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Updated: June 25, 2025
Although the patriots had now been fifteen years at war with the Spaniards, they were still very indifferent artillerymen for artillery had little to do in most of their fights, which were generally decided by cavalry and infantry, and even in that of Ayacucho there were only a few small field-pieces in use on either side.
Battles had been fought, a large French fleet was in the Pacific, etc., etc.; and one of the boat's crew of the Ayacucho said that when they left Callao, a large French frigate and the American frigate Brandywine, which were lying there, were going outside to have a battle, and that the English frigate Blonde was to be umpire, and see fair play. Here was important news for us.
He afterwards said that we sailed well enough with the wind free, but that give him a taught bowline, and he would beat us, if we had all the canvas of the Royal George. The Ayacucho got to the anchoring ground about half an hour before us, and was furling her sails when we came up to it. This picking up your cables is a very nice piece of work.
This was bad for us, for, being "flying light," with little more than ballast trim, we were in no condition for showing off on a taught bowline, and had depended upon a fair wind, with which, by the help of our light sails and studding-sails, we meant to have been the first at the anchoring-ground; but the Ayacucho was a good league to windward of us, and was standing in, in fine style.
That body also renamed the capital "Sucre" and chose the hero of Ayacucho as President of the republic. Now, the Liberator thought, was the opportune moment to impose upon his territorial namesake a constitution embodying his ideas of a stable government which would give Spanish Americans eventually the political experience they needed.
I had made a pet of his brig, the Ayacucho, which pleased him almost as much as my remembrance of his bride and their wedding, which I saw at Santa Barbara in 1836. Doña Ramona was now the mother of a large family, and Wilson assured me that if I would visit him at his rancho, near San Luis Obispo, I should find her still a handsome woman, and very glad to see me.
He was quickened by this, and at once inquiries were made on each side, and we were in full talk about the Pilgrim and Alert, Ayacucho and Loriotte, the California and Lagoda.
I should have thought this owing to his spending his winters on a rancho instead of the deck of the Ayacucho, had not the same thing been told me by others. Passing round Point Conception, and steering easterly, we opened the islands that form, with the main-land, the canal of Santa Barbara.
Proceeding to the Havannah, we discharged our cargo, took in another, partly on our own account, partly on that of the Spanish government, and sailed for Callao on the 1st December, exactly eight days before the celebrated battle of Ayacucho dealt the finishing blow to Spanish rule on the southern continent of America, and established the independence of Peru.
We lay on our oars in the swell, just outside of the surf, waiting for a good chance to run in, when a boat, which had put off from the Ayacucho, came alongside of us, with a crew of dusky Sandwich-Islanders, talking and hallooing in their outlandish tongue. They knew that we were novices in this kind of boating, and waited to see us go in.
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