Gentlemen Rovers

"[...]than three miles), l'Insurgente replied, firing high in an attempt to disable the American by bringing down her rigging. Midshipman David Porter, a youngster barely in his teens, was stationed in the foretop. Seeing that the top-mast, which had been seriously damaged by the French fire, was tottering and about to fall, but being unable to make himself heard on deck above the din of battle, he himself assumed the responsibility of lowering the foretopsail yard, thus relieving the strain on the mast and preventing a mishap which would probably have changed the result of the battle. That midshipman rose, in after years, to be an admiral and the commander-in-chief of the American Navy. Barreault, who had a much larger crew than his adversary, soon saw that his vessel was in danger of being pounded to pieces by the American gunners who were making every shot tell, and that his only hope of victory lay in getting alongside and boarding, depending upon his superior numbers to take the American vessel with the cutlass. With this in view, he ordered the boarding parties to their stations, sent men into the[...]".