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Updated: May 24, 2025
The fore and mainmasts still stood, supporting the weight of rigging and wreck which hung to them, and which like a powerful lever, pressed the labouring ship down on her side. To disengage this enormous top-hamper was to us an object more to be desired than expected.
Many of these trees are so large, that they would be able to furnish mainmasts for fifty-gun ships. Amidst the variety of aromatic trees and shrubs which this part of New Zealand produced, there was none which bore fruit fit to be eaten. The country was not found so destitute of quadrupeds as was formerly imagined.
Two more shells struck the wooden hull of the "Franklin" between the fore and mainmasts, tearing a great rent in her side and literally annihilating the crews of four guns. "There is three feet of water in the hold, sir and it is gaining!" shouted the carpenter at the pump-well. Men were sent at once to the pumps. Crash! This time a double explosion, followed by dense clouds of steam.
And this craft in which my hope was set was really a bark, by the way; I do not use the word poetically. Her fore and mainmasts were square rigged while her mizzen mast was rigged fore and aft like my little Wavecrest. As I watched her I saw that her navigator had espied the coming tempest from the south and the crew began to swarm among the sails.
When off the Lizard, meeting with a heavy south-westerly gale, they were driven back, the Pelican and Marigold having to cut away their mainmasts, to Falmouth, where they remained until the 13th of the next month, when, all their damages being repaired, they once more put to sea. All on board were eager to know their destination.
Besides her fore and mainsail, and those already named, the schooner, for so we must call her, carried two heavy, but graceful topsails upon her fore and mainmasts, and even a jigger sail or spanker and gaff above it, on a slender spur rigged from the quarter deck.
The sight that met the eyes of the spectators was one never to be forgotten. The "Numancia" was evidently ashore on the East bank. Her fore and mainmasts were gone, and clouds of dark smoke were lazily ascending from her forecastle.
The French ship's jibboom, as she fell on board the English frigate, passed directly between her fore and mainmasts, and there she hung, while it pressed so hard against the already wounded mainmast that there appeared every prospect of the latter being carried away. Just before, a shot had struck the boatswain and brought him mortally wounded to the deck. Paul Pringle knew of his loss.
Then a berth-deck was laid for the accommodation of officers and crew, and the main deck renewed and strengthened to carry the heavy 8-inch shell-gun, mounted on a pivot between the fore and mainmasts, and the four 24 pounder howitzers of 13 cwt. each, to be mounted as a broadside battery.
The ship of the enemy was greatly our superior in size, and lay much higher out of the water. Our boats had been exposed to his fire, as they were placed on spars between the fore and mainmasts during the action, and had suffered considerable damage.
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