Wreck

“ Some leaped into the sea, anticipating that death which was about to reach them; others, more successful, swam to fragments of the wreck; while the shrouds, yards and ropes, along the side of the vessel, were covered with the crew crowding upon them, and hanging there, as if hesitating which alternative of destruction to choose, equally imminent and equally terrible. ”

“ Some efforts were even then being made, to cut this portion of the wreck away; for, as the ship, which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. But, a great cry, which was audible even above the wind and water, rose from the shore at this moment; the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge. ”

“ To five-and-twenty souls did that thin line, shot over the wreck by means of a rocket, carry life and hope, and heartily their fellow-men worked to save them from the sea that fought hard to take them for its prey; and when, at last, nearly every man had come ashore upon the frail bridge of hemp, the waves seemed to tear at the wreck with redoubled fury, piling mountains of foaming water upon it, leaping upon the deck, or lifting the hull to dash it again upon the cruel rocks that were gnawing their way through the bottom. ”

“ Here, on a calm Spring day, with a seemingly flat sea, a white man’s vessel under full sail—no wreck, no derelict with broken masts and spars, and with perhaps the steering-gear carried away—was heading calmly, almost it seemed, happily, to become a total wreck on perhaps the cruellest coast in the world. ”

“ A miserable figure the poor wreck looks, when she is hauled up on the slip-way for repairs. Her masts are out of her, her bow crushed, her stern twisted and broken, the oakum is streaming out of her seams, her timbers are started, her rudder is gone, she looks truly the very wreck she is. ”

“ After observing this fragment of the wreck attentively for some time, I thought I perceived a man moving among the tangled collection of timbers and ropes and sails, endeavoring to extricate himself. Whatever it might be, it was some distance above the sea,—so high, indeed, that the waves no longer washed it fairly,—only the spray. ”

“ I was now going, with wind and current, to destruction; and cold, hungry, and fatigued, was obliged again to sit down in the water to rest, when an extraordinary circumstance greatly relieved me. On examining the wreck, to see if it was possible to detach any part of it to steer by, I perceived something loose, entangled in a fork of the wreck, and so carried along. This I found to be a small trunk, bottom upwards, which, with some difficulty, I dragged up upon the barge. ”

“ Having helped ourselves to all the casks of wine and brandy on board, we cut adrift from the wreck, and in spite of the cries of the wounded upon her decks, by numerous well-directed broadsides sent her to the bottom of the ocean, where dead men tell no tales. ”

“ Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar over a sunken ship. For, whether in mid-sea or among the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck must mark at last the end of each and all. ”

“ In five minutes we had emerged, sleek and dripping, on the further side, and the wreck was close before us.
We shook ourselves like dogs, and ran up the sand. The shivered frame of the thing lay pitched on the sharp back of the drift, where the poor ship must have dumped herself to be broken like a stick across a housemaid’s knee. What remained was a melancholy witness to the impotence of man’s bravest efforts to command Nature in her passions. She must have been a fine craft, of many thousand tons burden, by evidence of this fragment. ”

“ As the wreck of a man was flung like a limp bagful into the ascending convolutions of tawny dust, the watchful guards as one dashed in with their ropes whirling, hissing, but not till Waltzing Jupiter had swirled in midair and, infuriated, maddened, doped brute that he was, dived to make the kill. ”

“ When that wintry storm had passed away, the timbers of a wreck were found strewing the inhospitable shore, with here and there a dead body clinging to a fragment of a spar, but neither man nor child survived to tell how agonizingly they struggled against their fate, to practise the reformation which they had promised in their hour of bitter need. ”

“ A silent, voiceless, mouldering wreck is an object that excites melancholy thoughts at all times; but in the situation in which I was then placed, there was something also exciting and solemnizing in the discovery; and for a time I forgot even to look for a passing ship in the new and strange interest this old and weedy hull of antique form roused within me.
I remembered the brass cannon which was lying on the shore inscribed La Lima, and one or two guns that could be seen lying on the layers of shells beside the wreck, were exactly of the same form and size. ”

“ I made up my mind to go out the next day with the high tide, so I slept that night in my boat. At dawn I set out to sea, and in less than two hours I came up to the wreck. What a scene was there! The ship had struck on two rocks. The stern was torn by the force of the waves, the masts were swept off, ropes and chains lay strewn on the deck, and all was wrapt in gloom. As I came up to the wreck, a dog swam to me with a yelp and a whine. I took him on board my boat, and when I gave him some bread he ate it like a wolf, and as to drink, he would have burst, if I had let him take his fill of it. ”

“ From the huge whirlpool which the sinking wreck occasioned, arose a shriek so loud and shrill—the death–cry of a hundred drowning creatures, blended into one fierce yell—that it rung far above the war–cry of the elements, and echoed, and re–echoed till it seemed to pierce air, sky, and ocean. But what was that—that old gray head that rose above the water’s surface, and with looks of agony, and screams for aid, buffeted with the waves! One look, and he had sprung from the vessel’s side, and with vigorous strokes was swimming towards it. ”

“ Bad off as I was, it was better than being anchored to a sinking wreck by a dead man's grasp. I heard a voice near me that night repeating the Latin prayers of the Romish Church for the departing soul, but I couldn't see the speaker. The moon had gone under a cloud again, but there was light enough for me to catch a glimpse of some floating wreck on the crest of a wave above me; and then it came down right on top of me,—a lot of rigging and a spar or two,—our topmast and yard, which had gone over the side just before we foundered. ”

“ I have read ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ ‘The Wreck of the “Grosvenor,”’ ‘The Sinking of the “Royal George,”’ and wrecks by water-spouts, tidal waves, and every other thing which would knock a ship into a cocked hat, and I’ve classified every sort of wreck under its proper head; and when I’ve found out to what class a wreck belongs, I know all about it. Now, when a man comes here to report a wreck, the first thing he has to do is just to shut down on his story, and to stand up square and answer a few questions that I put to him. ”

