William Falconer

“ Rodmond, who heard a piteous groan behind,
Touched with compassion gazed upon the blind;
And, while around his sad companions crowd,
He guides th’ unhappy victim to the shroud:
‘Hie thee aloft, my gallant friend!’ he cries;
‘Thy only succour on the mast relies.’
The helm, bereft of half its vital force,
Now scarce subdued the wild unbridled course;
Quick to th’ abandoned wheel Arion came,
The ship’s tempestuous sallies to reclaim:
The vessel, while the dread event draws nigh,
Seems more impatient o’er the waves to fly ”

“ Each faithful maid expects th’ approaching youth:
In distant souls congenial passions glow,
And mutual feelings mutual bliss bestow—
Such shadowy happiness their thoughts employ,
Illusion all, and visionary joy!
Thus time elapsed, while o’er the pathless tide
Their ship through Grecian seas the pilots guide.
Occasion called to touch at Candia’s shore,
Which, blest with favouring winds, they soon explore;
The haven enter, borne before the gale,
Despatch their commerce, and prepare to sail.
Eternal powers! what ruins from afar
Mark the fell track of desolating war! ”

“ Death yawns on every leeward shore around.—
While Albert thus, with horrid doubts dismayed,
The geometric distances surveyed,
On deck the watchful Rodmond cries aloud,
‘Secure your lives! grasp every man a shroud!’—
Roused from his trance, he mounts with eyes aghast;
When o’er the ship, in undulation vast, [80]
A giant surge down rushes from on high,
And fore and aft dissevered ruins lie:
As when, Britannia’s empire to maintain,
Great Hawke descends in thunder on the main,
Around the brazen voice of battle roars,
And fatal lightnings blast the hostile shores ”

“ And far abroad the canvass wings extend.
Along the glassy plain the vessel glides,
While azure radiance trembles on her sides;
The lunar rays in long reflection gleam,
With silver deluging the fluid stream.
Levant and Thracian gales alternate play,
Then in th’ Egyptian quarter die away.
A calm ensues; adjacent shores they dread,
The boats, with rowers manned, are sent ahead; [53]
With cordage fastened to the lofty prow
Aloof to sea the stately ship they tow;
The nervous crew their sweeping oars extend,
And pealing shouts the shore of Candia rend:
Success attends their skill! ”

“ Who strikes them once, beyond relief must die:
And now sore wounded, thou perhaps art tost
On these, or in some oozy cavern lost:”
Thus thought Arion; anxious gazing round
In vain, his eyes no more Palemon found.—
The demons of destruction hover nigh,
And thick their mortal shafts commissioned fly:
When now a breaking surge, with forceful sway,
Two, next Arion, furious tears away:
Hurled on the crags, behold they gasp, they bleed!
And groaning, cling upon th’ elusive weed;
Another billow bursts in boundless roar!
Arion sinks! and Memory views no more. [134]
Ha! ”

“ The helm to starboard moves; each shivering sail
Is sharply trimmed to clasp th’ augmenting gale—
The mizen draws; she springs aloof once more,
While the forestay-sail balances before.
The fore-sail braced obliquely to the wind,
They near the prow th’ extended tack confin’d;
Then on the leeward sheet the seamen bend,
And haul the bow-line to the bowsprit-end:
To top-sails next they haste: the bunt-lines gone!
Through rattling blocks the clue-lines swiftly run;
Th’ extending sheets on either side are mann’d,
Abroad they come! the fluttering sails expand ”

“ Again in shivering streamers they may rend; [77]
Or should they stand, beneath th’ oppressive strain
The down-pressed ship may never rise again;
Too late to weather now Morea’s land,
And drifting fast on Athens’ rocky strand.”
Thus they lament the consequence severe,
Where perils unallayed by Hope appear:
Long pondering in their minds each feared event,
At last to furl the courses they consent;
That done, to reef the mizen next agree,
And try beneath it sidelong in the sea.
Now down the mast the yard they lower away,
Then jears and topping-lift secure belay ”

