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Updated: June 3, 2025
"The very next morning the engagement proved hot, And brave Admiral Benbow received a chain-shot. O when he was wounded to his merry men he did say, Take me up in your arms, boys, and car-ry me a-way. "Now, boys, come and help me Tom none of your foolery for your poor old father is drunk ." We assisted old Tom into the other "bed-place" in the cabin.
Well, a round-shot came from our enemy astern, and took off the head of Bill Cox, who was on the larboard side; while at that identical moment a chain-shot from the ship abeam cut off Tom Jay's head, who was nearest the starboard side, so cleanly he happened to have a long neck that it was jerked on to the body of Bill Cox, who, very naturally, putting up his hands to feel what had become, of his own head, kept it there so tightly that it stuck positively stuck; and, the surgeon afterwards plastering it thickly round, it grew as firmly as if it had always belonged to the body.
At three, while hotly engaged with them, the admiral's right leg was shattered to pieces by a chain-shot, and he was carried below, but soon after, he ordered his cradle on the quarter-deck, and the fight was continued till daylight, when one of the enemy's ships, of 20 guns, was discovered to be very much disabled.
It sent a chain-shot on board the retiring pirate, took off a Portuguese head and spun it clean into the sea ever so far to windward, and cut the schooner's foremast so nearly through that it trembled and nodded, and presently snapped with a loud crack, and came down like a broken tree, with the yard and sail; the latter overlapping the deck and burying itself, black flag and all, in the sea; and there, in one moment, lay the Destroyer buffeting and wriggling like a heron on the water with his long wings broken an utter cripple.
On the twenty-third the admiral renewed the battle with his single ship unsustained by the rest of the squadron. On the twenty-fourth his leg was shattered by a chain-shot; notwithstanding which accident, he remained on the quarter-deck in a cradle and continued the engagement.
The Dutch shot, however, fell chiefly on their sails and rigging; and few ships were sunk or much damaged. Chain-shot was at that time a new invention; commonly attributed to De Wit. Sir John Harman exerted himself extremely on this day. The Dutch admiral, Evertz, was killed in engaging him. Darkness parted the combatants.
The 23d we saw a French ship of 90 tons to windward of us, which came down upon us as if to lay us on board, sending up some of his men in armour into the tops, and calling out to us to strike. Upon this we saluted him with some cross-bars, chain-shot, and arrows, so thick that we made their upper works fly about their ears, and tore his ship so miserably, that he fell astern and made sail.
"This will do, I think," said Wentworth, as, glancing his experienced eye carefully along the gun, he found it pointed immediately on the gigantic frame of the warrior. "If this chain-shot miss him, it will be through no fault of mine." Every eye was now riveted on the main-mast of the schooner, where the warrior was still engaged in attaching the portentous flag.
A last fellow in a red night-cap, swarming out on the bowsprit, plumped into the sea. The Gunner leapt on to the bulwark. "Cleared, be God! alow and aloft!" he roared, swinging his chain-shot about his head. "Ats off all! God save h'our gracious King." A bandaged head poked out of the hatchway. "They're swarmin in through the port-holes!" came a husky scream. Old Ding-dong lifted on his elbows.
As single words were not always explosive enough to make a report equal to their feelings, they had recourse to compounds; "pert and prating popinjay," "hackneyed gutscraper," "maggot of corruption," "toad on a dung-heap," "snivelling sophisticating hound," are a few of the chain-shot which strike our eyes in turning over the yellow faded files.
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