On the 25th of the same month, the privateer _Dolphin_, Captain W. S. Stafford, cruising off the coasts of Spain and Portugal, fell in with a large ship and a brig, and fought them both. The privateer carried ten guns, the ship sixteen, and the { 218}brig ten. After a spirited action, in which the _Dolphin_ lost four men, she captured both of them, and sent them home to Baltimore. The same privateer, in November, was attacked just outside of Charleston harbor by five boats from an English man-of-war. Captain Stafford tore one of the boats to pieces by a discharge of grape-shot, and as the other boats had employment enough in saving their unfortunate comrades, the attack failed. The man-of-war then fired a broadside at the _Dolphin_ and sailed away.
The privateer _Lottery_, Captain Southcomb, while at anchor in Chesapeake Bay, February 15th, was captured by nine British barges, in which were two hundred and forty men; but not till after a fight of an hour and a half, in which the six guns of the _Lottery_ had made sickening havoc with the men in the crowded barges. Captain Southcomb was badly wounded.
On the 11th of March the privateer _General Armstrong,_ Captain Guy R. Champlin, of New York, encountered, off Surinam, what she supposed to be an English privateer. The _Armstrong_ bore down upon her, fired the starboard broadside, wore ship and gave her the larboard broadside, and was then about to attempt boarding, but found out that the enemy was a frigate, carrying twenty-four guns. The bat{ 219}tle lasted three quarters of an hour, when the _Armstrong_ succeeded in getting away. Captain Champ-lin, badly wounded, lay on the cabin floor, directly over the magazine, with a pistol in his hand, when he overheard some talk about striking the colors. He immediately ordered the surgeon to go on deck and tell the men that if any one of them dared to strike the colors, he would discharge his pistol into the magazine and blow them all up together. In his log-book he wrote: "In this action we had six men killed and sixteen wounded, and all the halyards of the headsails shot away; the fore-mast and bowsprit one quarter cut through, and all the fore and main shrouds but one shot away; both mainstays and running rigging cut to pieces; a great number of shot through our sails, and several between wind and water, which caused our vessel to leak. There were also a number of shot in our hull."