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Updated: September 25, 2025
It hangs from the ship's side at the end of a heavy, projecting timber called the cat-head, in the bight of a short, thick chain whose end link is suddenly released by a blow from a top-maul or the pull of a lever when the order is given. And the order is not "Heave over!" as the paragraphist seems to imagine, but "Let go!"
Just as the Ramsgate lifeboat was coming under the stern of the wreck and about to haul down foresail and shoot up alongside her, she was struck by a terrific sea. The Deal men saw this and shouted 'She's capsized! The Ramsgate lifeboat was indeed almost, but not quite capsized, and she was also shot forwards and caught under the cat-head and anchor of the wreck.
He was one of those whom we had found still alive in the launch, and he had picked up wonderfully since then, having become almost his old self again. He was lounging on the forecastle near the port cat-head, with his bare, brawny arms crossed on the rail as he gazed ahead at the two craft, with which we were slowly closing. "Peter," said I, "get the grindstone ready.
"I am grieved to say that we lost one of our best men. The poor, foolish fellow unknown to me, of course took the notion into his head to jump overboard, with the idea of swimming round the ship. He jumped from the starboard cat-head, and had very nearly completed his journey when he was seized by a shark and carried off from under our very eyes, as it might be.
It is true, we could cut away, and this we began to do pretty freely, but the lower-end of the foremast lay on the forecastle, where it was grinding everything near it to pieces, with the heaving and setting of the waves. All the bulwarks in. that part of the ship threatened soon to be beaten down, and I felt afraid the cat-head would be torn violently out of the ship, leaving a bad leak.
Moreover, I set about making ready to let go the anchor, resolving in my own mind that as I knew the depth of water in the passage of the reef and within the lagoon, I would run the schooner in and bring up opposite the bower. Fortunately the anchor was hanging at the cat-head, otherwise I should never have been able to use it.
The tightest ships, in a long voyage, from the constant strain which is upon the bowsprit, will leak, more or less, round the heel of the bowsprit, and the bitts, which come down into the forecastle; but, in addition to this, we had an unaccountable leak on the starboard bow, near the cat-head, which drove us from the forward berths on that side, and, indeed, when she was on the starboard tack, from all the forward berths.
Its pantomime and its language were as clear as a man's language could be. The boat was brought immediately as far as the larboard cat-head. There the two sailors moored it firmly, while Captain Hull and Dick Sand, setting foot on the deck at the same time as the dog, raised themselves, not without difficulty, to the hatch which opened between the stumps of the two masts.
On the seventh day Hardenberg and I were forward by the cat-head, adjusting the grain with some half-formed intent of spearing the porpoises that of late had begun to appear under our bows, and Hardenberg had been computing the number of days we were yet to run. "We are some five hundred odd miles off that island by now," he said, "and she's doing her thirteen knots handsome.
Six seconds later a dull heavy blow was heard, followed by a faint groan, the dark object near the cat-head vanished, and Cross, returning to the skipper's side, whispered "He's all right; knocked the senses clean out of him, and then laid him quietly out on deck. I reckon he won't come to hisself again for the next half-hour. Now, what's the next move, cap'n?"
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