Forty-five of them against a hundred and fifty, and Captain Haraden, debonair, unruffled, walking to and fro with a leisurely demeanor, remarking that although the Achilles appeared to be superior in force, "he had no doubt they would beat her if they were firm and steady and did not throw away their fire."It was, indeed, a memorable sea-picture, the sturdy Pickering riding deep with her burden of sugar and seeming smaller than she really was, the Achilles towering like a frigate, and all Bilbao turned out to watch the duel, shore and headlands crowded with spectators, the blue harbor-mouth gay with an immense flotilla of fishing boats and pleasure craft.The stake for which Haraden fought was to retake the Golden Eagle prize and to gain his port.
His seamanship was flawless.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.There lifted above the sky-line three armed merchantmen sailing in company from Halifax to New York, a brig of fourteen guns, a ship of sixteen guns, a sloop of twelve guns.When they flew signals and formed in line, the ship alone appeared to outmatch the Pickering, but Haraden, in that lordly manner of his, assured his men that "he had no doubt whatever that if they would do their duty he would quickly capture the three vessels." Here was performance very much out of the ordinary, naval strategy of an exceptionally high order, and yet it is dismissed by the only witness who took the trouble to mention it in these few, casual words: "This he did with great ease by going alongside of each of them, one after the other."One more story of this master sea-rover of the Revolution, sailor and gentleman, who served his country so much more brilliantly than many a landsman lauded in the written histories of the war.
While in the Pickering he attacked a heavily armed royal mail packet bound to England from the West Indies, one of the largest merchant vessels of her day and equipped to defend herself against privateers.A tough antagonist and a hard nut to crack!
They battered each other like two pugilists for four hours and even then the decision was still in the balance.Then Haraden sheered off to mend his damaged gear and splintered hull before closing in again.
He then discovered that all his powder had been shot away excepting one last charge.Instead of calling it a drawn battle, he rammed home this last shot in the locker, and ran down to windward of the packet, so close that he could shout across to the other quarter-deck: "I will give you five minutes to haul down your colors.If they are not down at the end of that time, Iwill fire into you and sink you, so help me God."It was the bluff magnificent--courage cold-blooded and calculating.The adversary was still unbeaten.Haraden stood with watch in hand and sonorously counted off the minutes.It was the stronger will and not the heavier metal that won the day.To be shattered by fresh broadsides at pistol-range was too much for the nerves of the gallant English skipper whose decks were already like a slaughterhouse.One by one, Haraden shouted the minutes and his gunners blew their matches.At "four" the red ensign came fluttering down and the mail packet was a prize of war.
Another merchant seaman of this muster-roll of patriots was Silas Talbot, who took to salt water as a cabin boy at the age of twelve and was a prosperous shipmaster at twenty-one with savings invested in a house of his own in Providence.Enlisting under Washington, he was made a captain of infantry and was soon promoted, but he was restless ashore and glad to obtain an odd assignment.As Colonel Talbot he selected sixty infantry volunteers, most of them seamen by trade, and led them aboard the small sloop Argo in May, 1779, to punish the New York Tories who were equipping privateers against their own countrymen and working great mischief in Long Island Sound.So serious was the situation that General Gates found it almost impossible to obtain food supplies for the northern department of the Continental army.
