One of the main drivers for this is that so many accounts have in actuality very few casualties. You'd think that with cannonballs from 9-32 lbs flying all over the place, there'd be many more dead bodies than their were. It's fairly common to read an account where a ship struck its colors and the whopping total is like 5 sailors killed, 20 wounded.

I wonder if captains just knew, when they were going to be beaten and saw no real reason to stand by and have their ships and men whittled down by cannon fire. This is what's driving some of my questioning of the things.