For a brief time they ran so in silence, and then Captain Jones stepped to the rail and hailed. For an answer the Englishman hauled down his Spanish flag, hoisted his red cross of St. George, and as the one came down and the other fluttered aloft, fired a broadside—fired it just as a fierce flaw of wind struck his sails to heel him over.
The Yankees waited till their vessel began to roll from the crest of a wave toward the enemy and then fired a broadside in return.
It was a battle off Cape Hatteras in the tail end of a Hatteras gale. The ships rolled and pitched over the heavy cross seas, and wallowed through the hollows. The crews, as they loaded their guns, saw the long rammers pointed to the clouds at one roll, and saw them dip in the spoondrift that rose to the port sills at the next. The muzzles of the guns were even dipped into the smother of it at times. The spray from the wave-crests in great masses splashed over the bulwarks. The smoke from the guns was snatched away by the gale, leaving clear targets for the gunners, who, from the excitement of it all, swabbed, and rammed, and fired—who shouted as they hauled out their guns to aim, and cheered as they fired their iron hail across the tossing seas. The roar and whizz of the gale were whelmed in the thunder of the broadsides and the scream of projectiles.
Diagram of the WASP-FROLIC BATTLE.
They swabbed, and rammed, and fired in frantic haste under the red cross—fired the moment the muzzles of the guns were hauled out through the bulwarks. Under the “gridiron flag” they loaded in haste and then calmly waited till the roll of the ship was right to make each projectile do its appointed work. The Englishman fired three broadsides by count to two of the Yankees, but scarce a projectile from the enemy struck the Yankee’s hull.
Nevertheless some damage was done by British projectiles. Within four minutes after the first broadside a shot struck the Wasp’s maintopmast not far above the cap and over it went like a tree before a hurricane. The yards fell across the fore braces and “rendered the head-yards unmanageable.” Ten minutes later (11.46 A.M.) the mizzen-topgallant-mast was shot off and “at twenty minutes from the beginning of the action every brace and most of the rigging was shot away” on the Wasp.
But both vessels were driving along before the wind. The impulse of the gale upon their rigging was strong enough to give them steerage way. But the cutting away of the two masts on the Wasp left her in such plight that the enemy had only to wear ship and haul to the wind on the port tack to escape. Some kinds of sea-fighters would have done that quickly, but not those of the Anglo-Saxon blood.
The Englishmen held their course and blazed away. The Wasp having been squared away by the falling of the mainmast, drew forward and somewhat across the bow of the enemy, and the distance between them lessened until at last the men who were loading two of the broadside guns of the Wasp felt their rammers strike the bluff of the enemy’s bows as they reached out to swab their guns. A moment later the ships came together with a crash, and then as they wallowed together in the trough of the sea two of the Wasp’s guns pointed fairly through the bow ports of the enemy and along her gun-deck. At that instant the order to fire was given and it was obeyed before the waves could shift the position. The slaughter of that raking fire was terrible.
With the send of the next wave the Wasp forged ahead until the bowsprit of the enemy fouled in the mizzen rigging of the Wasp and the two ships were held together in an embrace that seemed likely to tear both to pieces. The men of the Wasp had wished to board the instant the ships collided, but were then held back to fire a broadside. Now they would be restrained no longer. Without waiting for orders one, Jack Lang, a brawny fellow from New Brunswick, New Jersey, took his cutlass in his teeth, and grasping the rigging about the bowsprit of the enemy swung himself upon that spar. Captain Jones, of the Wasp, who wished to fire another broadside, bawled to him to come down but Jack had been impressed in the British service—he had a score of his own to settle—and he did not obey. And a dozen or more of his shipmates were hurrying from their guns to join him. The enthusiasm of the men could scarcely be restrained and the Captain let them have their way, giving the order to board.