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Updated: June 3, 2025
While they lay here a vessel appeared, the people on board of which stated that they had come to traffic secretly with the English. Suddenly, however, about midnight, they were seen to take their departure, and the vessel, bursting into flames, was discovered to be a fire-ship. The vessels slipping their cables, by great exertions put to sea and escaped damage.
Our canoes being all ready, we sailed from Quibo on the 20th July towards Realejo, a port a small way to the N.W. of Leon, being now 640 men, with eight ships, three tenders, and a fire-ship. Coasting along to the N.W. we passed the gulfs of Dulce and Nicoya, and the Isla del Cano, the land along the coast being low and covered with wood, but almost destitute of inhabitants.
The eyes of his old commander had fallen on him favorably it must have been an auspicious day and in less than half an hour the white men in the "Ofiss" had written his name on a document as Serang of the fire-ship Sofala. Since that time he had repeatedly looked at that estuary, upon that coast, from this bridge and from this side of the bar.
A French frigate of thirty-six guns was taken by captain Parker, in a new fire-ship of inferior force. Divers privateers of the enemy were sunk, burned, or taken, and a great number of merchant ships fell into the hands of the English. Nor was the success of the British ships of war confined to the English channel.
Nevertheless all eyes were anxiously fixed upon the remaining fire-ship, or "hell-burner," the 'Hope, which had now drifted very near the place of its destination. Tearing her way between the raft and the shore, she struck heavily against the bridge on the Kalloo side, close to the block-house at the commencement of the floating portion of the bridge.
Seeing the desperate state of the Marlborough, Mathews, who throughout managed blunderingly, with the single exception of the original attack, had thought to aid her and divert the fire of the Real by sending against the latter a fire-ship. It was elementary that vessels of this class needed energetic support and cover in their desperate work.
Some of the boldest threw themselves into the stream in order to get a close view of the fire-ship and extinguish it, when by its weight it suddenly broke through, burst the floating work which had detained it, and drove with terrible force on the bridge of boats.
The order of their going was as follows: Ahead went the improvised fire-ship in charge of Wolverstone, with a crew of six volunteers, each of whom was to have a hundred pieces of eight over and above his share of plunder as a special reward. Next came the Arabella.
West, the second in command, was a gentleman universally respected for his probity, ability, and resolution. The ten ships destined for this expedition were but in very indifferent order, poorly manned, and unprovided with either hospital or fire-ship.
Amid the commiseration of his friends, among whom was, of course, Terence O'Meara, Jim, together with other sick men from the flagship's crew, was put into a steam-launch and conveyed to the gunboat, from the deck of which he watched, half an hour later, while comfortably seated in a deck-chair, the departure of the Chilian squadron, consisting of the Blanco Encalada, Almirante Cochrane, O'Higgins, Chacabuco, Magellanes, and Abtao, the last-named being filled with combustibles so that she might serve, if necessary, as a fire-ship.
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