The Java, which had been badly damaged, ran down Upon the _Constitution_ with the intention of { 080}boarding. But her jibboom became entangled in the _Constitution's_ mizzen-rigging, and she was held there and raked mercilessly. At this time her bowsprit and foremast were shot away.
The two vessels now separated, and after considerable manoeuvring came together again, yard-arm and yard-arm, and reopened their broadsides. Now the _Java's_ mizzen-mast tumbled, and her main-mast was the only stick left standing. The _Constitution_ then hauled off, and spent an hour in repairing damages, at the end of which time she wore round and stood across her antagonist's bow, when the English colors were struck.
The action had lasted an hour and fifty-five minutes. The _Constitution_ had lost nine men killed and twenty-five wounded, Commodore Bainbridge being slightly wounded. The loss on board the _Java_ was variously stated; the lowest estimate made it twenty-two killed and one hundred and one wounded. Bainbridge said that sixty were killed. Captain Lambert was mortally wounded. The whole number on board was four hundred, including General Hislop and his staff and other officers, who were on their way to the East Indies.
The _Java_ was a complete wreck, and after a day or two it was determined to blow her up, which was done after all the prisoners and wounded had been { 081}carefully removed. She might have been towed into Bahia; but Brazil was friendly to Great Britain, and Bainbridge did not want to trust his prize in a Brazilian harbor. He, however, landed his prisoners there, and paroled them.
The _Constitution_--which received the name of "_Old Ironsides_," on account of escaping serious damage in this action--arrived at Boston in February. Here the same welcome that had been given to Hull and Decatur was extended to Bainbridge. The cities of New York and Albany gave him gold snuff-boxes, Philadelphia gave him a service of silver, and Congress voted the usual medals, with fifty thousand dollars of prize money for the crew.
In the first six months of the war, the little American navy, for which Congress had done nothing, and from which nothing had been expected, had six encounters with English cruisers, and in every one was victorious. These defeats were a sore trouble to English naval historians, who have ever since been laboring to explain them away. They have invented all sorts of ingenious theories to account for them; but it has never occurred to them to adopt the simple explanation that they _were_ defeats, brought about by superior seamanship and gunnery, backed up by the consciousness of a just cause, on the part of the Americans. The favorite explanation { 082}has been, that the American so-called frigates were seventy-four-gun ships in disguise; that the English crews were all green hands, and their numbers were not full at that. A few years later, General Scott met at a dinner in London a young British naval officer, who superciliously inquired, "whether the Americans continued to build line-of-battle ships, and to call them frigates."