“For three hours nothing was heard but an incessant roll of artillery and musketry, the crashing of timbers and masonry, the shouts and cheers of the combatants, and the shrieks and groans of the wounded.”
Describing the scene on board his own ship during the first two hours, Dr. Ives says: “The fire was kept up with extraordinary spirit. The flank guns of the south-west bastion galled the _Kent_ very much, and the Admiral’s aides-de-camp being all wounded, Mr. Watson went down himself to Lieutenant William Brereton, who commanded the lower-deck battery, and ordered him particularly to direct his fire against those guns, and they were accordingly soon afterwards silenced.”
Then he relates this incident, which occurred on board just afterwards. “At eight in the morning,” says the doctor, “several of the enemy’s shot struck the _Kent_ at the same time; one entered near the foremast, and set fire to two or three 32-pound cartridges of gunpowder as the boys held them in their hands ready to charge the guns. By the explosion the wad-nets and other loose things took fire between decks, and the whole ship was so filled with smoke that the men in their confusion cried out she was on fire in the gunner’s store-room, imagining from the shock they had felt from the balls that a shell had actually fallen into her. This notion struck a panic into the greatest part of the crew, and seventy or eighty jumped out of the portholes into the boats that were alongside the ship. The French presently saw this confusion on board the _Kent_, and resolving to take the advantage, kept up as hot a fire as possible upon her during the whole time. Lieutenant Brereton, however, with the assistance of some other brave men, soon extinguished the fire. Then running to the ports he begged the seamen to come in again, upbraiding them for deserting their quarters; but finding this had no effect on them, he thought the more certain method of succeeding would be to strike them with a sense of shame. He therefore loudly exclaimed, ‘Are you Britons? You Englishmen! and fly from danger! For shame! For shame!’ This reproach had the desired effect; to a man they immediately returned into the ship, repaired to their quarters, and renewed an inspirited fire into the enemy.”