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Updated: June 11, 2025
Both parties exerted themselves to their utmost; and when the first boat, with Francisco and Clara, landed, the headmost of the assailants was not much more than half a mile from them; but, shallow water intervening, there was a delay, which was favourable to the pirate. Hawkhurst landed in his boat as the launch of the Comus fired her eighteen-pound carronade.
The crew had landed and taken her gun—a six-pounder—with them, which did the mischief to our boats. The gun they threw into deep water, after having spiked it. She was a small schooner, about seventy-five tons. I kept her as a tender, put an eighteen-pound carronade, a master’s mate, and twenty men on board her, and a few days afterwards she captured a very pretty schooner coming round Cape Mayzi.
The Americans now had leisure to examine, through their marine-glasses, the vessel which was so boldly following them to the place of battle. She was a man-of-war brig, flying the British ensign from both mastheads and at the peak. Her armament consisted of twelve eighteen-pound carronades and two long sixes, as against the fourteen eighteen-pound carronades and two long nines of the "Enterprise."
As they neared, Jack opened his fire with his eighteen-pound carronades and long nines. The gun-boats returned his fire, and they were within a quarter of a mile, when Jack shortened sail to his top-sails, and a warm engagement took place, which ended in one of the gun-boats being in a few minutes dismasted. The frigate, under all canvas, came rapidly up, and her shot now fell thick.
In the night they improved their defences, and mounted on them three more guns, one of eighteen-pound calibre, and the others of forty-two, French pieces dragged from the Grand Battery, a mile and three quarters round the Barachois. The cannon could be loaded only under a constant fire of musketry, which the enemy briskly returned. The French practice was excellent.
He informed us that, if we had seen all we considered necessary to the successful issue of our projected expedition, he would be off again at daybreak next morning, as Giuseppe was in a most unamiable, and indeed dangerous temper, having been badly mauled a week previously by a British frigate most probably the one which had manifested such a very marked interest in the Pinta's movements and that he had only scraped clear of her and made good his escape at last by the happy accident of being close to shoal water, into which he had retreated, with his schooner half unrigged and seven eighteen-pound shot-holes through her sides and bottom, which he had inefficiently plugged with the utmost difficulty, reaching the lagoons at last in a water-logged and sinking condition.
In going below, while I was on the ward-room ladder, the captain of the gun directly opposite the hatchway was struck full in the face by an eighteen-pound shot and fell back on me; we tumbled down the hatch together. I struck on my head, and, fortunately, he fell on my hips.
Of course he stole the greater portion, but nevertheless, in a few weeks he brought me seventy-two pounds' weight of well-cleaned and perfectly white wax, which he had made up into balls about the size of an eighteen-pound shot.
Here is the magazine, still containing some powder, and here is a battery of eighteen-pound guns, with pyramids of balls, all in readiness against an assault; which, however, hardly any turn of human affairs can hereafter bring about. The appearance of a fortress is kept up merely for ceremony's sake; and these cannon have grown antiquated.
The pirate drew nearer, and fired both guns in succession, hulled the Agra amidships, and sent an eighteen-pound ball through her foresail. Most of the faces were pale on the quarter-deck; it was very trying to be shot at, and hit, and make no return. The next double discharge sent one shot smash through the stern cabin window, and splintered the bulwark with another, wounding a seaman slightly.
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