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Updated: June 25, 2025
He was moving, the whole time, from point to point, feeling shrouds and back-stays, and preventers, in order to ascertain the degree of strain on each, or examining how the purchases stood.
Her masts and rigging were very much damaged; her mizen-top-mast, gaff, spanker-boom, and main-topsail-yard being entirely shot away; the main and foremast, and the fore and main yards wounded in several places by large shot; many of her shrouds, stays, and back-stays shot away, besides those which had been knotted and stoppered in the action; all her spare cordage was expended in reeving running rigging, and she had three feet water in the hold.
The back-stays were first severed, then the lanyards of the shrouds, commencing at the aftermost and working forward; and when the hands had cut through about half of them the remainder suddenly parted and the foremast went over the bows with a crash, being only prevented from going adrift altogether and lost by the circumstance that the topsail sheets and other running gear had not been let go or cut away.
In this way we were almost always able to raise the cry of "Haul out to leeward" before them, and having knotted our points, would slide down the shrouds and back-stays, and sing out at the topsail halyards to let it be known that we were ahead of them. Reefing is the most exciting part of a sailor's duty.
I managed to get some hands to work on the braces, and finally got the yards trimmed shipshape and in the American fashion. That was, with the lower yards sharp on the back-stays, the topsails a little further aft, the t'gallant a little further still, until the main-skysail was almost touching with its weather leach cutting into the breeze a point or more forward of the weather beam.
Our rigging was all examined and overhauled, and mended, or replaced with new, where it was necessary: new and strong bobstays fitted in the place of the chain ones, which were worn out; the spritsail yard and martingale guys and back-ropes set well taught; bran new fore and main braces rove; top-gallant sheets, and wheel-ropes, made of green hide, laid up in the form of rope, were stretched and fitted; and new top-sail clewlines, etc., rove; new fore-topmast back-stays fitted; and other preparations made, in good season, that the ropes might have time to stretch and become limber before we got into cold weather.
"Ha! that'll do," cried Bax eagerly, "there's a can of turpentine just under the fore-hatch, which can't have been damaged by water. I'll go and fetch it." "Stay, I will go. Do you look after Lucy and her father," said Guy; and, without waiting for a reply, he slid down one of the back-stays and gained the deck. To traverse this was an act involving great danger and difficulty.
By this cruel accident, the result of many injuries to shrouds, back-stays, and spars, the situation of the Plantagenet became worse than ever; for, not only was the wreck to be partially cleared, at least, to fight many of the larboard guns, but the command of the ship was, in a great measure, lost, in the centre of one of the most infernal mêlées that ever accompanied a combat at sea.
What could be done, however, was done; and the entire crew were set to work, some to get up preventer back-stays and secure the fore-mast, and others to convert the spare spars into jury-masts.
When the collision of the two vessels took place, the Windsor Castle, conned so as not to run down the pirate, but to sheer alongside, stove in the bulwarks of the other, and carried away her topmasts, which, drawn to windward by the pressure on the back-stays, fell over towards the Windsor Castle, and, entangling with her rigging, prevented the separation of the two vessels.
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