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Updated: June 4, 2025
Here's to our falling in with him!" and we clicked our mugs on that right hopefully. "What weight do we carry?" I asked, in view of the Frenchman's heavy guns, our own not being yet mounted. "Four eighteens a-side, and one twenty-four forward and one aft. There'll be some chips flying if we meet him, but we'll do our best to close his fist and stop his grabbing. You're wanting to get back?
They were crowned with rows of white sandbags, interspersed with blue bundles that looked like army blankets or blue bed sticks filled with earth. There was not much stirring for the moment. Suddenly the guns woke up behind our line. The Canadian eighteens and five inchers took up the chorus. Back came half a dozen German forty pounder shells bursting in the field on my right.
The other fell short. "Fourteens!" the captain said. "I thought she wouldn't have eighteens, so far forward." Shot after shot was fired but, so far, no serious damage had been caused by them. The brig had been hulled once, and two shots had passed through her sails. The captain went, himself, to the pivot gun; and laid it carefully.
The effect, besides giving every prospect of a distant engagement, was to straighten the line to nearly mathematical precision. "Is it your wish, Sir Gervaise, that we should endeavour to open our lee lower ports?" asked Greenly. "Unless we attempt something of the sort, we shall have nothing heavier than the eighteens to depend on, should Monsieur de Vervillin see fit to begin."
The fleet that he commanded consisted of the flagship "Saratoga," carrying eight long twenty-four-pounders, six forty-two-pound and twelve thirty-two-pound carronades; the brig "Eagle," carrying eight long eighteens, and twelve thirty-two-pound carronades; schooner "Ticonderoga," with eight long twelve-pounders, four long eighteen-pounders, and five thirty-two-pound carronades; sloop "Preble," with seven long nines; and ten galleys.
Watching the frigate carefully, the helm was put down at just the right moment; and as our topsail swept round and was braced up bang! bang! bang! bang! roared our eighteens, away skipped the shot, and crash went all four of them slap into the stern of the disabled Frenchman, playing the very mischief with the gilt-ginger- bread work with which that part of the ship was profusely decorated.
The Essex being crippled and at anchor, Captain Hillyar, faithful, and most properly, to his principle of surrendering no advantage, chose his position beyond effective carronade range. The battle was therefore fought between the six long twelves of the Essex and the broadside of the Phoebe, consisting of thirteen long eighteens, one twelve, and one nine.
"All gentlemen hate to have a tree cut down, all blackguards delight in the process. Admiral, we will not hurt your trees. They will add to our strength, by masking it. Six long twenty-fours of the new make, here in front, and two eighteens upon either flank, and I should like to see the whole of the Boulogne flotilla try to take yonder shore by daylight.
Well, we cut away the wreck of the mast, and we threw twelve of our guns over, short eighteens they were, and all heavy metal, and that lightened her a bit, and we began to have hopes of weathering out the gale, when the word was passed of a strange sail to windward.
The Neversink's main-deck-batteries then consisted, as now, of twenty-four-pounders; the Macedonian's of only eighteens.
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