When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you organ pipes from a local church, shoot them at the Spanish!

>Two [**Spanish**] ships sailed from Portobelo on July 7 [**1667?**] to reclaim the island [**New Providence**], which Mansfield had now left in the care of his lieutenants as he sailed back to Jamaica. The 517 men on board gave the Spanish a ten-to-one advantage over the fit English soldiers on Providence. >After slamming one of the ships onto a reef, the Spanish commander sent a party onto the island to demand surrender, to which the English gallantly replied that they “preferred to lose their lives” than give back the land. >The Spanish soldiers poured onto the island and were met with odd-sounding volleys: The English at one of the forts had gone through all their ammunition and were now cutting up the church’s organ pipes and blasting them out of cannon at the advancing troops. It was a valiant defense of a practically worthless piece of rock, but in the end the English saw that the numbers were against them and gave up. _________________________________ **Source:** Talty, Stephan. “Sodom.” *Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws’ Bloody Reign*. New York: Crown Publishing Group (NY), 2007. 81. Print. _________________________________ **Further Reading:** [Portobelo, Colón](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portobelo,_Col%C3%B3n) [Edward Mansvelt / Edward Mansfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Mansvelt) [Jamaica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica) [New Providence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Providence)