The same day this admiral arrived in Bougie Bay, but here again he had bad luck. Just as he was within half a shot of the enemy’s castles and forts the wind dropped and it fell a flat calm. Then the breeze sprang up, but it blew off shore. So the time passed. On the 2nd of May the winds were still very fluky, and after twice in vain attempting to do anything with these varied puffs, Spragge resolved to attack by night with his ships’ boats and his smallest fireship. The water close to the forts was very shallow, and the English fireship could be rowed almost as well as a ship’s long-boat. So about midnight he dispatched all the boats he could, as well as the Eagle fireship, under the command of “my eldest Lieutenant, Master Nugent.” It was a dark night, and the high land was very useful for its obscuring effects.

Nugent, leaving one of the long-boats with the fireship, in addition to the fireship’s own boat, now rowed off to reconnoitre the enemy, having first given the fireship’s captain orders to continue approaching until he should find himself in shoal water: he was then immediately to anchor. Nugent had then rowed off and had scarcely left the fireship one minute when, after proceeding but a little way over the leaden waters, he found himself quite close to where the English squadron was anchored. He had thus lost his bearings in the dark and at once steered off again to find the fireship, when, to his great amazement, he suddenly saw the latter burst out into a sheet of flame. That, of course, was another piece of ill-luck, for it entirely upset all the carefully laid plans and instantly alarmed the enemy. It would have been useless to have attempted a boat attack that night, so the effort was postponed. What had happened was this: the little fireship had been all ready when, by an accident, the gunner had fired off his pistol. This had caused the ignition, and so the ship had been lost without any good being done. It was a thousand pities as, owing to her shallow draught, she had been relied upon for getting right close in.

With this warning the enemy the next day unrigged their ships, which lay in their harbour, then gathered together all the yards, the topmasts and spars generally off these ships, together with their cables. All this they made into a boom, which was buoyed up by means of casks. Spragge and his fleet watched this being done, for there was no wind, or, as he expressed it, we had “no opportunity of wind to do anything upon them.” On the 8th of May they noticed that the corsairs ashore were reinforced by the arrival of horse-as well as foot-soldiers, which the Englishmen suspected rightly had come from Algiers. The Bougie corsairs greeted this arrival with wild cheering and by firing of the guns in their ships and castles, as well as by the display of colours.

About noon, just as Spragge was anxious to reopen operations, he was harassed by a flat calm. Luckily, however, at 2 p.m. a nice breeze sprang up, and the Revenge, Dragon, Advice and Mary advanced and let go in 3½ fathoms nearer in, mooring stem and stern so that their broadsides might face Bougie’s fortifications. The position was roughly thus. Looking towards Bougie, Spragge’s six ships were moored roughly in a half-circle in the following order from left to right. First came the Portsmouth, then the Garland, the Dragon, the Mary, the Advice and finally the Revenge flagship. These were all, so to speak, in the foreground of the picture. In the background were the enemy’s ships on the left, whilst on the right were the castles and fortifications. In the middle distance on the left was the boom defence already noted. The Revenge was in 4 fathoms, being close up to the castles and walls, and the fight began. For two hours these ships bombarded Bougie’s ships and fortresses.

Spragge then decided to make a boat attack, his ships still remaining at anchor. He therefore sent away his pinnace, under the command of a man named Harman, “a Reformado seaman of mine.” A “reformado,” by the way, was a volunteer serving with the fleet without a commission yet with the rank of an officer. Harman was sent because Spragge’s second lieutenant had been hurt by a splinter in the leg. Lieutenant Pin was sent in command of the Mary’s boat, and Lieutenant Pierce had charge of the Dragon’s boat. The project was to cut the boom, and this was bravely done by these three boats, though not without some casualties. Eight of the Mary’s boat’s crew and her lieutenant were wounded with small shot. In the Admiral’s pinnace seven were killed outright, and all the rest were wounded excepting Harman. Of the Dragon’s boat’s crew ten were wounded as well as her lieutenant, and one was killed.

But the boom had been cut, and that was the essential point. That being done, the Admiral then signalled to his one remaining fireship, the little Victory, to do her work. She obeyed and got in so well through the boom that she brought up athwart the enemy’s “bolt-sprits, their ships being aground and fast to the castles.” The Victory burnt very well indeed, and destroyed all the enemy’s shipping, ten in all. Of these ten, seven were the best ships of the Algerine fleet, and of the three others one was a Genoese prize and the other had been a ship the pirates had captured from an English crew. The commander, the master’s mate, the gunner and one seaman of the fireship had been wounded badly in the fight, but the victory was complete and undoubted. On the 10th of May a Dutchman who had been captive with the corsairs for three years escaped by swimming off to the Revenge, and Spragge had him taken on board. The Dutchman informed the English Admiral that the enemy admitted that at least 360 Turkish soldiers had lost their lives in this engagement by fire and gunshot, as they could not get ashore from the ships. There were in all about 1900 men in addition to those 300 who came that morning from Algiers. The Dutchman, for himself, thought the losses far exceeded the number assessed by the enemy.

He stated that the castles and the town itself had been badly damaged, and as all their medicine-chests were on the ships and so burnt, it was impossible for the enemy to dress the wounds of their injured. “Old Treky, their Admiral, is likewise wounded,” wrote Spragge. Among the enemy’s killed was Dansker, a renegado, and our losses consisted only of 17 killed and 41 wounded.

CHAPTER X
THE GOOD SHIP EXCHANGE OF BRISTOL

A satirical English gentleman who lived in the reign of Charles II. and described himself as formerly “a servant in England’s Navie,” published a pamphlet in 1648 in which he complained bitterly of the inability of “the present Government,” even in spite of the expense of vast quantities of money, “to clear England’s seas of Ireland’s Pyrates.” The latter belonged at this time especially to Waterford and Wexford. A large amount of money, he bewailed, had been and was still being spent “to reduce half a dozen inconsiderable Pyrates,” but yet the “pyrates are not reduced, neither are the seas guarded.” One of these “pyrates” had in February 1647 in one day taken three small ships and one pinnace of a total value of £9000. One of these ships, whilst defending herself, had lost her master and one of her mates, as well as five mariners, besides other members of her crew wounded. And this author of A Cordiall for the Calenture asks if the present Government, with such an expenditure, cannot reduce half a dozen pirates, “how will England’s Commonwealth be wasted if the French, the Danes, the Dutch, or all of them shall infest England’s Seas.”