On reviewing the various proximate causes to which so many human beings owed their deliverance from a combination of dangers as remarkable for their duration as they were appalling in their aspect, it is impossible, I think, not to discover and gratefully acknowledge, in the beneficence of their arrangement, the overruling providence of that blessed Being, who is sometimes pleased, in His mysterious operations, to produce the same effect from causes apparently different; and on the other hand, as in our own case, to bring forth results the most opposite, from one and the same cause. For there is no doubt that the heavy rolling of our ship, occasioned by the violent gale, which was the real origin of all our disasters, contributed also most essentially to our subsequent preservation; since, had not Captain Cobb been enabled, by the greatness of the swell, to introduce speedily through the gun ports the immense quantity of water that inundated the hold, and thereby checked for so long a time the fury of the flames, the _Kent_ must unquestionably have been consumed before many, perhaps before any, of those on board could have found shelter in the _Cambria_.[15] But it is unnecessary to dwell on an insulated fact like this, amidst a concatenation of circumstances, all leading to the same conclusion, and so closely bound together as to force us to confess, that if a single link in the chain had been withdrawn or withheld, we must all most probably have perished. The _Cambria_, which had been, it seems, unaccountably detained in port nearly a month after the period assigned for her departure, was early on the morning of the fatal calamity pursuing at a great distance ahead of us the same course with ourselves; but her bulwarks on the weather side having been suddenly driven in, by a heavy sea breaking over her quarter, Captain Cook, in his anxiety to give ease to his labouring vessel, was induced to go completely out of his course by throwing the brig on the opposite tack, by which means alone he was brought in sight of us. Not to dwell on the unexpected, but not unimportant facts of the flames having been mercifully prevented, for eleven hours, from either communicating with the magazine forward, or the great spirit room abaft, or even coming into contact with the tiller ropes--any of which circumstances would evidently have been fatal,--I would remark that, until the _Cambria_ hove in sight, we had not discovered any vessel whatever for several days previous; nor did we afterwards see another until we entered the chops of the Channel. It is to be remembered, too, that had the _Cambria_, with her small crew, been homeward instead of outward bound, her scanty remainder of provisions, under such circumstances, would hardly have sufficed to form a single meal for our vast assemblage; or if, instead of having her lower deck completely clear, she had been carrying out a full cargo, there would not have been