2-995-736 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Revolution in Sicily - departure of Missori's expedition on the night of Aug. 8 from the Faro Point, Messina, to surprise the Torre Cavallo Fort, on the Calabrian shore, from a sketch by our special artist, Frank Vizetelly, 1860. '...at nine o'clock...an expedition under the command of Major Missori, numbering about 200 men, left the Faro Point in small fishing-boats, under the shadow of the City of Aberdeen, to surprise the Torre di Cavallo, a fort mounting thirty guns...The pilot who took the expedition across the strait - here a mile and a half wide - missed his way, and landed them considerably below the Torre del Cavallo. An alarm was given by an outlying picket, who fired their muskets and fell back on the fortress. In two or three minutes after a cannon was fired from the walls in the direction of our forlorn hope; but Missori, seeing the uselessness of attempting an attack now that all were on the alert, made for the hills up the dried bed of a mountain torrent, and he is now raising the Calabrese populations, and forming them into organised bands...Later in the day a spy came across with the intelligence that Missori had got safely into the hills, and was recruiting rapidly'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.