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skirmishers, while
Joshua took a position beside Commodore Decatur, to record his orders. Soon we
heard firing both on the river and inland, musketry and cannon both. Then the
Cherokee guarding the trails past White Marsh
Island came tumbling back, firing as they went, to report Seminoles
approaching Augustine Creek.
The Georgia militia from the settlements along that creek immediately wished
to advance against the
Seminoles to save their homes. General Jackson said that homes could be
rebuilt if Savannah held, but if they ran off now the Seminoles would kill
most of them and he would shoot any survivors. Rightly enough, they took him
at his word.
The British had two regular regiments, the 44th and the 71st, coming overland,
and two more on the river, the 42nd and another whose number I never learned.
None of them were at full strength, but add together Seminoles, Dons, West
Indian Negroes, and a naval landing party as large as ours, they probably
outnumbered us by half again.
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They tried to land in the town of Gerardus on our left flank, but the citizens
there had their wits about them. They fired several warehouses filled with
combustible material and then fought the British in the streets, hiding in the
smoke.
The British then tried another landing between Gerardus and Savannah itself,
but we had two eighteen-pounders at the south end of the city, and a water
battery of six-pounders on the island directly across the channel. We sank
twelve boats and set fire to a brig. The Cherokees killed most of the British
who got ashore, and they say that some of the ones in the water were eaten by
alligators or bitten by snakes.
The British then dropped down the river and put their men ashore south of
Gerardus, out of range of our guns though not of the Cherokees at the mouth of
Augustine Creek. Our heroic Indian friends had to fight looking both ways,
because the Seminoles were up past White Marsh Island by then, and not all of
them came out safe. But they took a good toll of the enemy, with a particular
delight in killing the Spanish.
Again, they say that some of the Seminoles turned their coats, and added to
the misery of the Dons.
General Jackson wanted to try to hold Gerardus and the river bank all the way
to Savannah, but Joshua says that he saw Commodore Decatur persuade him to a
different plan. Certainly the militia would never have stood except in
entrenchments with naval guns, and we had nothing like that except at the city
itself.
So the good folk of Gerardus and the Cherokees came tumbling back together,
into the entrenchments, leaving Gerardus burning behind them. The Gerardus
militia were so proud of the fight that they had made that we had several
brawls between them and the Savannans.
So the British came up to Savannah and on the sixth day of the campaign
launched their principal attack.
They put three regular regiments and two of what the Dons called regiments
against the entrenchments.
Meanwhile, they tried to ferry the last regiment across the river to the
island behind Savannah, along with some artillery to take the city in the
rear.
It was not a bad plan, for we held the island lightly, with a few
sharpshooters from the militia and some
Cherokees, also a few South Carolina militia who had just come in the day
before. They looked better than the Georgians, but Jackson and Decatur were
agreed on not putting them in the forefront.
The British had two armed luggers guarding the river crossing. These beat down
the water battery, or at least thought they did. (Joshua again says that
Commodore Decatur gave the idea for the stratagem.) The
British storming columns advanced, as the regiment in flatboats put out on to
the water.
Then, relying on a favorable wind, General Scott swept down the river into the
middle of the British.
Most of her guns were ashore to lighten her and strengthen the batteries, but
Captain Allen had twelve carronades and a hundred men armed with swivels,
muskets, and thrown combustibles and was the man to know what to do with all
of them. We do not say this to disgust you, Mother, or as a poetic figure, but
the Savannah River did run red that day.
The three columns going against the city were British on the left and the
right and Dons in the middle. The
Dons showed more stoutly than we had expected, nearly made it to the trenches,
but fell back under our musketry and broke when we opened with grape.
The British on the right came along the riverbank, and of course expected the
guns of the luggers and the
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river crossers to help them. They had no such help, as
General Scott put both luggers out of action, then opened fire on the
redcoats. They withdrew inland, losing a good half of the regiment.
The two regiments in the leftmost column were the most dangerous, as they came
in at an angle that left them almost immune to artillery. Commodore Decatur
and the sailors worked like Trojans to shift guns, but for nearly half an hour
it was hand-to-hand fighting, with General Jackson in the vanguard taking the
first of his wounds.
Thomas says that if it had not been for the Rangers and the Cherokees in the
rear of the British on the left, they might have won. Of course, the
Virginians and Marylanders also say it was their counterattack that saved the
day.
Certainly, with neither foe against them, the British might have prevailed, or
at least drawn off in better order. As it was, when repelled, they like the
other enemies fled southward, to the banks of Augustine
Creek. There Admiral Cockburn had prudently left boats and a few Marines to
guard the line of retreat, but the Cherokee burned the boats and drove off the
Marines.
The fighting went on into the night, to be ended more by the rain than by
anything else. The Spanish surrendered as fast as they could to anyone who
would let them, but the British regulars upheld their reputation. They fought
us all the way to Augustine Creek, shooting from every kind of cover that they
could find although not being the masters of open fighting that our best men
were. We even had to bring up a six-pounder to blast them out of a farmhouse.
Our leaders were again in the forefront. General Jackson rode about, guiding
his horse with his knees because he would not put down his sword and one arm
was in a sling from a second wound.
Commodore Decatur and the naval party held the river flank valiantly, and it
was there that Joshua received his wound.
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