The significance of his victory was that at every point he had excelled a British frigate and had literally blown her out of the water.

His crew had been together only five weeks and could fairly be called green while the _Guerriere_, although short-handed, had a complement of veteran tars.

The British navy had never hesitated to engage hostile men-of-war of superior force and had usually beaten them.

Of two hundred fights between single ships, against French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Danish, and Dutch, the English had lost only five.

The belief of Captain Dacres that he could beat the _Constitution_ was therefore neither rash nor ill-founded.
The English captain had ten Americans in his crew, but he would not compel them to fight against their countrymen and sent them below, although he sorely needed every man who could haul at a gun-tackle or lay out on a yard.