fought the first, when she took the Guerriere in August, due east of Boston and south of Newfoundland.  The Wasp won the second in September, by taking the Frolic half-way between Halifax and Bermuda.  The United States won the third in October, by defeating the Macedonian south-west of Madeira.  The Constitution won the fourth in December, off Bahia in Brazil, by defeating the Java.  And the Hornet won the fifth in February, by taking the Peacock, off Demerara, on the coast of British Guiana.

This closed the first period of the war at sea.  The British government had been so anxious to avoid war, and to patch up peace again after war had broken out, that they purposely refrained from putting forth their full available naval strength till 1813.  At the same time, they would naturally have preferred victory to defeat; and the fact that most of the British Navy was engaged elsewhere, and that what was available was partly held in leash, by no means dims the glory of those four men-of-war which the Americans fought with so much bravery and skill, and with such well-deserved success.  No wonder Wellington said peace with the United States would be worth having at any honourable price, ’if we could only take some of their damned frigates!’ Peace was not to come for another eighteen months.  But though the Americans won a few more duels out at sea, besides two annihilating flotilla victories on the Lakes, their coast was blockaded as completely as Napoleon’s, once the British Navy had begun its concerted movements on a comprehensive scale.  From that time forward the British began to win the naval war, although they won no battles and only one duel that has lived in history.  This dramatic duel, fought between the Shannon and the Chesapeake on June 1, 1813, was not itself a more decisive victory for the British than previous frigate duels had been for the Americans.  But it serves better than any other special event to mark the change from the first period, when the Americans roved the sea as conquerors, to the second, when they were gradually blockaded into utter impotence.

Having now followed the thread of naval events to a point beyond the other limits of this chapter, we must return to the American movements against the Canadian frontier and the British counter-movements intended to checkmate them.

Quebec and Halifax, the two great Canadian seaports, were safe from immediate American attack; though Quebec was the ultimate objective of the Americans all through the war.  But the frontier west of Quebec offered several tempting chances for a vigorous invasion, if the American naval and military forces could only be made to work together.  The whole life of Canada there depended absolutely on her inland waterways.  If the Americans could cut the line of the St Lawrence and Great Lakes at any critical point, the British would lose everything to the west of it; and there