The _Preble_ was driven from her anchorage and ran ashore under the Plattsburg batteries, and the _Ticonderoga_ played no heavier part than to beat off the little British galleys.
The decisive battle was therefore fought by four ships, the American _Saratoga_ and _Eagle_, and the British _Confiance_ and _Linnet_.

It was then that Macdonough acquitted himself as a man who did not know when he was beaten.

The _Confiance_, which must have towered like a ship of the line, had so cruelly mauled the _Saratoga_ that she seemed doomed to be blown out of water.

So many of his gunners were killed by the double-shotted broadsides that Macdonough jumped from the quarter-deck to take a hand himself and encourage the survivors.

He was sighting a gun when a round shot cut the spanker boom, and a fragment of the heavy spar knocked him senseless.
Recovering his wits, however, he returned to his gun.