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Updated: June 9, 2025
His crew yelled as it rose: the Britons, instead of quailing, cheered with fierce derision: the pirate's wild crew of yellow Malays, black chinless Papuans, and bronzed Portuguese, served their side guns, 12-pounders, well and with ferocious cries; the white Britons, drunk with battle now, naked to the waist, grimed with powder, and spotted like leopards with blood, their own and their mates', replied with loud undaunted cheers, and deadly hail of grape from the quarterdeck; while the master gunner and his mates loading with a rapidity the mixed races opposed could not rival, hulled the schooner well between wind and water, and then fired chain shot at her masts, as ordered, and began to play the mischief with her shrouds and rigging.
It was my opinion founded upon our experiences during the recent fight that if the pirate schooner was to be tackled successfully, it would have to be by a bigger craft than the Wasp, or, at all events, that if the Wasp was to be again employed against the pirates, she would certainly have to be equipped with a very much heavier armament; her insignificant little array of six 9-pounders could never be expected to cope successfully with the other craft's fourteen 12-pounders and her long 32.
Then we simply had to scuttle for our lives, for, of course, the shore batteries mounted very much heavier and longer range guns than any that a destroyer could carry; and there was no sense in attempting, as a general rule, to oppose our 12-pounders and 6-pounders to their 6-inch and 11-inch guns. Yet we by no means allowed the Russians to invariably have it all their own way.
The firemen were called with their buckets ready to extinguish the flames should they burst out, and two 12-pounders being pointed astern in the cabin, soon made a clear breach, through which a tremendous fire was opened on the Pique's decks. The French frigate had already lost her fore and mizen-mast, and about three hours and a quarter after midnight, her main-mast fell over the side.
Among the British contingent the navy was well represented, the Naval Brigade, under the command of Captain Gallaghan of the Endymion, consisted of 125 bluejackets with four 12-pounders from the Barfleur, Terrible, Endymion, Phoenix, and Algerine, and 278 marines under Major Luke; there were also two more naval 12-pounders manned by Hong-Kong artillery under Major Saint John; there started on the same day the junks which had been captured from the enemy.
Again the destroyer's gun roared, and the deckhouse melted in a shower of splinters. Ken, struck on the leg by one of them, toppled over helplessly. His leg felt numb, he could not move. There was nothing for it now but to await the inevitable end. Crash! Vaguely Ken realised that this was a heavier gun than the 12-pounders of the destroyer.
Towards nightfall Warren made arrangements to send up two naval 12-pounders, a mountain battery, and a heavy working party under engineer direction to organise field protection a provision that should have formed part of the original plan elaborated through four days of operations.
Middle Hill, Rifleman's Ridge, Telegraph Hill, with its three 9-pounders, which the Rifle Brigade men, for quaint reasons of their own, name Faith, Hope, and Charity, all have a turn at us, and our batteries reply; but there is not much vigour in it on either side until Middle Hill, with its Creusot 94-pounder, and the howitzer on Surprise Hill, begin to shell our naval 12-pounders.
Her whole armament consisted of fourteen 4-pounders. When her new commander tried to add to these a couple of 12-pounders, the deck proved too small and the timbers too weak for them, and they had to be returned. So Lilliputian was his cabin, that, to shave himself, Lord Cochrane was obliged to thrust his head out of the skylight and make a dressing-table of the quarter-deck.
De Wet, if he was indeed responsible for the manoeuvres of these Southern Boers, certainly handled his small force with a discreet audacity which marks him as the born leader which he afterwards proved himself to be. Our artillery also was strongly reinforced. The 18th, 62nd, and 75th field batteries came up with three naval 4.7 guns and two naval 12-pounders.
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