Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 1, 2025
The steel weather-rigging carried away at the lanyards, and mast, jib, mainsail, blocks, stays, sea-anchor, French Pete everything went over the side. Almost by a miracle, the captain clutched at the bobstay and managed to get one hand up and over the bowsprit. The boys ran forward to drag him into safety, and Red Nelson, observing the disaster, put up his helm and ran down to the rescue.
Then, as a wave receded, I let the boat out on the alpine rope so as to avoid a sudden jerk. The heavy painter had been lost when the sea-anchor went adrift. The 'James Caird' could be seen but dimly in the cove, where the high black cliffs made the darkness almost complete, and the strain upon one's attention was great.
We were always up and down on top of the swells, and our bodies ached so terribly from the sitting-down position and from the joggling of the motion that we would cry with pain. The salt water got in all of our bruises and cracked our hands and feet, but there was no help for us, and we had to grin and bear it. A shark took hold of our sea-anchor and we were afraid that he would tear it to pieces.
The sea-anchor remained just under the surface of the ocean, in a perpendicular position. A long line, in turn, connected it with the schooner. As a result, the Petite Jeanne rode bow-on to the wind and to what little sea there was. The situation really would have been favorable, had we not been in the path of the storm.
Putting out a sea-anchor, the 'Duncan McDonald' kept within a half-a-mile of this icy shore. The captain had determined to land and survey the place, which far away back seemed to terminate in mountain peaks of ice.
And then we took in the sea-anchor and the mizzen, hoisted the reefed staysail, ran the Snark off before it, and went below not to the hot meal that should have awaited us, but to skate across the slush and slime on the cabin floor, where cook and cabin-boy lay like dead men in their bunks, and to lie down in our own bunks, with our clothes on ready for a call, and to listen to the bilge-water spouting knee-high on the galley floor.
Of course, our canvas had gone long before. But Captain Oudouse had on the Petite Jeanne something I had never before seen on a South Sea schooner a sea-anchor. It was a conical canvas bag, the mouth of which was kept open by a huge hoop of iron. The sea-anchor was bridled something like a kite, so that it bit into the water as a kite bites into the air, but with a difference.
But I now noticed that the weight of the hamper being on the larboard side, balanced the list the vessel took from her shifted ballast, and that she floated on a level keel with her bows fair at the sea, whence I concluded that a sort of sea-anchor had been formed ahead of her by the wreckage, and that it held her in that posture, otherwise she must certainly have fallen into the trough.
"Spare oar right! Rowlocks right! Sea-anchor right! Bottom boards and stern grating right. Painter, ten fathoms; hemp. . . . A bit short there, Compton! Eh? . . . Oh all right," said the official, and we manoeuvred into position, our sterns held in by the guard-boats.
Now, gentle reader, what would you do if you were on a small boat, rolling in the trough of the sea, a trysail on that small boat's stern that was unable to swing the bow up into the wind? Get out the sea-anchor. It's just what we did. We had a patent one, made to order and warranted not to dive.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking