About two hours after we engaged we were boarded athwart hawse by one of their men of war, notwithstanding our endeavours to prevent him by wearing our ship two or three points from the wind to have taken him alongside. When he had been athwart our hawse some short time, my Lord would have had me boarded him with our men and taken him, which I refused to do by giving him my reason that it would be very disadvantageous to us: first, that I must have commanded our men from our guns, having then I believe 300 men killed and wounded, and could not expect but to lose 100 in taking him; secondly, had we so done, we could not have cut him loose from us, by reason the tide of flood bound him fast; and, thirdly, had we plyed our guns slowly by taking away our men, we had given cause to the enemy to believe we had been disabled, and consequently more of them would have boarded us, which might possibly have overpressed us, and would have been more dishonour to have lost her by that means than being at last burnt;--so that my Lord was satisfied with my reasons, and resolved we should cuff it out to the last man, still in expectation of assistance.
About 10 o’clock Van Ghent himself, finding those his other flags could do no good upon us, nor the party with them, came up with us himself, we having lost the conduct of our ship. He ranged along our side, gave us a smart volley of small shot and his broadside, which we returned to him with our middle and lower tier, our upper guns almost all disabled, the men killed at them. He passed ahead of us and brought his ship too to leeward, and there lay till I was gone off the deck.
Some short time after, Sir Joseph Jordaine (our barge having been with him and given him my Lord’s commands) passed by us very unkindly to windward, with how many followers of his division I remember not, and took no notice at all of us; which made me call to mind his saying to your Royal Highness, when he received his commission, that he would stand betwixt you and danger; which I gave my Lord account of, and did beleive by his acting yourself might be, in his view, in greater danger than we, which made my Lord answer me: “We must do our best to defend ourselves alone.”