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Updated: June 19, 2025
Watson uttered a cry which was meant to be triumphant, although it came like a hoarse croak from his parched throat. Then the tears gushed into his eyes as he gazed again upon the flag. It almost seemed as if he were home again. Nearer and nearer they rowed to the squadron. There were four ships of war, and now they could see the sailors walking the decks and the guns in the portholes.
They had reached the door and their sledge hammers were raining blows on its solid timbers. An incessant fire poured from the portholes which Brown had cut through the walls. The men were so close to the door his shots were not effective. Brown ordered one of his prisoners, Captain Dangerfield, a clerk of the Armory Staff, to secure the fastenings.
By eleven o'clock he was aboard in his bunk, still thinking when he should have been asleep, staring wide-eyed at dim deck beams, his mind flitting restlessly from one thing to another. Steve Ferrara lay in the opposite bunk, wheezing his breath in and out of lungs seared by poison gas in Flanders. Smells of seaweed and tide-flat wafted in through open hatch and portholes.
All the pitch, tar, and brimstone in the town were put on board of her, together with other combustibles. On the deck were placed logs of wood, which were dressed up in coats and hats to look like men, and by their sides were muskets and cutlasses. Portholes were made, and in these were placed other logs to represent cannon.
The vessels backed into the bay and anchored to await the order to sail. The Matteawan hove her cable short at 10 o'clock. All eyes were riveted on the Seguranca, the flagship, and when the final signal came a mighty cheer arose. From the lower row of portholes to her tops hats waved in wild delight. The anchor was quickly weighed and the great vessel pointed her prow down the bay.
As on the Wolf, they were sometimes caught spying on us, and listening at the portholes or ventilators of our cabins. We next picked up the Wolf on the afternoon of December 19th, and heard that since we had last seen her she had sunk a French sailing vessel, the Maréchal Davout, loaded with grain for Europe.
When they first began to fire, I called aloud to the first mate to fire at the boat out of the steerage portholes, which not being done, and the people I had ordered upon deck with small arms not appearing, I was extremely surprised, and the more when an officer came and told me 'The people would not take arms.
He and certain other adventurers had purchased a vessel of some five hundred tons, which they proposed to convert into a pirate by cutting portholes for cannon, and running three or four carronades across her main deck.
Even then we did not know whether we were safely through the lines, or whether we had been brought to under the guns of a hostile ship, for we could distinguish nothing whatever through the portholes. However, we were soon released from the cabin, and walked on deck, to find ourselves safely through the blockade.
There the flaming thing lay right up against the portholes, the flames catching the tarred rigging, and running up the masts. Farragut walked his quarter-deck as coolly as though the ship was on parade. "Don't flinch from that fire, boys," he sang out, as the flames rushed in the portholes, and drove the men from their guns. "There's a hotter fire than that for those who don't do their duty.
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