Nevertheless, because of the qualities displayed by the American seamen, from the battle between the _Guerrière_ and the _Constitution_ to Macdonough’s victory on Lake Champlain, and in all the naval encounters, except possibly one that followed the signing of the treaty--because of the hearty good will that backed the strong and well-trained arm of the republican sailor, what was denied in the promise of peace was granted when peace came. The British politicians quibbled and the British historians have garbled and sneered, but the full significance of the naval battles of the War of 1812 was and is appreciated by the real rulers of the British nation. And that significance, though it brought a treaty--a written document--that is humiliating, brought a lasting state of peace that was and is a matter of pride to all who honor the flag. It did more. The manifest superiority of the American seamen was so great that, by degrees, the British naval authorities were led to abandon their cruel methods of manning and disciplining their ships and to adopt the American system of good pay and good food and just treatment instead. Treating men as men has worked as well, these late years, in the British navy, as it has always worked in the American. Moreover a day was to come when the British Government was to say, in a most emphatic Government document, that the American declaration of war in 1812 was entirely justified. As said, the treaty of peace was signed on December 24, 1814. But it had to be ratified by both Governments, and the news that peace had been declared had to be promulgated throughout the world before hostilities would cease. There were battles not a few thereafter. The Yankee sailor was to be heard from on the sluggish waters of the Mississippi’s swamps; under the bleak cliffs of Tristan d’Acunha, on the sunlit seas of India, and elsewhere. He did not always triumph, but his flag did not come down save at the behest of greatly superior numbers; and this chapter shall tell how it came down in the first naval contest after the treaty was signed. [Illustration: Commodore Stephen Decatur.] It was on the unlucky _President_ when she was commanded by Stephen Decatur. As the reader will recall, Decatur was blockaded with the _United States_, the _Macedonian_, and the _Hornet_ at New London by a British squadron, beginning in June, 1813. There the two frigates remained until the end of the war. Late in 1814 Decatur was transferred to the _President_, then in New York harbor. Rodgers had had the ill luck to make four cruises in her without ever having a battle or even taking enough merchantmen to pay the expense of keeping the ship in commission. A very excellent revision of an old proverb says that “all things come to him who ‘rustles’ while he waits.” It is a fact that the active aggressive men of the navy in that war did not have much bad luck.