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Updated: June 4, 2025
Towards nightfall of the same day, Sept. 1, 1814, four more sail were sighted; and the "Wasp" at once made off in chase of the most weatherly. At eight o'clock the "Wasp" had gained so rapidly upon the chase, that the latter began firing with her stern chaser, and soon after opened with one of her lee guns. All the time the enemy kept up a vigorous signalling with rockets, lanterns, and guns.
Philip was active, and exerted himself to the utmost, encouraging the worn-out men, securing where aught had given way, and little interfered with by the captain, who was himself no sailor. "Well," observed the captain to Philip, as they held on by the belaying-pins, "you'll acknowledge that she is a fine weatherly vessel in a gale is she not?
The duke and Oquendo, with some of the best sailors among the Fleet, tried to beat out from the crowd and get room to manoeuvre, but Drake's ships were too weatherly and too well handled to permit of this, and they were driven back again into the confused mass, which was being slowly forced towards the shoals and banks of the coasts.
Fortunately for my purpose, we were making rather a long passage of it, the little hooker not being by any means a particularly weatherly craft; consequently our first land-fall on our sixth day out was the curious shoal and accompanying group of rocky islets called Los Roques, or The Roccas, off La Guayra, close to which we hove about and stood to the northward on the starboard tack.
In one particular only had his calculations been inaccurate, and that was in the speed of the ship; he had not reckoned on her being either so fast or so weatherly as she had proved to be, and his reckoning located her as being at that moment within sight of but to the eastward of the Wight.
It is, however, a very easy thing to get a nearer look at him, and it's no great matter to us, intending as we do to make the islands off the Cape de Verde, if we do lose a little of our weatherly position keep the schooner away a point, and get a small pull on your weather braces give her a little sheet too, fore and aft, sir. So, that will do keep her steady at that south-east and by south.
Beilby who was a shipowner as well, and had for many years employed a fleet of small vessels in the South Sea Islands trade. The voyage across the Pacific from Valparaiso to Sydney was disappointing calms and light, variable winds being met with for nearly a month; and then between Australia and New Zealand, two weeks of savage westerly gales tried the ship's weatherly qualities to the utmost.
"Hardly," said Roswell, gazing intently towards the nearest island; "hardly; for the most weatherly of the two will necessarily get the force of the wind and the impetus of those bergs first, and make the fastest drift. It may lessen the violence of the nip, but I do not think it will avert it altogether." This opinion of Gardiner's fully described all that subsequently occurred.
But directly that the wind shows signs of dropping we may look out; and if we observe any further suspicious manoeuvres we may safely conclude that she is French, and, if the men-o'-war do not forestall us, we will have a slap at her; for she appears to be a wonderfully fast and weatherly craft and is certainly a most magnificent sea-boat."
Among the latter, too, as has been stated, some were much farther to windward than the others; an irregularity that proceeded from a desire of the Comte to luff up as near as possible to the enemy a desire, which, practised on, necessarily threw the least weatherly vessels to leeward.
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