“The Admiral the same evening ordered lights to be placed on the masts of the vessels that had been sunk, with blinds towards the Fort, that we might see how to pass between them a little before daylight, and without being discovered by the enemy.

“At length the glorious morning of the 23rd of March arrived.”  Clive’s men gallantly stormed the battery covering the narrow pass,[50] “and upon the ships getting under sail the Colonel’s battery, which had been finished behind a dead wall,” to take off the fire of the Fort when the ships passed up, began firing away, and had almost battered down the corner of the south-east bastion before the ships arrived within shot of the Fort.  “The Tyger, with Admiral Pocock’s flag flying, took the lead, and about 6 o’clock in the morning got very well into her station against the north-east bastion.  The Kent, with Admiral Watson’s flag flying, quickly followed her, but before she could reach her proper station, the tide of ebb unfortunately made down the river, which occasioned her anchor to drag, so that before she brought up she had fallen abreast of the south-east bastion, the place where the Salisbury should have been, and from her mainmast aft she was exposed to the flank guns of the south-west bastion also.  The accident of the Kent’s anchor not holding fast, and her driving down into the Salisbury’s station, threw this last ship out of action, to the great mortification of the captain, officers, and crew, for she never had it in her power to fire a gun, unless it was now and then, when she could sheer on the tide.  The French, during the whole time of the Kent and Tyger’s approach towards the Fort, kept up a terrible cannonade upon them, without any resistance on their part; but as soon as the ships came properly to an anchor they returned it with such fury as astonished their adversaries.  Colonel Clive’s troops at the same time got into those houses which were nearest the Fort, and from thence greatly annoyed the enemy with their musketry.  Our ships lay so near to the Fort that the musket balls fired from their tops, by striking against the chunam[51] walls of the Governor’s palace, which was in the very centre of the Fort, were beaten as flat as a half-crown.  The fire now became general on both sides, and was kept up with extraordinary spirit.  The flank guns of the south-west bastion galled the Kent very much, and the Admiral’s aide-de-camps 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.  At 8 in the morning 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.