Graham's Magazine, Vol. XX, No. 3, March 1842

by Various

From the moment when the enemy had disclosed his lighted ports, our gallant tars had been waiting, like hounds in the leash, for the signal which was to let them loose upon the foe. The silent gesture of the captain, when he sprung into the mizzen rigging, had been intuitively understood by the crew, and the orders of the proper officers were scarcely waited for, before the ports were opened, the battle lanterns unmasked, the guns run out, and the whole deck changed, as if by magic, from a scene of almost Egyptian darkness to one of comparative light. Nor were the men less ready to discover the moment when to open their fire. The first word of the British officer’s haughty interruption had scarcely been spoken, when the gunners began to pat their pieces and squint knowingly along them, so that, when the command to fire was given, our whole broadside went off at once, like a volcano, and with deadly effect. Every gun had been accurately aimed, every shot was sent crashing into the foe. Not so the enemy. Although the British captain had certainly viewed us with suspicion, his crew had apparently thought us deserving of little caution; and the reply of our leader, and the order of their own to fire, took them, after all, with surprise. Nearly a minute accordingly elapsed before they delivered their broadside, and then it was done hurriedly and with little certainty of aim. The first fire is always more effective than the ensuing six; and the advantage of the surprise was decided; for while we could hear the crashing of timbers, and the shrieks of the wounded, following our discharge, the shot of the enemy passed mostly over our heads, and, in my vicinity, not a man of our crew was killed. One poor fellow, however, fell wounded at the gun next to mine.

“Huzza!” roared Hinton, leaping like a lion to fill the place of the injured man, “they’ve got their grog already. Have at ’em, my brave fellows, again, and revenge your messmate. Never mind, Jack,” he said, turning to the bleeding man, “every one must have a kick sometime in his life, and the sooner its over, my hearty, the better. Bouse her out, shipmates! Huzza for old Nantucket—the varmints have it again on full allowance!”

For ten minutes the fight was maintained on our side without cessation. The enemy, at first, rallied and attempted to return our broadsides promptly, but the injuries she had suffered from our first discharge had disheartened her men, and, when they found the spirit with which we maintained our fire, they soon gave up the contest and deserted their arms. Still, however, the enemy did not strike. One or two of her forward guns were occasionally and suddenly discharged at us, but all systematic resistance had ceased in less than five minutes.

By this time, however, the whole fleet was in an uproar. Lights were dashing in every quarter of the horizon, and, as the darkness had been clearing away since our brush with the merchantman, our lookout aloft could see through the faint, misty distance, more than one vessel bearing down toward us. The majority, however, of the fleet, seemed to be struck with a complete panic, and, like a flock of startled partridges, were hurrying from us in every direction. It soon became apparent that the ships, bearing down upon us, were armed; and before we had been engaged ten minutes with our antagonist, no less than three men-of-war, from as many quarters of the horizon, had opened a concentric fire on us, regardless of the damage they would do their consort. Still, however, unwilling to leave his antagonist without compelling her to strike, our leader maintained his position and poured in a series of rapid broadsides which cut the foe up fearfully. Yet she would not strike. On the other hand, reanimated by the approach of her consorts, her men rallied to her guns and began again to reply to our broadsides. Meanwhile the hostile frigates were coming up to us, hand over hand, increasing the rapidity of their cannonade as the distance betwixt us lessened. Our situation was becoming momentarily more critical. Yet even amid our peril my eye was attracted by the sublimity of the scene.

