--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Week-days.|Sept. 1779.|Wind. |Courses.|Dist. |Lat. |Long. | Bearings.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | | | |Flamb. H.
Thursday,\| 23.24. |S.S.W.| E.S.E. |Nothing.|52.13.|0.11. E.|W. aftern.
Friday. /| | | W.S.W. | | | |W. by N.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Foggy at first,--clear afterwards.
"At 1 P.M. beat to quarters. All my men at quarters but West, who was on
shore when we sailed, the men say on leave,--and Collins in the sick
bay. (MEM. _shirked_.) The others in good spirits. Mr. Wallis made us a
speech, and the men cheered well. Engaged the enemy at about 7.20 P.M.
Mr. Wallis had bade me open my larboard ports, and I did so; but I did
not loosen the stern-guns, which are fought by my crew, when necessary.
The captain hailed the stranger twice, and then the order came to fire.
Our gun No. 2 (after-gun but one) was my first piece. No. 1 flashed, and
the gunner had to put on new priming. Fired twice with those guns, but
before we had loaded the second time, for the third fire, the enemy ran
into us. One of my men (Craik) was badly jammed in the shock,--squeezed
between the gun and the deck. But he did not leave the gun. Tried to
fire into the enemy, but just as we got the gun to bear, and got a new
light, he fell off. It was very bad working in the dark. The lanthorns
are as bad as they can be. Loaded both guns, got new portfires, and we
ran into the enemy. We were wearing, and I believe our jib-boom got into
his mizzen rigging. The ships were made fast by the men on the upper
deck. At first I could not bring a gun to bear, the enemy was so far
ahead of me. But as soon as we anchored, our ship forged ahead a
little,--and by bringing the hind axle-trucks well aft, I made both my
starboard guns bear on his bows. Fired right into his forward ports. I
do not think there was a man or a gun there. In the second battery,
forward of me, they had to blow our own ports open, because the enemy
lay so close. Stopped firing three times for my guns to cool. No. 2
cools quicker than No. 1, or I think so. Forward we could hear
musket-shot, and grenadoes,--but none of these things fell where we were
at work. A man came into port No. 5, where little Wallis was, and said
that the enemy was sinking, and had released him and the other
prisoners. But we had no orders to stop firing. Afterwards there was a
great explosion. It began at the main hatch, but came back to me and
scalded some of my No. 2 men horribly. Afterwards Mr. Wallis came and
took some of No. 2's men to board. I tried to bring both guns to bear
with No. 1's crew. No. 2's crew did not come back. At half-past ten all
firing stopped on the upper deck. Mr. Wallis went up to see if the enemy
had struck. He did not come down,--but the master came down and said we
had struck, and the orders were to cease firing.
"We had struck to the Richard, 44, Commodore Jones, and the Alliance,
40, which was the vessel they saw from the quarter-deck. Our consort,
the Countess Scarborough, had struck to the enemy's ship Pallas. The
officers and crew of the Richard are on board our ship. The mids talk
English well, and are good fellows. They are very sorry for Mr. Mayrant,
who was stabbed with a pike in boarding us, and Mr. Potter, another
midshipman, who was hurt.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Week-days.|Sept., 1779.|Wind. |Courses.|Dist.|Lat. |Long. |Bearings.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, \|24th, 25th. |S.S.W.| |None.|As |As |As above.
Saturday./| | | | |above. |above. |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"The enemy's sick and wounded and prisoners were brought on board. At
ten on the 25th, his ship, the Richard, sank. Played chess with Mr.
Merry, one of the enemy's midshipmen. Beat him twice out of three.
"There is a little French fellow named Travaillier among their
volunteers. When I first saw him he was naked to his waist. He had used
his coat for a wad, and his shirt wet to put out fire. Plenty of our men
had their coats burnt off, but they did not live to tell it."
Then the diary relapses into the dreariness of most ship-diaries, till
they come into the Texel, when it is to a certain extent relieved by
discussions about exchanges.
* * * * *
Such a peep at the most remarkable frigate-action in history, as that
action was seen by a boy in the dark, through such key-hole as the
after-ports of one of the vessels would give him, stimulated us all to
"ask for more," and then to abuse Master Robert Heddart, "volunteer," a
little, that he had not gone into more detail. Ingham defended his
grandfather by saying that it was the way diaries always served you,
which is true enough, and that the boy had literally told what he saw,
which was also true enough, only he seemed to have seen "mighty little,"
which, I suppose, should be spelled "mity little." When we said this,
Ingham said it was all in the dark, and Haliburton added, that "the
battle-lanterns were as bad as they could be," Ingham said, however,
that he thought there was more somewhere,--he had often heard the old
gentleman tell the story in vastly more detail.
Accordingly, a few days after, he sent me a yellow old letter on long
foolscap sheets, in which the old gentleman had written out his
recollections for Ingham's own benefit, after some talk of old times on
Thanksgiving evening. It is all he has ever found in his grandfather's
rather tedious papers about the battle, and one passing allusion in it
drops the curtain on Denis Duval.
Here it is.
"JAMAICA PLAIN, NOV. 29, 1824.
"MY DEAR BOY,--I am very glad to comply with your request
about an account of the great battle between the Serapis and the
Bon Homme Richard and her consort. I had rather you should write
out what I told you all on Thanksgiving evening at your mother's,
for you hold a better pen than I do. But I know my memory of the
event is strong, for it was the first fight I ever saw; and
although it does not compare with Rodney's great fight with De
Grasse, which I saw also, yet there are circumstances connected
with it which will always make it a remarkable fight in history.
"You said, at your mother's, that you had never understood why the
men on each side kept inquiring if the others had struck. The
truth is, we had it all our own way below. And, as it proved, when
our captain, Pearson, struck, most of his men were below. I know,
that, in all the confusion and darkness and noise, I had no idea,
aft on the main deck, that we were like to come off second best.
On the other hand, at that time, the Richard probably had not a
man left between-decks, unless some whom they were trying to keep
at her pumps. But on her upper deck and quarter-deck and in her
tops she had it all her own way. Jones himself was there; by that
time Dale was there; and they had wholly cleared our upper deck,
as we had cleared their main deck and gun-room. This was the
strangeness of that battle. We were pounding through and through
her, while she did not fight a gun of her main battery. But Jones
was working his quarter-deck guns so as almost to rake our deck
from stem to stern. You know, the ships were foul and lashed
together. Jones says in his own account he aimed at our main-mast
and kept firing at it. You can see that no crew could have lived
under such a fire as that. There you have the last two hours of
the battle: Jones's men all above, our men all below; we pounding
at his main deck, he pelting at our upper deck. If there had not
been some such division, of course the thing could not have lasted
so long, even with the horrid havoc there was. I never saw
anything like it, and I hope, dear boy, you may never have to."
[_Mem._ by Ingham. I had just made my first cruise as a midshipman
in the U.S. navy on board the Intrepid, when the old gentleman
wrote this to me. He made his first cruise in the British navy in
the Serapis. After he was exchanged, he remained in that service
till 1789, when he married in Canso, N.S., resigned his
commission, and settled there.]