Читать книгу Harper's Young People, January 10, 1882 - Various - Страница 2

BY JAMES PAYN

II

THE LOSS OF THE "ROYAL GEORGE."

In a letter which Miss Martineau once showed me, from a relative of hers, long dead, addressed to her great niece from Southsea, near Portsmouth, and dated August 9, 1782, there occurred this singular passage:

"The day is calm and pleasant, and as I sit at the open window, the great vessel in the offing, betwixt me and the Fair Island" (the Isle of Wight used to be so called), "seems to sway not a hand-breadth, nor to flutter a single pennant." Then, in a trembling hand, but still the same, was added: "A dreadful thing has happened. When I had written that beginning of my letter, Dorothy, I looked again southward; the sea was as waveless as before, and the Fair Island sparkled in the sun, but betwixt us and it I saw no trace of the great three-decker. I thought my brain had gone wrong, and rang the bell for Agnes; but when she too could see nothing of the ship, a terrible apprehension took hold of me; and when the alarm-guns from the fort began to thunder, I knew she had gone down. I hear near a thousand men were aboard of her."

This was the famous "wreck of the Royal George," immortalized by the verse of Cowper. She was a ship of one hundred guns, carrying brass 24-pounders on her main-deck, brass 32-pounders on her middle deck, and iron 32-pounders on her lower deck. Her lanterns were so large that the men used to enter them to clean them. She had six months' provisions on board, and many tons of shot. The blue flag of "brave Kempenfelt" was flying at her mizzen, and in two days she was to leave Spithead to join the fleet in the Mediterranean.

So sudden and unexpected a catastrophe was never before heard of in nautical annals; but the cause of it is common enough. It arose from the obstinacy and fool-hardiness of the lieutenant of the watch. These caused the death of some eight hundred human beings. It is not necessary to mention his name; indeed, the sailor from whose personal narrative I compile the story, and who had probably just joined the ship, did not know his name, though of course it could be discovered easily enough. "He was, if I remember right," he says, "the third lieutenant, a good-sized man between thirty and forty." Fortunately for himself, perhaps, he was drowned with the rest.

The accident arose through the heeling over of the ship. It was necessary to lay her on her side to get at the water cock, situated in that part of the hold called the well, in order to replace it by a new one. The operation was begun at eight o'clock in the morning. The ship at that time was "full of Jews, women, and people selling all sorts of things," as was usual on the eve of a long voyage. The last lighter, with rum on board, had just come alongside, and was lashed to the larboard side of the vessel, and the men were piped to clear her, and stow the rum in the hold. Though the water was almost level with the port-holes through which the larboard guns were run out, no danger seems at first to have been apprehended. The sea dashed in with every wave, and disturbed the mice in the lower deck, and the men amused themselves with hunting them in the water. "There was a rare game going on," are the words of the narrator.

By nine o'clock the weight of the rum barrels and of the sea water brought the larboard port-holes still lower, and the carpenter applied to the third lieutenant to give orders to "right ship, as she could not bear it." But the lieutenant gave him a very short answer. The captain – Captain Waghorn – was on board, and also the admiral; but admirals and captains are not consulted in such matters. The lives of those at sea, as of those on land, are mainly in the hands of subordinates. In a very short time the carpenter repeated his warning, and the lieutenant answered, "Sir, if you can manage the ship better than I can, you had better take the command." In a minute or two afterward, it is true, this fool-hardy officer ordered the drummer to be called to beat to right ship, but it was then too late. There was no time to beat his drum, or even time to get it. "Let us try," said our sailor to the lieutenant of his gun, "to house our gun out without waiting for the drum, as it will help to right the ship." They pushed the gun, but it ran back on them, and they could not start it. "Then I cried, 'Ned, the ship is sinking, jump out at the port-hole!' He did so, but I believe was drowned, for I never saw him again. I followed him. I saw the port-holes as full of heads as they could cram, all trying to get out."

What a picture! Imagine all those poor fellows struggling to escape through a space not large enough for one-tenth of them, up an incline as steep as the peaked roof of a house, and with a hungry sea rushing in behind them! Above all, think of the poor women! Our sailor, holding on to the best-bower anchor, which hung above the port, seizes hold of one and drags her out, but at that moment the draught of air from between-decks, caused by the sinking of the ship, blows him off his feet. Then the huge mass goes down, and draws him down with it. He tries to swim, but can not, "though I plunged as hard as I could with both hands and feet; but when the ship touched bottom, the water boiled up a good deal, and I felt that I could swim, and began to rise." So, even if a vessel with a hundred guns goes down and takes one with her, there is some use, you see, in having learned to swim. When he comes to the surface he hears – what a sound at such a moment! – the cannons ashore firing their signals of distress, but he can see nothing. His face is covered with tar, a barrel of tar having been staved in as the ship went down, and its contents spread over the water. He strikes it away from his eyes as well as he can, and looks about him.

The fore, main, and mizzen tops of the huge ship were all above water, and he climbs up into comparative safety. In the shrouds of the mizzentop he finds the admiral's baker, and sees the woman he has just pulled out of the port-hole rolling by. He seizes her once more, and hangs her head over one of the ratlines of the mizzen-shrouds, like clothes to dry, which is the best he can do for her; but a surf comes and knocks her backward, and "away she went, rolling over and over." Strangely enough, the poor creature is saved after all by the boat of a frigate lying at Spithead, whose captain has just put off to the rescue. "I must look to those who are in more danger than you, my lad," he sings out to our sailor, as he goes by.

"Ay, ay, sir," is the reply; "I am safely moored enough."

The captain of the Royal George, though, strange to say, he could not swim, was picked up alive. But out of nearly a thousand men, which was the ship's complement, although some were on leave, and sixty marines had gone ashore that very morning, only a very few were saved. Government allowed five pounds to them for the loss of their things. "I saw the list, and there were but seventy-five."

For several days afterward bodies would suddenly come up to the surface at the spot where the ship had sunk, "forty and fifty at a time. The watermen made a good thing of it; they would take from the men their buckles, money, and watches; then, making fast a rope to their heels, would tow them to land."

The poet who sings of the calamity tells us "no tempest gave the shock," and indeed there was scarcely any breeze at all. The ship was anchored, and had not even a stitch of canvas on her to keep her steady.

Sixty years afterward the interest of this terrible event had by no means died away, and I well remember, as a boy, going on board the ship that was stationed above the scene of the calamity, to see the divers who were still employed upon the wreck. The aspiration of the poet,

was never realized; but almost everything was taken out of her; and more fancy articles – paper-knives, work-boxes, etc. – affirmed to have been made from her timbers, were sold, I am afraid, than the Royal George, big as she was, could ever have furnished. In country places and at the sea-side in England you may purchase them even now at the bazars – old-fashioned articles, with this tomb-like inscription on them: "This desk" (or letter-weight, or paper-knife) "was made out of the wood of the Royal George, sunk off Spithead in 1782, with eight hundred of her crew."