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Updated: June 20, 2025
Every instant I expected to hear the fatal crash. Had our mizenmast been caught in any of the rigging, our destruction would have been certain; but ere the boat actually struck the wreck she was hauled off; and now the crew, labouring with all their strength, drew her up to her anchor. To weigh the anchor with the sea that was running was impossible.
I resisted all efforts to persuade me into retreating again, and it ended in my being lashed to the mizenmast by my friendly conductor, who declared that his head, the best landsman's head on board, would not stand the giddy scene; in short, that he should be obliged to report himself sick, and exchange our agreeable society below for the solitude of his berth.
In order to keep her there, Captain Martin and some of his crew endeavoured to lash her bowsprit to his mizenmast; while others were engaged in bringing a gun to bear, out of a port which the carpenters quickly cut through the stern windows and quarter gallery.
Notwithstanding this, the Gloucester was the only ship which suffered much, by carrying away her mainyard; but on the 7th of April several guns were heard to leeward, and it was soon seen that the Wager had lost her mizenmast and main-topsail yard, while the Anna Pink had had her bowsprit so injured that there was a risk of her losing her fore-topmast.
All the masts were crowded with the labouring crew; fiercer blew the tempest; there was a crash; wild shrieks, rising high above the howling of the storm, rent the air. The mizenmast had gone by the board, and falling over the starboard side had carried all those upon it into the boiling ocean.
As the sun showed himself for an instant towards noon, he caused Shandon and Wall to take a pretty exact observation, which was shouted to him. All the crew suffered the tortures of anxiety for half the day, but towards two o'clock these words were shouted from the top of the mizenmast: "Veer to the west, all steam on."
Although she had lost her mizenmast, there was nothing to prevent her being navigated to a port; and had the circumstances been different, I should have called for volunteers and made an effort to induce a crew to undertake the navigation of her to, say, Batavia, with the idea of claiming salvage.
As the boatswain had said, she was about half a mile distant from us, and her mizenmast was over the side, still fast to the hull by the rigging, which had not been cut away.
We had now a good sight of the enemy, and brought our whole broadside to bear upon her stern; and after a quarter of an hour more firing I perceived that her ensign was no longer on the staff, where it had been hoisted after the fall of the mizenmast; neither had she for the last five minutes given us a gun in return. "She has struck, sir, I think," said I to Captain Delmar; "her ensign is down."
Polson, recognising the necessity for prompt action at the helm, had sent a second hand to the wheel, and at the first sound of my voice these two men sent the wheel spinning hard over with all their united strength, while at the same moment the men tending the after braces had relieved the ship of the pressure of the whole of the canvas upon her mizenmast, the craft accordingly swerved away from the wind with almost the alacrity of a living thing, and the next moment she was swirling round, as though upon a pivot, shaving the obstructive angle of the reef by a hairbreadth, and coming to with the wind over the starboard quarter, when the rounding of her port bow was actually dashing aside the white water, while I clung to my masthead in fear and trembling, waiting for the shock which should tell me that she had struck.
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