ABSTRACT
When war was declared, Codrington seized the French quarters of St. Kitts in July 1702 and invaded Guadeloupe in March 1703. Labat took an active part in some of the fighting which took place. On one occasion an English ship came very near a tower on which Labat had mounted a cannon and engaged it with three guns. Labat happened to be on the tower and served the cannon himself… . “The ship was so close that we could speak to each other, and once when they thought that they had bowled me over, one of them who could speak French called out to me, ‘Père Blanc, are you hit?’ I took aim and fired through a porthole on her gun deck and the round made the splinters fly. So I shouted to them in my turn, ‘How did you like that?’
