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Updated: June 14, 2025
He saw them lurid and gigantic, pulling the triggers of their rifles or muskets, or working the batteries. The cannon also grew from twelve-pounders or eighteen-pounders into guns three or four times as large, and many stood where none had stood before. The smoke continued to inflame his brain also, and it made him pass through great alternations of hope and fear.
Fore and aft the shot flew crashing between the decks, seldom failing to find some victims, and oftentimes carrying off the heads of half-a-dozen men, as they stood at their guns, in its course from one end of the ship to the other. Never were guns more rapidly worked than were those two twelve-pounders on board the "Thisbe." The captain stood by, encouraging the men.
All the heavy cannon at fort Lee, except two twelve-pounders, with a considerable quantity of provisions and military stores, including three hundred tents, were lost.
The work was pushed forward day and night. It took most of the oxen belonging to the army to drag two twelve-pounders up the steep ascent, but when they were once planted on the summit, Ticonderoga lay at the mercy of the besiegers. When St. Clair saw the enemy getting ready to cannonade him from Mount Defiance, he at once gave orders to evacuate the fortress under cover of the night.
Bougainville had under his command the frigate La Boudeuse, carrying 26 twelve-pounders, and the store-ship L'Etoile, appointed to supply him with provisions and stores, and to accompany him during the whole of his voyage. His establishment consisted of eleven commissioned officers, three volunteers, and two hundred sailors, &c.
There were stored ready for service, 440 balls for the twelve-pounders, 1255 balls for the six-pounders, 546 pounds of mixed loose grapeshot, and many other sizes of strapped and canister shot. For the use of the infantry there were 7749 musket flints, 1825 pounds of musket powder, 1513 pounds of rifle powder, 31,390 cartridges, and 2047 blank cartridges.
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.
This will take the form of artillery practice, and it is prophesied that we shall get it pretty hot, as they will certainly have better guns than our twelve-pounders. The sun is melting. Teams jingle back, and the guns open fire from edge of slope, each one as it delivers its shot starting back as if with surprise at its own performance. "3 P.M. Our guns are blazing away merrily now.
In the naval contests of the last century armed ships were inferior in size to those of modern times, and their tough oak sides were not easily pierced by the six- and nine-pound balls then in general use, and twelve-pounders were considered of unusual dimension.
"He said the vessel had been armed with two twelve-pounders, and we have not even one. I suppose she has the other on the starboard side. If she had half a dozen of those playthings she might do something." "She may do a deal of mischief with two of them if they are well handled," suggested Louis.
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