Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy: A weird series of tales of shipwreck and disaster, from the earliest part of the century to the present time, with accounts of providential escapes and heart-rending fatalities.Anonymous
History
Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy: A weird series of tales of shipwreck and disaster, from the earliest part of the century to the present time, with accounts of providential escapes and heart-rending fatalities.
Anonymous
Mutiny; Pirates; Seafaring life; Shipwrecks
The Aimwell of Whitby, while cruising the Greenland seas, in the year
1810, had boats in chase of whales on the 26th of May. One of them was
harpooned. But instead of sinking immediately on receiving the wound,
as is the most usual manner of the whale, this individual only dived
for a moment, and rose again beneath the boat, struck it in the most
vicious manner with its fins and tail, stove it, upset it, and then
disappeared. The crew, seven in number, got on the bottom of the boat;
but the unequal action of the lines, which for sometime remained
entangled with the boat, rolled it occasionally over, and thus plunged
the crew repeatedly into the water.--Four of them, after each
immersion, recovered themselves and clung to the boat; but the other
three, one of whom was the only person acquainted with the art of
swimming, were drowned before assistance could arrive. The four men on
the boat being rescued and conveyed to the ship, the attack on the
whale was continued and two more harpoons struck.--But the whale
irritated, instead of being enervated by its wounds, recommenced its
furious conduct. The sea was in a foam. Its tail and fins wore in
awful play; and in a short time, harpoon after harpoon drew out, the
fish was loosened from its entanglements and escaped.
In the fishery of 1812, the Henrietta of Whitby suffered a similar
loss. A fish which was struck very near the ship, by a blow of its
tail, stove a small hole in the boat's bow. Every individual shrinking
from the side on which the blow was impressed, aided the influence of
the stroke, and upset the boat. They all clung to it while it was
bottom up; but the line having got entangled among the thwarts,
suddenly drew the boat under water, and with it part of the crew.
Excessive anxiety among the people in the ship, occasioned delay in
sending assistance, so that when the first boat arrived at the spot,
two survivors only out of six men were found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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