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Updated: June 21, 2025
She sailed well, and carried two eighteen-pounders and six long eights, so that we had every reason to hope that we should pick up some prizes, if we did not get taken ourselves. That last contingency did not occur to us. Though it was hot, and we were rather crowded in the cabin, we had a very pleasant time on board.
The "Falcon" was not a fast vessel, seldom making, under favorable circumstances, more than eight knots an hour. She carried sixteen guns, twelve of which were eighteen-pounders. It had been intended that the "Falcon" should only stay a few hours at Gibraltar, proceeding immediately she had taken in a fresh supply of coal.
Don Alonso, on this news, made a handsome speech to his soldiers and mariners, encouraging them to their duty, and promising to divide among them all they should take from the English: he ordered the guns we had taken out of the ship that was lost to be put into the castle, and mounted for its defence, with two eighteen-pounders more, out of his own ship.
The water was smooth, and the day remarkably fine; we were distant from the shore more than a mile and a quarter, when the captain, wishing to try the range of the main-deck guns, which were long eighteen-pounders, ordered the gunner to elevate one of them and fire it towards the land. The gunner asked whether he should point the gun at any object.
So well was this battery placed, and so accurate the aim of its gunner, that the very first shot dismounted one of the eighteen-pounders in the fort. The second again struck the gun and completely disabled it. The besieged mounted their second heavy gun in its place, and were preparing to open fire on the French battery, when a shot struck it also and dismounted it.
The same evening the forces were landed upon the island, a little below Gascoigne's plantation. A red flag was hoisted on the mizzen-top of the Admiral's ship, and a battery was erected on the shore, in which were planted twenty eighteen-pounders. On this, the General, having done all he could to annoy the enemy, and prevent their landing, and finding that the Fort at St.
The artillery was generally six-pounder brass guns throwing only solid shot; but General Taylor had with him three or four twelve-pounder howitzers throwing shell, besides his eighteen-pounders before spoken of, that had a long range. This made a powerful armament. The Mexicans were armed about as we were so far as their infantry was concerned, but their artillery only fired solid shot.
Probably he had run away at first thinking that we were the biggest ship, whereas in reality, as we afterwards discovered, he was vastly our superior, not only in the number of his guns but in weight of metal, for they were eighteen-pounders, and while we had only 200 men fit to work our guns, he had 350.
She was commanded, I found, by Captain Henry Trollope, and carried fifty-six guns, twenty-eight long eighteen-pounders on the upper deck, and twenty-eight carronades, sixty-eight pounders, on the lower deck. Her crew consisted in all of three hundred and twenty men and boys, our arrival almost making up the complement.
The two eighteen-pounders, for which Clive had sent to Madras, were now well upon the road, under the protection of a small body of Sepoys, and were approaching Conjeveram. The enemy sent a considerable body of troops to cut off the guns, and Clive found that the small number which he had sent out, to meet the approaching party, would not be sufficient.
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