The practiced restraint of the age (1810) stands in such contrast to our contemporary exaggeration of every least little accomplishment as "awesome" or "fantastic".
Master Mate Jenkin Jones, surviving senior officer of Africaine, reports on the closing moments of a losing naval duel with the French frigate Astree.
I manned, remanned, and manned again the only two guns which would bear on the Astree until my heart sickened at ordering men to the slaughter - everyone having been killed or wounded. The cheerful alacrity with which at my order they quitted the comparatively safe guns to serve where death seemed almost inevitable, excited at the moment (and the impression made under such circumstances on a young mind is indelible) my warmest admiration. Had I felt it to be my duty to order for a fourth time the guns to be manned I have no doubt the order would have been properly obeyed; but to have given such an order in that stage of the conflict would have been an unjustifiable expenditure of the lives of brave men.
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