The batteries slowly moved forward along the bay and one by one the 138 guns opened fire, but soon events did not go according to plan. The alignments were not correct: the two lead ships "Pastora" and the "Tala Piedra" moved further ahead than they should have. When they opened fire on their main target, the King's Battery, the British guns replied, but the cannonballs were observed to bounce off their hulls. Eventually the Spanish "junks" were anchored on the sandbanks near the Mole but were too spread out to create any significant damage to the British walls.