The battle of the Swash and the capture of Canada

by Samuel Barton

This quiet condition of things continued until after midnight. At one o'clock A.M. all the light-houses in the harbor were lighted simultaneously, and the surprised Englishmen saw themselves surrounded with stationary and revolving lights, from Sandy Hook and the Navesink Highlands on the south, to Cheesequake and Princess Bay on the southwest and west; Elm Tree and Toad Hill on the north-west, and the Narrows and Robbin's Reef in the distant north.

A hasty consultation of their charts convinced them that these were merely the regular light-houses of the harbor; but if so, why had they not been lighted earlier? Evidently their darkness all the evening, and their simultaneous lighting at this late hour, proved that instructions had been given to their keepers in advance, and if so, must have been given with some object in view. So guns were fired, and signals were exchanged, and orders were given to the whole fleet to prepare for instant action, and the whole surface of the Lower Bay seemed to be illuminated as if by magic, by the powerful electric search lights which were turned in all directions, making everything plainly visible almost to the horizon.

A faint sound, as of the distant rushing of waters, was heard in the direction of the Narrows, and the word was passed quietly from officers to men: "They're coming now, boys. Look sharp; and be ready for them." It was the last of the ebb tide, and aided by it the American fleet made rapid progress down the bay.

Suddenly, to the great bewilderment and dismay of the English, a vast number of powerful electric lights seemed to spring out of the water in almost every direction around them. These were nearly as powerful as the search lights on their own vessels; and dazzled the eyes of the British so completely, that their search lights were rendered comparatively useless. Presuming, of course, that each of these was on board of a vessel, and therefore represented something to be destroyed, the English commenced blazing away with their guns, both great and small, directing them against these lights.

"I had no idea the beggars had such a big fleet," said the British Admiral to an officer standing near him on the dock of the flagship. "Why there must be nearly two hundred of them. But they must be small things, or we would know all about them. We have a list of every ship in their navy up to last winter, and all told, there were less than forty, so I don't fear them much."

If the admiral had only known then, what he discovered later on, he need have had still less fear of these lights, and moreover, might have saved a vast amount of valuable ammunition which was needlessly wasted; for these powerful lights, instead of proceeding from the deck or spars of hostile ships, were nothing more than decoy lights on long spar buoys, whose lower ends being loaded, permitted them to float upright with the tide, with about half their length out of water, thus raising the lights about fifteen to twenty feet above the surface of the bay. The lights were fed by powerful storage batteries, and had been turned on as they had been launched overboard from two swift little torpedo launches about a mile up the bay. The tide being ebb, carried them quickly down to where the enemy's fleet lay at anchor, and the latter, almost before they could realize their position, found themselves, as they supposed, in the midst of the American fleet.

These "Blinding buoys" as they were called, were one of the numerous ingenious devices which had been called into existence by the supposed approach of war.

They served their purpose of blinding and confusing the enemy admirably; and if the Americans had only had force enough to have enabled them to take advantage of the fright and confusion they occasioned, the result of the conflict would have been very different from what it was. When we consider however, the very limited means at their disposal, it will be seen that they accomplished results which seem well nigh incredible. The time of launching the "blinding buoys" had been carefully chosen, so as to utilize them for the longest possible period. The idea was to have them reach the anchored vessels about a quarter of an hour before the tide turned, so that they would remain among them as long as the slack water ebb lasted. So the Englishmen kept blazing away at them for nearly half an hour, without either inflicting any damage, or discovering their fraudulent character. In the noise and confusion, it became impossible to signal the other vessels of the fleet; and the wisdom of issuing detailed orders in advance was now apparent.

In pursuance of these orders, the "Etruria," and "Umbria," and "City of New York," and several of the other unarmored cruisers, slipped their cables, and ran quietly out to sea. The smaller gunboats, at anchor in the Horseshoe, extinguished all their lights, and gave no indication whatever of their presence. But the torpedo boats hastened to the scene of battle, eager to come to the assistance or the rescue of their more formidable consorts. And it was one of these, which first discovered the fraudulent character of the "blinding buoys."

This boat—the "Terror"—having fixed upon one of these electric lights as her own especial prey, made a dash for it, with the idea of affixing a torpedo to it, and blowing it skyward. Nearer and nearer it came—its dazzling brilliancy illuminating every part of the deck of the little vessel, whose officers and crew stood with bated breath, waiting for the crash which would indicate that their prey was within their reach.