While the British tried to climb over the bulwarks, his thirty-seven men and boys fought like raging devils, with knives, pistols, cutlases, with their bare fists and their teeth.

A few of the enemy gained the deck, but the privateersmen turned and killed them.

Others leaped aboard and were gradually driving the Americans back, when the skipper ran to the hatch above the powder magazine, waving a lighted match and swearing to drop it in if his crew retreated one step further.

Either way the issue seemed desperate.

But again they took their skipper's word for it and rallied for a bloody struggle which soon swept the decks.
No more than twenty minutes had passed and the battle was won.