The clipper ship era: an epitome of famous American and British clipper ships, their owners, builders, commanders, and crews, 1843-1869Clark, Arthur H.
History
The clipper ship era: an epitome of famous American and British clipper ships, their owners, builders, commanders, and crews, 1843-1869
Clark, Arthur H.
Clipper ships -- Great Britain; Clipper ships -- United States
The _Invincible_, owned by J. W. Phillips and others, of New York, was
1767 tons register, and measured: length 221 feet, breadth 41 feet 6
inches, depth 24 feet 10 inches. She was commanded by Captain H. W.
Johnson, a gentleman who possessed a merry wit and a vivid imagination.
Some of his experiences by land and sea, as related by himself, were
certainly startling, and he told them with a minuteness of detail and an
earnestness of manner that carried conviction equal to the most
realistic illusions of the drama. There was one story about a mutiny on
board the British brig _Diadem_, of which vessel Johnson said he was
second mate. This craft carried a Lascar crew, and was in the Bay of
Bengal, bound from Calcutta to Hong-kong with a cargo of opium, when a
mutiny broke out in which all hands took part with such ferocious valor
that the second mate and the serang, both badly wounded, were the only
survivors.
The listeners are shown the dead bodies of Europeans and Asiatics, lying
about the blood-stained deck under the fierce rays of the southern sun,
and we breathe the tainted air, while chattering cormorants and
screeching fishhawks tear the thin clothing of the corpses into shreds
and fight with claw and beak over the decaying flesh. Johnson and the
serang, so widely separated by blood, language, and religion, now united
by a bond of common suffering, help each other to crawl into the caboose
for shelter from the heat and from the birds of prey. Now we hear the
gentle chafing of the gear aloft, and the lazy slatting of the sails, as
the brig rolls upon the long, glassy swell; we see the sun sink beyond
the ocean’s rim in a glory of gold and purple that illumines the zenith
and turns the sea into a lake of fire; and we feel the benediction of
the cool twilight and whispering breeze.
In the silence of the night, the two men, weak from loss of blood, drag
themselves aft to the deserted cabin; Johnson lowers himself down the
companion and gropes his way to the pantry, where he finds food to share
with his companion. In the captain’s cabin he finds a decanter of brandy
and a tumbler in the rack at the foot of the berth; he fills the glass
and pours the spirit down his parched throat to brace his shattered
nerves, then fills the glass again and takes it to the serang, but the
faithful follower of Mahomet refuses to lift it to his burning lips. We
live with them as they work their little vessel back to the muddy waters
of the Hooghly and sight a pilot brig lying at anchor on her station,
and their joy is ours when the pilot, with his leadsman, servant, and
boat’s crew, comes on board. Again these unfortunate men, haggard and
still suffering from their wounds, are being tried in an Anglo-Indian
Court of Justice under a charge of murder on the high seas, and we hear
the judge pronounce their solemn sentence of death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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