Dana, Richard Henry, 1815-1882; Sailors; Seafaring life; Voyages and travels
The next day, about three P. M., passed a large corvette-built ship,
close upon the wind, with royals and skysails set fore and aft, under
English colors. She was standing south-by-east, probably bound round
Cape Horn. She had men in her tops, and black mast-heads; heavily
sparred, with sails cut to a t, and other marks of a man-of-war. She
sailed well, and presented a fine appearance; the proud,
aristocratic-looking banner of St. George, the cross in a blood-red
field, waving from the mizen. We probably were as fine a sight, with
our studding-sails spread far out beyond the ship on either side, and
rising in a pyramid to royal studding-sails and sky-sails, burying the
hull in canvas, and looking like what the whale-men on the Banks, under
their stump top-gallant masts, call "a Cape Horn-er under a cloud of
sail."
Friday, August 12th. At daylight made the island of Trinidad, situated
in lat. 20° 28' S., long. 29° 08' W. At twelve M., it bore N. W. 1/2
N., distant twenty-seven miles. It was a beautiful day, the sea hardly
ruffled by the light trades, and the island looking like a small blue
mound rising from a field of glass.
Such a fair and peaceful-looking spot is said to have been, for a long
time, the resort of a band of pirates, who ravaged the tropical seas.
Thursday, August 18th. At three P. M., made the island of Fernando
Naronha, lying in lat. 3° 55' S., long. 32° 35' W.; and between twelve
o'clock Friday night and one o'clock Saturday morning, crossed the
equator, for the fourth time since leaving Boston, in long. 35° W.;
having been twenty-seven days from Staten Land--a distance, by the
courses we had made, of more than four thousand miles.
We were now to the northward of the line, and every day added to our
latitude. The Magellan Clouds, the last sign of South latitude, were
sunk in the horizon, and the north star, the Great Bear, and the
familiar signs of northern latitudes, were rising in the heavens.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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