His first cruise was made in the ship in which he was afterward to win such splendid renown,--the Constitution. She was then commanded by Captain Samuel Nicholson. He remained in her for more than two years, and thus became thoroughly familiar with the great frigate,--a knowledge he was eventually to put to good use. In 1800 she was the flagship of Commodore Talbot, in the West Indies, and Hull was her first lieutenant. Commodore Talbot and the captain of a British frigate on that station were friends, and the American and British captains would often discuss the sailing qualities of their respective frigates, the British ship being a good sailer as well as the Constitution. At last a sailing-match was agreed upon, the captains wagering a cask of wine on the result. The two frigates started with a fresh breeze at sunrise, and the contest was to last until the sunset gun was fired. Hull sailed the Constitution, and his seamanship on that day of friendly rivalry was scarcely inferior to that which he displayed when Admiral Broke's squadron of five ships was hounding him on an August day, twelve years after. The Constitution could easily leg it at an eleven-knot gait, with a tolerable breeze, and was almost unapproachable on a wind; but that day, under Hull's skilful handling, she outdid herself, and beat her opponent by several miles. Hull kept the crew on deck the livelong day, and the seamanlike manner in which he beat the English frigate, which was also remarkably well sailed, won the admiration even of his opponents. Hull was too great a seaman himself to underrate either British skill or pluck, and many years after it is told of him that, speaking with a very steady old boatswain, the man remarked, "The British, sir, are hard fellows on salt water." "I know that,--they are a hard set of fellows, sure enough," was Hull's emphatic reply. Hull saw no very brilliant service during the hostilities with France in 1799-1800, but he cut out a French letter-of-marque in the harbor of Port Platte, Hayti, in a very handsome manner. He armed a small vessel, the Sally, with men from the Constitution, ran into the harbor in broad daylight, landed a company of marines, who spiked the guns of the fort and carried off the French letter-of-marque in fine style. In 1802 Hull went to the Adams, of twenty-eight guns, as her first lieutenant. The Adams was one of the fastest frigates that ever floated, and Hull was the man to get the most out of her. She was sent to the Mediterranean at the beginning of the Tripolitan troubles, and in her patrol of the Straits of Gibraltar in all weathers, and her blockade of Tripoli in the dangerous winter season, her first lieutenant splendidly sustained the reputation he had brought from the Constitution with him, as one of the ablest seamen in the navy. He would carry more sail than any other lieutenant in the squadron would have carried, and would make sail when most ships scarcely showed a rag of canvas.