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Included as broadside vessels, they would raise the British armament by three 24's, three 12's, four 9's, and a howitzer to a total of fifty-three guns. Actually, they could be brought into action only under exceptional circumstances, and are more properly omitted. These minutiæ are necessary for the proper appreciation of what Captain Douglas justly called "a momentous event."
"Do you think you will bring him round, sir?" Mr. Eden. "I have great hopes; he is much improved since he had the garden and the violin." No. 24. "Will you give him my compliments, sir? No. 24's compliments and tell him I bid him 'never say die'?" Mr. Eden. "Well, , how are you this morning?" "I am a little better, sir. "Are the nurses kind to you?" "That, they are, sir, kinder than I deserve."
For our platforms, we had two-inch oak planks, nailed down with iron spikes. With glad hearts we then got up our carriages and mounted our guns, of which twelve were 18 pounders twelve 24's, and twelve French 36's, equal to English 42's. A general joy was spread over the faces of our regiment, as we looked along our battery of thunderers.
The Court Martial censured Carden's decision, which was clearly wrong, for the power of heavy guns over lighter, of the American 24's over the British 18's, was greatest at a distance; therefore, to close rapidly, taking the chances of being raked if not avoidable by yawing was the smaller risk.
Besides these, when the expedition started, there were twenty gunboats, each carrying one fieldpiece, from 24's to 9-pounders; or, in some cases, howitzers. "By all these means," wrote Douglas on July 21st, "our acquiring an absolute dominion over Lake Champlain is not doubted of." The expectation was perfectly sound.
So Hood, with that inspiration of genius so common then among sailors, laid his seventy-four, the Centaur, close alongside the Diamond; made a hawser, with a traveller on it, fast to the ship and to the top of the rock; and in January 1804 got three long 24's and two 18's hauled up far above his masthead by sailors who, as they 'hung like clusters, appeared 'like mice hauling a little sausage.
The British carronades that had pounded French ships at close range proved useless against opponents that knew how to choose and hold their distance and could shoot straight with long 24'S. "It seems," said a writer in the London Times, "that the Americans have some superior mode of firing."
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