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Updated: June 18, 2025
The western half of it, from top to bottom, had been carried away bodily; there were eleven shot-holes in the other half; the lantern had been completely demolished; and the ground everywhere in the vicinity was strewn with fragments of iron and glass.
The carpenter made ready sheets of lead, and plugs of oakum, for the stopping of shot-holes. The cook-room fire was extinguished. The sails were splashed with a solution of alum. The people went to eat and drink at their quarters. Extra tiller ropes, of raw hide, were rove abaft. The trumpeters put on their tabards, "of the Admiral's colours," and blew points of war as they sailed into action.
He was delighted to see Jolliffe and Mesty after so long an absence; he laughed at the boatswain's cheeks, inquired after the purser's steward's shot-holes, shook hands with Gascoigne and his other mess-mates, gave Vigors a thrashing, and then sat down to supper.
This was no light task, for not only were we completely dismasted, but the hull of the ship was terribly knocked about, the carpenter reporting five feet of water in the hold and twenty-seven shot-holes between wind and water, apart from our other damages, which were sufficiently serious.
I saw one pistol from which the sight had been cut as neatly as it could have been done by machinery. A piece of board a few inches long was cut from a fence on the field, in which there were thirty-one shot-holes. It was now nine o'clock. The wounded had been carried to the hospital. The dismounted troopers were placed in charge of them, in the double capacity of nurses and guards.
As the enemy were to windward this was not easily to be done, and we had to wait patiently in the hope that the enemy would choose to renew the fight, while in the meantime our top-men were knotting and splicing rigging, and the carpenter's crew were strengthening the wounded yards and stopping shot-holes.
"By the Lord! it was the brig that saved us!" cried Mr. Wharton. "Hudson brought her into action with the Frenchman, and was blown out of the water by a broadside!" The little captain turned on his heel and paced up and down the deck. Already his crew were plugging the shot-holes, knotting and splicing and mending.
He informed us that, if we had seen all we considered necessary to the successful issue of our projected expedition, he would be off again at daybreak next morning, as Giuseppe was in a most unamiable, and indeed dangerous temper, having been badly mauled a week previously by a British frigate most probably the one which had manifested such a very marked interest in the Pinta's movements and that he had only scraped clear of her and made good his escape at last by the happy accident of being close to shoal water, into which he had retreated, with his schooner half unrigged and seven eighteen-pound shot-holes through her sides and bottom, which he had inefficiently plugged with the utmost difficulty, reaching the lagoons at last in a water-logged and sinking condition.
She had lost her mizzenmast, and her other masts and several of her yards were injured. Her sails and rigging were cut to pieces. So numerous were the shot-holes in her hull, that the carpenter and his mates were unable to stop them until she had three and a half feet of water in her hold.
The gunboat was accordingly hauled alongside the wharf at Antofagasta, her heavy guns were lifted out of her, and the vessel was careened in order that the shot-holes below her water-line might be plugged.
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