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Updated: June 10, 2025
The Serapis was one of a remarkably bad class of ships, worse even than the two-decked 50-gun ships. She measured 886 tons, and her armament consisted of 20 long 18-pounders on the lower-deck, 22 long 12-pounders on the main-deck, and 2 long 6-pounders on the forecastle, making in all 44 guns.
On the lower gun deck was an improvised battery of six 18-pounders, two of which burst, killing most of the men at work there and tearing away the deck above them. The remainder of the men refused to serve the other guns, and thus the Bonhomme Richard was deprived of the services of her heaviest battery, in addition to the serious loss in dead and wounded.
Each morning as we clustered round our little green table and had our breakfast, we invariably had about half a dozen rounds of 18-pounders crash around us with varying results, but one day, as we'd finished our meal and all sat staring into the future, we suddenly caught the sound of something on more corpulent lines arriving.
Shells from the 18-pounders and trench-mortars cut their wire and demoralised their sentries. Guns of all calibres pounded their system of trenches till it looked for all the world like nothing more than a ploughed field. The sky was filled with our aeroplanes wheeling about and directing the work of batteries, and with the black and white bursts of anti-aircraft shells.
She carried 48 guns, including 30 long 18-pounders on the main-deck, 16 carronades, 32-pounders, and 2 long nines on her quarter-deck and forecastle. She measured under 1100 tons, and though her regular complement was 300 men and boys, she was nearly 40 men short.
"You're giving me one forward section of 18-pounders there," began the brigadier, marking the map. "Now," placing a long lean forefinger on a point 150 yards behind our most advanced infantry post, "couldn't I have another little fellow there? that would tickle him up." The colonel smiled through his glasses.
The boat I was in, with several others, grounded on a coral-reef, not a hundred yards from a sea-battery, which we found mounted no less than ten long 18-pounders; and as they pointed directly on the reef, they could very soon have knocked us all to pieces. Fortunately, the garrison slept so soundly, or the rain and wind made such a clatter, that they did not discover us.
As he proffered his sheathed sword he introduced himself as Monsieur Jules Despard, chief mate of the French privateer brigantine Audacieuse, of Dunquerque, mounting sixteen long 18-pounders, and a long 32-pounder on her forecastle, and originally carrying a crew of one hundred and fifty-six men, of whom twenty-five were away in the Indiaman that had vanished in the southern board, while twelve more were aboard one of the vessels of which the gun-brigs were in chase.
Two 18-pounders, which since Balaclava had been kept ready for instant service, were waiting to be moved. There were no teams of horses at hand to drag them up to the front, but the man-harness was brought out, and the willing gunners cheerily entered the shafts, and threw themselves with fierce energy into the collars.
The position was at the Tara Street end of Butt Bridge, and the object, in order to be ready to begin early the shelling of Liberty Hall, which was looked upon as the centre and symbol of the anarchy. After much difficulty two 18-pounders were brought up and machine guns were placed on the tower of the Fire Station and the Tivoli, and then, when all was ready, the bombardment began.
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