This was the most atrocious affair in which Bacon was engaged. The inhuman massacre of sleeping men was in keeping with the memorable affair at Chestnut Neck, near Tuckerton, when Count Pulaski's guards were murdered by the British and Refugees.

The massacre at Long Beach took place about a mile south of Barnegat light-house, and there were, we think, more men killed and wounded then than in any other action in that part of Old Monmouth now comprised within the limits of Ocean county.

A tory paper gives the following version of the affair:

"A cutter from Ostend, bound to St. Thomas, ran aground on Barnegat Shoals, October 25, 1782. The American galley 'Alligator,' Captain Steelman, from Cape May, with twenty-five men, plundered her on Saturday night last of a quantity of Hyson tea and other valuable articles, but was attacked the same night by Captain John Bacon, with nine men, in a small boat called the 'Hero's Revenge,' who killed Steelman and wounded the First Lieutenant, and all the party except four or five were either killed or wounded."

In this account the number of Steelman's men is doubtless overestimated and Bacon's underestimated.