After the _Avon_ struck, the luck of the _Wasp_ turned. As the crew of the small boat were lowering it to the water in order to go over and take possession of the _Avon_, a new enemy appeared. The boat was at once hoisted in and the drums beat to quarters. Then the _Wasp_ was sent away before the wind while the topmen hurried aloft to reeve off new rigging in place of some that had been shot away. A few minutes sufficed, but before everything was quite ready two more ships were seen bearing down and Blakeley wrote: “I felt myself compelled to forego the satisfaction of destroying the prize.” As a matter of fact he had already destroyed her, as we learn from the reports of the ships of the enemy. The first of the vessels to come to the aid of the _Avon_ was the _Castilian_. She bore down on the quarter of the _Wasp_ and fired one broadside which whistled harmlessly over the _Wasp’s_ quarter-deck. Then she tacked around and hastened back to the _Avon_, for the _Avon_ was firing guns and making other signals of distress. The survivors of her crew were working desperately at the pumps and with plugs to stop the leaks, and the crew of the _Castilian_ and those of the _Tartarus_ as well came to their aid. But neither the strength of the men at the pumps nor the skill of the carpenters could avail to undo the work of the Yankee backwoodsmen done during the few minutes--perhaps twenty--that the _Wasp_ lay on the _Avon’s_ lee bow. At 11.55 the work of transferring the _Avon’s_ crew began and at 1 o’clock the next morning, as the last boat was leaving her, the _Avon’s_ bow sank down under water, her stern rose high in air, and down she went. As it seems to a student of naval history at the end of the nineteenth century, it is both interesting and instructive to compare the _Reindeer_ battle with the _Avon_ battle. For while the Yankee crew in the first battle ruined the _Reindeer_, she was still able to float. She was cut to pieces in the wake of her ports and comparatively few shot struck the water-line or under. But in this battle with the _Avon_ they had so far improved in their skill with great guns, that, although there was now a rolling sea and it was night, they were, nevertheless, able to shoot so many holes into her at the water-line and below it that all the efforts of three crews could not save her. The men of the _Wasp_, though their story ends in a mystery, yet speak to their countrymen. For their battles proved that _the first requisite of a sea power is the ability to strike_. As long as the American people can reach out with good ships carrying good guns manned by clear-eyed marksmen, they shall have peace. The _Wasp_ was struck by four round shot in the course of the battle, and these killed two men. A wad from one of her guns that was aimed too high, hit a third man and hurt him some.