A master on board a vessel which was blown “out of the Downs to Norway,” describes the sights he saw on those fatal days, the 25th and 26th of November, in homely but graphic language. He says: “By four o’clock we miss’d the _Mary_ and the _Northumberland_, who rid not far from us, and found they were driven from their anchors; but what became of them, God knows. And soon after, a large man-of-war came driving down upon us, all her masts gone, and in a dreadful condition. We were in the utmost despair at this sight, for we saw no avoiding her coming thwart our haiser; she drove at last so near us, that I was just gowing to order the mate to cut away, when it pleas’d God the ship sheer’d contrary to our expectation to windward, and the man-of-war, which we found to be the _Sterling Castle_, drove clear of us, not two ships’ lengths, to leeward. “It was a sight full of terrible particulars to see a ship of eighty guns (_sic_) and about six hundred men(68) in that dismal case. She had cut away all her masts; the men were all in the confusion of death and despair; she had neither anchor, nor cable, nor boat to help her, the sea breaking over her in a terrible manner, that sometimes she seem’d all under water. And they knew, as well as we that saw her, that they drove by the tempest directly for the Goodwin, where they could expect nothing but destruction. The cries of the men, and the firing their guns, one by one, every half minute for help, terrified us in such a manner, that I think we were half dead with the horror of it.” The same writer describes the collision of two vessels, which he saw sink together, and several great ships fast aground and beating to pieces. “One,” says he, “we saw founder before our eyes, and all the people perish’d.” “We have,” says Defoe, “an abundance of strange accounts from other parts, and particularly the following letter from the Downs, and though every circumstance in this letter is not literally true, as to the number of ships or lives lost, and the style coarse and sailor-like, yet I have inserted this letter, because it seems to describe the horror and consternation the poor sailors were in at that time; and because this is written from one who was as near an eye-witness as any could possibly be, and be safe.