Three times they charged Barney's battery and were three times repulsed by sailors and marines who fought them with muskets, cutlasses, and handspikes, and who served those five guns with an efficiency which would have pleased Isaac Hull or Bainbridge.
Unwilling to pay the price of direct attack, the British General Ross wisely ordered his infantry to surround Barney's stubborn contingent.
The American troops who were presumed to support and protect this naval battery failed to hold their ground and melted into the mob which was swirling toward Washington.

The sailors, though abandoned, continued to fight until the British were firing into them from the rear and from both flanks.

Barney fell wounded and some of his gunners were bayoneted with lighted fuses in their hands.

Snarling, undaunted, the sailors broke through the cordon and saved themselves, the last to leave a battlefield upon which not one American soldier was visible.

They had used their ammunition to the end and they faced five thousand British veterans; wherefore they had done what the navy expected of them.