"The next are the watermen; and, indeed, the insolence of these, though they are under some limitations too, is yet such at this time, that it stands in greater need than any other, of severe laws, and those laws being put in speedy execution. "Some years ago, one of these very people being steersman of a passage-boat between London and Gravesend, drown'd three-and-fifty people at one time. The boat was bound from Gravesend to London, was very full of passengers and goods, and deep loaden. The wind blew very hard at south-west, which being against them, obliged them to turn to windward, so the seamen call it, when they tack from side to side, to make their voyage against the wind by the help of the tide. "The passengers were exceedingly frighted when, in one tack stretching over the stream, in a place call'd Long-Reach, where the river is very broad, the waves broke in upon the boat, and not only wetted them all, but threw a great deal of water into the boat, and they all begg'd of the steersman or master not to venture again. He, sawey and impudent, mock'd them, ask'd some of the poor frighted women if they were afraid of going to the Devil; bid them say their prayers and the like, and then stood over again, as it were, in a jest. The storm continuing, he shipp'd a great deal of water that time also. By this time the rest of the watermen begun to perswade him, and told him, in short, that if he stood over again the boat would founder, for that she was a great deal the deeper for the water she had taken in, and one of them begg'd of him not to venture; he swore at the fellow, call'd him fool, bade him let him alone to his business, and he would warrant him; then used a vulgar sea-proverb, which such fellows have in their mouths, 'Blow Devil, the more wind, the better boat.' "The fellow told him in so many words he would drown all the passengers, and before his face began to strip, and so did two more, that they might be in condition to swim for their lives. This extremely terrify'd the passengers, who, having a cloth or tilt over them, were in no condition to save their lives, so that there was a dreadful cry among them, and some of the men were making way to come at the steersman to make him by force let fly the sail and stand back for the shore; but before they could get to him the waves broke in upon the boat and carried them all to the bottom, none escaping but the three watermen that were prepar'd to swim. {210} "It was but poor satisfaction for the loss of so many lives, to say the steersman was drown'd with them, who ought, indeed, to have died at the gallows, or on the wheel, for he was certainly the murtherer of all the rest.