Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849

by William O. S. Gilly

One there was on board the Athenienne, to whose care the safety of the vessel and the lives of her crew had been entrusted, who appeared to have misgivings as to the course she was steering. The captain was seated in his cabin, looking over the chart with one of his officers, when he exclaimed, 'If the Esquerques do exist, we are now on them,' Scarcely were the words out of his mouth when the ship struck.

For the information of our readers, we must state that the Esquerques, or Shirki, are a reef of sunken rocks lying about eighty miles west from Sicily, and about forty-eight from Cape Bon, on the coast of Africa. In 1806, the charts were not as accurate as they are in the present day, and the reef was not laid down in all of them; the very existence, indeed, of these rocks was positively denied by some navigators, though it was as positively asserted by others.

It would be vain to attempt to describe the scene that followed the first shock, on the vessel's striking the rock. Upon the captain's hastening on deck, he found the crew rushing up from their berths, many of them in a state of nudity, and so stupified as to be utterly incapable of making the least effort for their own preservation. Some went below, and for the moment resigned themselves to despair, while others rushed to the poop for safety.

In a few minutes, the officers had gathered round their captain. It needed no words to point out to them the imminence of their danger, and the necessity of their setting an example of steadiness and intrepidity to the men. They suffered no signs of dismay to appear in their demeanour, but immediately proceeded to consider what were the best steps to be taken to meet the impending danger. The calmness and courage thus displayed by the captain and his officers could not fail of having the desired effect upon the ship's company, who recovered from their panic, and seeing the necessity for instant exertion, held themselves in readiness to execute each order as it was issued.

In order to prevent the ship falling on her broadside, the masts were cut away; but she continued to beat so violently upon the rocks, that in less than half-an-hour she filled with water up to the lower deck ports, and then fell over to larboard on her beam ends. Captain Raynsford, foreseeing the inevitable loss of his vessel, had ordered the boats to be hoisted out, with the idea that they would be useful in towing a raft, which he had caused to be constructed to leeward. This raft would probably have been the means of preserving a great many lives, had not the men in charge of the two jolly-boats pushed off, and left their unhappy comrades to their fate. Unfortunately, both the cutter and the barge, in hoisting out, were stove, and immediately swamped, no less than thirty men perishing with them. Several of the crew had been killed by the falling of the masts, and others were severely injured. Two midshipmen were crushed to death between the spanker boom and the bulwarks.

Brenton has thus described the horrible scene on board:—'Nothing was to be heard but the shrieks of the drowning and the wailings of despair. The man who would courageously meet death at the cannon's mouth, or at the point of the bayonet, is frequently unnerved in such a scene as this, where there is no other enemy to contend with than the inexorable waves, and no hope of safety or relief but what may be afforded by a floating plank or mast. The tremendous shocks as the ship rose with the sea, and fell again on the rocks, deprived the people of the power of exertion; while at every crash portions of the shattered hull, loosened and disjointed, were scattered in dreadful havoc among the breakers. Imagination can scarcely picture to itself anything more appalling than the frantic screams of the women and children, the darkness of the night, the irresistible fury of the waves, which, at every moment, snatched away a victim, while the tolling of the bell, occasioned by the violent motion of the wreck, added a funereal solemnity to the horrors of the scene.'

The fate of the hapless crew seemed fast approaching to a termination. When the vessel first struck, signal guns had been fired, in the hope that some aid might be within reach, but none appeared; the guns were soon rendered useless, and when the ship fell on her beam ends, the wreck, with the exception of the poop, was entirely under water. Here were collected all that remained of the ship's company, whose haggard countenances and shivering forms were revealed to each other, from time to time, by the glare of the blue lights, and by the fitful moonbeams which streamed from beneath the dark clouds, and threw their pale light upon the despairing group.

The sea-breached vessel can no longer bear
The floods that o'er her burst in dread career;
The labouring hull already seems half filled
With water, through an hundred leeks distilled;
Thus drenched by every wave, her even deck,
Stripped and defenceless, floats a naked wreck.
FALCONER.

Two boats only remained, one of which was useless, her side having been knocked in by the falling of the masts; and the other, the launch, was therefore the sole means of preservation left. She was already filled with men, but it was found impossible to remove her from her position on the booms; and even if she had floated, she could not have contained above one-fourth of the crew. For about half an hour she continued in the same position, (the men who were in her expecting every moment that her bottom would be knocked out by the waves dashing against the spars on which she rested,) when suddenly a heavy sea lifted her off the bows clear of the ship. Three loud cheers greeted her release, and the oars being ready, the men immediately pulled from the wreck, with difficulty escaping the many dangers they had to encounter from the floating spars and broken masts.

These gallant fellows, however, would not desert their companions in misfortune, and although their boat already contained more than a hundred, they pulled towards the stern of the frigate; but so great was the anxiety of the poor creatures upon the poop to jump into the boat, that in self-defence they were obliged to keep at a certain distance from the wreck, or the launch would have been instantly swamped. They were therefore reduced to the terrible alternative, either of leaving their comrades to perish, or of throwing away their own lives. Nine of the men who had jumped overboard were picked up, but to have attempted to save any more would have been to sacrifice all. One of the officers left on board the wreck endeavoured by every argument to persuade Captain Raynsford to save himself by swimming to the launch, but all in vain. This intrepid man declared that he was perfectly resigned to his fate, and was determined not to quit his ship whilst a man remained on board. Finding that all entreaties were useless, the officer himself jumped overboard from the stern gallery into the sea, and swimming through the surf, gained the launch and was taken on board.