employed by both vessels and visited each during the preparation for battle.

One hundred and sixty-three was the number of the crew of the Kearsarge, including officers; that of the Alabama not definitely known, but from the most reliable information estimated at nearly the same. The tonnage of the former 1031, of the latter 1044. The battery of the Kearsarge consisted of seven guns, two eleven-inch pivots, smooth bore, one twenty-eight-pounder rifle, and four light thirty-two pounders; that of the Alabama of eight guns, one sixty-eight-pounder pivot, smooth bore, one one hundred and ten-pounder rifle pivot, and six heavy thirty-two pounders. Five guns were fought by the Kearsarge, seven by the Alabama, both with the starboard batteries. The Kearsarge had made thirteen and one-half knots an hour under steam, the Alabama never exceeded thirteen, and at the time of the action was only equal to ten. The vessels were not unequally matched in size, speed, crew, and armament, displaying a similarity not often witnessed in naval battles. The contest was decided by the superiority of the eleven-inch Dahlgrens over the Blakely rifle and smooth bore, in connection with the greater coolness and accuracy in aim of the gunners of the Kearsarge.

"So ends the story of the Alabama," quoting again from the Liverpool Courrier, "whose journal would be the most interesting volume of ocean literature; whose ubiquity scared the commerce of America from the seas; whose destructive powers have ruined property belonging to the northerns valued at upwards of three millions of money; whose actions very nearly involved these countries in war with the United States. The Americans are indignant that the ship was built by British hands, of British oak, armed with British guns, and manned by British sailors."

Numerous inaccuracies, suppressions, exaggerations, and discrepancies exist in most of the accounts of this renowned naval engagement. The first reports published in Europe were characterized by contradictions sufficient to confuse any reader. This variance was noted by the London Daily News in the following manner: "The sceptic who called history a matter-of-fact romance, should have lived in our day, when a naval action is fought off Cherbourg on a Sunday, and reported to the London and Paris newspapers on the Monday morning, no two reports agreeing in any single fact, except in the result. In our enlightened epoch of incessant, instantaneous, and universal inter-communication, the difficulty of getting at the simple facts of any passing incident, in which conflicting sympathies are concerned, increases in proportion to the increasing celerity and certainty with which the materials of history are gathered. Some allowance, no doubt, may be made for eyewitnesses on shore of a naval engagement seven miles out at sea. Their 'powerful glasses' are liable to that peculiar inaccuracy of sight which distance, excitement, and smoke produce. A French gentleman, for instance, who from Cherbourg Breakwater looked on at the American duel on Sunday last, wrote a graphic letter to the Debats, with a postscript to the effect that he had just discovered that the account in his letter was entirely wrong."

Here ends the present story of the Kearsarge and Alabama. It is the truth told honestly.