Vastly outnumbered if it should come
to boarding, he handled his vessel so as to avoid the Achilles
while he poured the broadsides into her. After two hours the
London privateer emerged from the smoke which had obscured the
combat and put out to sea in flight, hulled through and through,
while a farewell flight of crowbars, with which the guns of the
Pickering had been crammed to the muzzle, ripped through her
sails and rigging.
Haraden hoisted canvas and drove in chase, but the Achilles had
the heels of him "with a mainsail as large as a ship of the
line," and reluctantly he wore ship and, with the Golden Eagle
again in his possession, he sailed to an anchorage in Bilbao
harbor. The Spanish populace welcomed him with tremendous
enthusiasm. He was carried through the streets in a holiday
procession and was the hero of banquets and public receptions.
Such a man was bound to be the idol of his sailors and one of
them quite plausibly related that "so great was the confidence he
inspired that if he but looked at a sail through his glass and
told the helmsman to steer for her, the observation went
round,'If she is an enemy, she is ours.'"
It was in this same General Pickering, no longer sugar-laden but
in cruising trim, that Jonathan Haraden accomplished a feat which
Paul Jones might have been proud to claim.
Pages:
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53