He stared into darkness, seeing the last of the horizon. Then he touched the weathered quarterdeck rail. Aloud he said ‘We'll fight very soon, my gir… - Douglas Reeman

Adam grasped the rail as gun by gun the American began to retaliate [...] He winced as he felt the iron smashing into the hull or through the rigging overhead.

Scum they might be; many would otherwise have been hanged or deported, but firm discipline and fair treatment would soon change that. The hard men who would never break, Adam would take on himself to train. They often proved to be the best sailors, especially those who had never known anything but poverty and oppression.

Designed originally as a third-rate of sixty-four guns, she had been cut down to her present seize by the removal of most of her upper deck and corresponding armament. But her forty twenty-four pounders remained, with an additional four eighteen-pounders for bow and stern-chasers.