USS Hornet vs HMS Penguin

23 March 1815, Off Tristan da Cunha

American victory; Penguin captured and scuttled

Hornet, now under James Biddle, had escaped from New York and was making for a rendezvous at Tristan da Cunha when she met the brig-sloop Penguin, sent out from the Cape to hunt American privateers. In twenty minutes of close action Hornet's guns killed Penguin's captain, James Dickinson, and dismasted her; Penguin's bowsprit caught in Hornet's rigging, but her men would not board, and she surrendered. She was too badly damaged to keep and was scuttled. It was the last naval fight of the war, fought two months after the peace.