By this time I was observed by some of the people on the bank, and two men came to my assistance. They lifted me up; I once more recovered some faint recollection; and, as they bore me along, I was sensible that one of them said the sea would overtake us; that he must let me go and take care of his own life. I only remember clinging to the other and imploring him not to abandon me to the merciless waves.—But I have a very confused idea of what passed, till I saw the boat, into which I was to be put to cross the Fleet water; I had then just strength to say, “For God’s sake do not take me to sea again.”
I believe the apprehension of it, added to my other sufferings tended to deprive me of all further sensibility, for I have not the least recollection of any thing afterwards until roused by the remedies applied to restore me in a farm-house whither I was carried. There I heard a number of women around me, who asked a great number of questions which I was unable to answer. I remember hearing one say I was a French woman; another say that I was a negro, and indeed I was so bruised, and in such a disfigured condition, that the conjectures of these people are not surprising.
When recovering some degree of confused recollection, and able to speak, I begged that they would allow me to go to bed. This, however, I did not ask with any expectation of life, for I was now in such a state of suffering, that my only wish was to be allowed to lie down and die in peace.
Nothing could exceed the humanity of Mr. Abbot, the inhabitant of Fleet farm-house, nor the compassionate attention of his sister, Miss Abbot, who not only afforded me immediate assistance, but continued for some days to attend me with such kindness and humanity, as I shall always remember with the sincerest gratitude.”
The unfortunate sufferer who gives the preceding account, was tended with great humanity by Mr. Bryer, while a wound in her foot, and the dangerous bruises she had received, prevented her from quitting the shelter she first found under the roof of Mr. Abbot, at Fleet. As soon as she was in a condition to be removed to Weymouth, Mr. Bryer, a surgeon there, received her into his own house, where Mrs. Bryer assisted in administering to her recovery such benevolent offices of consolation as her deplorable situation admitted. Meantime the gentlemen of the south battalion of the Gloucester Militia, who had done every thing possible towards the preservation of those who were the victims of the tempest, now liberally contributed to alleviate the pecuniary distresses of the survivors. None seemed to have so forcible a claim on their pity as this forlorn and helpless stranger; and she alone, of forty souls, except a single ship-boy, survived the wreck of the Catharine. There perished, twelve seamen, two soldiers’ wives, twenty-two dragoons and four officers, Lieutenant Stains, Mr. Dodd of the hospital-staff, Lieutenant Jenner, the representative of an ancient and respectable family in Gloucestershire, aged thirty-one and Cornet Burns, the son of an American loyalist of considerable property, who was deprived of every thing for his adherence to the British Government.—Having no dependence but on the promises of government to indemnify those who had suffered on that account he, after years of distress and difficulty, obtained a cornetcy in the 26th regiment of dragoons, then going to the West Indies, and was thus lost in his twenty-fourth year. This officer had intended embarking in another transport, and had actually sent his horse on board, when finding the Catharine more commodious, he gave her the preference, while the other put back to Spithead in safety. The mangled remains of Lieutenant Jenner were two days afterwards found on the beach, and interred with military honors.
But the Catharine was not the only vessel which suffered in the tempest. Those who on shore had listened to it raging on the preceding evening, could not avoid feeling the most lively alarm for the consequences; and early on the morning of the 18th of November, several pilots and other persons assembled on the promontory called the Look-out at Weymouth. Thence they too evidently discovered the distress and danger of many of the transports.
Soon after, a lieutenant of the navy, residing at Weymouth, applied to the major of a militia regiment, for a guard to be sent to the Chisell Bank, as a large ship, supposed to be a frigate, was on shore. This was immediately granted, and the major himself marched along with a captain’s guard.
The violence of the wind was so great, that the party could with difficulty reach the place of their destination. There they found a large merchantman, the Æolus, laden with timber for government, on shore. Lieutenant Mason of the navy, and his brother, a midshipman, perished in her, and a number of men who would probably have been saved had they understood the signals from shore. The men of Portland who crowded down to the scene of desolation, meant to express, by throwing small pebbles at them, that they should remain on board, to make them hear was impossible, because they foresaw the ship would drive high on the bank. Should that be the case, they might soon leave her without hazard; and accordingly those who continued on board were saved, though many of them were dreadfully bruised.
Not far from the same place, the Golden Grove, another merchantman, was stranded, and in her Dr. Stevens and Mr. Burrows of St. Kitts, were lost. Lieutenant Colonel Ross, who was also there escaped on shore. These two vessels had struck against a part of the Passage-House, almost in the same spot where a French frigate, the Zenobia, had gone to pieces in 1763.
But the scene of distress was infinitely greater about four miles to the westward, where, as already related, the Catharine was wrecked. Along with her, nearly opposite to the villages of Fleet and Chickerell, the Piedmont and Venus, two transports, and soon after the Thomas, a merchantman, shared the same fate.