The Wasp and Reindeer.
From a wood-cut in the “Naval Monument.”
But though disabled, the enemy was not yet conquered. Her captain had, early in the fight, been cut through the calves of both legs by a musket-ball that made a most painful wound. Of course, he stood to his post. And then, as his ship was fouling the Wasp, a grape shot—a round iron ball more than two inches in diameter—pierced both thighs. He fell to his knees, but he struggled up and, sword in hand, cheered on his men, and then calling away boarders he ran forward to lead them, and was climbing into the rigging when two musket-balls, fired simultaneously from the maintop of the Wasp, struck him in the top of the head and passed down through to come out beneath his chin. “Placing one hand to his forehead and with the other convulsively brandishing his sword, he exclaimed ‘Oh God!’ and dropped lifeless on his own deck.”
The end had come. The British seamen recoiled, as their leader fell, and Blakeley’s men who had gathered to repel boarders now boarded in turn and swept the crew of the shattered ship into her hold. It was exactly 3.44 P.M. and twenty-nine minutes had passed since the first gun was fired by the enemy, and but eighteen since the Wasp returned the fire.
And then the Yankees learned that they had captured the British brig-sloop Reindeer, commanded by Captain William Manners. “The captain’s clerk, the highest officer left, surrendered the brig.” Her captain and purser were dead; her first (and only) lieutenant and sailing-master were wounded. So were one midshipman, a boatswain and a master’s mate. Whether she had other midshipmen is not stated—probably she had none.
In this action between the Wasp and the Reindeer we have, at last, after describing a year’s fighting, a British crew of which British writers speak well. That they do so only because the Reindeer’s armament and the number of her crew were much under the Wasp is not to be doubted. Nevertheless it is a pleasure to note that James is willing to write that “the British crew had long served together, and were called the pride of Plymouth,” but he states their number as consisting of “ninety-eight men and twenty boys.” No crew ever fought more bravely than they did until Captain Manners fell; and when he was down they yielded exactly as did the crew of the Yankee Argus when her captain was shot down.
Being assured that the Reindeer had the best of British crews, we can form an estimate of their skill by considering the damage which they were able to do to the Wasp during the twenty-nine minutes they were firing at her—firing at a range that varied from sixty yards down to a point where the ships touched each other—a range which for eighteen minutes was under sixty feet.
With nine short twenty-fours in their broadside and one short twelve on a high pivot what damage does the uninformed reader suppose that this one of the ablest of British crews—a crew that could and did load and fire their guns every two minutes—was able to do? They hulled the Yankee with six round shot and put another in the foremast. They fired at least eighty-six shots at the Yankee—a target that was one hundred feet long, eight or ten feet high, and for eighteen minutes less than sixty feet away—and yet only seven struck home. With their grape, and their musketry, fired when the ships were grinding together, they killed and mortally wounded eleven Yankees and severely or slightly wounded fifteen more.
