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Updated: June 13, 2025
It was in the morning watch Prince's Island had been safely passed, and the principal dangers of the passage overcome, when seated upon the foreyard a scene of beauty opened upon my eyes, which it may be long before they are greeted with again. We were heading up the Straits, and from my position the highlands of both islands were in sight.
About noon on the day I speak of, the weather had begun to look a little better, but the sea had if any thing increased. I had just come on deck, when Mr Splinter sung out "Look out for that sea, quartermaster! Mind your starboard helm! Ease her, man ease her!" On it came, rolling as high as the foreyard, and tumbled in over the bows, green, clear, and unbroken.
For two days Carpenter and his officers waited and watched, the steamer lying and rolling about upon a long swell, and under a hot and brazen sun. Then, about seven o'clock in the morning, as the sea haze lifted, a look-out on the foreyard hailed the deck and said the boat was in sight.
In a few hours she is close enough to be recognised as one of the luckiest sperm whalers of the fleet the brig POCAHONTAS, of Martha's Vineyard. Within a quarter of mile of the two ships the NASSAU and the DAGGET the newcomer backs her foreyard and hauls up her mainsail. A cheer rises from the ships. She wants to "gam," I.E. to gossip.
Gibney went to the master's cabin, wrote out an agreement, carried the skipper aft and got his signature to the contract. Then he tucked the skipper into bed and came dashing out on deck. The wind was from the northwest and luckily the foreyard was braced to starboard while the mainyard was braced to port, so his problem was a simple one.
At twelve o'clock the foreyard was hauled aback, and we committed his body to the deep, Goring reading the Church of England burial service. The breeze has freshened up, and we have done ten knots all day and sometimes twelve. The sooner we reach Lisbon and get away from this accursed ship the better pleased shall I be. I feel as though we were in a floating coffin.
The foreyard had been sprung, or True Blue would have brought the vessel to under her fore-topsail. True Blue had not long left the deck when a tremendous sea, like a huge black hill, was observed rolling up on the weather bow. "Hold on, lads hold on!" shouted Tom Marline.
Every eye was wildly fixed on the captain, and every cheek wore a death-like paleness. At last, away went her fore-top mast, top-gallant and royal-mast, foreyard, main-royal-mast, main-top-gallant, and main-top-mast; and her mizen-mast was much injured.
Later on, as the gale slackened, we set our topsails close-reefed, and more `fore-and-aft' sail; and, when the sun had got above our foreyard, the commodore ordered the topgallant-masts to be sent up, these having been housed when it came on to blow heavily.
They were set on wooden yards, the foreyard and foretopsail-yard, both of which could be sent on deck in foul weather. The main-mast was stepped a little abaft the beam, and carried three sails, the main-sail, the main topsail, and a third, the main topgallant-sail. This third sail did not set from a yard until many years after its introduction.
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