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Updated: May 23, 2025
Her jib-boom was gone, and so were all three masts, clean cut off at the deck, as though a hand-saw had done it; but the mizzenmast was alongside, held by the shrouds and backstays, and the port main and fore shrouds streamed like serpents from her chains into the water.
Our fellows had carried the whole of their Christmas poultry aloft, and having perched themselves at the yard-arms and on the cross-trees, gaff, and flying jib-boom ends, they made each of the wretched birds fast with a string six or eight feet long, in such a manner that they could flap their wings, but could not escape.
Call all hands, however, for we may have it upon us at any moment, by the look of things up there," pointing to the frowning, ruddy sky. "Rig in the jib-boom, and send down all but the lower-yard on deck, and both topmasts as well. Set some of the men to secure the canvas with double gaskets; and close-reef the boom-foresail and set it.
In the first place, the vessel's heading was stopt; then, coiled away in a tub, like a whale-rope, the line was placed toward the after part of the quarter-deck; and one of the sailors carried the lead outside of the ship, away along to the end of the jib-boom, and at the word of command, far ahead and overboard it went, with a plunge; scraping by the side, till it came to the stern, when the line ran out of the tub like light.
There was, be it remembered, an enormous sea, which during all the struggles of the men broke with fury over the lifeboat, and kept her full to her thwarts all the night, bursting in clouds of spray, and of course drenching the lifeboatmen. They now got to the bows of the wreck, where the strong off-tide drifted them right under the jib-boom and bowsprit.
That was on the morning of the 13th, and old Jervis made the signal to prepare for action, and keep close order, which means, to have your flying jib-boom in at the starn windows of the ship ahead of you; and we did keep close order, for a man might have walked right round from one ship to the other, either lee or weather line of the fleet.
At 10 A. M. the ship labouring so much, and her being eight streaks of her main-deck under water, abreast of her main-hatchway, so that we had very little prospect of her living two minutes above water, it was thought necessary to send her mizen-mast by the board, in order to righten her; but while going, the mizen-mast heeled to windward and caught her royal-yards in the top-sail tye, and stayed her so, that we were compelled to cut away the main-mast, which carried the fore-top-mast and jib-boom; and, while in the act of going by the board, it knocked an invalid down and killed him on the spot.
To the question put by the Major, Ayrton replied: "When I was swept off the forecastle, when I was hauling in the jib-boom, the BRITANNIA was running right on the Australian coast. She was not more than two cables' length from it and consequently she must have struck just there." "In latitude 37 degrees?" asked John Mangles. "Yes, in latitude 37 degrees." "On the west coast?"
The middies and the sailors, delighted with the chance, rigged out a dozen or twenty lines from the jib-boom end, and spritsail yard-arms, with hooks baited merely with bits of tin, the glitter of which resembles so much that of the body and wings of the flying-fish, that many a proud dolphin, making sure of a delicious morsel, leaped in rapture at the deceitful prize.
Manuel's countrymen jabbered at him in their own language; and even the silent cook was seen riding the jib-boom and shouting Gaelic to a friend as black as himself.
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