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The British fleet gallantly attacked the enemy, but after a desperate battle, in which Captain Downie was slain, and nine of the ill-manned gunboats fled, it was compelled to surrender to a superior force. Prevost, notwithstanding that his strength was ten times greater than that of the enemy, had awaited the assistance of the fleet.
Her grey sails were mottled with age and her rigging was loose and worn. Sixteen men and boys made up her crew, a number by no means sufficient for a boat of her size. It seemed almost criminal to send such an ill-manned craft out on the tempestuous North Atlantic. However, the three ships sailed from the Thames and steered up the east coast of England.
"Not a rag left but what was of such a nature as had to be destroyed." "150 on board, the greatest part of them sorry fellows." "Poor ragged souls, and very small." "Miserable poor creatures, not a seaman amongst them, and the fleet in the same condition." "Unfit for service, and a nuisance to the ship." "Never so ill-manned a ship since I have been at sea. The worst set I ever saw."
That was work enough to be done by four small ships, ill-manned and ill-provisioned, during a five months' absence from Valparaiso; and the Chilians were not ungrateful. Their gratitude, however, was not strong enough to make them zealous co-operators in his schemes for their benefit. Lord Cochrane was eager to start upon another expedition, in which he hoped for yet greater success.
Communication by water was, except during a period of profound peace, almost impracticable; for, although of late years the lakes of Canada have been covered with vessels of war, many of them, as we have already remarked, of vast magnitude, and been the theatres of conflicts that would not have disgraced the salt waters of ocean itself, at the period to which our story refers the flag of England was seen to wave only on the solitary mast of some ill-armed and ill-manned gunboat, employed rather for the purpose of conveying despatches from fort to fort, than with any serious view to acts either of aggression or defence.
They remonstrated with the captain, but they could not alter his determination. The boat was pulled away and was lost to sight in the breakers. Neither the boat nor any member of the crew was ever seen or heard of again. The boat was ill-found and ill-manned. She was undoubtedly caught in the breakers and foundered.
Their ships of war were few in number, unseaworthy, ill-found, ill-manned. Two thousand able-bodied seamen could with difficulty be got together in an emergency. The nominal fighting strength of the fleet stood high, but that strength in reality consisted of men "one half of whom had never sailed out of the Gulf of Finland, whilst the other half had never sailed anywhere at all."
Communication by water was, except during a period of profound peace, almost impracticable; for, although of late years the lakes of Canada have been covered with vessels of war, many of them, as we have already remarked, of vast magnitude, and been the theatres of conflicts that would not have disgraced the salt waters of ocean itself, at the period to which our story refers the flag of England was seen to wave only on the solitary mast of some ill-armed and ill-manned gunboat, employed rather for the purpose of conveying despatches from fort to fort, than with any serious view to acts either of aggression or defence.
However, Gow at first made as if he would lie by for them, but seeing plainly what a ship it was, and that they should have their hands full of her, he began to consider; and calling his men together upon the deck, told them what was in his mind, viz., that the Frenchman was apparently superior in force in every way; that they were but ill-manned, and had a great many prisoners on board, and that some of their own people were not very well to be trusted; that six of their best hands were on board the prize; and that all they had left were not sufficient to ply their guns and stand by the sails, and that therefore as they were under no necessity to engage, so he thought it would be next to madness to think of it.
When the morning dawned, neither he nor the royal dancer from the Marquesas was to be found. Some time in that night, from the windward beach, ill-manned and desperate, the royal sailing canoe must have set forth tumultuously upon its pilgrimage again. I sat in a place in Honolulu. Soft drinks were served, and somewhere beyond a tidy screen of palm fronds a band of strings was playing.
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