Duncan McGregor

“ As the Caroline approached, part of a mast and some spars, rising and falling, were observed grinding under the weather-quarter of the wreck, having got entangled with the keel or rudder irons, and thus attaching it to the hull of the vessel. The Caroline, coming down swift before the wind, was in a few minutes brought across the bows of the Kent. At that moment a shout was heard as if from the very centre of the fire, and the same instant several figures were observed clinging to a mast. The sea was heavy, and the wreck threatened every moment to disappear. ”

“ In vain was the axe applied to the entangled tackle; the moment was inconceivably critical, as the boat, which necessarily followed the motion of the ship, was gradually rising out of the water, and must, in another instant, have been hanging perpendicularly by the bow, and its helpless passengers launched into the deep, had not a most providential wave suddenly struck and lifted up the stern, so as to enable the seamen to disengage the tackle. ”

“ Wallen, the mate of the Caroline, with great quickness of thought set the spot by a star. Then, in spite of the danger in the darkness of floating wreck, he resolved to wait quietly till daylight, and ordered his men to shout repeatedly to cheer any who might be still floating on stray spars. For a long time no one answered; at last a feeble cry came, and the Caroline's sailors returned it loudly and gladly. What joy that faint cry must have brought to those friendly ears! ”

“ As the boats were nearly three-quarters of an hour absent between each trip—which period was necessarily spent by those in the wreck in a state of fearful inactivity—abundant opportunity was afforded for collecting the sentiments of many of the unhappy men around me; some of whom, after remaining perhaps for a while in silent abstraction, would suddenly burst forth, as if awakened from some terrible dream to a still more frightful reality, into a long train of loud and desponding lamentation, that gradually subsided into its former stillness. ”

“ With a view to excite among the ladies as little alarm as possible, in conveying this intelligence to Colonel Fearon, the commanding officer of the troops, I knocked gently at his cabin door, and expressed a wish to speak with him; but whether my countenance betrayed the state of my feelings, or the increasing noise and confusion upon deck created apprehensions amongst them that the storm was assuming a more serious aspect, I found it difficult to pacify some of the ladies by repeated assurances that no danger whatever was to be apprehended from the gale. ”

“ Indeed, the only one whose life appears to have been placed in extreme jeopardy alongside was one of the ladies, who, in attempting to spring from the boat, came short of the hand that was held out to her, and would certainly have perished, had she not most happily caught hold at the instant of a rope that happened to be hanging over the Cambria's side, to which she clung for some moments, until she was dragged into the vessel. ”

“ We are so much in the habit of uttering the awful words 'Almighty,' 'heaven,' 'hell,' 'eternity,' 'divine justice,' 'holiness,' etc., without attaching to them, in all their magnitude, the ideas of which such words are the symbols, that we become overwhelmed with much of the astonishment that accompanies a new and alarming discovery if, at any time, the ideas themselves are suddenly and forcibly impressed upon us ”

“ From the violence of the gale, it seems that the report of our guns was not heard; but the ascending volumes of smoke from the ship sufficiently announced the dreadful nature of our distress; and we had the satisfaction, after a short period of dark suspense, to see the brig hoist British colours, and crowd all sail to hasten to our relief. ”

“ The rolling of the ship, which was vastly increased by a dead weight of some hundred tons of shots and shell that formed a part of its lading, became so great about half-past eleven or twelve o'clock, that our main chains were thrown by every lurch considerably under water; and the best cleated articles of furniture in the cabins and the cuddy were dashed about with so much noise and violence as to excite the liveliest apprehensions of individual danger. ”

“ But it is impossible, I think, for the inexperienced mariner, however unreflecting he may try to be, to view the effects of the increasing storm, as he feels his solitary vessel reeling to and fro under his feet, without involuntarily raising his thoughts, with a secret confession of helplessness and veneration that he may never before have experienced, towards that Being whose power, under ordinary circumstances, we may have disregarded, and whose incessant goodness we are prone to requite with ingratitude. ”

“ The wind beginning to freshen and a gale coming on, it was all the jolly-boat could do to rejoin the Caroline. There could be no doubt that when the Caroline hove-to and luffed under the lee of the Kent, it must have passed men drifting to leeward on detached spars. They of course all perished in the rising storm.
"A piece of plate was presented to Captain Cook, of the Cambria, by the officers and passengers of the Kent, and the Duke of York publicly thanked him for his humane zeal and promptitude. ”

“ The sailors and soldiers, cold, wet, and almost naked, quickly followed; the whole forming, in their haggard looks and the endless variety of their costume, an assemblage at once as melancholy and grotesque as it is possible to conceive. So eager did the people appear to be to pour out upon us the full current of their sympathies, that shoes, hats, and other articles of urgent necessity were presented to several of the officers and men before they had even quitted the point of disembarkation. ”

“ In conclusion, I would observe that if any class of men, more than another, ought [Pg 82] to be struck with awe and gratitude by the goodness and providence of God, it is they who go down to the sea in ships, and see His wonders in the great deep; or if any ought to familiarize their minds with death and its solemn consequences, it is surely soldiers, "whose very business it is to die." ”

