Harper's Young People, May 9, 1882 / An Illustrated Weekly

by Various

A frightful scene followed. The sailors had acted ill throughout the storm, and, skulking in their hammocks, had compelled their officers and the soldiers, who behaved admirably, to man the pumps; but now that the catastrophe, which they might have helped to avert, was upon them, they exhibited a frantic fear.

The ship lay beating against the rocks, with her broadside toward them, and the Captain's advice was that each man should take what opportunity should offer itself to reach the land. The ensign staff was accordingly unshipped, and laid between the ship's side and a rock; but it snapped asunder with the weight of the first man who attempted to cross, so that there was nothing for the rest to do but to drop into the raging sea, and trust to the waves to carry them to the unknown shore.

This desperate attempt, made by a number of the men, was of course impossible for the ladies, who with the passengers, three black women, and two soldiers' wives, had collected in the roundhouse upon deck to the number of no less than fifty. The Captain, whose use was gone in these dreadful straits, sat on a cot with a daughter upon each side, whom he alternately pressed to his breast. The scene was indescribably mournful. Mr. Meriton procured a quantity of wax candles, and stuck them about the place in which it was their hope to wait for dawn; then perceiving that the poor women were parched with thirst, he brought a basket of oranges, with which they refreshed themselves. This was the last meal they were ever to take on earth.

At this time they were all tolerably composed, except Miss Mansell, who lay sobbing upon the floor. Mr. Meriton thought he perceived that the sides of the ship were visibly giving way; that her deck was lifting, and that consequently she could not much longer hold together.

On leaving the roundhouse to see whether his suspicions were correct, they received a terrible confirmation. The ship had separated in the middle, and not a moment was to be lost in seizing the slender chance of saving his life. As a great sea struck the ship the poor ladies cried out: "Oh, poor Meriton, he is drowned! Had he staid with us he would have been safe." Whereupon Mr. Rogers, another officer, offered to go and look for him. This they opposed, lest he should share the same fate.

Rogers and the Captain, however, went out with a lantern, but being able to see nothing but the black face of the perpendicular rock, the Captain returned to his daughters, and was no more seen. A very heavy sea struck the ship, and burst into the roundhouse, and Mr. Rogers heard the ladies shriek at intervals until the water drowned their voices.

He seized a hen-coop, and was carried by a wave on to a rock, where it left him, miserably bruised, in the company of no less than one hundred and twenty-four persons, among whom he found Mr. Meriton. The meeting between these two was very touching, for they were old friends, and had just survived a calamity, little less terrible, in another Indiaman, between which event and their present peril an interval of only twenty-five days had elapsed. They were prevented, however, from the interchange of mutual congratulations by at least twenty men between them, none of whom could move without imperilling his life.

They were, in fact, on the ledge of a cavern overhung by the precipice, as closely packed and with as little room to move in as those sea-birds which we often see clustered on some ridge of rock. The full horror of their situation was, however, hid from them. They could not even see the ship they had just quitted, though in a few minutes a universal shriek, which long vibrated in their ears, and in which the voice of female agony was plainly distinguishable, informed them that she had gone to pieces. Not one atom of the wreck of the Halsewell was ever afterward beheld.

This terrible incident gave such a shock to the poor trembling wretches on the ledge that many of them, being already unnerved and weak from bruises, lost their feeble hold, and fell upon the rocks below. Their groans and cries for succor increased the misery of the survivors. After three hours, which seemed as many ages, the daylight broke, and revealed the fact that unless aid was given from the cliff above them, escape was impossible, while the total disappearance of the ship left no evidence of their position, their guns and signals of distress through the night having been unheard by reason of the roaring of the gale.

The only hope of escape was to creep along the ledge to its extremity, and then, on a ridge nearly as broad as a man's hand, to turn a corner, and then scale a precipice almost perpendicular and two hundred feet in height! Such was the courage of their despair that even this was essayed. What with fear and fatigue, many lost their footing, and perished in the attempt. The cook and quarter-master alone succeeded in reaching the cliff top, and at once hastened to the nearest house.