After the prolonged labor and anxiety of the three days' chase, the people of the "Constitution" needed some relaxation of the strain, and Captain Hull put into Boston, where he remained a week. From there he sailed to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where he took and burned some prizes; but hearing that the squadron from which he had just escaped was in the neighborhood, he steered for the southward. All the time the sailors were kept exercised at the guns, under the careful oversight of the officers; for the captain knew that the result, in any battle he might be called upon to fight, depended mostly upon skill in firing, which practice alone could give.
On the 19th of August, at two o'clock in the afternoon, while cruising about in the ocean somewhere in the latitude of New York, the "Constitution" made a strange sail to the southward and eastward. Captain Hull had just before received information that an English frigate was cruising alone to the southward of him, and suspecting that this stranger was the object of his search, he bore down for her under all sail, she meanwhile making no attempt to get away. At three o'clock the ships were near enough to make each other out, and Hull's conjecture proved to be right. The stranger was the frigate "Guerrière," under Captain Dacres, which had now left the squadron of Commodore Broke, and was on her way to Halifax.
By four o'clock the "Constitution" was gaining rapidly on her opponent, and three quarters of an hour later, being then about three miles off, the "Guerrière" backed her main-topsails and waited for the Americans to come up. Upon this the "Constitution" took in her top-gallant sails, staysails, and flying jib, took a second reef in the topsails, hauled the courses up, sent down the royal yards, cleared ship for action, and beat to quarters. At the same time she bore up, and steered for the "Guerrière's" quarter.
At five o'clock the "Guerrière" hoisted her colors and opened fire, but her shot fell short. Then for nearly an hour the two ships manoeuvred, Hull doing his best to get into a good position to rake, and the English frigate each time deftly evading him by "wearing ship," as it is called,--that is, by turning quickly on her heel, with the wind astern. But all this drew the ships apart, when both really wished to close and fight; and presently by a common impulse Hull and Dacres concluded to give up manoeuvring, and both ran off to the eastward, with the wind free, the "Guerrière" a little ahead, but the "Constitution" quickly crawling up on her.