The Algerine batteries were fully manned; the mole, moreover, was crowded with troops.  With singular temerity, they fired no gun as the ships came on, thus relieving the most anxious of Exmouth’s preoccupations concerning the difficulties before him; fearing, seemingly, that, if otherwise received, the prey might turn and escape.  The British, on their side, observed the utmost silence; not a gun, not a cheer, marred the solemn impression of the approach.  The flag-ship, Queen Charlotte,[16] piloted by an officer who had served continuously with Exmouth since 1793, anchored by the stern across the mole head, at a distance of fifty yards, her starboard batteries pointing to sweep it from end to end.  Still no sound of battle, as she proceeded to lash her bows to those of an Algerine brig lying just within the mole.  This done, her crew gave three cheers, as well they might.  Then the stolid, unaccountable apathy of the barbarians ceased, and three guns in quick succession were fired from the eastern battery.  Stirred by a movement of compassion, Lord Exmouth, from the flag-ship’s poop, seeing the Moorish soldiery clustered thick upon the parapets to watch the ships, waved to them with his hand to get down.  At the first hostile gun he gave the order “Stand by!” at the second, “Fire!” and simultaneously with the third the Queen Charlotte’s broadside rang out, and the battle began.

The other vessels of the squadron were not all as successful as the flag-ship in taking the exact position assigned, and the admiral’s plan thereby suffered some of that derangement to which every undertaking, especially military and naval, is liable.  This, however, produced no effect upon the general result, except by increasing somewhat the lists of killed and wounded, through loss of advantageous offensive position, with consequent defect in mutual support.  But the first broadside is proverbially half the battle.  It was a saying of Collingwood to his crew, in a three-decker like the Queen Charlotte, that if they could deliver three effective fires in the first five minutes no vessel could resist them; and this was yet more certain when opposed to the semi-discipline of adversaries such as the Algerine pirates.  Exmouth’s general design was to concentrate his heavy ships at the southern end of the mole, whence the curve in the line of batteries would enable them to enfilade or take in reverse the works at the northern extremity.  Here were to be the two three-deckers, with a seventy-four between them, all three in close order, stem to stern.  The two-decker, however, anchored some seven hundred feet astern of the Queen Charlotte, the intervening space being left empty until filled by a thirty-six-gun frigate, upon whose captain St. Vincent passed the eulogium, “He seems to have felt Lord Nelson’s eye upon him.”  The two remaining seventy-fours placed themselves successively close astern of the first, which was in accord with the original purpose, while the other three-decker took the right flank of the line, and somewhat too far out; in which exposed and unintended position, beyond the extreme north point contemplated for the British order, she underwent a very heavy loss.