Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v2p2.djvu/38

 late in the evening; but the rock still holds out, and may probablyfor some days. A large part of the town has been unavoidably destroyed, and more must inevitably suffer from the means still in possession of the. enemy.

“The opportunity afforded to the navy for evincing the zeal and good will of British seamen, has been necessarily confined to a few individuals: but I know of no officer more indefatigable in the various duties which have fallen to him, than Captain Bloye of the Lyra: he hasendeavoured to anticipate every wish of the army. Lieutenant O’Reilly, with his former companions in the batteries, was conspicuously active; every ship in the squadron sent a proportion of seamen, under their respective officers, and they behaved uniformly well. The loss on both sides during the assault, must have been considerable, as artillery of all descriptions was playing on the enemy while disputing the breach and walls. Captain John Smith, of the Beagle, who was slightly wounded on the island, has the command of the seamen there landed.”

On this occasion the appearance of the breach proved fallacious; for when the combined column of British and Portuguese troops ordered to the assault, after being exposed to a heavy fire of shot and shells, arrived at the foot of the wall, it proved a perpendicular scarp of twenty feet to the level of the streets, with only one accessible point, which merely admitted an entrance by single files. In this situation, the assailants made repeated, but fruitless exertions, to gain an entrance; no man surviving the attempt to mount the narrow ridge. In this desperate state, Sir Thomas Graham adopted the venturous expedient of ordering the guns to be turned against the curtain, the shot of which passed only a few feet over the heads of the men at the foot of the breach. In the mean time a Portuguese brigade forded the river, near its mouth, and made a successful attack upon a small breach, to the right of the great one. This latter manoeuvre, joined to the effect of the batteries upon the curtain, at length gave an opportunity for the troops to establish themselves upon the narrow pass, and in an hour more the defenders, driven from all their complicated works, retired to the castle, leaving the town in full possession of the allies, whose loss amounted to 2,300 men, killed and wounded. The success in this quarter was rendered complete by the surrender of the castle on the 8th September, as will be seen by the following letter from the Commodore to Lord Keith:

