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Updated: June 16, 2025
The Queen Charlotte led to the attack. It was Lord Exmouth's intention not to reply to the enemy's fire in bearing down, unless it should become galling. In that case, the middle and main-deck guns, thirty long 24-pounders, were to have opened; keeping the upper deck for shortening sail, and the lower for working the cables. The guns on these decks were not primed until the ship had anchored.
When, in answer to the summons of our 24-pounders, the captain of the Dolores rounded-to and laid his topsail to the mast, he did not trouble his crew to haul down the studding-sails, for he knew that his ship was as good as lost to him, and the result was that the booms snapped short off at the irons, like carrots, leaving a raffle of slatting canvas, gear, and thrashing wreckage for the prize crew to clear away.
Besides the field-pieces bearing directly down the road, two 24-pounders poured upon their flank a storm of missiles of all sorts, with fragments of railway bars and broken chains for grape, and rusty nails and the rakings of the scrap-heap for canister.
It was not only upon the speed of the Europa, however, that we built our hopes of success; for not only was she an unusually fast vessel, but she carried an exceptionally heavy armament for a ship of her class, namely, twenty-four long 24-pounders on her main-deck, and fourteen long 8-pounders on her quarter-deck and forecastle; while, to crown all, her crew consisted of two hundred and ninety-two men every one of whom had voluntarily entered.
The vessel I now commanded was a brig sloop of fourteen 24-pounders, the ship’s company by no means a bad set, and in the course of the cruise I had the satisfaction of seeing them alert, clean and obedient. This was in a great measure owing to the officers, who, when supported, were firm, discriminating and encouraging.
He armed it with one 32-pounder cannon, three 24-pounders, and eight other guns. In the matter of small-arms he was even more liberal. He supplied the fort with 2500 muskets, 500 carbines, 400 pistols, and 500 swords. In the magazines he stored 300 quarter casks of rifle powder and 763 barrels of ordinary gunpowder.
Philip, on the left or north bank, was a work of brick and earth, flanked on either hand by a water battery. In the main work were mounted, in barbette, four 8-inch columbiads and one 24-pounder gun; the upper water battery carried sixteen 24-pounders, the lower one one 8-inch columbiad, one 7-inch rifle, six 42-pounders, nine 32-pounders, and four 24-pounders.
Fort Jackson, on the south or left bank of the river, was a casemated pentagon of brick, mounting in the casemates fourteen 24-pounder guns, and ten 24-pounder howitzers, and in barbette in the upper tier two 10-inch columbiads, three 8-inch columbiads, one 7-inch rifle, six 42-pounders, fifteen 32-pounders, and eleven 24-pounders, in all sixty-two guns.
If a head was seen above the walls, twenty rifle-bullets whizzed at it in a moment, and the same unremitted attention was paid to our boats as they landed. On another hill, much to the northward, and consequently, further inland, the French had erected a battery of six 24-pounders.
They were sister ships, of 11,600 tons' displacement, 450 feet on the waterline, and were rated at a speed of 22 1/2 knots. Each carried a complement of 765 men, and was armed with eight 8.2-inch guns, six 6-inch guns, twenty 24-Pounders, four machine-guns and four torpedo tubes. The Leipzig had a displacement of 3,250 tons and carried 286 men.
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