Flynn smiled again before looking behind him with a scowl to see if Matt had been able to keep up. Matt's little barge was still there surprisingly.
Flynn shook his head in consternation as to Matt's specific choice of the little ship versus the larger one. What man in his right mind would pass up this ship with all its canons for that little pea shooter back there with just two canons?
So what if the two canons were mounted on a rotational turret! In a fight like this firepower was the only thing that mattered.
Matt had even had the gall to name his little gunboat the USS Nathanael, after the Revolutionary war hero Nathaniel Hale. Flynn rolled his eyes at the thought of that injustice.
Naming ships after past heroes wasn't necessarily a thing of bad taste, but in Flynn's mind every ship was a 'she'. He'd named his ship Polly.
It was a good ship and Polly had been a good woman. The two went hand-in-hand to his way of thinking. Treat a ship well like you would a woman and you'd be rewarded. Treat her mean and there'd be no living with her.
Flynn saw a flurry of activity upon the five remaining Whalers that were in port, as someone on board noticed the Polly and the USS Nathaniel steaming into the harbor. They looked like ants in their activity as they were driven to their tasks by the bellowing roars of giants little better than overstuffed cockroaches.
"Well, cockroaches and assorted vermin, time to feel the boot heel!" Flynn called out in glee.
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Jim gazed out the open gun ports judging the distance and the trajectory needed. They were all lined up.
A harpoon shot out from one of the mounted launchers on one of the Whalers. The harpoon dinked off the side of the heavy iron plated ship and everyone within the gun bay chuckled.
"Stand at the ready!" Jim called out.
A moment passed before the order was given.
"Fire!!!" Jim bellowed out and the canons went off belching flame as gunpowder smoke acridly filled the gun bay.
The two rows of canons leaped backward in their traces even as their gun crews went back to work in the process of reloading them. Maybe the actions of the gun crews weren't as polished or as quick as their counterparts in the distant past may have been, but they were getting the job done.
The wet swab meant to extinguish still simmering embers was shoved down the cannon barrels with a hot hiss of sound as water came into contact with hot metal. The powder charge was rammed down it followed by a cannonball tapped into place, even as a new fuse was stuck into the breach.