Although, after the first burst of mutual gratulation, and of becoming acknowledgment of the divine mercy for our unlooked-for deliverance, had subsided, none of us felt disposed to much interchange of thought, each being rather inclined to wrap himself up in his own reflections; yet we did not, during the first night, view with the alarm it warranted, the extreme misery and danger to which we were still exposed, by being crowded together, in a gale of wind, with upwards of 600 human beings, in a small brig of 200 tons, at a distance, too, of several hundred miles from any accessible port. Our little cabin, which was only calculated, under ordinary circumstances, for the accommodation of eight or ten persons, was now made to contain nearly eighty individuals, many of whom had no sitting room, and even some of the ladies no room to lie down. 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; while the impurity of the air they were inhaling became so marked, that the lights occasionally carried down amongst them were almost instantly extinguished. Nor was the condition of the hundreds who covered the deck less wretched than that of their comrades below; since they were obliged night and day to stand shivering, in their wet and nearly naked state, ankle deep in water:[13]—some of the older children and females were thrown into fits, while the infants were piteously crying for that nourishment which their nursing mothers were no longer able to give them.[14]
Our only hope amid these great and accumulating miseries was that the same compassionate Providence which had already so marvellously interposed in our behalf would not permit the favourable wind to abate or change until we reached some friendly port; for we were all convinced that a delay of a very few days longer at sea must inevitably involve us in famine, pestilence, and a complication of the most dreadful evils. Our hopes were not disappointed. The gale continued with even increasing violence; and our able captain, crowding all sail, at the risk of carrying away his masts, so nobly urged his vessel onward, that in the afternoon of Thursday, the 3rd, the delightful exclamation from aloft was heard, "Land ahead!" In the evening we descried the Scilly lights; and running rapidly along the Cornish coast, we joyfully cast anchor in Falmouth harbour, at about half-past twelve o'clock at night.
On reviewing the various proximate causes to which so many human beings owed their deliverance from a combination of dangers as remarkable for their duration as they were appalling in their aspect, it is impossible, I think, not to discover and gratefully acknowledge, in the beneficence of their arrangement, the overruling providence of that blessed Being, who is sometimes pleased, in His mysterious operations, to produce the same effect from causes apparently different; and on the other hand, as in our own case, to bring forth results the most opposite, from one and the same cause. 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 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.[15]
But it is unnecessary to dwell on an insulated fact like this, amidst a concatenation of circumstances, all leading to the same conclusion, and so closely bound together as to force us to confess, that if a single link in the chain had been withdrawn or withheld, we must all most probably have perished.
The Cambria, which had been, it seems, unaccountably detained in port nearly a month after the period assigned for her departure, was early on the morning of the fatal calamity pursuing at a great distance ahead of us the same course with ourselves; but her bulwarks on the weather side having been suddenly driven in, by a heavy sea breaking over her quarter, Captain Cook, in his anxiety to give ease to his labouring vessel, was induced to go completely out of his course by throwing the brig on the opposite tack, by which means alone he was brought in sight of us. Not to dwell on the unexpected, but not unimportant facts of the flames having been mercifully prevented, for eleven hours, from either communicating with the magazine forward, or the great spirit room abaft, or even coming into contact with the tiller ropes—any of which circumstances would evidently have been fatal,—I would remark that, until the Cambria hove in sight, we had not discovered any vessel whatever for several days previous; nor did we afterwards see another until we entered the chops of the Channel. It is to be remembered, too, that had the Cambria, with her small crew, been homeward instead of outward bound, her scanty remainder of provisions, under such circumstances, would hardly have sufficed to form a single meal for our vast assemblage; or if, instead of having her lower deck completely clear, she had been carrying out a full cargo, there would not have been time, under the pressure of the danger and the violence of the gale, to throw the cargo overboard, and certainly, with it, not sufficient space in the brig to contain one-half of our number.
When I reflect, besides, on the disastrous consequences that must have followed if, during our passage home, which was performed in a period most unusually short, the wind had either veered round a few points, or even partially subsided—which must have produced a scene of horror on board more terrible if possible than that from which we had escaped; and above all, when I recollect the extraordinary fact, and that which seems to have the most forcibly struck the whole of us, that we had not been above an hour in Falmouth harbour, when the wind, which had all along been blowing from the south-west, suddenly chopped round to the opposite quarter of the compass, and continued uninterruptedly for several days afterwards to blow strongly from the north-east,—one cannot help concluding that he who sees nothing of a Divine Providence in our preservation must be lamentably and wilfully blind to "the majesty of the Lord."
In the course of the morning we all prepared, with thankful and joyful hearts, to place our feet on the shores of Old England.
The ladies, always destined to form our vanguard, were the first to disembark, and were met on the beach by immense crowds of the inhabitants, who appeared to have been attracted thither less by idle curiosity than from the sincerest desire to alleviate in every possible manner their manifest sufferings.
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. And in the course of the day, many of the officers and soldiers, and almost all of the females, were partaking, in the private houses of individuals, of the most liberal and needful hospitality.
But this flow of compassion and kindness did not cease with the impulse of the more immediate occasion that had called it forth. For a meeting of the inhabitants was afterwards held, where subscriptions in clothes and money to a large amount were collected for the relief of the numerous sufferers. The women and children, whose wants seemed to demand their first care, were speedily furnished with comfortable clothing, and the poor widows and orphans with decent mourning. Depositories of shirts, shoes, stockings, etc., were formed for the supply of the officers and private passengers; and the sick and wounded in the hospital were made the recipients, not only of all those kindly attentions and medical assistance that could remove or soothe their temporal suffering, but were also invited to partake freely of the most judicious spiritual consolation and instruction. This march of charity was conducted by the ladies of Falmouth, who were zealously accompanied on it by the whole body, in the vicinity, of that peculiar sect of Christians, who have ever been as remarkable for their unassuming pretensions and consistent conduct, as for unostentatiously standing in the front ranks of every good work. And so strong is the reason which I, in particular, have to associate in my mind all that is sincere, considerate, and charitable with the society of Friends, that the very badge of Quakerism will, I trust, henceforward prove a full and sufficient passport to the best feelings of my heart.