The Americans had been so sure of victory they were planning a triumphant return to Boston with Shannon’s crew in handcuffs. The battle had indeed been one-sided, but not in the direction the Americans anticipated. It gained the dubious distinction of being the quickest slaughter in naval history up to then, as it was all over in eleven minutes. At least sixty-one crewmen were killed and eighty-five injured from Chesapeake, while from Shannon thirty-four were killed and fifty-two injured. With a prize crew and prisoners on board, Chesapeake left Boston and headed for Nova Scotia, accompanied by Shannon. The ships reached Halifax on June 5, but thick fog forced them to wait outside the harbor until the 6th, a Sunday.

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Some fifty years later, the author and judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton recalled the events that day: “I was attending divine service in St. Paul’s Church at that time, when a person was seen to enter hurriedly, whisper something to a friend in the garrison pew, and as hastily withdraw. The effect was electrical, for, whatever the news was, it flew from pew to pew, and one by one, the congregation left the church.

“My own impression was that there was a fire in the immediate vicinity of St. Paul’s; and the movement soon became so general that I, too, left the building to inquire into the cause of the commotion. I was informed by a person in the crowd than ‘an English man-of-war was coming up the harbor with an American frigate as her prize.’ By that time the ships were in full view, near George’s Island, and slowly moving through the water. Every housetop and every wharf was crowded with groups of excited people, and, as the ships successively passed, they were greeted with vociferous cheers. Halifax was never in such a state of excitement before or since.”

Haliburton and a friend found a boat and rowed out to Shannon, but were denied admission. Instead, they were allowed to board Chesapeake, and because the vessel only had a small prize crew, the carnage of battle had not yet been removed. Haliburton remembered the grim scene: “Externally she looked…as if just returned from a short cruise; but internally the scene was one never to be forgotten by a landsman….The coils and folds of ropes were steeped in gore as if in a slaughter-house. She was a fir-built ship, and her splinters had wounded nearly as many men as Shannon’s shot. Pieces of skin, with pendant hair, were adhering to the sides of the ship; and in one place I noticed portions of fingers protruding, as if thrust through the outer wall of the frigate; while several of the sailors, to whom liquor had evidently been handed through the portholes by visitors in boats, were lying asleep on the bloody floor as if they had fallen in action and had expired where they lay. Altogether, it was a scene of devastation as difficult to forget as to describe. It is one of the most painful reminiscences of my youth, for I was but seventeen years of age.”

Once Captain Broke was taken off Shannon, the surgeon of the naval hospital examined him: “I was requested…to visit Captain Broke, confined to bed at the commissioner’s house in the dockyard, and found him in a very weak state, with an extensive saber wound on the side of the head, the brain exposed to view for three inches or more; he was unable to converse, save in monosyllables.” Miraculously, he survived and returned to England in October. He would never serve at sea again, and although he lived to the age of sixty-four, he never fully regained his health.

Captain Lawrence survived four days, but died of his wounds on June 5, just before they reached Halifax. He was thirty-one years old. His body was wrapped in Chesapeake’s flag and laid on the quarterdeck, before being buried with military honors at Halifax.

Lieutenant Ludlow, acting first lieutenant of Chesapeake, made reasonable progress, but died a few days after being transferred to the naval hospital, and was buried close to Lawrence. He was only twenty-one years old. His own last words were “Don’t give up the ship.” 

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