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Updated: June 4, 2025
I'd been catching it bad just before. I'd got on my beam-ends in Oporto, and couldn't afford to be fastidious about a berth. Consequently, I'd found myself in a rotten old Genovese tramp barque that most of the crew had run from because they thought she'd founder next time she put to sea.
The first time this took place, I was sent on my beam-ends, and was not a little alarmed into the bargain; but the crew seemed to take it as a matter of course, and in reply to my anxious inquiries as to the extent of damage that had been occasioned, they informed me that she had only brushed the cobwebs off her keel.
He was not, however, kept long in suspense. Scarcely had he regained the cabin when the ship again struck with terrific violence, and he knew by the rending crash overhead that one or more of the masts had gone over the side. The ship at the same moment slewed round and was thrown on her beam-ends.
Owing to the difficulty of finding and passing the ropes to each other, from the intensity of the darkness, and the deluge of rain which blinded them, the men were not able to execute the order of the mate so soon as it was necessary; and before they could accomplish their task, or Captain Ingram could gain the deck, the wind suddenly burst upon the devoted vessel from the quarter directly opposite to that from which the gale had blown, taking her all aback, and throwing her on her beam-ends.
There was still too much sail on the schooner, and, as the gale increased, I feared that the masts would be torn out of her or carried away, while the wind whistled and shrieked through the strained rigging. Suddenly the wind shifted a point, a heavy sea struck us on the bow, and the schooner was almost laid on her beam-ends, so that I could scarcely keep my legs.
Then it was sawed across, yielding eighteen logs, each sixteen feet in length, with a diameter of four feet at the smallest end. The logs were put upon wheels, and run over a light trestle-work to the mill, drawn thither by a ridiculous dummy, which looked not unlike an old-fashioned tavern store on its beam-ends, with an elbow in the air.
We had gone about several miles without any difficulty, when, as we were once more standing in for the shore, a squall heavier than any we had yet experienced struck the vessel and laid her over almost on her beam-ends. At that moment the captain rushed on deck with the look of a half-frantic man. He cast one hurried glance forward.
She was quite upon an even keel that is to say, her deck lay in a plane parallel with that of the water but this latter sloped at an angle of more than forty-five degrees, so that we seemed to be lying upon our beam-ends.
This is a danger peculiar to lying-to in a gale; for if the vessel get into the trough of the sea, and is met in that situation by a wave of unusual magnitude, she runs the double risk of being thrown on her beam-ends, and of having her decks cleared of everything, by the cataract of water that washes athwart them.
As he did so, a huge roller came foaming and tumbling towards us, striking our upturned side so violently that it hove us fairly over on our beam-ends, whilst it lifted us clear of the ledge to which we had hung, and launched us into the unbroken water to leeward. Once clear of the ledge, the little craft instantly righted, and I put the helm hard up.
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