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The firing on both sides was tremendous; an idea of it may be obtained from the fact, that more than twenty broadsides were fired in twenty-six minutes! In the mizzen staystail of the General Monk there were afterwards counted, three hundred and sixty-five shot-holes.
The wind was about north-east, and the stranger, standing to the nor'ard on the starboard tack, was enabled to cross our bows. Soon afterwards she tacked to the eastward, and we also hove about until, she being on our weather quarter, we again tacked, as did also the stranger. We exchanged broadsides with her in passing, when we once more tacked and brought her to close action about noon.
As the Windsor Castle was thrown up on the wind, an exchange of broadsides took place, which, according to the usual custom of all well regulated broadsides in close conflict, cut away a certain proportion of the spars and rigging, and cut up a proportion of the ships' companies.
As the Victory approached, the French ships opened with broadsides upon her, in hopes of disabling her before she could close with them. Not a shot was returned, though men were falling on her decks until fifty lay dead or wounded, and her main-top-mast, with all her studding-sails and booms, had been shot away.
At half-past six on the morning of the 9th of July, Farragut, who had left Port Hudson on the Monongahela on the evening of the 7th, started from Donaldsonville with the Essex, Kineo, and Tennessee in company, ran the gauntlet of the batteries, swept and silenced them with his broadsides, and endured for nearly two hours a brisk musketry fire from the enemy without serious loss suffered or inflicted.
On the 11th of October the British flotilla was seen coming up the lake. The rival forces met at Valcour Island, and the battle began. From noon till night the combatants hurled broadsides at each other without ceasing. The British then drew off to repair damages, meaning to renew the fight in the morning.
In order to make each ship count as much as possible as an offensive unit, Theaphanes made an innovation by fitting out Greek fire tubes on the broadsides as well as in the bows. This may be noted as the first appearance of the broadside armament idea, which had to wait six hundred years more before it became finally established.
One in the ship saying to the Duke, "Sir, methinks De Ruyter hath given us more: than two broadsides;" "Well," says the Duke, "but you shall find him run by and by," and so he did, says Sir W. Coventry; but after the Duke himself had been first made to fall off. The Resolution had all brass guns, being the same that Sir J. Lawson had in her in the Straights.
The Arzobispo, though old and clumsy, was a stout-built craft; and so thick was its hide, that the broadsides of the Yankee had done the hull no damage to speak of. The superstructure, however, was completely shattered; the masts and rigging hung like sweeps over the sides; and, to the unpractised eye, the ship was a complete wreck.
She having shortened sail, her antagonists were compelled to do the same; and while they poured their broadsides into her, she returned them as rapidly as the crew could run the guns in and out.
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