A few minutes afterwards the Montgomery encountered the Lorenzo, a Spanish bark, bound from Barcelona to Havana with a cargo of dried beef. She was taken just as easily, and Ensign Osborn, with several “Jackies,” sailed her into port.
May 7. Quite a sharp little affair occurred off Havana, in which the Vicksburg and the cutter Morrill were very nearly enticed to destruction.
A small schooner was sent out from Havana harbour shortly before daylight to draw some of the Americans into an ambuscade.
She ran off to the eastward, hugging the shore with the wind on her starboard quarter. About three miles east of the entrance of the harbour she came over on the port tack.
A light haze fringed the horizon, and she was not discovered until three miles off shore, when the Mayflower made her out and signalled the Vicksburg and Morrill. Captain Smith of the Vicksburg immediately clapped on all steam and started in pursuit.
The schooner instantly put about and ran for Morro Castle before the wind. On doing so, she would, according to the plot, lead the two American war-ships directly under the guns of the Santa Clara batteries.
These works are a short mile west of Morro, and are a part of the defences of the harbour. There were two [pg 105]batteries, one at the shore, which had been recently thrown up, of sand and mortar, with wide embrasures for 8-inch guns, and the other on the crest of the rocky eminence which juts out into the waters of the gulf at the point. The upper battery mounted modern 10 and 12-inch Krupp guns, behind a six-foot stone parapet, in front of which were twenty feet of earthwork and belting of railroad iron.
The American vessels were about six miles from the schooner when the chase began. They steamed after her at full speed, the Morrill leading, until within a mile and a half of the Santa Clara batteries.
Commander Smith of the Vicksburg was the first to realise the danger into which the reckless pursuit had led them. He concluded it was time to haul off, and sent a shot across the bow of the schooner.
The Spanish skipper instantly brought his vessel about, but while she was still rolling in the trough of the sea with her sails flapping, an 8-inch shrapnel shell came hurtling through the air from the water-battery, a mile and a half away.