224

A TERRIFIC STORM.

[CHAP.

"Towards eight at night the wind became more moderate, though a large sea tumbled in from the westward.

"At ten o'clock the appearance of the weather was so very favourable that we set the fore-topsail, which we had not done an hour before there burst upon us, like a clap of thunder, a most dreadful storm of wind and rain, which was so very sudden and unexpected that, having not so much as the least sign by which we could have foreseen the great violence of it, we had our topsails still out, so that we were laid down on our beam ends, and the sea made a fair breach over us. We immediately made a seamanlike disposition of our sails, clewing all of them up at once, and bringing-to under a balanced mizen.1

"The sails were so extremely unwieldy that it was not without the greatest difficulty, and

1 To balance a sail, is the act of reducing it, when it is not fitted with reefs. A "mizen" would be balanced by lowering the gaff, and rolling up the slack upper portion of the sail.

XI.j

A.TURBULENT SEA.

225

danger to our seamen, that we could get them furled.

"The vast flapping of the unruly sails, together with the deep rolling and working of our ship, every minute endangered the masts falling by the board. We were three hours before we could get the sails into anything like tolerable order.

"The seas incessantly broke over us, for being so heavy a vessel we did not rise at all to them.

"At half-past one, everybody agreed that they had never been, but once, in so great a tempest. All hands were on deck, whose sole employ then was at the pumps, and holding fast. The second lieutenant with three men attended the helm, which was almost constantly a lee, to keep her head to the sea.

But our utmost efforts and skill were insufficient to prevent three heavy seas breaking directly on our deck; a smaller sea had struck us on the bow and had just thrown us, even against the helm, into the hollow of the sea. We were no sooner there than a sea, that seemed to us to

Q

226

GUNS HOVE OVERBOARD.

[CHAP.

reach half way up the topmast head, fell upon us, and forced away from their lashings the three boats on the booms, and threw our large boat, which was lashed with a small cable to the ring-bolts of the deck, over on the lee side, which, without deliberation, we immediately cut up and threw overboard in order to clear the deck. This was not easily done, as we were entirely full of water, our men working up to their necks in the waste, where there was now no intermission of shipping water, for we laboured so much, and the seams in the deck everywhere yawned so much, and particularly by the guns, that it was thought too dangerous to admit us any longer to keep our cannon, two of which we threw overboard; and as we cut away all our spare masts leaving the deck entirely open, there was no shelter or covering for the men.'

"We frequently lay so long on our side that

1 Captain Phipps refers to this gale in the following words:" In one of these gales, the hardest, I think, I ever was in, and with the greatest sea, we lost three of our boats,

XI.]

DANGER OF SHIPWRECK.

227

we thought it impossible we could recover; the sea, too, was of so tremendous a height that when we descended the side of it, it quite took away our breath, and gave us reason to think, when between two of them, that every minute was our last.

"The gale was at N.W., and, by our account and soundings, we judged we could not be at a greater distance than ten leagues from the rugged coast of Norway. The terror this threw us into was so great that it obliged us, notwithstanding the continued. violence of the wind would have dictated far otherwise, to set our foresail, but judging that this, too, would be insufficient, we attempted to set the reefed mainsail, which we had no sooner shown than it flew to rags.

"If the wind had not now changed more to the northward, destruction would have been inevitable.

and were obliged to heave two of our guns overboard, and bear away for some time, though near a lee shore, to clear the ship of water."

228

END OF MR. FLOYD'S MANUSCRIPT. [CHAP. "We took it for granted that the Carcass must have foundered, for we still saw nothing of her, and as she was somewhat deeper than we were, we concluded, from the bad hand that we had made of it, that she could not have swam it out. On the 13th it became a little more moderate.”

Here the manuscript abruptly ceases, the writer having, in all probability, laid it on one side with the intention of completing it after his arrival in England; but this, like many other good resolutions formed by young officers on a homeward voyage, was never carried out.

It will suffice here to say that, in consequence of the turbulent weather encountered by the ships for the Carcass, in spite of the dismal forebodings on board the Racehorse regarding her fate, remained above water-it was not until the 25th of September they dropped anchor off Orfordness, reaching the Nore a few days later, where they were both paid out of commission on the 13th of October.