Armed Merchantmen.—Resolution, 36 guns; Cleopatra, 28 guns; La Focha, 20 guns; Guarmey, 18 guns; Fernando, 26 guns; San Antonio, 18 guns.
Total, fourteen vessels, of which ten were ready for sea; and twenty-seven gun-boats.
In this action my little boy had a narrow escape. As the story has been told by several Chilian writers somewhat incorrectly, I will recapitulate the circumstances.
When the firing commenced, I had placed the boy in my after-cabin, locking the door upon him; but not liking the restriction, he contrived to get through the quarter gallery window, and joined me on deck, refusing to go down again. As I could not attend to him, he was permitted to remain, and, in a miniature midshipman's uniform, which the seamen had made for him, was busying himself in handing powder to the gunners.
Whilst thus employed, a round shot took off the head of a marine close to him, scattering the unlucky man's brains in his face. Instantly recovering his self-possession, to my great relief, for believing him killed, I was spell-bound with agony, he ran up to me exclaiming, "I am not hurt, papa: the shot did not touch me; Jack says, the ball is not made that can kill mamma's boy." I ordered him to be carried below; but, resisting with all his might, he was permitted to remain on deck during the action.
Our loss in this affair was trifling, considering that we were under the fire of more than two hundred guns; but the ships were so placed that the enemy's frigates lay between us and the fortress, so that the shot of the latter only told upon our rigging, which was considerably damaged.
The action having been commenced in a fog, the Spaniards imagined that all the Chilian vessels were engaged, and were not a little surprised, as it again cleared, to find that their own frigate, the quondam Maria Isabella, was their only opponent. So much were they dispirited by this discovery, that as soon as possible after the close of the contest, their ships of war were dismantled, the top masts and spars being formed into a double boom across the anchorage so as to prevent approach. The Spaniards were also previously unaware of my being in command of the Chilian squadron, but on becoming acquainted with this fact, bestowed upon me the not very complimentary title of "El Diablo," by which I was afterwards known amongst them. The title might have been rendered more appropriate, had my efforts been better seconded by the other vessels.
On the following day, having repaired damages, the flag-ship and Lautaro again went in and commenced a destructive fire upon the Spanish gun-boats, the neutral vessels in the harbour removing out of the line of shot. As the gun-boats withdrew to a position closer under the batteries, where we could make little impression upon them without getting severely punished by the fire of the fortress, we contented ourselves with the demonstration made.
On the 2nd of March, I despatched Capt. Foster with the gun-boat captured from the Spaniards, and the launches of the O'Higgins and Lautaro—to take possession of the island of San Lorenzo, when an unworthy instance of Spanish cruelty presented itself in the spectacle of thirty-seven Chilian soldiers taken prisoners eight years before. The unhappy men had ever since been forced to work in chains under the supervision of a military guard—now prisoners in turn; their sleeping place during the whole of this period being a filthy shed, in which they were every night chained by one leg to an iron bar. The joy of the poor fellows at their deliverance, after all hope had fled, can scarcely be conceived.
From the liberated patriots and the Spanish prisoners, I learned that in Lima there were a number of Chilian officers and seamen taken on board the Maypeu, whose condition was even more deplorable than their own, the fetters on their legs having worn their ancles to the bone, whilst their commander, by a refinement of cruelty, had for more than a year been lying under sentence of death as a rebel. Upon this, I sent a flag of truce to the viceroy, Don Joaquim de la Pezuela, requesting him to permit the prisoners to return to their families, in exchange for the Spanish prisoners on board the squadron, and others in Chili—where there were great numbers, who were comparatively well treated. The Viceroy denied the charge of ill-treatment—asserted his right, if he thought proper, to regard his prisoners as pirates; retorting that after the battle of Maypeu, General San Martin had treated the Spanish Commissioner as a spy, and had repeatedly threatened him with death. The exchange of prisoners was uncourteously refused, the Viceroy concluding his reply with an expression of surprise that a British nobleman should command the maritime forces of a Government "unacknowledged by all the Powers of the globe." To this latter observation, I considered it incumbent upon me to reply that "a British nobleman was a free man, and therefore had a right to adopt any country which was endeavouring to re-establish the rights of aggrieved humanity; and that I had hence adopted the cause of Chili, with the same freedom of judgment that I had previously exercised when refusing the offer of an Admiral's rank in Spain, made to me not long before, by the Spanish Ambassador in London;" this offer having been made by the Duke de San Carlos, in the name of Ferdinand the Seventh.