“ No one who had not passed through the circumstances which Falconer describes, could have painted them as he has done; and of the comparatively few who have had the opportunity of drinking in the fearful inspiration of such scenes, and survived to tell of them, Falconer is the first who appears to have possessed the genius requisite to retain and embody the impression, with the vigour of imagination and the fidelity of memory. It was not more necessary [6] that he should be a poet, than that he should be a seaman. ”

“ From Albert his opinion thus dissents.—
“Too true the perils of the present hour,
Where toils succeeding toils our strength o’erpower!
Our bark, ’tis true, no shelter here can find,
Sore shattered by the ruffian seas and wind: [89]
Yet where with safety can we dare to scud
Before this tempest, and pursuing flood?
At random driven, to present death we haste,
And one short hour perhaps may be our last:
Though Corinth’s gulf extend along the lee,
To whose safe ports appears a passage free,
Yet think! this furious unremitting gale
Deprives the ship of every ruling sail ”

“ To weigh the danger with the doubtful hope:
Though sorely buffeted by every sea,
Our hull unbroken long may try a-lee;
The crew, though harassed much with toils severe,
Still at their pumps, perceive no hazards near: [90]
Shall we, incautious, then the danger tell,
At once their courage and their hope to quell? ”

“ Jears, lifts, and brails, a seaman each attends,
And down the mast its mighty yard descends.
Jears, or geers, answer the same purpose to the main-sail, fore-sail, and mizen, as haliards do to all inferior sails. The tye, a sort of runner, or thick rope, is the upper part of the jears. ”

“ Through hostile floods, their vessel to regain;
Weak Hope, alas! they buffet long the wave,
And grasp at life though sinking in the grave;
Till all exhausted, and bereft of strength,
O’erpowered they yield to cruel fate at length [128]
The burying waters close around their head,
They sink! for ever numbered with the dead.
Those who remain the weather shrouds embrace,
Nor longer mourn their lost companions’ case;
Transfixt with terror at th’ approaching doom,
Self pity in their breasts alone has room:
Albert, and Rodmond, and Palemon, near
With young Arion, on the mast appear ”

“ Top-gallant-yards, which are the highest ones in a ship, are sent down at the approach of an heavy gale, to ease the mast-heads. Travellers are iron rings furnished with a piece of rope, one end of which encircles the ring to which it is spliced: they are principally intended to facilitate the hoisting or lowering of the top-gallant yards; for which purpose two of them are fixed on each back-stay; which are long ropes that reach on each side of the ship, from the top-masts (which are the second in point of height) to the chains. ”

“ The chess tree, called by the French taquet d’amure, consists of a perpendicular piece of wood, fastened with iron bolts, on each side the ship: in the upper part of the chess-tree is a large hole, through which the tack is passed; and when the clue or lower corner of the sail comes down to it, the tack is said to be aboard. Taught, the roide of the French, and dicht of the Dutch sailors, implies the state of being extended, or stretched out. Tally, is a word applied to the operation of hauling the sheets aft, or toward the ship’s stern. To belay is to fasten. ”

“ Due east from this appears th’ immortal shore
That sacred Phœbus, and Diana bore,
Delos! through all th’ Ægean seas renown’d,
Whose coast the rocky Cyclades surround;
By Phœbus honoured, and by Greece revered,
Her hallowed groves e’en distant Persia feared:
But now a desert unfrequented land,
No human footstep marks the trackless sand.
Thence to the north by Asia’s western bound
Fair Lemnos stands, with rising marble crown’d ”

“ Stay-sail; though the form of sails is so extremely different, they may all be divided into sails which have either three or [149] four sides: a stay-sail comes under the first class, and receives its name from a large strong rope on which it is hoisted, called a stay, employed to support the mast, by being extended from its upper end towards the fore part of the ship, as the shrouds (a range of large ropes) , are extended to the right and left of the mast, and behind it. The yards of a ship are said to be square, when they hang across the ship, at right angles, with the mast ”

“ And first to brail the tack up firmly move:
‘The watchful seaman, whose sagacious eye
On sure experience may with truth rely,
Who from the reigning cause foretels th’ effect,
This barbarous practice ever will reject:
For, fluttering loose in air, the rigid sail
Soon flits to ruins in the furious gale; [74]
And he, who strives the tempest to disarm,
Will never first embrail the lee yard-arm.’
So Albert spoke; to windward, at his call,
Some seamen the clue-garnet stand to haul—
The tack’s eased off, while the involving clue
Between the pendent blocks ascending flew ”

