vessels aback, unable to maneuver, the Dons were, for the moment, helpless, and while their broadsides threw round shot and chain shot among the buccaneers and killed a number, the light swift boats were hard targets to hit, and before a second broadside could be fired they were under the vessels’ side where the cannons could not reach them. Then the battle raged thick and fast. Picking off the Dons whenever they showed their heads above the bulwarks, cutting sheets and braces with their shots, the buccaneers forced their tiny craft under the warships’ sterns, jammed the rudders, and, sinking their own craft to make sure the men must do or die, they swarmed up ropes, chains and quarter galleries onto the Spaniards’ decks. “Ringrose and his party attacked the Admiral’s ship, and leaping over the bulwarks cut down the Admiral, swept like demons among the Spanish crew, cutting, slashing, shooting and converting the decks to a bloody shambles. Not until two-thirds of the crew were killed did the Dons surrender, however. With the flagship in their hands, Captain Coxon took charge and at once sent two canoes of buccaneers to aid Sawkins, who had thrice been beat back from the decks of the other warship. Hardly had the reënforcements arrived when two explosions took place on the ship and in the confusion the buccaneers swarmed onto the ship’s deck and took the vessel without resistance, for not one Spaniard was left alive and uninjured aboard! But on every ship the slaughter was terrific. Of the original crew of eighty-six on the flagship, only twenty-five men remained alive and only eight of these were able to stand. Indeed, even Ringrose and his fellows, hardened to slaughter and bloodshed as they were, were amazed at the butchery they had wrought, and, in their journals, Ringrose and Dampier state that ‘blood ran down the decks in whole streams and not one place upon the ships was found that was free of blood.’ And yet this victory, this awful carnage, had been carried out by sixty-eight buccaneers in frail canoes and small boats, truly a most marvelous feat of daring and bravery, and, more remarkable yet, the buccaneers’ losses amounted to but eighteen killed and twenty-two wounded!