age_, which then ran
ashore on the southern point of the island. The _Inflexible_, followed
closely by the _Carleton_, continued on, but fired only occasionally;
showing that Arnold was keeping his galleys in hand, at long
bowls,--as small vessels with one eighteen should be kept, when
confronted with a broadside of nine guns. Between the island and the
main the north-east wind doubtless drew more northerly, adverse to the
ship's approach; but, a flaw off the cliffs taking the fore and aft
sails of the _Carleton_, she fetched "nearly into the middle of the
rebel half-moon, where Lieutenant J.R. Dacres intrepidly anchored
with a spring on her cable." The _Maria_, on board which was Carleton,
together with Commander Thomas Pringle, commanding the flotilla, was
to leeward when the chase began, and could not get into close action
that day. By this time, seventeen of the twenty gunboats had come
up, and, after silencing the _Royal Savage_, pulled up to within
point-blank range of the American flotilla. "The cannonade was
tremendous," wrote Baron Riedesel. Lieutenant Edward Longcroft, of the
radeau _Thunderer_, not being able to get his raft into action, went
with a boat's crew on board the _Royal Savage_, and for a time turned
her guns upon her former friends; but the fire of the latter forced
him again to abandon her, and it seemed so likely that she might be
re-taken that she was set on fire by Lieutenant Starke of the _Maria_,
when already "two rebel boats were very near her. She soon after blew
up." The American guns converging on the _Carleton_ in her central
position, she suffered severely. Her commander, Lieutenant Dacres,
was knocked senseless; another officer lost an arm; only Mr. Edward
Pellew, afterwards Lord Exmouth, remained fit for duty. The spring
being shot away, she swung bows on to the enemy, and her fire was thus
silenced. Captain Pringle signalled to her to withdraw; but she was
unable to obey. To pay her head off the right way, Pellew himself had
to get out on the bowsprit under a heavy fire of musketry, to bear the
jib over to windward; but to make sail seems to have been impossible.
Two artillery boats were sent to her assistance, "which towed her off
through a very thick fire, until out of farther reach, much to the
honour of Mr. John Curling and Mr. Patrick Carnegy, master's mate
and midshipman of the _Isis_, who conducted them; and of Mr. Edward
Pellew, mate of the _Blonde_, who threw the tow-rope fr