On August 27, Lord Exmouth sent a flag of truce restating his demands and giving a period of three hours for a reply. Upon the expiration of that term and on the return of the flag of truce without an answer, he anchored his flagship just half a cable's length from the mole head at the entrance of the harbour, so that her starboard broadside flanked all the batteries from the mole-head to the lighthouse. The mole itself was covered with troops and spectators, whom Lord Exmouth vainly tried to disperse before the firing began by waving his hat and shouting from his own quarter-deck as the flagship came to an anchor at half-past two in the afternoon.
'As soon as the ship was fairly placed,' writes Lord Exmouth's biographer, 'the sound of the cheer given by the crew was answered by a gun from the Eastern Battery; a second and a third opened in quick succession. One of the shots struck the Superb. At the first flash Lord Exmouth gave the order "Stand by," at the second "Fire." The report of the third gun was drowned by the thunder of the Queen Charlotte's broadside.'
Thus opened an engagement which is memorable among the attacks of fleets upon land fortifications, and which fully justified Lord Exmouth's opinion that 'nothing can resist a line-of-battle ship's fire.' The Algerine tactics were to allow the British squadron to come to an anchor without molestation, and to board the vessels from their galleys while the British crews were aloft furling sails, for which purpose they had thirty-seven galleys fully manned waiting inside the mole. To the surprise of the enemy, however, the British admiral had given orders for the sails to be clewed from the deck, instead of sending men aloft for the purpose, and the British ships were thus able to open fire the moment they came to an anchor. The result of this smart seamanship was an instant disaster for the Algerines; their galleys were all sunk before they could make the few strokes of the oar which would have brought them alongside, and tremendous broadsides of grapeshot from the Queen Charlotte and the Leander shattered the entire flotilla, and in a moment covered the surface of the harbour with the bodies of their crews and with a few survivors attempting to swim from destruction.
On the molehead the effect of the British fire was terrible; the people with whom it was crowded were swept away by the fire of the Queen Charlotte, which had ruined the fortifications there before the engagement became general, and then crumbled and brought down the Lighthouse Tower and its batteries. The Leander's guns, which commanded the principal gate of the city opening on the mole, prevented the escape of any survivors.
The batteries defending the mole were three times cleared by the
British fire, and three times manned again.
'The Dey,' wrote a British officer on the Leander, 'was everywhere offering pecuniary rewards for those who would stand against us; eight sequins were to be given to every man who would endeavour to extinguish the fire. At length a horde of Arabs were driven into the batteries under the direction of the most devoted of the Janissaries and the gates closed upon them.'
Soon after the battle began, the enemy's flotilla of gunboats advanced, with a daring which deserved a better fate, to board the Queen Charlotte, and a few guns from the latter vessel sent thirty-three out of thirty-seven to the bottom. Then followed the destruction of the Algerine frigates and other shipping in the port, which were set on fire by bombs and shells and burned together with the storehouses and the arsenal.
The Algerines, none the less, made a most determined resistance, and maintained a fire upon the squadron for no less than eleven hours. Young Charles Yorke was in command of a tender of the flagship which was moored near to his parent ship, and was consequently in the midst of the hottest fire, within sixty yards of the mouths of the enemy's guns, throughout the engagement. Long before that period had elapsed, however, he found himself running short of ammunition, and taking one marine in his dinghy, pulled in her to the Queen Charlotte, climbed her side and made his way to the quarter-deck, where, saluting Lord Exmouth, he said, 'Sir, I am short of ammunition.' 'Well, my lad,' replied the admiral, 'I cannot help you, but if you choose to go below, and fetch what you want yourself, you are very welcome.' Charles Yorke, wishing for nothing better, again saluted and withdrew. He then descended into the flagship's magazine, and single-handed brought up 1368 lbs. of ammunition, which he lowered over her side to his single marine in the dinghy, and in her returned to his gunboat to resume his firing until the close of the action, when, by the aid of a land breeze, which turned about half-past eleven into a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning, the fleet was able to draw out from the batteries. Nothing had been able to resist the concentrated and well-directed fire, and the sea defences of Algiers, with a great part of the town itself, had by this time been shattered and reduced to ruin.
This success was only purchased at heavy cost, for the British casualties, considering the size of the squadron, were enormous, the Impregnable being the chief sufferer. One hundred and twenty-eight men were killed and 690 wounded, while the Dutch lost thirteen and fifty-two respectively. The Leander had every spar injured and her rigging cut to pieces, and when her cables were at last shot away, was unable to set a single sail, and so was drifting helplessly ashore, when a fortunate change of wind allowed her boats to bring her to a second anchorage. On the flagship the enemy's fire was so hot that Lord Exmouth himself escaped most narrowly, being slightly wounded in three places, and the skirts of his coat were shot away by a cannon-ball.
When the morning broke, the admiral found that he had brought the Dey to reason. Having first beheaded his prime minister, that potentate released the British Consul and the boat's crew he had detained before the action, handed over the ransom money he had extorted from captured subjects of Naples and Sardinia in exchange for their freedom, amounting to no less than 382,000 dollars, and undertook, 'in the presence of Almighty God,' to release all Christian slaves in his dominions, to abandon the enslavement of Christians for the future, and to treat all prisoners of war with humanity until regularly exchanged, according to European practice in like cases. About 1200 slaves, the bulk of them Neapolitans and Sicilians, were embarked on the 31st, making, with those liberated a few weeks before, more than 3000 persons whom Lord Exmouth thus had the satisfaction of delivering from slavery. He sailed away from the city without leaving a single Christian slave, so far as could be gathered, in either of the Barbary States.