doubt, located on a point of land
commanding the passage from the Gulf into the bay of Mobile. This
redoubt was garrisoned by only one hundred and twenty combatants,
officers included; and its armament was but twenty small pieces of
cannon, some of which were almost entirely useless, and most of them
poorly mounted "in batteries hastily thrown up, and leaving the gunners
uncovered from the knee upward," while the enemy's land force, acting in
concert with the ships, consisted of twenty artillerists with a battery
of two guns, and seven hundred and thirty marines, Indians, and negroes.
His ships carried five hundred and ninety men in all. This immense
disparity of numbers and strength did not allow to the British military
and naval commanders the slightest apprehension "that four British
ships, carrying ninety-two guns, and a land force somewhat exceeding
seven hundred combatants, could fail in reducing a small work mounting
only twenty short carronades, and defended by a little more than a
hundred men, unprovided alike with furnaces for heating shot, or
casements to cover themselves from rockets and shells." Nevertheless,
the enemy was completely repulsed; one of his largest ships was entirely
destroyed, and 85 men were killed and wounded on board the other; while
our loss was only eight or nine. Here a naval force of _five_ to _one_
was repelled by the land-battery.

Again, in 1814, a barbette battery of one four-pounder and two
eighteen-pounder guns at Stonington, repelled a British fleet of one
hundred and thirty-four guns. During the engagement the Americans
exhausted their ammunition, and spiked their eighteen-pounders, and only
one of them was afterwards used. Two of the enemy's ships, carrying one
hundred and twelve guns, were engaged during the whole time of attack,
and during much of this time bombarded the town from a position beyond
reach of the land-battery. They were entirely too far off for the
four-pounder gun to be of any use. Supposing the two eighteen-pounders
to have been employed during the whole action, and also all the guns of
the fleet, _one_ eighteen-pounder on land must have been more than
equivalent to _sixty-seven_ guns afloat, for the ships were so much
injured as to render it necessary for them to withdraw. The British loss
was twenty killed, and more than fifty wounded. Ours was only two killed
and six wounded.[20]

[Footnote 20: Perkins says two killed and six wounded. Holmes says six
wo