and finally it split lengthwise asunder at the bottom, so that the water entered, which rose so fast that the ship began to sink early in the morning. At the last extremity, when the people endeavored to save themselves, 63 persons sprang into a boat. But as this boat was too overburdened, and another person reached it by swimming, holding persistently on to it, it was not possible to drive him away till they chopped his hands off, when he went down. Another person, in order to save himself, jumped on a barrel which had fallen out of the large ship, but which immediately capsized and sank with him. But the passengers in the large ship held on partly to the rigging, partly to the masts; many of them stood deep in the water, beat their hands together about their heads and raised an indescribably piteous hue and cry. As the boat steered away, its occupants saw the large ship with 300 souls on board sink to the bottom before their eyes. But the merciful God sent those who had saved themselves in the boat, an English ship that had been sailing near, and which took the poor shipwrecks on board and brought them back to the land. This great disaster would never have been known in Germany if the ship had gone down during the night with all its human freight on board.
The following fatal voyage, where all the passengers
