neutral port. There, when the _Levant_ had anchored, they surrounded her, and assisted by the escaped prisoners who had captured and manned the Portuguese battery on shore, they fired broadside after broadside at her. They were at a range of their own choosing. They were in the harbor where the water was a dead-flat level, and they continued their fire for fifteen minutes without a single shot striking her hull. At the end of that time the Yankee lieutenant (Ballard) who commanded the little sloop, thinking that they might eventually hit her and hurt somebody, hauled down his flag.