“Be that as it may, and you seem sure of your information, I sha’n’t run away from her.”
The wind so held that the Achilles first bore down upon the prize of the Pickering and was able to recapture and put a prize crew aboard before Captain Haraden could fetch with gunshot. With a British lieutenant from the Achilles in command, the prize was ordered to follow her captor. It was evident to the waiting Americans aboard the Pickering that the Achilles intended forcing an engagement, but night was falling and the English privateer bore off as if purposing to convoy her prize beyond harm’s way and postpone pursuit until morning.
The hostile ships had been sighted from Bilboa harbor where the Achilles was well known, and the word swiftly passed through the city that the bold American was holding pluckily to her landfall as if preparing for an attempt to recapture her prize. The wind had died during the late afternoon and by sunset thousands of Spaniards and seamen from the vessels in the harbor had swarmed to crowd the headlands and the water’s edge where they could see the towering Achilles and her smaller foe “like ships upon a painted ocean.” An eye witness, Robert Cowan, said that “the General Pickering in comparison to her antagonist looked like a long boat by the side of a ship.”
Because of lack of wind and the maneuvers of the Achilles, Captain Haraden thought there was no danger of an attack during the night, and he turned in to sleep without more ado, after ordering the officer of the watch to have him called if the Achilles drew nearer. His serene composure had its bracing effect upon the spirits of the men. At dawn the captain was awakened from a sound slumber by the news that the Achilles was bearing down upon them with her crew at quarters. “He calmly rose, went on deck as if it had been some ordinary occasion,” and ordered his ship made ready for action.
We know that he was a man of commanding appearance and an unruffled demeanor; the kind of fighting sailor who liked to have things done handsomely and with due regard for the effect of such matters upon his seamen.
Several of his crew had been transferred to the prize, and were now prisoners to the Achilles. The forty-five defenders being reduced to thirty-odd, Captain Haraden, in an eloquent and persuasive address to the sixty prisoners he had captured in the Golden Eagle, offered large rewards to volunteers who would enlist with the crew of the Pickering. A boatswain and ten men, whose ties of loyalty to the British flag must have been tenuous in the extreme, stepped forward and were assigned to stations with the American crew. Her strength was thus increased to forty-seven men and boys. The captain then made a final tour of the decks, assuring his men that although the Achilles appeared to be superior in force, “he had no doubt they would beat her if they were firm and steady, and did not throw away their fire.” One of his orders to the men with small arms was: “Take particular aim at their white boot tops.”
The kind of sea fighting that won imperishable prestige for American seamen belongs with a vanished era of history. As the gun crews of the General Pickering clustered behind their open ports, they saw to it that water tubs were in place, matches lighted, the crowbars, handspikes and “spung staves” and “rope spunges” placed in order by the guns. Then as they made ready to deliver the first broadside, the orders ran down the crowded low-beamed deck:
“Cast off the tackles and breechings.”
“Seize the breechings.”
“Unstop the touch-hole.”