Lost ships and lonely seas

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

A hundred and forty people of the Wager found themselves alive, and nothing more, on the savage and desolate coast of Patagonia. The boatswain, who was a hard case, had stuck by the ship, but there was nothing noble in his motive. He led a crowd of kindred spirits, who vowed they would stay there as long as the liquor held out. When ordered to abandon the hulk, they threatened mutiny and broached another cask. During the following night, however, another gale drove the sea over the wreck, and the rogues had quite enough of it.

They signaled for the boats to take them off, but this was impossible because of the raging surf; wherefore the gay mutineers lost their tempers and let a cannon-ball whizz from a quarter-deck gun at the refugees on shore. While waiting for rescue, they rifled the cabins for tempting plunder, and swaggered in the officers’ laced coats and cocked hats. The boatswain, who egged them on, saw to it that they were well armed, for he proclaimed defiance of all authority, and there was to be no more of the iron-handed code of sea law. These were pressed men, poor devils, who broke all restraint because they had not been wisely and humanely handled.

When at length they were taken ashore, Captain Cheap showed one of his fitful flashes of resolution by sallying from his tent and knocking the insolent boatswain down with a loaded cane and putting a cocked pistol to his ear. This took the wind out of the sails of the other mutineers, and they tamely submitted to being stripped of their arms, which made them harmless for the moment. So bleak was the coast that the only food obtainable was shell-fish, while from the wreck almost no stores were saved. The most urgent business was to knock huts together of the drift-wood and canvas, and effect some sort of organization. A fortnight passed before Captain Cheap had the provisions properly guarded and the rations dealt out in a systematic manner, while in the meantime the sailors were stealing the stuff right and left, and the battle was to the strongest.

It was ascertained that they were marooned on what appeared to be an island near the coast and about three hundred miles to the northward of the Strait of Magellan. Three canoes of Patagonian Indians happened to discover the camp, and they were friendly enough to barter for two dogs and three sheep, which were no more than a meal for the hungry crew of the Wager. The Indians vanished, and the agony of famine took hold of these miserable people. Instead of pluckily working together to master the situation like true British seamen, they split into hostile factions, and insubordination was rampant. There were rough and desperate men among them, it is true, but a leader of courage and resource whom they respected would have stamped out much of this disorder.

They wandered off in sullen groups, ten of them straying away into the woods until starvation drove them back, another party building a punt and sailing away in it, never to be heard of again. These latter fellows were not regretted, according to the narrative of one of the survivors, who declares that

there was great reason to believe that James Mitchell, one of them, had perpetrated no less than two murders, the first on a sailor found strangled on board and the second on the body of a man who was discovered among some bushes, stabbed in a shocking manner. On the day of their desertion, they plotted blowing up the captain in his hut, along with the surgeon and Lieutenant Hamilton of the marines; they were with difficulty dissuaded from it by one less wicked than the rest; and half a barrel of powder, together with the train, were found actually laid.

Among the officers was a boyish midshipman named Cozens who was of a flighty, impulsive disposition and who had no head for strong liquors. Too much grog made him boisterous, and by way of a lesson he was shut up in a hut under guard. He cherished a hearty dislike for Captain Cheap and was extremely impertinent to that chicken-hearted bully of a commander, who thereupon lashed him with his cane. The doughty sentry of marines interfered, swearing that not even the captain of the ship should strike a prisoner placed in his charge. The midshipman took the disgrace to heart, and what with anger, drink, and privation he seems to have become a bit unbalanced. There had been no more popular young officer in the Wager, easy, genial, affectionate; but now he quarreled with the surgeon and had a more serious row with the purser, taking a shot at him and vowing that he was ready to mutiny to get rid of the blockheads and villains who had brought ruin to the expedition.

Captain Cheap heard a report of the uprising of Midshipman Cozens and delayed not to investigate, but rushed out and shot the rash youngster through the head. There was nothing novel in talking mutiny. The whole camp was infected with lawlessness. If it was a crime to ignore authority, all hands were guilty. Flouted and held in contempt, Captain Cheap killed the midshipman as an example to the others, and, of course, they hated and despised him more than before. Poor young Cozens lived long enough to take the hand of his chum, Midshipman Byron, and to smile a farewell to the sailors who had been fond of him. They begged to be allowed to carry him to one of their own tents while he was still breathing, but the captain refused, and flourished his pistol at them; so he died where he fell.

Captain Cheap, after the deed was done, addressed the people, assembled together by his command, and told them he was resolved to retain his authority over them as usual, and that it remained as much in force as ever. He then ordered them all to return to their respective tents, with which they complied. This event, however, contributed to lessen him in the regard of the people.

Three boats had been saved from the wreck of the Wager, and the largest of them was the long-boat, a word that awakens memories of many an old-time romance of the sea and seems particularly to belong to “Robinson Crusoe.” It was what might be called a ship’s launch, and was often so heavy and capacious that vessels towed it astern on long voyages. Two months after the disaster, the Wager’s people despairing of rescue, began to patch up the boats with the idea of making their way to the Spanish settlements of the mainland. The long-boat was hauled up on the beach, and the carpenter undertook the difficult task of sawing it in two and building in a section in order to make it twelve feet longer.