The night, I have said, had partially cleared away, but the darkness was still sufficiently intense to render the approaching frigates but dimly visible, except when a gush of fire would stream from their ports, lighting up, for the moment, with a ghastly glare, the smoke-encircled hull, the tall masts, and the thousand mazes of the hamper. Often the whole three vessels would discharge their broadsides at once, when it would seem for an instant as if we were girdled by fire. Then, as the smoke settled on their decks, they would disappear wholly from our sight, and only become again distinguishable, when they belched forth their sulphureous flame once more. In the west, the scene was even more magnificent, for in that quarter, was unexpectedly the nearest of the three men-of-war, and as she came up to us close-hauled, she yawed whenever she fired, and then steadily discharged her pieces, doing more damage than all her other consorts. The gallant manner in which she delivered her fire—the measured, distinct booming of her long twenty-fours—and more than all, the inky hue of the sky, in the background, brought out into the boldest relief, by the light of her guns, made up a picture of gloomy grandeur, which the imagination can compare to nothing, except the fitful, ghastly gleams of light shooting across the darkness of that infernal realm, which Dante has painted with his pen of horror. While, however, I was gazing awe-struck, on this scene, I noticed that the dark bank of clouds behind the frigate, was visibly in motion, rolling up towards us. Our superior officer had, perhaps, noticed the same phenomenon, and knowing what it portended, had remained by his antagonist, when otherwise, our only chance of escape would have been in an early flight. Some of the older tars now perceived the approaching tempest, and paused instantaneously from the combat. Indeed, not a moment was to be lost. I had scarcely time to look once more in the direction of the other frigates, and then turn again to the westward, before our antagonist in that quarter, was completely shut in by the squall. The wind had, meantime, died away, leaving us rocking unquietly in the swell. A pause of a minute ensued, a pause of the most breathless suspense. The men had instinctively left their guns, and stood awaiting the directions of their leaders to whom they looked in this emergency. We were happily nearly before the wind, which could now be seen lashing the foam from the billows, and driving down upon us with the speed of a race-horse. Another instant and the squall would be upon us. All this, however, had passed, in less time than is occupied in the relation, for scarcely a minute had elapsed, since I first saw the approaching squall, before Captain Smythe shouted,

“Stand by to clew down—quick there all!”

The command was not an instant too soon. His opening words were heard distinctly in the boding calm that preceded the squall, but the concluding sentence was lost in the hissing and roaring of the hurricane that now swept across our decks. The captain saw that it was useless to attempt to speak in the uproar, and waving his hand for the quartermaster to keep her away, while the men instinctively clewed down the topsail-yards, and hauled out the reef-tackles, he awaited the subsidence of the squall. For five minutes we went skimming before the tempest, like a snow-flake in a storm. On—on—on, we drove, the fine spray hissing past us on the gale, and the shrill scream of the wind through our hamper deafening our ears. Whither we were going, or what perils might meet us in our mad career, we knew not. We were flying helplessly onward, enclosed by the mist, at the mercy of the winds. Even if the intensity of the squall would have allowed us to bring by the wind and reef, prudence would dictate that we should run before the hurricane, as the only chance of escaping from the clutches of our foes. Yet, surrounded as we were by the merchantmen of the fleet, we knew not but the next moment, we might run down some luckless craft, and perhaps by the collision, sink both them and ourselves.

For nearly half an hour we drove thus before the hurricane. More than once we fancied that we heard the shrieks of drowning men, rising high over all the uproar of the tempest, but whether they were in reality the cries of the dying or only the sounds created by an overheated imagination and having no existence except in the brain of the hearer, God only knows! A thousand ships might have sunk within a cable’s length of us, and not a prayer of the sufferers, not a shriek of despair have met our ears. There was a fearfulness in that palpable darkness, which struck the most veteran heart with an awe akin to fear. When men can look abroad and see the real extent of the peril which surrounds them they can dare almost anything; but when surrounded by darkness their imaginations conjure up dangers in every strange intonation of the tempest, in every new outbreak of the surge. They tremble at what they cannot behold; in the language of the scripture “their joints are loosed with fear.”

At length the fury of the squall began to subside, and the dark bank of clouds which had encircled us, undulated, rolled to and fro, and finally flew in ragged vapors away, flitting wildly past the stars that once more twinkled in the sky. As the prospect brightened, we looked eagerly around to see what damage the squall had occasioned. The fleet was scattered hither and thither over the horizon, torn, shattered, dismantled, powerless. Far up in the quarter from whence the hurricane had burst could be faintly seen the body of the convoy; but on every hand around some of the less fortunate ships were discoverable. Whether, however, most of the merchantmen had attempted to lie-to, or whether we had scudded before the gale with a velocity which none could rival, it was evident that we had passed away like a thunderbolt from the rest of the fleet, leaving them at a hopeless distance astern.

Owing to the rapidity with which our canvass had been got in, we suffered no material injury; and, when the gale subsided and the wind came out again from the north, we lost no time in hauling up and getting the weather-gauge of the convoy. The ship was put once more in trim—the crew then turned in, and the watches were left in undisturbed possession of the decks. As I stood at my post and watched the bright stars overhead, shining placidly upon me, or listened to the cry of “All’s well!” passed from lookout to lookout across the deck, I could not help contrasting the peace and silence of the scene with the fearful uproar of the preceding hour.