As the Yankees with “wary caution” fired their second or third broadside of round shot, the mainmast of the Avon fell over the rail, and her fire gradually died away while the men of the Wasp with unabated vigor worked their guns. At 10 o’clock the fire of the Avon ceased altogether, and Captain Blakeley hailed to ask her if she had struck. In reply the Avon opened a feeble fire and for twelve minutes more the Yankee gunners continued their deadly work, when the Avon being again silent, Blakeley once more hailed, and this time had the satisfaction of learning that the enemy had struck.
An appalling work had been done, for it was the work chiefly of men who had in themselves never suffered visible wrong at the hands of the British. They had never been enslaved by a press-gang. They had never felt the lash of the cat. They struck at the enemy because of an inherited hatred—rather because of a hatred that came to them through tradition—and every blow struck home.
Diagram of the
WASP-AVON BATTLE.
After the Avon struck, the luck of the Wasp turned. As the crew of the small boat were lowering it to the water in order to go over and take possession of the Avon, a new enemy appeared. The boat was at once hoisted in and the drums beat to quarters. Then the Wasp was sent away before the wind while the topmen hurried aloft to reeve off new rigging in place of some that had been shot away. A few minutes sufficed, but before everything was quite ready two more ships were seen bearing down and Blakeley wrote: “I felt myself compelled to forego the satisfaction of destroying the prize.”
As a matter of fact he had already destroyed her, as we learn from the reports of the ships of the enemy. The first of the vessels to come to the aid of the Avon was the Castilian. She bore down on the quarter of the Wasp and fired one broadside which whistled harmlessly over the Wasp’s quarter-deck. Then she tacked around and hastened back to the Avon, for the Avon was firing guns and making other signals of distress. The survivors of her crew were working desperately at the pumps and with plugs to stop the leaks, and the crew of the Castilian and those of the Tartarus as well came to their aid. But neither the strength of the men at the pumps nor the skill of the carpenters could avail to undo the work of the Yankee backwoodsmen done during the few minutes—perhaps twenty—that the Wasp lay on the Avon’s lee bow. At 11.55 the work of transferring the Avon’s crew began and at 1 o’clock the next morning, as the last boat was leaving her, the Avon’s bow sank down under water, her stern rose high in air, and down she went.
As it seems to a student of naval history at the end of the nineteenth century, it is both interesting and instructive to compare the Reindeer battle with the Avon battle. For while the Yankee crew in the first battle ruined the Reindeer, she was still able to float. She was cut to pieces in the wake of her ports and comparatively few shot struck the water-line or under. But in this battle with the Avon they had so far improved in their skill with great guns, that, although there was now a rolling sea and it was night, they were, nevertheless, able to shoot so many holes into her at the water-line and below it that all the efforts of three crews could not save her.
The men of the Wasp, though their story ends in a mystery, yet speak to their countrymen. For their battles proved that the first requisite of a sea power is the ability to strike. As long as the American people can reach out with good ships carrying good guns manned by clear-eyed marksmen, they shall have peace.
The Wasp was struck by four round shot in the course of the battle, and these killed two men. A wad from one of her guns that was aimed too high, hit a third man and hurt him some.
We have only the account of the favorite British naval history from which to obtain the number of the crew of the Avon and her losses. He puts it at “one hundred and four men and thirteen boys.” He says she lost ten killed and thirty-two wounded. It is worth while giving James’s opinion of the matter. He says: