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Updated: June 21, 2025
Then at last the long eighteen-pounders on the gun-deck got a word in. The old Niler was not the man to miss a vessel alongside in a quiet sea: he sent two round shot clean through him; the third splintered his bulwark and swept across his deck. "His masts fire at his masts!" roared Dodd to Monk, through his trumpet.
This consisted of a battery mounting three eighteen-pounders, upon the road, flanked by other batteries, one on each side; all so placed as that whichsoever of them should be attacked, it might be defended by a cross-fire from the rest.
Now they drag two eighteen-pounders amidships, double-shot them, and point them down the main hatch, so as to blow out the bottom of the ship. In a few minutes everything is ready. "Start the fires!" A puff of smoke, a little blaze, then flames everywhere! Quick and sharp comes the order to leap aboard the ketch. Decatur, sure that the work thus far is well done, is the last man to leave.
The block-houses remain, but the work, which was composed of fascines and sods, is falling down, and the ridge on which it stands is too narrow to admit of any useful works being constructed upon it." The armament of Fort Howe, according to Col. Morse, consisted of 2 five and a half inch brass mortars, and 8 iron guns; the latter comprising 2 eighteen-pounders, 4 six-pounders, and 2 four-pounders.
On the 10th, four eighteen-pounders with two howitzers were placed in battery upon the top of the sand-hill; on the 11th, the fort surrendered; and on the 12th, the garrison, consisting of four hundred men of the second American regiment, marched out with all the honours of war, and laid down their arms upon the glacis.
Provisions had been stored in the fort, before the commencement of the siege, sufficient for sixty days; and of this a third was already exhausted when, on the 14th of October, the French troops serving with Riza Sahib received two eighteen-pounders, and seven smaller pieces of artillery.
The one battery available for service consisted of two eighteen-pounders and a four-pounder, mounted behind earth breastworks. The gunners were put under the command of an old sailor, who had been impressed into the British navy, where he served four years. The skill he thus acquired in gunnery, he now gladly used against his former oppressors.
The Latona was a fine thirty-eight gun frigate, with eighteen-pounders; the Belle Poule and Tartar were excellent of their class. The Dutch squadron consisted of one seventy-four, one sixty-eight, one sixty-four, and five fifty-fours.
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.
"She carried fourteen guns, mostly eighteen-pounders, and a thirty-two-pounder on a pivot. She had eighty hands at first, but eight of them went away in the prize." "Do you know whether she has gone off straight for France or whether she is going to remain here?" "Prom what I gathered from the men, sir, I believe the other two privateers are going straight home.
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