THE SELF-STEERED CRAFT
Late in the afternoon of October 23, 1854, a great storm was sweeping the New England coast. Watchers on the cliffs sighted through the thick and driving mists a brig rigged vessel over which the sea was constantly breaking, heading directly towards the shore. Soon, wind and sea driven, she drove through the onsweeping waves over the outlying line of sand bars. Suddenly, when directly between the outer and inner line of bars, she swung broadside to the sea and headed straight up the coast, when it was seen that her crew had been forced to mount and cling to the main rigging, where they were clinging desperately above the raging sea which was pouring in torrents across the vessel’s deck, making any attempt to regain the use of the wheel impossible. Before being driven to the rigging the crew had lashed the wheel. Then up the coast, under short sail, the vessel drove onward without guiding hand clear to the end of the Cape and around Race Point into Massachusetts Bay; across this tumbling sea of mad waters she rushed on until she piled up on the rocks at Scituate, and there in a few hours she was ground to pieces, where the entire crew of seven men were swallowed up in the sea.
As she drove along the surf opposite Highland Station a great brown pig was swept from her deck and came rolling up in the surf on the shore. He was a good swimmer and had made the distance, somewhat out of breath but intact. A spectator took him home and he grew to be a big and lusty porker. If he could have talked we would have known the name of his ship.