equipped six gun-boats and two bombards, formed them into two divisions, and gave the command of one of them to captain Decatur. The enemy's gun-boats were moored along the mouth of the harbor, under the batteries, and within musket-shot. Captain Decatur determined to board the enemy's eastern division, consisting of nine. He boarded in his own boat, and carried two of the enemy's boats in succession. When he boarded the second boat, he immediately attacked her commander, who was his superior in size and strength, and, his sword being broken, he seized the Turk, when a violent scuffle ensued. The Turk threw him, and drew a dirk for the purpose of stabbing him, when Decatur, having a small pistol in his right pocket, took hold of it, and, turning it as well as he could, so as to take effect upon his antagonist, cocked it, fired through his pocket, and killed him. When Commodore Preble was superseded in the command of the squadron, he gave the frigate Constitution to Decatur, who was afterwards removed to the Congress, and returned home in her when peace was concluded with Tripoli. He succeeded commodore Barron in the command of the Chesapeake, after the attack made upon her by the British man-of-war Leopard. He was afterwards transferred to the frigate United States. In the war between Great Britain and the United States, while commanding the frigate United States, he fell in, Oct. 25, 1812, with the Macedonian, mounting 49 carriage-guns, one of the finest of the British vessels of her class, and captured her after an engagement of an hour and a half. When captain Carden, the commander of the Macedonian, tendered him his sword, he observed that he could not think of taking the sword of an officer who had defended his ship so gallantly, but should be happy to take him by the hand. In a letter written five days after the capture, he says, "I need not tell you that I have done every thing in my power to soothe and console captain Carden; for, really, one half the pleasure of this little victory is destroyed in witnessing the mortification of a brave man, who deserved success quite as much as we did who obtained it." In January, 1814, commodore Decatur, in the United States, with his prize the Macedonian, then equipped as an American frigate, was blockaded at New London by a British squadron greatly superior in force. A challenge which he sent to the commander of the British squadron, sir Thomas Hardy, offering to meet two of the British frigates with his two ships, was declined. In January, 1815, he attempted to set sail from New York, which was blockaded by four British ships; but the frigate under his command, the President, was injured in passing the bar, and was captured by the whole squadron, after having maintained a running fight of two hours and a half with one of the frigates, the Endymion, which was dismantled and silenced. After the conclusion of peace, he was restored to his country, in 1815. The conduct of the Barbary powers, and of Algiers in particular, having been insulting to the United States, on the ratification of peace with Great Britain, war was declared against Algiers, and a squadron was fitted out, under the command of commodore Decatur, for the purpose of obtaining redress. In the spring of 1815, he set sail, and, June 17, off cape de Gatt, captured an Algerine frigate, after a running fight of 25 minutes, in which the famous admiral Rais Hammida, who had long been the terror of the Mediterranean sea, fell. The American squadron arrived at Algiers June 28. In less than 48 hours, Decatur terrified the regency into his own terms, which were,
