A passing vessel spoke the Miami by wireless and stated that she had sighted the Northwestern, but gave her position twelve miles to the westward of the point first quoted. It was evening before the steamer in distress was sighted. The Coast Guard cutter ran up under her stern, and asked if she could hold on for a while. The captain of the steamer answered that he could.
"I'm all right, so far," he shouted back through the megaphone; "it's that blithering bally-hoo of a propeller!"
His language was picturesque, fluent, and convincing, and everybody on board the cutter grinned while the old sea-dog expressed a highly colored opinion of the whole tribe of ship-fitters, machinists, and mechanics generally. After ten minutes of descriptive shouting, during which he never repeated an adjective twice, he wound up by saying that he considered "an engine-room an insult to a seaman's intelligence," and said that "he'd like to pave the bottom of the sea with the skeletons of engineers diving a thousand fathom for his lost propeller!" Following which, he seemed to feel better, and discussed what was best to be done with his ship.
The situation was dangerous. The sea was far too rough for the lowering of a boat, no matter how well handled. The gale was such that it was unsafe for the Miami to anchor. In the case of the Northwestern, anchoring had been her last resort. There was fully twenty fathom of water, and fortunately the steamer's anchors held. The captain had put ninety fathom of chain on each anchor, and though the weight pulled her nose into the water, so that she snubbed into the sea like a ram trying to butt down a wall, still everything held. The Miami stood by all night, keeping close to the imperilled vessel.
Next morning the conditions were no better. The advantages of daylight were more than overcome by the increased fury of the sea. The Northwestern lay in an angry rip, for the gale had come on in full force and was countering the long rollers from the southeast that had been blown up by the storm of two days before, the same which had driven the Miami to shelter and which had crippled the big steamer, twice the size of the revenue cutter. The Miami stayed near by, hove to, waiting for the storm to abate. But of this there were no signs. The force of the gale increased steadily through the day.
Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.
Man's Waterspout. A Derelict's End.