This Certainly Was A Lucky Escape, After An Engagement Of Three Glasses
With An Enemy So Much Our Superior; For He Had 56 Guns And 450 Men,
While We Had Only 20 Guns Mounted And Only 73 Men, Of Whom 11 Were
Negroes And Two Indians.
He had farther the vast advantage over us of
being in perfect readiness, while we were in the utmost
Confusion; and
in the middle of the engagement, a third of my people, instead of
fighting, were hard at work in preparing for an obstinate resistance;
particularly the carpenter and his crew, who were busy in making
port-holes for stern-chase guns, which, as it happened, we made no use
of. Yet were we not unhurt, as the loss of my boat and anchor were
irreparable, and may be said to have been the cause of that scene of
trouble which fell upon us soon after; as we had now only one anchor
remaining, that lost at Payta being the third, and we had not now a boat
of any kind. I have since learnt that some of our shots in the
engagement were well directed, and that we killed and wounded several of
the enemy.
Having thus got away from the Peregrine, I slipped off in the evening
with much ado from the Brilliant, her consort, on board of which Betagh
now was, and even desired to be the first to board me. I was now in a
very uncomfortable situation, not having the smallest hope of meeting
with the Success; and I had learned at Payta, that the Spaniards had
laid on an embargo for six months, so that we had nothing to expect in
the way of prizes; and, having seen our prize taken, we had reason to
expect that all our designs were discovered by the enemy.
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