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Updated: June 6, 2025
She was captured off Bilboa by a French vessel, sent in as a prize, and condemned because of the frigate's visit. This case is notable because of the pure application of a single principle, not obscured by other incidental circumstances, as often happens.
To prevent the corvette from following, the Frenchmen again returned to their guns, and the frigate suddenly hauling up let fly her broadside. Pearce saw the manoeuvre about to be executed, and was just in time to haul up also to save the "Vestal" from being raked. The frigate's shot, accompanied by a shower of musketry, came tearing on board.
It appeared that this official had his confidential agents ashore, who supplied him with spirits, and in various boxes, packages, and bundles addressed to the Purser and others brought them down to the frigate's boats at the landing.
This is the kind of fellow to walk a frigate's deck and bowl his broadsides into the "Gadlant Thudnder-bomb," or any forty-port-holed adventurer who would like to exchange a few tons of iron compliments. I don't know what put this into my head, for it was not till some time afterward I learned the young fellow had been in the naval school at Annapolis.
We got the boat round without much risk, and, in less time than it takes to write it, were sending down towards the ship at a furious rate. I steered, and passed so near the frigate's rudder, that I thought, for an instant, I had gone too close. A rope was hove as we cleared the lee-quarter of the frigate, and the people on board hauled us alongside.
We are small, it is true, and our guns are but light; nevertheless we may break the frigate's cabin-windows, while you are doing him still greater injury from these heights. I trust you will assign ze Ving-and-Ving some honorable station, should you come to blows with the republicans."
The Frenchmen replied briskly enough at first; but as they occasionally got a dose from the frigate's long guns, they gradually slackened in their efforts to defend their ships, and finally were seen taking to their boats and escaping on shore. Mr Nott instantly volunteered to board and set fire to the corvette.
Our course was set for the northwest, and the next day our frigate's propeller finally churned the waters of the Pacific. "Open your eyes! Open your eyes!" repeated the sailors of the Abraham Lincoln. And they opened amazingly wide.
The enemy after this hauled up on the larboard tack, and was about to pour her starboard broadside into us, when, our crew springing to their feet, our sails were thrown back, and the French frigate's larboard bow came directly on to our starboard quarter.
Mason now seemed to have got his hand in, for his next shot hit the frigate's bowsprit-end as fair as though he had specially aimed at it, knocking the cap to pieces, and causing the jib-booms to go over to leeward.
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