A fresh southeast wind was blowing and the Avon was bowling along toward the southwest. As the Wasp came on in chase, the Avon hoisted signal flags and then signal lights and fired some rockets. The Wasp, of course, was unable to answer these, and the Avon was cleared for action. No effort to run away having been made by the Avon—on the contrary she fired a shot from her stern chaser—the Wasp had arrived close on her port quarter by 9.20 o’clock when one of the officers of the Avon shouted:
“What ship is that?” Captain Blakeley replied by repeating the question. Again the Avon hailed, when Blakeley replied:
“Heave to and I’ll let you know who I am,” and then fired the little twelve-pounder he had taken from the forecastle of the captured Reindeer. At that the Avon set her foretop-mast studding sail and began firing her stern chaser.
The Wasp and Avon.
From a wood-cut in the “Naval Monument.”
Fearing she might escape, Captain Blakeley put up his helm, ran down under the Avon’s lee, and as he ranged up under her quarter, gave her a raking broadside of bar shot and (presumably) langrage that set her rigging adrift in every direction. Another broadside of these projectiles was still more effective, for it brought down the fore-and-aft mainsail of the Avon, and it fell over the lee guns abaft the mainmast—the guns that bore on the Wasp—and for the time, put them entirely out of action, while her speed was materially diminished.
It was a moonless night, but the crew of the Wasp “could see through the smoke and gloom of the night the black hull of the Avon as she surged through the waters; and aloft, against the sky, the sailors could be discerned, clustering in the tops.”
No backwoods gunner would ask for a better target than was then afforded by the enemy. With their rifles the Yankee marksmen began to pick the British sailors from the Avon’s tops as they had shot raccoons from the tree crotch, while those behind the great guns loaded with ball as the Wasp ran through her lee, and aiming at the white line which the smoother and spoon drift drew along the bow and waist of the Avon’s black hull, they fired with unerring precision. They had been under fire—they were veterans now, though but three months on board ship.
Meantime the crew of the Avon had returned the fire furiously—after the manner of the British sailors of that day. Their manner of fighting was described by Lord Howard Douglas as “uncircumspect gallantry.” The same author describes the handling of the Wasp and of her guns with the words “wary caution.”