Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849Gilly, William O. S.
History
Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849
Gilly, William O. S.
Great Britain. Royal Navy -- History -- 18th century; Great Britain. Royal Navy -- History -- 19th century; Shipwrecks
honours, or for the service of his country.
THE APOLLO.
The following account of the loss of the Apollo is taken almost
verbatim from the narrative of Mr. Lewis, clerk of the ship, an
eye-witness of the occurrence. His narrative is too graphic to be
suppressed:--'On Monday, the 26th of March, 1804, His Majesty's ship
Apollo sailed from the Cove of Cork in company with the Carysfort, and
sixty-nine sail of merchantmen under convoy, for the West Indies. On
the 27th, we were out of sight of land, with a fair wind blowing fresh
from the west-south-west. At eight o'clock on the evening of Sunday,
the 1st of April, the wind shifted from south-west to south-east. At
ten o'clock, we up mainsail and set mainstay-sail. At a quarter past
ten, the mainstay-sail split by the sheet giving way. All hands were
called upon deck. It blew strong and squally; we took in the
foretop-sail and set the foresail. At half-past eleven the
maintop-sail split; furled it and the mainsail. The ship was now under
her foresails, the wind blowing hard, with a heavy sea.
'At about half-past three on Monday morning, April 2nd, the ship
struck the ground, to the astonishment of every one on board, and by
the last reckoning, we conjectured we were upon an unknown shoal.
'The vessel struck very heavily several times, by which her bottom was
materially injured, and she made a great deal of water. The chain
pumps were rigged with the utmost despatch, and the men began to pump,
but in about ten minutes she beat and drove over the shoal, and on
endeavouring to steer her, they found her rudder was carried away. The
ship was then got before the wind, the pumps were kept going, but
from the quantity of water shipped, there was every probability of her
soon foundering, as she was filling and sinking very fast.
'After running about five minutes, the ship struck the ground again
with such violent shocks, that we feared she would go to pieces
instantly; however, she kept striking and driving further on the
sands, the sea washing completely over her. Orders were given to cut
away the lanyards of the main and mizen rigging, when the masts fell
with a tremendous crash over the larboard-side: the foremast followed
immediately after. The ship then fell on her starboard-side, with the
gunwale under water. The violence with which she struck the ground and
the weight of the guns (those on the quarter-deck tearing away the
bulwarks) soon made the ship a perfect wreck abaft, and only four or
five guns could possibly be fired to alarm the convoy and give notice
of danger.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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