“ The main-sail and fore-sail of a ship are furnished with a tack on each side, which is formed of a thick rope tapering to the end, having a knot wrought upon the largest extremity, by which it is firmly retained in the clue of the sail: by this means the tack is always fastened to windward, at the same time that the sheet extends the sail to leeward. ”

“ The movement of scudding, from the Swedish word skutta, is never attempted in a contrary wind, unless, as in the present instance, the condition of a ship renders her incapable of sustaining any longer on her side, the mutual efforts of the winds and waves. The principal hazards, incident to scudding, are generally a pooping sea; the difficulty of steering, which exposes the vessel perpetually to the risk of broaching-to; and the want of sufficient sea-room: a sea striking the ship violently on the stern may dash it inwards, by which she must inevitably [162] founder ”

“ A ship-boy on the high and giddy mast!
“Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast,
Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains,
In cradle of the rude imperious surge.”
SHAKSPEARE. Page 30, l. 1.
O’er bar and shelf.
A bar is known, in hydrography, to be a mass of earth, or sand, that has been collected by the surge of the sea, at the entrance of a river, or haven, so as to render navigation difficult, and often dangerous. A shelf, or shelve, so called from the Saxon Schylf, is a name given to any dangerous shallows, sand-banks, or rocks, lying immediately under the surface of the water. ”

“ Clue-lines are fastened to the lower corners of the square sails, for the more easy furling of them. Reef-tackles are ropes fastened to the edge of the sail, just beneath the lowest reef; and being brought down to the deck by means of two blocks, are used to facilitate the operation of reefing. Earings are small ropes employed to fasten the upper corners of the principal sails, and the extremities of the reefs, to the respective yard-arms, particularly when any sail is to be close furled. ”

“ In 1773, a black was examined before the East India Directors, who affirmed that he was one of five persons who had been saved from the wreck of the Aurora, and that she had been cast away on a reef of rocks off Mocoa.
To these particulars, for which the public are chiefly indebted to the assiduous researches of the Rev. James Stanier Clarke, it may be added, on the same authority, that Falconer was, in his person, about five feet seven inches in height, of a thin light make, hard featured, and weather-beaten, of blunt and aukward manners, but cheerful, kind, and generous. ”

“ Drift is that motion and direction, by which a vessel is forced to leeward sideways, when she is unable any longer to carry sail; or, at least, is restrained to such a portion of sail, as may be necessary to keep her sufficiently inclined to one side, that she may not be dismasted by her violent labouring produced by the turbulence of the sea.
Page 77, l. 10.
And try beneath it the sidelong in the sea.
To try, is to lay the ship with her side nearly in the direction of the wind and sea, with her head somewhat inclined to windward ”

“ The wales are the strong flanks which extend along a ship’s side, at different heights, throughout her whole length, and form the curves by which a vessel appears light and graceful on the water: they are usually distinguished into the main-wale, and the channel-wale. ”

“ Conceals his grief, and doubles all his cares.—
“Away there! lower the mizen-yard on deck,”
He calls, “and brace the foremast yards aback!”
His great example every bosom fires,
New life enkindles, and new hope inspires.
While to the helm unfaithful still she lies,
One desperate remedy at last he tries—
“Haste! with your weapons cut the shrouds and stay,
And hew at once the mizen-mast away!”
He said: to cut the girding stay they run,
Soon on each side the severed shrouds are gone:
Fast by the fated pine bold Rodmond stands,
Th’ impatient axe hung gleaming in his hands ”

“ As therefore the ship lies in such a situation as to have the wind and sea directly on her side; and these increase to such an height, that she must either founder, or scud before the storm; the aftmost sails are first taken in, or so placed that the wind has very little power on them: and the head-sails, or fore-mast sails, are spread abroad, so that the whole force of the wind is exerted on the ship’s forepart, which must therefore of necessity yield to its impulse. ”