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Updated: May 24, 2025
That ought to suit us a great deal better than playing at long bowls, so please have both broadsides and the long gun double-shotted, and we will give him everything we can as he ranges up alongside, and then board him in the smoke, instead of waiting for him to board us." "An excellent plan, sir, I think," answered Simpson.
Six times the southrons charged, six times they were tumbled back by the Union batteries double-shotted with canister. Night fell on a drawn battle. The next day, January 1, 1863, was peaceful save for cavalry skirmishing. January 2nd the awful combat was renewed. Rosecrans having planted artillery upon commanding ground, Bragg must either carry this or fall back.
Eight guns, with grim muzzles trained on the old rider and his charging column, waited but for the captain's word to hurl their double-shotted canisters of death. And Tom Travis, in the agony of it, stood, sword in hand, stricken in dumbness and doubt. On came the column, the old warrior leading them on and: "The command the command! Give it to us, Captain," shouted the gunners. "Cease firing!"
Seventy-five!! Fifty!! Forty!!! the glint of a sword-blade on the British right! the word of command to their grenadiers! 'Ready! Present! Fire!!! Like six single shots from as many cannon the British volleys crashed forth, from right to left, battalion by battalion, all down that thin red line. The stricken front rank of the French fell before these double-shotted volleys almost to a man.
The practice continued to be exceedingly bad on both sides; so bad, indeed, that the New Englanders suffered more from the bursting of their own guns than from the enemy's fire. The nine instructors could not be everywhere; and all their good advice could not prevent the eager amateurs from grossly overloading the double-shotted pieces.
"Which makes her a very fair match for us," he contentedly remarked. "We will engage her at close quarters, Mr Sennitt," said the skipper; "be good enough, therefore, to have every gun double-shotted. Let no man fire until I give the word; we will wait until we are fairly abreast of her, and then give her our whole larboard broadside at once. Luff, you may!" to the master, who had taken the wheel.
The boarding-nettings were up, the guns double-shotted with grape and canister, and the swivels loaded with canisters of musket-balls. She lay, with her anchor apeak, about a mile from the shore, and no canoe could approach her in any direction without being distinctly seen and exposed to the full fire of our swivels immediately.
American seafarers were safe against kidnapping on their own decks, and they had won this security by virtue of their own double-shotted guns. At the same time England lifted the curse of the press-gang from her own people, who refused longer to endure it.
Of these the most acrid, namely, those of Peltier's paper, "L'Ambigu," had already received the reprobation of the British Ministry; but, as had been previously explained at Amiens, the Addington Cabinet decided that it could not venture to curtail the liberty of the Press, least of all at the dictation of the very man who was answering the pop-guns of our unofficial journals by double-shotted retorts in the official "Moniteur."
From what he knew of Blackbeard, it was useless to try to parley for the lives of his passengers. Better it was to answer with double-shotted guns than to beg for mercy. The British tars, stripped to the waist, turned anxious eyes to the skipper upon the quarter-deck while they quaffed pannikins of rum and water and cracked many a rough jest.
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