Three days after the start of the insurrection the Navy’s Admiral Mahoney Shipyard was still in colonial hands, protected by the firepower of the docked HMS Rhoper and HMS Camelia corvettes. The overly confident insurgents believed they could force the crew to surrender if they captured the Shipyard facilities. At night, some accomplices among the dockworkers opened the secondary entrances and a few PUIB and WMP squads, about fifty people in total, sneaked in. They occupied easily the warehouses, but a shootout with a guard alerted both the crew onboard and those stationed in the ashore quarters, a  fortified three-store brick building who hosted around a hundred sailors and staff members at that moment.

 

When the insurgents assaulted the quarters, they were met with a furious resistance and continued rifle fire and they managed to avoid being slaughtered just because of the cover of the night. After regrouping behind corners and crates, the insurgents ensued a standoff with the besieged crew and those on the ship for the whole night, exchanging sporadic fire. Captain Adams of the HMS Rhoper and Captain Eastmoore of the HMS Camelia discussed through the radio and decided to keep their men garrisoned on the ship, fearful that an ambush was awaiting them on the way to the quarters.

 

When dawn arise, the insurgents send messengers waiving the white flag to deliver an ultimatum to the quarters and the ships, asking for surrender before noon. The request was promptly refused and met by Capt. Adams with an identical counter-ultimatum. For the next couple of hours both sided waited but despite the tension no shots were fired, and the insurgents were silently allowed to recover their dead and wounded. However, a crowd had been gathered meanwhile in the neighborhood by some agitprops and at a 8:30 around five hundred people stormed in and positioned themselves between the ships and the quarters, chanting and protesting.

The situation became more chaotic during the following two hours as another five hundred or more protesters joined in, and the WMP and PUIB leaders failed to keep control of the crowd.

 

At 10:52 somebody in the crowd instigated an assault against the quarters and in a few minutes hell broke loose. The assailants were met once again by fire and responded by throwing bricks, setting fire to tar-drenched ropes to create a smoke cover and launching sorties against the doors. At 10:58 the Rhoper opened fire on the insurgents with its naval guns, followed one minute later by the Camelia. Panic ensued as the people run for their lives and many were stamped to the death, while other took shelter in the warehouses, only to discover that they were targeted too. A few insurgents tried to reach the two coastal guns of the shipyard to fire back at the ship, but they were driven off by rifle shots.

 

At about 11:20 the cannon shots ceased and armed squads from the crew disembarked and recaptured the deserted shipyard, soon joined by the men from the quarters. An entrance from a crewmen diary compared the scene to the results of an earthquake, with destroyed and flaming building and hundreds of dead and wounded littering the ground, moans and cry engulfing the smoke-thick air.

 

The colonial troops counted 156 dead insurgents and recovered 112 wounded but is estimated that more than 200 wounded escaped, many of whom died in the following days. The crewmen in the quarters lost 12 men and suffered another 27 wounded, plus 8 guards were killed in the night shootout.