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Updated: June 3, 2025
The wind blew stronger and stronger. On flew the fire-ship. The boom was reached. With a crash she forced her way through it. She was bearing directly down for the French fleet. "To the boats!" shouted Ronald. The cry was repeated by the other officers with him. "Wait till I give the word to shove off, so that no one may be left behind. To your stations, and fire the trains," he added.
As Tyre was divided from the continent by an arm of the sea, there was necessity for filling up the intermediate space with a bank or pier, before the place could be closely invested. This work, accordingly, was immediately undertaken and in a great measure completed; when all the wood, of which it was principally composed, was unexpectedly burned by means of a fire-ship sent in by the enemy.
The next night had been fixed for sending forth the fireships against the bridge, and for the entrance of the fleet into the harbour. One fire-ship floated a little way towards the bridge and exploded ingloriously.
As the French pilots had been at odds among themselves as to the exact position of the fleet, the admiral had taken the precaution to send a fire-ship and three buccaneering vessels several miles in advance of the rest of the squadron. Unfortunately these scouts drew too little water and passed over the reefs without touching them.
He says: "Far from impeding the direct action of the fire-ship, which was naught or nearly so during the confused battles of the war of 1652, the regularity and ensemble newly attained in the movements of squadrons seem rather to favor it. The fire-ships played a very important part at the battles of Lowestoft, Pas de Calais, and the North Foreland.
But although a considerable reward was promised to the boatmen sent to reconnoitre they did not venture near the enemy, but returned without effecting their purpose, and reported that the bridge of boats was uninjured, and the fire-ship had had no effect.
This vessel of wrath appeared in 1699, indorsed as a man of a sweet gospel spirit, though, indeed, one of his indorsers had himself been "a scandalous fire-ship among the churches." This doubtful personage copied his sermons from a volume by his namesake, Dr. Samuel Bolton, "Sam the Doctor and Sam the Dunce," Mather calls them.
James's Hall that I nearly fell off it from laughing. As we sat on deck that evening, smoking a cigar in the bright moonlight, we could still hear in the distance the gongs and laughter of the jovial Kanowits celebrating the arrival of the "fire-ship," no common occurrence in these waters.
Scarcely had the signal been made for setting the trains on fire, than the flames rose in all directions; a magazine, filled with pitch, tar, tallow, oil, and hemp, was quickly in a blaze; while the guns of the fire-ship went off in the direction the enemy were approaching.
He was delivered to the council of war, and shot the next day. One evening between eleven o'clock and midnight, a fire-ship, rigged like a French ship, flying French colors, and in every respect resembling a gunboat, advanced towards the line of battle and passed through. By unpardonable negligence the chain had not been stretched that evening.
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