The wind soon increasing, blew strongly from the east-south-east with a very heavy sea, and about three o'clock in the morning of the 17th flew suddenly round to the contrary point, blowing most tremendously, and accompanied with rain, thunder, and lightning; the _Ramilies_ was taken by the lee, her main sail thrown aback, her main mast went by the board, and her mizen mast half way up; the foretop mast fell over the starboard bow, the foreyard broke in the slings, the tiller snapped in two, and the rudder was nearly torn off. Thus was this capital ship, from being in perfect order, reduced within a few minutes to a mere wreck, by the fury of the blast and the violence of the sea, which acted in opposition to each other. The ship was pooped, the cabin, where the admiral lay, was flooded, his cot bed jerked down by the violence of the shock and the ship's instantaneous revulsion, so that he was obliged to pull on his boots half-leg deep in water, without any stockings, to huddle on his wet clothes, and repair upon deck. On his first coming hither, he ordered two of the lieutenants to examine into the state of the affairs below, and to keep a sufficient number of people at the pumps, while he himself and the captain kept the deck, to encourage the men to clear away the wreck, which by its constant swinging backwards and forwards by every wave against the body of the ship, had beaten off much of the copper from the starboard side, and exposed the seams so much to the sea that the decayed oakum washed out, and the whole frame became at once exceedingly porous and leaky.