The Essex, which had left port a little later than the _President_ and _Hornet_, took several prizes, one of them being a transport filled with soldiers. She was chased by the _Alert_, of twenty guns, and fired upon. The _Essex_ was armed with carronades, guns not intended for work at long distances. Waiting till the enemy had come pretty near, she suddenly opened her broadside, and in eight minutes the _Alert_ struck her colors.
The great war-game on the ocean began in earnest when Captain Isaac Hull sailed from the Chesapeake in July, in the _Constitution_, a frigate of forty-four guns. On the 17th he came in sight of five vessels, which proved to be Broke's squadron, and the next day he was surrounded by them. As the wind was { 066}very light, he resorted to "kedging" to keep out of reach of them. This consisted in sending a boat ahead for perhaps half a mile, with a kedge anchor and lines. The kedge was then dropped, and the lines carried back to the ship. These being fastened to the windlass, the crew, by turning it and winding them up, pulled the vessel up to the anchor. While this was being done, the boat was going ahead with another kedge and lines, to repeat the operation and make it continuous. The flagship of the British squadron was pretty close in chase when the American frigate was thus seen to be walking away from it. The enemy soon found out how the mysterious movement was made, and resorted to the same expedient. But it was not possible to approach very near by this means, as it would have brought his boat under the fire of the American's stern-guns. Captain Hull had cut away some of the woodwork and run two twenty-four pounders out at his cabin windows, and also mounted a long gun on his spar deck as a stern-chaser. Whenever there was a little wind, every vessel set every stitch of canvas she could carry, and all the nicest arts of seamanship were resorted to to gain the slightest advantage. Eleven ships were in sight most of the time, all participating in the contest. An American merchantman appeared to windward, and the British vessels, { 067}not wishing to leave the chase, displayed an American ensign to decoy her within reach of their guns. Thereupon the _Constitution_ hoisted an English flag, to warn her off. This exciting race was kept up for three days. In the evening of the second day, it was evident that a heavy squall was coming up. Just before it struck the _Constitution_, all the light canvas was furled, and the ship was brought under short sail in a few minutes. When the pursuing vessels observed this, they began at once to let go and haul down without waiting for the wind. Presently the squall came, and with it a rainstorm that hid the vessels from one another. As soon as this happened, the _Constitution_ sheeted home and hoisted her fore and main topgallant sails, and while her pursuers were steering in different directions to avoid the force of the squall, and believed her to be borne down by the pressure of the wind, she was sailing straight away from them at the rate of eleven knots an hour. When the squall was over, the nearest vessel of the British squadron was seen to be a long way astern, and to have fallen off two points to leeward, while the slowest ones were so far behind as to be almost out of sight. The chase was kept up during the night, but in the morning was found to be so hopeless that it was abandoned.