During the fall they built a raft; it took them nearly a month and a half to make it, for they had no tools to work with, but two rude chisels and two jack-knives, one of which (Jack’s) had the point broken off of it. But after they had spent all the time in the making of the raft, it turned out to be of no use, excepting to fish off of in the bay during fair weather, so all their labor was for nothing.
They had great ideas of it at first, and one day when the wind was fair, and the day clear and bright, they undertook to sail away upon it to the island to the southward. Tom had fashioned a pair of oars out of a palmetto tree, and he and Jack had made a sail out of the coarse sea-grass that covered the island; these had cost them vast labor, but they found that with oars and sail together, they did not get their clumsy craft along at the rate of a mile an hour. I doubt if they ever could have reached the island under the best of circumstances; as it was, they met a current a couple of miles to the southward, that swept them out to sea. They were fully six hours in getting back to land; even then it was a chance that they got back at all, nor would they have done so if a wind had not luckily sprung up from the south. After that they were content to remain where they were.
They also set up a signal: it was a palmetto tree with a bush lashed to the top of it; beside this they built a pile of brush to fire at night, in case any vessel should appear in the offing at evening time. They added to this brush heap, from day to day, until it was as high as a hay stack.
Once, during the latter part of that autumn, a dead porpoise was washed up on the beach toward the lower part of the sandy hook. This was a Godsend to them as a means to let their condition be known to the outside world, for of the skin of this porpoise they made a number of bags or bladders, which they set adrift at different times, when the wind was fair for carrying them away. In these air bladders Tom put a map of the island, its bearings (as nearly as he could judge), and word of their condition. All this was drawn and written on two strips of bark, and was done with the point of a red hot piece of iron. This was the wording of the written part:
The ship Nancy Hazlewood
of Philadelphia was lost
at sea on the 26 of Apl.
1813. The 1st & 2d mates
by name John Kent Baldwin
and Thomas Granger were
wrecked on ths. Islnd. If
you are a Christn. come to
thr. aid.
This I have copied from a slip of bark that Captain Williamson afterward gave me.
Thus they settled and lived on the island with little of interest happening in their lives, until the great hurricane of 1814 came upon them. This was great in itself, but it brought that with it which let them have no more idle days for a long time to come.