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Updated: June 14, 2025
We had three field-batteries engaged, the naval twelve-pounders, Joey, and the pop-guns; about thirty guns altogether." We slept that night by the side of the railway, tethering our horses to the wire fence that runs down it. Rain fell heavily all night. Most of us had no blankets, and we lay bundled up, shivering under our greatcoats on the sopping ground.
Out of their own mouths the foreigners at once were convicted of inferior stuff, and their two twelve-pounders crammed with grapnel, which ought to have scattered mortality, banged upward, as harmless as a pod discharging seed. In no account of this great conflict is any precision observed concerning the pell-mell and fisticuff parts of it.
From the cot I watched the others making more holes in the wall, through which they shoved their rifles and then there was a great cheer outside, and a man came running in crying, "Alvarez and Heinze are at the corner with the twelve-pounders!"
"But you are taking a higher flight than I am, Louis, and we will overhaul your idea some other time, when there are no twelve-pounders near," interposed the captain, as he glanced at the enemy. "My recording angel is not one of the sort you are thinking about; though, metaphorically speaking, I believe in those to whom you allude.
Below, Jean Touzel had eyes only for this sea-fight before him, for, despite the enormous difference, the Englishmen were now fighting their little craft for all that she was capable. But the odds were terribly against her, though she had the windward side, and the firing of the privateer was bad. The carronades on her flush decks were replying valiantly to the twelve-pounders of the brig.
The barque was named Don Miguel, of three hundred and forty-seven tons measurement, hailing from Havana; with a crew of fifty-six, all told; and she mounted twelve twelve-pounders, with an ample supply of ammunition for them in her magazine. The brigantine rejoiced in the name El Caiman.
It has been much neglected; the floods of water have carried away the gate, and destroyed the wall on each side of it; but the present commander is putting it into thorough repair. When finished, it will mount six nine- and six twelve-pounders.
They then crossed into an open field and attempted to flank our right. He was met there by three twelve-pounders, the marines under Captain Miller, and my men acting as infantry, and again was totally cut up. By this time not a vestige of the American army remained, except a body of five or six hundred posted on a height on my right, from which I expected much support from their fine situation.
It was those two fires that saved the day. From the sky-line to the rebel rear came the thunder of a salvo of artillery. It was the short bark of twelve-pounders loaded up with blank a signal and the rebels did not wait to see whether this was friend or foe.
The four twelve-pounders and two hundred muskets captured with the Detroit is a serious loss to us. If the Detroit is lost to us, however, she is of no further use to the enemy. We are, I repeat, greatly outweighted and outnumbered by the enemy, both in siege guns and artillery, and have no forge for heating shot.
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