This redoubt was garrisoned by only one hundred and twenty combatants, officers included; and its armament was but twenty small pieces of cannon, some of which were almost entirely useless, and most of them poorly mounted "in batteries hastily thrown up, and leaving the gunners uncovered from the knee upward," while the enemy's land force, acting in concert with the ships, consisted of twenty artillerists with a battery of two guns, and seven hundred and thirty marines, Indians, and negroes.
His ships carried five hundred and ninety men in all.

This immense disparity of numbers and strength did not allow to the British military and naval commanders the slightest apprehension "that four British ships, carrying ninety-two guns, and a land force somewhat exceeding seven hundred combatants, could fail in reducing a small work mounting only twenty short carronades, and defended by a little more than a hundred men, unprovided alike with furnaces for heating shot, or casements to cover themselves from rockets and shells." Nevertheless, the enemy was completely repulsed; one of his largest ships was entirely destroyed, and 85 men were killed and wounded on board the other; while our loss was only eight or nine.

Here a naval force of _five_ to _one_ was repelled by the land-battery.
Again, in 1814, a barbette battery of one four-pounder and two eighteen-pounder guns at Stonington, repelled a British fleet of one hundred and thirty-four guns.

During the engagement the Americans exhausted their ammunition, and spiked their eighteen-pounders, and only one of them was afterwards used.

Two of the enemy's ships, carrying one hundred and twelve guns, were engaged during the whole time of attack, and during much of this time bombarded the town from a position beyond reach of the land-battery.