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
Another night renewed our afflictions. The morning of the third,
fraught with still greater evils, appeared; our continued sufferings
made us exert the last effort, and we English prisoners, tried every
means to save as many of our fellow creatures as lay in our power.
Larger rafts were constructed, and the largest boat was got over the
side. The first consideration was to lay the surviving wounded, the
women and helpless men in the boat, but the idea of equality, so
fatally promulgated among the French, destroyed all subordination, and
nearly one hundred and twenty having jumped into the boat, in defiance
of their officers, they sunk her.--The most dreadful sea that I ever
saw seemed at that moment to aggravate our calamity; nothing of the
boat was seen for a quarter of an hour, when the bodies floated in
all directions; then appeared, in all their horrors, the wreck, the
shores, the dying and the drowned! Indefatigable in acts of humanity,
an adjutant general, Renier, launched himself into the sea, to obtain
succours from the shore, and perished in the attempt.
Nearly one half the people had already perished, when the horrors of
the fourth night renewed all our miseries. Weak, distracted, and
destitute of every thing, we envied the fate of those whose lifeless
corpses no longer wanted sustenance.--The sense of hunger was already
lost, but a parching thirst consumed our vitals. Recourse was had to
urine and salt water, which only increased the wants; half a hogshead
of vinegar indeed floated up, of which each had half a wine glass; it
afforded a momentary relief, but soon left us again in the same state
of dreadful thirst. Almost at the last gasp, every one was dying with
misery, and the ship, now one third shattered away from the stern,
scarcely afforded a grasp to hold by, to the exhausted and helpless
survivors.
The fourth day brought with it a more serene sky, and the sea seemed
to subside, but to behold, from fore to aft, the dying in all
directions, was a sight too shocking for the feeling mind to endure.
Almost lost to a sense of humanity, we no longer looked with pity on
those whom we considered only as the forerunners of our own speedy
fate, and a consultation took place, to sacrifice some one to be food
for the remainder. The die was going to be cast, when the welcome
sight of a man of war brig renewed our hopes.
A cutter speedily followed, and both anchored at a short distance from
the wreck. They then sent their boats to us, and by means of large
rafts, about one hundred, out of four hundred who attempted, were
saved by the brig that evening.--Three hundred and eighty were left to
endure another night's misery, when, dreadful to relate, above one
half were found dead the next morning!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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