Lieutenant John Meade boarded Chesapeake and was shown to Barron’s cabin. There he presented him with Vice-Admiral Berkeley’s orders, which complained that “many seamen, subjects of his Britannic Majesty…while at anchor in the Chesapeake, deserted and entered on board the United States frigate called the ‘Chesapeake,’ and openly paraded the streets of Norfolk, in the sight of their officers, under the American flag, protected by the magistrates of the town and the recruiting officer belonging to the above-mentioned American frigate.”

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Barron claimed that he knew of no such deserters and that he had given instructions not to enlist deserters. Furthermore, he refused point-blank to allow a search for these men. Barron obviously felt uneasy at the belligerent tone of the dispatches, so as Lieutenant Meade returned to Leopard, he ordered his officers to quietly call the men to quarters, clear the gun deck, and prepare for action. They had hardly begun when the British frigate fired two warning shots across Chesapeake’s bow and stern, followed by three devastating broadsides from a distance of less than two hundred feet.

The two ships were evenly matched in terms of firepower, but Chesapeake had a much larger crew. However, the American gun crews could not return fire because, even though the guns were loaded, they had neither lighted matches nor red-hot irons. Already British cannons had caused much damage to the hull, sails, and rigging, with three men killed and eighteen wounded, including Barron himself. After just fifteen minutes, the commodore decided to surrender rather than risk further massacre of his men, but Chesapeake had yet to fire a single cannon in retaliation.

Barron kept calling for one gun to be fired before he surrendered, as was customary to save the honor of a ship, so that it could not be said to have surrendered without firing a shot. At the very moment he finally ordered the flag hauled down, Chesapeake managed to fire a single gun. The third lieutenant, William Henry Allen, had heroically carried a burning coal from the galley in his hands.

HMS Leopard ceased firing and sent a boat to the frigate with several lieutenants and other officers, including Marine Sergeant James Atkins, who noted that “the American officers presented their swords which, however, Britons refused to accept; we mustered the ship’s company and found many English in their service but as our orders were only to secure deserters, we in consequence secured only 4 belonging to the Melampus.” How many of Chesapeake’s crew were British, and how many of those were Royal Navy deserters, remains uncertain, but Atkins made it clear that the British followed Admiral Berkeley’s orders to remove deserters only, and that merely a handful could be identified—three (not four) from Melampus and one from Halifax. 

Thirty-four-year-old Jenkin Ratford of Halifax had enlisted with Chesapeake under the assumed name of John Wilson. He was now dragged from his hiding place and put on board Leopard. The other three men—John Strachan, Daniel Martin, and William Ware—were in fact Americans. They had originally been illegally pressed into the Royal Navy, only to return to their merchant ships and then desert again, this time joining Melampus as volunteers. 

Commodore Barron sent Captain Humphreys a letter stating that the American frigate was now his prize, but the British declined to take the ship. The captain declared that “having to the utmost of my power fulfilled the instructions of my commander-in-chief, I have nothing more to desire, and must in consequence proceed to join the remainder of the squadron.”

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