American Merchant Ships and SailorsAbbot, Willis J. (Willis John)
History
American Merchant Ships and Sailors
Abbot, Willis J. (Willis John)
Merchant marine -- United States -- History
"'I will take the boat,' said I, 'and when she fills I will cling to a
spar. I will not die until my strength is exhausted and I can breathe no
longer.' Here the conversation ended, when the captain covered his head
with a blanket. I then wrote the substance of our misfortune in the
log-book, and also a letter to my mother; rolled them up in a piece of
tarred canvas; and, assisted by the carpenter, put the package into a
tight keg, thinking that this might probably be thrown on shore, and thus
our friends might perhaps know of our end."
Men who face Death thus sturdily are apt to overcome him. The gale
lessened, the ship was patched up, the craven captain resumed command, and
in two weeks' time the "Industry" sailed, sorely battered, into Santa
Cruz, to find that she had been given up as lost, and her officers and
crew "were looked upon as so many men risen from the dead." Young
Coggeshall lived to follow the sea until gray-haired and weather-beaten,
to die in his bed at last, and to tell the story of his eighty voyages in
two volumes of memoirs, now growing very rare. Before he was sixteen he
had made the voyage to Cadiz--a port now moldering, but which once was one
of the great portals for the commerce of the world. In his second voyage,
while lying in the harbor of Gibraltar, he witnessed one of the almost
every-day dangers to which American sailors of that time were exposed:
"While we were lying in this port, one morning at daylight we
heard firing at a distance. I took a spy-glass, and from aloft
could clearly see three gunboats engaged with a large ship. It
was a fine, clear morning, with scarcely wind enough to ruffle
the glass-like surface of the water. During the first hour or
two of this engagement the gunboats had an immense advantage;
being propelled both by sails and oars, they were enabled to
choose their own position. While the ship lay becalmed and
unmanageable they poured grape and canister shot into her stern
and bows like hailstones. At this time the ship's crew could not
bring a single gun to bear upon them, and all they could do was
to use their small arms through the ports and over the rails.
Fortunately for the crew, the ship had thick and high bulwarks,
which protected them from the fire of the enemy, so that while
they were hid and screened by the boarding cloths, they could
use their small arms to great advantage. At this stage of the
action, while the captain, with his speaking-trumpet under his
left arm, was endeavoring to bring one of his big guns to bear
on one of the gunboats, a grapeshot passed through the port and
trumpet and entered his chest near his shoulder-blade. The chief
mate carried him below and laid him upon a mattress on the cabin
floor. For a moment it seemed to dampen the ardor of the men;
but it was but for an instant. The chief mate (I think his name
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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