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Updated: May 18, 2025
Besides her thirteen-, eight-, and six-inch guns, she carried a secondary quick-fire battery of twenty six-pounders, four one-pounders, and four Gatling guns distributed about the superstructure and in the fighting-tops. The peculiar efficacy of this battery lay in its menace to threatening torpedo-boats, and its hostility to range-finders, big-gun sights, and opposing gunners.
There ain't nothin' wrong with war, Scraggsy, unless you happen to get killed. Then it's like cholera. You can cure every case except the first one." They had come inside the minimum range of the Mexican's long gun now, so that only the one-pounders continued to peck at the Maggie. Evidently the Mexican was as eager to get to close quarters as Mr. Gibney, for he held steadily on his course.
The light battery of Hotchkiss one-pounders, under Lieutenant J. B. Hughes, of the Tenth Cavalry, was handled with conspicuous gallantry. On the hill-slope immediately around me I had a mixed force composed of members of most of the cavalry regiments, and a few infantrymen. There were about fifty of my Rough Riders with Lieutenants Goodrich and Carr.
Our men had won a great victory, had not lost a ship, and had only one man killed and one wounded. The story of the Gloucester's fight with the "destroyers" has been graphically told by one who was on board her during that exciting time. "The Spaniards were beginning to get the range with their deadly automatic one-pounders. One shot in the right place would sink us.
Going up on the other side, I took a piece of bread out of my pocket, and was just trying to persuade myself to offer our two companions some, when crack! crack! came a couple of Nordenfeldt shells right behind us. It didn't take us long to get over the hill, the vicious little one-pounders crackling and fizzling round us all the while. On the other side a comical sight met our eyes.
We got across safely, but had not been there five minutes before a grandly directed shell sent the General and his staff off the brow of the hill in double quick time. We delivered our dispatches, and were getting ready for a gallop over the quarter mile of veldt, when, pom, pom, pom, pom, came a dozen one-pounders a few yards away right across our track.
"They have a great many guns," Peters said, as the rattle of the machine-guns and the thud of quick-firing one-pounders joined the continuous fire of several Boer batteries and the deeper roar of their big gun, "and they seem to be in greater force than was supposed, for I can make out large reinforcements coming up to them from behind."
Nevertheless, it was effective, for to a man the crews of the one-pounders deserted their posts and tumbled below; seeing which the individual in command lost his nerve. "She's hauled down her rag," shrieked Scraggs. "Be merciful, Gib. There's men dyin' on that boat." "Lay alongside that craft," Mr. Gibney shouted to the helmsman.
Their money is all gone, and they subsist merely by levying contributions. But, sure, banditti can never conquer a kingdom! On the other hand, what cannot any number of men do, who meet no opposition? They have hitherto taken no place but open towns, nor have they any artillery for a siege but one-pounders.
The six, three, and one-pounders direct their rain of shots at the turret portholes, gun shields, or unprotected parts of the ship, having also an eye to torpedo- boats, while from the fighting tops, the Gatlings rain a thousand shots a minute on any of the crew in exposed positions.
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