Next day, the wind continuing favorable, carried the fleet down channel; and as the Catharine transport came within sight of the isle of Purbeck, Lieutenant Jenner, an officer on board, pointed out to another person, the rocks where the Halsewell and so many unfortunate individuals had perished. He and Cornet Burns had been unable to reach Southampton until the Catharine had sailed, therefore they hired a boy to overtake her, and on embarking at St. Helens the former expressed his satisfaction, in a letter to his mother, that he had been so fortunate as to do so. On Tuesday the 17th, the fleet was off Portland, standing to the westward; but the wind shifting and blowing a strong gale at south-south-west, the admiral, dubious whether they could clear the channel, made a signal for putting into Torbay, which some of the transports were then in sight of.--However, they could not make the bay; the gale increased, and a thick fog came on; therefore the admiral thought it expedient to alter his design, and about five in afternoon made a signal for standing out to sea. Of the circumstances relative to the Catharine, a more detailed account has been preserved than respecting the other vessels of the fleet; and they are preserved by a female, with whose name we are unacquainted, in these words. "The evening of the 17th was boisterous and threatening; the master said he was apprehensive that we should have bad weather; and when I was desired to go on deck and look at the appearance of the sky, I observed that it was troubled and red, with great heavy clouds flying in all directions, and with a sort of dull mist surrounding the moon. On repeating this to the other passengers, two of whom had been at sea before, they said we should certainly have a stormy night, and indeed it proved so very tempestuous that no rest was to be obtained. Nobody, however, seemed to think that there was any danger, though the fog was so thick that the master could see nothing by which to direct his course; but he thought that he had sufficient sea-room. The fatigue I had suffered from the tossing of the ship, and the violence with which she continued to roll, had kept me in bed. It was about ten o'clock in the morning of the 18th, when the mate looked down into the cabin and cried, "save yourselves if you can!" The consternation and terror of that moment cannot be described; I had on a loose dressing gown, and wrapping it round me I went up, not quite on deck, but to the top of the stairs, from whence I saw the sea break mountain high against the shore. The passengers and soldiers seemed thunderstruck by the sense of immediate and inevitable danger, and the seamen, too conscious of the hopelessness of any exertion, stood in speechless agony, certain of meeting in a few moments that destruction which now menaced them.