nine o'clock
12th . -- At eight o'clock this morning the enemy sunk one of the fire-ships from a fresh battery thrown up during the night . All day a hot fire was kept up from it which almost completed the destruction of the shipping intended for the defence of the town against an attack by sea . At nine o'clock the chief officer of artillery waited on the commodore with a message from Lord Cornwallis , requesting that the lieutenants of the navy with their men should move on from the right into the hornwork on the left , which the crews of the transports had quitted in consequence of the heavy fire to which it was exposed . It was every instant expected that the enemy would storm the works . Hearing this , I immediately volunteered to work this battery , and set off for it accordingly , with a midshipman and thirty-six seamen , it being understood that I was to be relieved in eight hours by the first lieutenant . In fifty-two minutes after my arrival in the hornwork the enemy silenced the three left guns by closing the embrasures , and shortly afterwards they dismounted a twelve-pounder , knocked off the muzzles of two eighteens , and for the last hour and a half of the time I had undertaken to hold the post left me with one eighteen-pounder .