duel between guerriere USS constitution 1812 19 August frigate French Navy United States
Guerrière was a 38-gun frigate of the French Navy. She was later captured by the British and recommissioned as HMS Guerriere, and became famous for her fight against USS Constitution. USS Constitution is a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy. Named after the Constitution of the United States of America by President George Washington, she is the oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat in the world. Constitution, launched in 1797, was one of the six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794. Joshua Humphreys designed these frigates to be the Navy's capital ships, and so Constitution and her sisters were larger and more heavily armed and built than the standard frigates of the period. Built in Boston, Massachusetts at Edmund Hartt's shipyard, her first duty with the newly formed United States Navy was to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War. During the afternoon of 19 August 1812, Latitude N and Longitude West about 400 miles of Halifax, Nova Scotia, a sail was sighted on the weather beam bearing down on them. She was soon made out to be a man-of-war and Guerriere prepared for action mustering 244 men and 19 boys at quarters. When the enemy hoisted American colours, Captain Dacres permitted the Americans in his crew to quit their guns. The two ships exchanged broadsides for half an hour before the enemy closed her starboard beam and sent HMS Guerriere's mizzen mast overboard. Switching to the other bow, the enemy raked HMS Guerriere and swept her decks with grapeshot and musket fire, and then attempted to board. Samuel Grant, master's mate commanding the forecastle, was badly wounded and at about the same time Robert Scott, the master, was shot through the knee and the Captain severely wounded. Captain Dacres ordered Lieutenant Bartholomew Kent to lead the marines and boarders from the
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