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Updated: June 15, 2025
The kedge-anchor was immediately let go, to hold her till the floating buoy and broken chain should be got on board. But while this was in operation the hawser of the kedge was chafed through on the rocky bottom and parted, when the vessel was again adrift.
Accordingly, to get her off, the launch and cutter were ordered to carry out a kedge-anchor ahead. While the boats were still away, a boat from the shore came alongside, out of which several officers hurried on board. One of them informed Captain Hood that it was the commanding officer's orders that the ship should go into another branch of the harbour to perform ten days' quarantine.
We then carried out the kedge-anchor, in order to warp into the harbour; but when this was done, we could not trip the bower-anchor with all the purchase we could make; we were therefore obliged to lie still all night, and in the morning, when the tide turned, the ship going over the anchor, it tripped of itself, and we warped the ship into a proper birth with ease, and moored in twenty-eight fathom, with a sandy bottom.
She was safe at sea again una de multis with a damaged foreyard, and a loss of all the ornamental work about her bow and stern, three anchors, one kedge-anchor, fourteen lengths of chain, four boats, the jib-boom, bobstay, and bands and fastenings of the bowsprit.
By four in the afternoon of the 29th they got the ship afloat, and cut away their small bower anchor, but ran aground again in ten minutes. At nine they carried out the kedge-anchor, but the hawser broke in heaving. They now carried out another hawser, having a lower-deck gun fixed to it, as they had now lost all their anchors, and were still aground.
They were wet and splashed, and one who ventured a few yards from the plank sank to his waist. The others pulled him out and then they climbed a rope ladder. Kit thought the experiment proved that nothing useful could be done until the tide flowed round the ship. Another gang was moving a kedge-anchor across the deck, while a few more coiled heavy ropes beside the winch.
"Allie played his cards well; he'd set into a good many similar games afore, I judge. He begun by doing little favors for Phoebe Ann she was the deef aunt I mentioned and 'twa'n't long afore he was as solid with the old lady as a kedge-anchor.
He was very very quiet, but off his balance evidently. Would you believe it? He wanted to take a length of old stream-cable and a kedge-anchor with him in the long-boat. We said, 'Ay, ay, sir, deferentially, and on the quiet let the thing slip overboard. The heavy medicine-chest went that way, two bags of green coffee, tins of paint fancy, paint! a whole lot of things.
And close to us, beginning to bend away towards that hissing knot in the north-west, wound our poor little channel, mercilessly exposed as a stagnant, muddy ditch with scarcely a foot of water, not deep enough to hide our small kedge-anchor, which perked up one fluke in impudent mockery.
Having reached the spot, which was so darkened by overhanging trees that we could see with difficulty, a small kedge-anchor attached to a thin line was let softly down over the stern. "Now, lads," whispered the captain as he walked along the line of men, who were all armed to the teeth, "don't be in a hurry, aim low, and don't waste your first shots."
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