{90}[103] ["Scarce was this done, when _a gust, exceeding in violence everything of the kind I had ever seen, or could conceive, laid the ship on her beam ends_.... "The ship _lay motionless_, and, to all appearance, irrevocably overset.... _The water forsook the hold_, and appeared between decks.... "Immediate directions were given _to cut away the main and mizen masts_, trusting when the ship righted, to be able to wear her. On cutting one or two lanyards, the _mizen-mast went first over_, but without producing the smallest effect on the ship, and, on cutting the lanyard of one shroud, the _main-mast followed_. I had next the mortification to see the _foremast and bowsprit also go over_. On this, _the ship immediately righted with great violence_."--"Loss of the _Centaur_ Man-of-War, 1782, by Captain Inglefield," _Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii. 41.] [bc] _Perhaps the whole would have got drunk, but for_.--[MS.] {91}[104] ["A midshipman was appointed to guard the spirit-room, to repress that unhappy desire of a devoted crew _to die in a state of intoxication._ The sailors, though in other respects orderly in conduct, here pressed eagerly upon him. "_'Give us some grog,'_ they exclaimed, _'it will be all one an hour hence.'--'I know we must die,'_ replied the gallant officer, coolly, _'but let us die like men!'--Armed with a brace of pistols,_ he kept his post, even while the ship was sinking."--"Loss of the _Earl of Abergavenny,_ February 5, 1805," _Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii. 418. John Wordsworth, the poet's brother, was captain of the _Abergavenny_. See _Life of William Wordsworth_, by Professor Knight, 1889, i. 370-380; see, too, Coleridge's _Anima Poetæ_, 1895, p. 132. For a contemporary report, see a Maltese paper, _Il Cartaginense_, April 17, 1805.] [105] ["However, by great exertions of the chain-pumps, we _held our own_.... All who were not seamen by profession, had been employed in _thrumming a sail which was passed under the ship's bottom, and I thought_ had some effect.... "_The Centaur laboured so much_, that I _could scarce hope she would swim_ till morning: ... our sufferings _for want of water_ were very great.... "_The weather again threatened_, and by noon _it blew a storm_. The ship laboured greatly; _the water appeared in the fore and after-hold_. I was informed by the carpenter also that _the leathers_ were nearly consumed, and the _chains of the pumps_, by constant exertion, and friction of the coils, were rendered almost useless.... "At this period the carpenter acquainted me that the well was stove in.... and the chain-pumps displaced and totally useless.... Seeing their efforts useless, many of them [the people] burst into tears, and wept like children.... "I perceived _the ship settling by the head._"--"Loss of the _Centaur_," _Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea_, 1812, iii. pp. 45-49.] {92}[bd] _'T is ugly dying in the Gulf of Lyons_.--[MS.]