1718
Cape Fear River (Battle of the Sandbars)
The setting
Cape Fear estuary, Province of North Carolina (approx. 33.92 N, 78.00 W - approximate to the engagement area, sufficient for the map layer, not for the site)
terrain_class `estuary`. Shoal careening ground with a falling tide - Cape Fear was chosen as a careening station precisely because it was shallow enough to heel a hull in. draft_gate = 1, and here the gate decided the action rather than merely shaping the approach. scale_type `nominal`.
Reveal the outcome
Recorded sideSouth Carolina expedition (Col. William Rhett)
Recorded resultvictory
South Carolina expedition victory; Bonnet's squadron defeated and the commander captured, subsequently tried at Charleston in October-November 1718. Both forces grounded on a falling tide and could not manoeuvre; for five to six hours only Henry and Royal James could bear on each other.
How the atlas explains it
The outcome is hydrographic, not tactical. Both forces grounded on a falling tide and neither could manoeuvre. Through the five to six hours in which only Henry and Royal James could bear on each other, the pirates had the better of the shooting - Royal James's hull gave her crew cover the grounded Henry did not have. Rhett won because his sloops lay downstream and floated first on the returning tide. He won by position, not by gunnery.
What followed
The row that separates position from performance: the side that shot better lost, and the reason is the bathymetry and the tide table. It is also the volume's worked case for how a casualty figure decays - a number correct when filed, copied outward, never re-extracted. Read alongside the consent-architecture pattern: Bonnet fought well and the crew's morale held; what a force organised by consent could not produce was the option of doing something unpopular quickly.