Steering straight for the largest vessel, though already considerably damaged aloft by the fire of the others, Walker delivered his broadside, and then the enemy got round him, two on either side, one ahead and one astern; the other two apparently decamped, and took no part in the action. The ship astern, after attempting to rake the Boscawen, was so roughly handled by her stern guns that she hauled off, and struck her colours. The fight was continued with the remaining five for the space of an hour; and the writer asserts that it was maintained on board the Boscawen without any confusion or disorder, the men, under the officers' orders, banging away at whatever happened to be in front of their guns, "without fear or thought for the others." The flagship struck, and sank ten minutes later; the remaining four stuck to it, hoping yet to subdue the sorely battered Boscawen; but Walker's men remembered his pledge to them, and were resolved that he should not be stultified. In another half-hour every flag was down, and the Sheerness, at length coming up, chased and captured one of the runaways; so the "bag" was one sunk and six captured.
The enemy is stated to have had 113 killed and drowned, while the Boscawen's casualties amounted only to one killed and seven wounded. The writer ascribes this comparative immunity to a protection, a raised bulwark, "man-high," of elm planking, which Walker had caused to be erected, with a step on which the marines could mount to fire, and stand down to load; and he says the elm did not splinter, but kept out bullets, and closed up round the holes made by shot. With due allowance for this, however, the Frenchmen must have made very wretched practice; they were probably unpractised and undisciplined merchant crews; but it was a brilliant affair. The vessels were all homeward bound "Martinico men," as Walker had surmised, provided with letters of marque.
An old lady, a person of some distinction, a passenger in the commodore's ship, was picked up, floating about on a bale of cotton; she did not know how she had got there. The commodore was also rescued, and Walker gave them the use of his cabin, and fitted out the old lady with "a silk nightgown, some fine linen waistcoats, cambric night-caps, etc., in which she appeared a kind of hermaphrodite in dress"; a droll figure, indeed! But a privateer skipper can scarcely be expected to be provided with requisites for such an occasion. The poor old lady had a tragic tale to tell, for her daughter, a young girl, went down with the ship; and her account of the scene between decks, where she and her daughter retired during the action, is ghastly enough: "Hither they brought the poor bleeding sailors, one after another, without legs, without arms, roaring with their pains, and laid in heaps to be butchered anew by the surgeon, in his haste and despatch of cure or death. Here several of the objects died at our feet. Thus surrounded by the ghastly prospect, all at once death himself came breaking in upon us, through the side of the ship; cut down the surgeon and one of his mates, and shattered the whole medicine-chest in pieces. Here was a total suspension of all relief to the poor wounded wretches; death coming, as it were, to reinforce his own orders and stop every means or effort to prevent him."
Arrived with his shattered vessel and equally dismantled prizes at King's Road, Bristol, Walker, reporting proceedings to the Admiralty, received a handsome congratulatory letter from the Secretary.
Sailing once more in July, Walker captured in August a vessel, the Catharina, which he subsequently bought as a tender, naming her the George; and in the following month he found himself, as was so often the case in privateers, at loggerheads with his crew over a vessel—a Dutchman—which he overhauled, and, being satisfied that her cargo was not contraband, dismissed her. The crew, after grumbling among themselves, assembled on deck while Walker was at supper, demanding to see him.
He and his officers armed themselves and went on deck, and faced the three hundred angry men, who required to know why the Dutchman was not good prize. Walker's reply was admirable: "This is not the way to ask me. I am willing that the meanest man in the ship shall be satisfied of my conduct, but I will give that satisfaction in my own way, and not be called to account by you. I am sorry, indeed, that it should ever be said of me that I was obliged to take up arms against my own people, in defence of conduct which can be so easily supported by words only. It will be a pain to me to reflect upon it, as long as I live, and a blot on the character I imagined I had gained. I am very willing to explain to you what rights we have over Dutch vessels, but I shall choose my own time for doing it; and every man who does not instantly separate to his duty, when I give the word, I shall treat him as an associate in a mutiny."
Two of the men called out that it would be too late to explain when the chase was out of sight. "Bring those men aft, and put them in irons," said Walker; and he was obeyed. Next morning he gave them a lecture on prize law and discipline, to which they listened in all submission.