“ Betrayed on every hand, wronged and ruined, he seems merely to linger on in life—like the stern-timbers of some mighty wreck, that marks the spot where once the goodly vessel perished, and are now the beacon of the quicksand to others. ”

“ Again and again, as they continued their mad career, a huge boulder would loom up threateningly from out a smother of foam, and it looked as though nothing could save the wreck from final disaster, but invariably the self-navigated vessel would win a way for itself, at times actually shaving the very side of the rock. ”

“ The boatswain forward labors desperately to return an answering signal; but the spray, the slanted deck, the overleaping waves, are too much for him. Darkness and storm and despair rule again.
The wind, indeed, has fallen; the force of the gale is broken; but the waves are making deeper and more desperate surges. The wreck, which had remained fixed in the fury of the wind, lifts again under the great swell of the sea, and is dashed anew and anew upon the shoal. With every lift her timbers writhe and creak, and all the remaining upper works crack and burst open with the strain. ”

“ The sea was strewed with spars, masts, chests, boats stove in or otherwise injured, casks, empty hencoops, and innumerable pieces of floating wreck, that were continually dashed against the rocks, or were washed ashore, wherever an opening for the sea presented itself. At a little distance lay the remains of a fine ship, her masts gone by the board, her decks open, in fact a complete wreck, over which the sea had but lately been making a clean sweep, carrying overboard everything that could not resist its fury. ”

“ Such a wreck as that which then went ashore on the Hen-and-Chicken Shoals was a godsend to the poor and needy settlers in the wilderness where so few good things ever came. For the vessel went to pieces during the night, and the next morning the beach was strewn with wreckage—boxes and barrels, chests and spars, timbers and planks, a plentiful and bountiful harvest, to be gathered up by the settlers as they chose, with no one to forbid or prevent them. ”

“ At this instant he perceived a plank floating toward the land, to which were fastened two human beings.
“It has grounded in a place so shallow as almost to be dry; those persons live and may yet be saved!” was the exclamation of the youth, as he jumped from the deck of the schooner, and began to make his way at an incredibly rapid pace toward the wreck. ”

“ The bow of the vessel stuck fast in the sand, her stern swung around, and she lay with her broadside exposed to the breakers, which swept over her with each returning rise,–a wreck to be saved by no human power. ”

“ For near a minute the suspected foremast gallantly resisted; then followed its companion; and by the time the wreck was cleared, of the whole beautiful fabric that enabled them to skim the seas, two ragged stumps remained.
In these vast and solitary waters, to be dismasted is perhaps the worst calamity. Let the ship turn turtle and go down, and at least the pang is over. ”

“ While I felt this pressing down and burying tendency of the seas, as they broke upon my head and shoulders, I understood the reason why so many good swimmers are drowned in attempting to reach the shore from a wreck on a shoal, when the wind, though blowing heavily, is in the victim's favor. ”

“ The rock, which they reached with difficulty, was scarcely above water; it was between three and four hundred yards long, and two hundred wide; and upon this spot, in the midst of the deep, nearly a hundred men were thrown together, without food, almost without clothing, and with very little hope that they should ever escape from the perils that surrounded them. They had only left the wreck in time to hear her dashed to pieces against the rocks; her timbers quivering, rending, and groaning, as they were riven asunder by the remorseless waves. ”

“ D. J. LAWLOR.
13
An inquiry naturally suggests itself, By what means has a wreck, so perfect that a “working model” could be constructed from it, been so long preserved? Ordinarily, wrecks, being exposed to the direct action of the winds and waves, soon break up and disappear. How does it happen that this wreck formed an exception? That it was preserved by being embedded and buried in the sand, has been already intimated. The causes which at first operated to bury and conceal, and, at length, by their continued action brought the wreck to light, will be considered in the following chapter. ”

“ Shrieks to God for aid, mingled with the hollow bellowing of the wind and the roar of the destroying waves, as man after man was torn from the rattlins, the yards, or timber-heads, as the death-clutch failed, and he was swept away into the waste of water, or was dashed again and again by succeeding waves against the wreck. ”

“ Every once in a while the workmen about these wreck-heaps will stop their shouting and straining at the ropes, gather into a crowd at some one spot in the ruins, and remain idle and quiet for a little while. ”

“ The tenant of a wreck on a savage coast, in an untraversed ocean, at the mercy of barbarous hordes, who, in a moment, from precarious friends, might be transformed into ferocious enemies; afflicted, too, by excruciating maladies which confined him to his bed, and by the pains and infirmities which hardship and anxiety had heaped upon his advancing age. ”

“ They are running down in a body toward the wreck, though one of their boats does seem to be sheering out of the line, as if getting into our wake. It is hard to say, sir, for they are still a good bit to windward of the wreck. ”

“ The wreck of the ship furnished them with many necessaries; for, getting together some broken pieces of boards and planks, sails and rigging, with the help of poles they made themselves tents; and having got wood for firing, and three or four sea gowns to cover them, making the negro their centry, they slept soundly all night, having been without sleep for several nights before. ”

“ I saw some pieces of the wreck blown on shore, at a great distance, two miles off me, but resolved to see what they were, and found it was a piece of the head, but too heavy for me to bring away.
May 24. Every day, to this day, I worked on the wreck; and with hard labour I loosened some things so much with the crow, that the first blowing tide several casks floated out, and two of the seamen's chests: but the wind blowing from the shore, nothing came to land that day but pieces of timber, and a hogshead, which had some Brazil pork in it; but the salt-water and the sand had spoiled it. ”