Lost ships and lonely seas

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

It was a scene to linger in one’s memory, the waterlogged sloop with her sails streaming in useless ribbons from a broken mast, the little cabin with the skipper almost dead in his bunk, and the group of starved and wistful seamen who bowed their heads while he brokenly whispered the words of the prayer-book. As soon as he had finished, they crept out to rejoin David Flat, who had preferred to be absent from his own funeral service. Through the companionway the captain overheard them talking to him

with great earnestness and affection, and expressing their hope that God would interpose for his preservation. They assured him also that although they had never yet been able to catch a single fish, they would again put out their hooks and try whether in that manner any relief could be obtained.

There was little comfort for David Flat in this commiseration, and the situation benumbed his mind so that he was in a stupor, which changed to raving madness during the night. At eight o’clock next morning Captain Harrison was thinking of this faithful seaman of his who had only three hours more to live, when two of the others came into the cabin and took hold of his hands. Their agitation was apparent, but they seemed unable to speak and explain themselves, and he surmised that they had concluded to put him to death instead of David Flat. He therefore groped for his pistol, but the sailors snatched it away, and managed to tell him that a sail had been sighted, a large vessel to leeward which had altered her course and was beating up to them as fast as possible.

The men on deck had been similarly affected, losing all power of speech for the moment; but presently they hurried into the cabin, with strength renewed, to shout at the captain that a ship was coming to save them. They tried to make poor David Flat comprehend the tremendous fact, but he was babbling of other things, and his wits were still all astray. During the business of the death-sentence, which had been conducted with such extraordinary dignity, the men had remained sober, keeping clear of the brandy-keg, but now they proposed to celebrate. Captain Harrison succeeded in dissuading all excepting the mate, who filled a can and sat down by himself to liquor up. And so they were making a decent finish of it, although their nerves were tortured beyond endurance, when the breeze died out, and the other ship lay becalmed two or three miles away. They remembered the dreadful disappointment of Christmas day, when another ship had deserted them after steering close enough to hail the sloop.

This blessed stranger, however, lowered a boat, and the oars flashed on the shining sea until the rescuers were alongside the Peggy.

As the captain was incapable of moving, they lifted him out of the cabin and, lowering him into the boat with ropes, he was followed by his people, among whom was David Flat, still raving. Just when putting off, it was discovered that the mate was missing. He was immediately summoned and, after his can of liquor, had no more than ability to crawl to the gunwale, having forgot everything that had happened. The unfortunate drunken wretch having been got down, the saviors rowed away to their own ship, which they reached in about an hour.

This vessel was the Susannah of London, commanded by Captain Thomas Evers, who was engaged in the Virginia trade and was now returning from Virginia to London. He received the Peggy’s people with all possible tenderness and humanity. The Susannah proceeded on her voyage, and though in a very shattered condition and so much reduced in provisions that it was necessary to put her people on short allowance, she reached England early in March. The mate, as also James Doud who shot the negro, and one James Warren, a seaman, died during the passage. Lemuel Ashley, Samuel Wentworth, and David Flat, who was to have been shot for food, all survived. Flat continued raving mad during the voyage, but whether he afterwards recovered is not ascertained. When Captain Harrison came on shore, he made an oath to the truth of the preceding melancholy facts in order that the interests of his insurers might be preserved.

In the case of the English ship Barrett, which was wrecked in mid-Atlantic in January, 1821, the method of choosing the man who should die to serve as food was sufficiently novel and ingenious to merit attention. She was a much larger vessel than the Peggy, with a crew of sixteen, and had sailed from St. John, New Brunswick, in command of Captain Faragar, with a cargo of timber for Liverpool. Heavy gales blew her canvas away and strained her hull until it filled with water. Rations were reduced to two ounces of bread and a pint of water a day until this was almost gone. Then a sail was descried, and a brig bowled down to pass within hail, the master promising to send aboard what provisions he could spare. Then the wind chopped around to the westward, and, precisely as had happened to the sloop Peggy, the brig hauled her braces, sheeted her topsails home, and went driving away on her course.

Mr. MacCloud, the mate of the Barrett, was a hardy young Scot with the endurance of iron and the soul of a hero. Day after day the ship wallowed in the wicked winter weather of the Western Ocean, and only the timber in the flooded hold kept her afloat. Cold and hunger laid the crew low until only the mate and three men were able to stand a watch on deck; but he kept a little canvas on her and tended the tiller and somehow jammed her along until they had sailed six hundred miles toward the Irish coast.

Every eatable was consumed: candles, oil—all were gone, and they passed the long, dreary, stormy nights of sixteen and seventeen hours in utter darkness, huddled together in the steerage, imploring the Almighty to help them, yet feeling reckless of existence. Such was their condition about the middle of January, and no one but the mate paid the slightest attention to the vessel.