Viana in Portugal, and bound for Angola.  This vessel was about 28 tons burden, having 17 persons on board, with some 12 tons of wine, which we divided among our ships, together with some rusk in chests and barrels, 5 bales of coarse blue cloth, and some coarse linen for negroes shirts; all of which goods were divided among our fleet.  The 4th of May, we had sight again of our pinnace and the admirals shallop, which had taken three Portuguese caravels, two of which we sent away and kept the third.  The 2d June we came in sight of St Michaels.  The 3d we sent off our pinnace, which was about 24 tons burden, together with the small caravel we had taken off the Burlings, to range about the anchorages of the Azores, trying to make captures of any thing they could find, appointing them to meet with us at a rendezvous 12 leagues W.S.W. from Fayal.  Their going from us served no purpose, and was a misfortune, as they omitted joining us when appointed, and we also missed them when they might have been of much service.

The 13th of June we fell in with a mighty carak from the East Indies, called Las cinquellagues, or the five wounds.  The May-Flower was in sight of her before night, and I got up with her in the evening.  While I had ordered our men to give her a broadside, and stood carefully examining her strength, and where I might give council to board her in the night when the admiral came up, I received a shot a little above the belly, by which I was rendered unserviceable for a good while after, yet no other person in my ship was touched that night.  Fortunately, by means of one captain Grant, an honest true-hearted man, nothing was neglected though I was thus disabled.  Until midnight, when the admiral came up, the May-Flower and the Sampson never desisted from plying her with our cannon, taking it in turns:  But then captain Cave wished us to stay till morning, when each of us was to give her three broadsides, and then lay her on board; but we long lingered in the morning till 10 o’clock, before we attempted to board her.

The admiral then laid her on board amid ships, and the May-Flower came up on her quarter, as if to take her station astern of our admiral on the larboard side of the carak; but the captain of the May-Flower was slain at the first coming up, on which his ship fell astern on the outlicar[394] of the carak, a piece of timber, which so tore her foresail that they said they could not get up any more to fight, as indeed they did not, but kept aloof from us all the rest of the action.  The Sampson went aboard on the bow of the carak, but had not room enough, as our quarter lay on the bow of the Exchange, and our bow on that of the carak.  At the first coming up of the Exchange, her captain Mr Cave was wounded in both legs, one of which he never recovered, so that he was disabled from doing his duty, and had no one in his absence that would undertake to lead his company to board the enemy.  My friend, captain