How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves: Updated to 1900Kingston, William Henry Giles
History
How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves: Updated to 1900
Kingston, William Henry Giles
Great Britain. Royal Navy -- History
boats approach that the shots flew over them, and before the schooner's
guns could be reloaded, the boats were up to her, and the seamen began
climbing on board--no easy matter, for the sides were unusually high,
and had been greased all over so as to render it as difficult as
possible. At that moment the pirate crew losing heart, began to leap
overboard and swim towards the shore, in the hopes of preserving their
lives. Many, however, were cut-down before they could make their
escape, while others were captured in the water. Among them Aragonez
himself was taken, with 27 besides, 10 were killed, and 15 wounded;
while the English lost 1 man killed and 4 wounded in this most gallant
affair. Captain Walcott then sent a requisition to the governor of
Barracoa, which induced him to dispatch a party in search of those who
had escaped into the woods, when sixteen more were captured and
immediately put to death by the Spaniards. The _Tyne_ then sailed with
her prisoners for Jamaica, when two of them turning king's evidence,
their chief and the remainder of the miscreant band were executed. The
affair may well take rank with any of the most brilliant boat services
on record, and Admiral Rowley expressed in a general order his sense of
the admirable skill and courage with which the enterprise had been
carried out. That most graphic of writers, Michael Scott, who spent
many years in the West Indies, had evidently heard of it when he wrote
"Tom Cringle's Log." The capture of Lieutenant Hobson by the pirates,
and his subsequent release, afforded him the idea of the captive of his
hero by the picaroon, while the destruction of Obed's schooner in a
harbour off Cuba, with not a few additional touches, was also taken from
the account of the capture of the _Zaragonaza_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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