Household words, No. 21, August 17, 1850 : $b A weekly journal — John Shaqi
Household words, No. 21, August 17, 1850 : $b A weekly journal
General
Household words, No. 21, August 17, 1850 : $b A weekly journal
English literature -- Periodicals
Of this most interesting and unprecedented voyage, the narrative of
which everybody would have read with such avidity, Mr. Waghorn gives no
detailed account. He disappoints you of all the circumstances. All
intermediate things are abruptly cut off with these very characteristic
words:—“_Suffice it_ to say, _I arrived_ at Juddah, 620 miles, in six
and a half days, in that boat!” You get nothing more than the sum total.
He kept a sailor’s log-journal; but it is only meant for sailors to
read, though now and then you obtain a glimpse of the sort of work he
went through. Thus:—“_Sunday_, 13th, strong N.W. wind, half a gale, but
scudding under storm-sail. Sunset, anchored for the night. Jaffateen
islands out of sight to the N. Lost two anchors during the night,” &c.
The rest is equally nautical and technical. In one of the many scattered
papers collected since the death of Mr. Waghorn, we find a very slight
passing allusion to toils, perils, and privations, which, however, he
calmly says, were “inseparable from such a voyage under such
circumstances,”—but not one touch of description from first to last.
A more extraordinary instance of great practical experience and
knowledge, resolutely and fully carrying out a project which must of
necessity have appeared little short of madness to almost everybody
else, was never recorded. He was perfectly successful, so far as the
navigation was concerned, and in the course he adopted, notwithstanding
that his crew of six Arabs mutinied. It appears (for he tells us only
the bare fact) they were only subdued on the principle known to
philosophers in theory, and to high-couraged men, accustomed to command,
by experience, _viz._, that the one man who is braver, stronger, and
firmer than any individual of ten or twenty men, is more than a match
for the ten or twenty put together. He touched at Cossier on the 14th,
not having fallen in with the Enterprise. There he was told by the
Governor that the steamer was expected every hour. Mr. Waghorn was in no
state of mind to wait very long; so, finding she did not arrive, he
again put to sea in his open boat, resolved, if he did not fall in with
her, to proceed the entire distance to Juddah—a distance of four hundred
miles further. Of this further voyage he does not leave any record, even
in his log, beyond the simple declaration that he “embarked for
Juddah—ran the distance in three days and twenty-one hours and a
quarter—and on the 23rd anchored his boat close to one of the East India
Company’s cruisers, the Benares.”
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