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Updated: June 16, 2025
The first lieutenant went down on the main-deck and personally repeated the Captain's instructions; and before he returned to the quarter-deck the first of our long 24-pounders spoke its message, the shot passing through the stranger's foresail and narrowly missing the mast.
Sleep wrapped the whole Mexican line, and but few words were spoken in the American ranks as the troops took up their respective positions: Garland, with Dunn's battery and Huger's 24-pounders, on the right, against the Molino; Wright, at the head of the stormers, and followed by the light division under Captain Kirby Smith, in the centre; M'Intosh, with Duncan's battery, on the left, near the ravine looking toward the Casa Mata; and Cadwallader, with his brigade, in reserve.
She was pierced for 56 guns, but only mounted 52, of which 32 were long 24-pounders, and 20 42-pounders, her complement being 480 men. The other two mounted 54 guns, and the Constitution carried 32 instead of 42-pounder carronades.
Having no round-shot for the two 24-pounders, we were reduced to firing back on the city the shot of the same calibre hurled against us, and a reward of half a rupee per shot was paid by the commissariat to any camp-follower bringing in the missiles.
When all the siege artillery was in position there were forty pieces, of which six were 8-inch sea-coast howitzers on siege carriages, eight 24-pounders, seven 30-pounder Parrotts, four 6-inch rifles, four 9-inch Dahlgren guns, four 8-inch mortars, three 10-inch mortars, and four 13-inch mortars.
The British batteries had found and were hammering at it; not the guns upon Mount Olia, which had been hauled thither to dominate those of the citadel, but a dozen 24-pounders disposed, with a line of mortars behind them, on the lower slope above the estuary, where an out-cropping ridge of rock gave firm ground among the sand-dunes.
Tempelhof, at that time a subaltern of artillery, was stationed with a couple of 24-pounders in attendance on the Battalion Plothow, which with three others and some cavalry lay to the south side of Hochkirch, forming a kind of fore-arm or POTENCE there to right of the big Battery, with their rear to Hochkirch; and keeping vedettes and Free-corps parties spread out into the woods and Devil's Hills ahead.
Where do you think I am? Why, truly, writing on a cot between two 24-pounders in a Spanish 84. You will wonder, I am sure, at seeing the date of this letter, and perhaps wish to know by what good fortune I found a berth in a Spanish man-of-war, an Event which I little expected when I wrote last. I shall begin my story from Geneva, and you shall hear my adventures to the present moment.
The largest, with which the Glutton was chiefly engaged, was supposed to be the Brutus, armed with 46 24-pounders on the main-deck, and several 36-pounders on the quarter-deck and forecastle, while she was fully 300 tons larger than the Glatton.
The greatest industry was used, Hull reported, in making preparations to besiege, but it was not till August 7, nearly four weeks after crossing, that the siege guns were ready; and then the artillery officers reported that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to take them to Malden by land, and by water still more so, because the ship of war "Queen Charlotte," carrying eighteen 24-pounders, lay off the mouth of the Canard, commanding the stream.
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