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Updated: June 18, 2025
When we went on board it was but just daylight, and the captain was not yet on deck, but the mate received us: we were surprised to find that she mounted twelve brass guns, remarkably well fitted, and that everything was apparently ready for action, rammers and sponges, shot and wadding being all up and at hand.
Permanent hands, day-laborers, rammers you can't get out of those forms." "But Europe is dissatisfied with these forms." "Dissatisfied, and seeking new ones. And will find them, in all probability." "That's just what I was meaning," answered Levin. "Why shouldn't we seek them for ourselves?" "Because it would be just like inventing afresh the means for constructing railways.
I could give you the names o' three captains now 'oo ought to be in an asylum, but you don't find me interferin' with the mentally afflicted till they begin to lay about 'em with rammers an' winch-handles. Only once I crept up a little into the wind towards Master Vickery. 'I wonder what she's doin' in England, I says.
The main-deck exhibited all the confusion incidental to a sea-fight, the guns sixteen twelve-pound carronades still unsecured, with their rammers and sponges flung down on the deck beside them, shot lying in the scuppers, overturned wadding-tubs, cutlasses, pistols, boarding-pikes, strewed all over the deck, and horrible sight several dark, silent figures lying stark and still in pools of blood, just as they had fallen in the fight.
The ships became now closely entangled for their full length on their starboard sides; so near were they together, that the guns of one touched the sides of the other, and in some places where the port-holes met, the guns were loaded by passing the rammers into the opposite vessel. Every discharge in this position was of course most deadly, and told fearfully upon the rotten hull of the Richard.
They were fine bronze guns, glistening in the sun, and their wide mouths looked threatening. Spongers, rammers and the real gunners all stood by. Henry saw a twelve pound ball hoisted into each bronze throat, and then, as the gunners did their work, each mass of metal crashed through the thickets, the savages yelling in delight at the thunderous reports that came back, in echo after echo.
This gun was kept scrupulously clean and neat in all its arrangements; the rammers, sponges, screws, and other apparatus belonging to it, were neatly arranged beside it, and four or five of its enormous iron shot were piled under its muzzle. The traversing gear connected with it was well greased, and, in short, everything about the gun gave proof of the care that was bestowed on it.
The entrance to the little fort was a projecting passage, about twelve feet long, and only three feet wide, formed of two rows of enormous palisades, sunk two feet six inches in the earth, which was pounded closely down with heavy rammers. This passage was an important feature in the power of defence, as it added to the flanking fire.
With the British vessel's anchors hooked in her opponent's port forechannels, the two drifted away to leeward, the Brunswick by virtue of flexible rammers alone able to use her lower deck guns, which were given alternately extreme elevation and depression and sent shot tearing through the Vengeur's deck and hull; whereas the Vengeur, with a superior fire of carronades and musketry, swept the enemy's upper deck.
Ned saw the officers, driving the men into place with the flats of swords, and he heard the note of a trumpet, singing loud and clear over the prairie. Then his eyes turned back to the gun, because there his duty lay. Ned heard the trumpet peal again, and then the thud of hoofs. He saw the rammers and spongers gather about the gun.
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