Which when they had taken up, they used helps, under-girdling the ship; and fearing lest they should fall into the quicksands, strake sail and so were driven.
The souls of the jolly, jolly mariners in Kipling’s “Last Chantey,” plucking at their harps and they plucked unhandily, listened with professional approval when the stout Apostle Paul lifted his voice in turn and sang to them:
Once we frapped a ship, and she labored woundily,
There were fourteen score of these,
And they blessed Thee on their knees,
When they learned Thy Grace and Glory under
Malta by the sea!
And so the Ramillies was frapped, or under-girdled by passing hempen hawsers under her keel and around the straining hull to hold her timbers together before she literally fell apart. It was a fine feat of seamanship, but unavailing. The admiral had nothing more to say about the crime of tossing overboard his Majesty’s valuable guns, munitions, and stores, and the crew fairly gutted the ship of everything weighty, including both bower anchors. As the day wore on toward nightfall, about twenty other ships were still visible, and the officers urged the admiral to shift his pennant to one of them and so save himself; but
this he positively refused to do, deeming it, as he declared, unpardonable of a commander-in-chief to desert his garrison in distress; that his living a few years longer was of very little consequence, but that, by leaving his ship at such a time, he should discourage and slacken the exertions of the people by setting them a very bad example.
When evening came, the spirits of the people began to fail, and they openly expressed the utmost despair, together with the most earnest desire of quitting the ship lest they should founder in her. The admiral hereupon advanced and told them that he and their officers had an equal regard for their own lives, that the officers had no intention of deserting either them or the ship, that, for his part, he was determined to try one more night in her; he therefore hoped and intreated they would do so too, for there was still room to imagine that one fair day, with a moderate sea, might enable them by united exertion to clear and secure the well against the incroaching ballast which washed into it; that if this could be done they might be able to restore the chains to the pumps and use them; and that then hands enough might be spared to raise jury-masts with which they might carry the ship to Ireland; that her appearance alone, while she could swim, would be sufficient to protect the remaining part of her convoy; above all, that as everything that could be thought of had now been done for her relief, it would be but reasonable to wait the effect.