“ Owing to the continued violence of the gale, and to the bulwarks on one side of the brig having been driven in, the sea beat so incessantly over our deck as to render it necessary that the hatches should only be lifted up between the returning waves, to prevent absolute suffocation below, where the men were so closely packed together that the steam arising from their respiration excited at one time an apprehension that the vessel was on fire ”

“ It has been observed by the author of the Retrospect, that "in the heat of battle, it is not only possible but easy to forget death, and cease to think; but in the cool and protracted hours of a shipwreck, where there is often nothing to engage the mind but the recollection of tried and unsuccessful labours, and the sight of unavoidable and increasing harbingers of destruction, it is not easy or possible to forget ourselves or a future state." ”

“ Some of those men who were necessarily left behind, having previously conducted themselves with great propriety and courage, I think it but justice to express my belief that the same difficulties which had nearly proved fatal to Captain Cobb's personal escape were probably found to be insurmountable by landsmen, whose coolness, unaccompanied with dexterity and experience, might not be available to them in their awful situation. ”

“ For there is no doubt that the heavy rolling of our ship, occasioned by the violent gale, which was the real origin of all our disasters, contributed also most essentially to our subsequent preservation; since, had not Captain Cobb been [Pg 70] enabled, by the greatness of the swell, to introduce speedily through the gun ports the immense quantity of water that inundated the hold, and thereby checked for so long a time the fury of the flames, the Kent must unquestionably have been consumed before many, perhaps before any, of those on board could have found shelter in the Cambria. ”

“ The mate and four seamen pushed off in the jolly-boat, through a sea covered with floating spars, chests, and furniture, that threatened to crush or overwhelm the boat. When within a few yards of the stern, they caught sight of the first living thing—a wretched man clinging to a [Pg 85] spar close under the ship's counter. Every time the stern-frame rose with the swell he was suspended above the water, and scorched by the long keen tongues of pure flame that now came darting through the gun-room ports. Each time this torture came the man shrieked with agony ”

“ While the men were thus bent in various ways on self-preservation, one of the sailors, who had taken his post with many others over the magazine, awaiting with great patience the dreaded explosion, at last cried out, as if in ill-humour that his expectation was likely to be disappointed, "Well, if she won't blow up, I'll see if I can't get away from her;" ”

“ The men on their return to their regiment expressed themselves in terms of the liveliest gratitude for the affectionate attentions they received on board the Caroline, from Captain Bibbey, who considerately remained till daylight close to the wreck, in the hope that some others might still be found clinging to it—an act of humanity which, it will appear on the slightest reflection, would have been madness in Captain Cook, in the peculiar situation of the Cambria, to have attempted. ”

“ A fine fellow, a soldier, who had neither wife nor child of his own, but who evinced the greatest solicitude for the safety of those of others, insisted on having three children lashed to him, with whom he plunged into the water; not being able to reach the boat, he was again drawn [Pg 37] into the ship with his charge, but not before two of the children had expired. One man fell down the hatchway into the flames, and another had his back so completely broken as to have been observed quite doubled falling overboard. ”

“ Two or three soldiers, to relieve their wives of a part of their families, sprang into the water with their children, and perished in their endeavours to save them. One young lady, who had resolutely refused to quit her father, whose sense of duty kept him at his post, was near falling a sacrifice to her filial devotion, not having been picked up by those in the boats until she had sunk five or six times. A man, who was reduced to the frightful alternative of losing his wife or his children, hastily decided in favour of his duty to the former. ”

“ But if, at the hour of death, when all external support shall slide away, the soul shall be awakened to the consciousness of its real condition; if it should be made to see, on the one hand, the spirituality and exceeding breadth of the divine law, and be quickened, on the other, to a sense of its unnumbered transgressions ”

“ I must state that, in general, it was not those most remarkable for their fortitude who evinced either a precipitancy to depart, or a desire to remain very long behind—the older and cooler soldiers appearing to possess too much regard for their officers, as well as for their individual credit, to take their hasty departure at a very early period of the day, and too much wisdom and resolution to hesitate to the very last. ”

“ The bustle attendant on a departure for India is calculated to subdue the force of those deeply painful sensations to which few men can refuse to yield, in the immediate prospect of a long and distant separation from the land of their fondest and earliest recollections. ”

“ Some whose agitation and timidity had, in the earlier part of it, rendered them objects of pity or contempt, afterwards rose, by some great internal effort, into positive distinction for the opposite qualities; while others, remarkable at first for calmness and courage, suddenly giving way, without any fresh cause of despair, seemed afterwards to cast their minds as they did their bodies, prostrate before the danger. ”

“ The better to balance the boat in the raging sea through which it had to pass, and to enable the seamen to ply their oars, the women and children were stowed promis [Pg 33] cuously under the seats, and consequently exposed to the risk of being drowned by the continual dashing of the spray over their heads, which so filled the boat during the passages that before their arrival at the brig the poor females were sitting up to the waist in water, and their children kept with the greatest difficulty above it. ”