Page:A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2.djvu/319

1803.
August.
Friday 19.

passable for the Bridgewater, and might enable him to take those on board who had escaped drowning. He bore away round all; and whilst the two hapless vessels were still visible from the mast head, passed the leeward extremity of the reef, and hove to for the night. The apprehension of danger to himself must then have ceased; but he neither attempted to work up in the smooth water, nor sent any of his boats to see whether some unfortunate individuals were not clinging to the wrecks, whom he might snatch from the sharks or save from a more lingering death; it was safer, in his estimation, to continue on his voyage and publish that we were all lost, as he did not fail to do on his arrival in India.^[1]

 

1. Against a British seaman filling a respectable situation, these are heavy charges; but Mr. Palmer is himself the authority. The following extracts from his account are taken from a Calcutta paper, the Orphan of Feb. 3, 1804. The Bridgewater, he says, "was just beginning to draw off, when the Porpoise was scarcely a ship's length to leeward, settling with her head towards us, and her broadside upon the reef; her foremast was was gone and the sea breaking over her. At this moment we perceived the Cato within half a cable's length, standing stem on for us. I hailed to put their helm a-starboard, by which means she just cleared us, and luffed up under our stern; had she fallen on board of us the consequences must have been dreadful indeed." On the 18th, "When the day was broke, we had the mortification to perceive the Cato had shared the fate of the Porpoise; the bow and bow sprit of the latter only at intervals appearing through the surf, (The Porpoise and Cato were mistaken for each other.) The latter lay with her bottom exposed to the sea, which broke with tremendous fury over her; not a mast standing. Finding we could not weather the reef, and that it was too late had it been in our power to give any assistance; and still fearing that we might be embayed or entangled by the supposed chain or patches; all therefore that remained for us to do was either by dint of carrying sail to weather the reef to the southward, (meaning the Cato's Bank,) or, if failing in that, to push to leeward and endeavour to find a passage through the patches of reef to the northward. At ten a.m., we found by chronometer we had got considerably to the westward; and that it would be impossible, with the wind as it was then blowing strong from the S.E. with a heavy sea, to weather the southern reef; we therefore determined, while we had the day before us, to run to the westward of the northern reef."
   
   "At two p.m. we got sight of the reef bearing N.N.E. At five p.m. we could perceive the wrecks, and ascertained the westermost extent of the reef to lay in 155° 42′ 30″ east longitude."