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Updated: June 11, 2025
Both of these anchorages are exposed to north winds, which, however, do not reach home with much violence. The holding-ground being good in the first-named bay to the eastward, the anchorage there may be considered safe, although the undertow at times makes it wild riding. I visited Robinson Crusoe Bay in a boat, and with some difficulty landed through the surf near the cave, which I entered.
The examination was satisfactory, on all points but one; that of the holding-ground; and we returned to the vessel, having taken good care to trust ourselves in neither the wind nor the current. An anchor-watch was set, with a mate on deck, four hours and four hours, and all hands turned in. I had the morning watch.
He had, however, with the sagacity of an old navigator, already thrown out his anchor into the best holding-ground during the storms which he foresaw were soon to sweep the state. Before the close of the year which now occupies, the learned doctor of laws had become a doctor of divinity also; and had already secured, by so doing, the wealthy prebend of Saint Bavon of Ghent.
He carried us into a very small bay, where we found plenty of water, capital holding-ground, and a basin as smooth as a dock. But one wind that which blew from the north-west could make any impression on it, and the effects of even that were much broken by a small island that lay abreast of the entrance; leaving good passages, on each side of it, out to sea.
Having first sent the boats to sound, we hauled into a small bay, where we anchored at dusk in seventeen fathoms, good holding-ground, though the bottom was so irregular that we had from five to thirteen close upon our quarter.
Neill’s Harbour, the only one on this eastern coast of Prince Regent’s Inlet, except Port Bowen, to which it is far superior, corresponds with one of the apparent openings seen at a distance in 1819, and marked on the chart of that voyage as a “valley or bay.” We found it not merely a convenient place of shelter but a most excellent harbour, with sufficient space for a great number of ships, and holding-ground of the best quality, consisting of a tenacious mud of a greenish colour, in which the flukes of an anchor are entirely embedded.
What mattered it, that it was an uninhabited island, and that the ship was land-locked and well-moored, and the holding-ground was capital? It is all of no account when you come to look at the affair in the way of duty. Why, old Robbins, with his rivers in the ocean, would never have been caught in this miserable manner."
The wind was blowing moderately fresh from the north-west; but so secure was the anchorage and so good the holding-ground that, on arriving on board, Ned was not at all surprised to find that the steward, instead of keeping watch, had gone below and turned in, trusting to luck that, once on shore, nobody would dream of going off again to the ship that night.
Now and then a vessel held a little by some new obstacle that the anchor had caught hold of, but soon the resistance gave way, and then it moved on again, approaching the shore, whither all now were tending, except a few that occupied a good holding-ground in the lee of the castle and island.
Immediately beyond that the bottom shelves rapidly down to a depth of 2000 fathoms, so that if Columbus was sounding as he came south he would find no bottom there. Below what are called the Ridings Rocks, however, the land sweeps to the south and east in a long sheltered bay, and to the south of these rocks there is good anchorage and firm holding-ground in about eight fathoms of water.
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