Navigating the Lower Saint Lawrence in the 19th Century.
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Our actual position at this time could not be ascertained; and
the three hours of total darkness that followed seemed a century of
anxiety and appalling suspense. The captain, I believe, suspected
where we were; but no one else had the remotest idea whether we had
struck on the north or the south shore of the St. Lawrence, on the
Island of Anticosti, towards which we had been steering, on a rock,
a reef, or on a sand-bank. Blue lights were burned, and signal
guns fired, though with great difficulty, owing to the plunging of
the gun under water, and the want of a proper match, a substitute
of which was at length found in a lighted cigar; and there soon
appearing no chance of succour, or any possibility of getting the
ship afloat again, the dangerous expedient of cutting away the
masts was determined on, fearing, from the heavy rolling and
labouring of the vessel, increased by the top-weight of the masts,
that she should heel over on her beam-ends, or break up in her
present berth before morning. The decks were accordingly cleared of
all whose assistance was not required; and, with the aid of saws
and axes, the fore and main masts were speedily cut away, and went
over the side with a tremendous crash. This hazardous work was
performed by a party of the soldiers (amongst these a grenadier of
the name of Moor was conspicuous, and was afterwards promoted for
his general good conduct and gallant behavior), under the direction
and aid of the officers of the ship, the carpenter, and one or two
of the old seamen. The cutting away of the masts is always a moment of critical danger and anxiety, lest their falling to windward should cause the ship to settle over in that direction, thereby exposing her decks, instead of her side, to be swept by every coming sea. They fell to leeward, however, and fortunately without the occurrence of any personal accident, notwithstanding the crowded state of the deck and the profound darkness of the night. Most of the officers, many of the boys of the band, and a few of the sergeants' wives and their children, congregated in the cuddy, where the swinging lamp was kept lighting as long as possible: but here, as elsewhere, the sea constantly burst in through the side ports; the furniture got adrift from its lashings; and men, women and children, tables, chairs, boxes, stove-pipes and sundry other loose articles, were often washed, en masse, from side to side of the cabin. Those on deck were of course still worse off, drenched to the skin with every sea that broke over the ship, exposed, most of them half-naked, to the "pelting of the pitiless storm," and flung every now and then, by some sudden and heavy lurch, into the lee scuppers, from whence they were dragged, half drowned, by their comrades. Long wished-for morning broke at length; and, as the shades of darkness rolled away, we were cheered by the sight of land under our lee - joyful relief from the anxious dread and suspense of the past three hours! Our situation, however, was still exceedingly critical, and perilous in the extreme. The ship was making water rapidly, and the hold filling so fast, that it was feared the main deck, where so many luckless creatures were now crowded, would ere long burst upwards; and as her back was throught to be broken, and the sea still breaking incessantly over her, it was not known how soon she might part asunder. The snow had in a great measure ceased to fall, and the wind was beginning in some degree to moderate; but the scene was wild and desolate as can well be imagined: heavy masses of broken clouds were driving across the sky; a tremendous sea, black and crested with foam, rolled in from the ocean; the sea-birds shrieked as they wheeled and circled above our heads; and our "devoted bark," dismantled and mismasted, lay bedded in the sand, and buffeted by every wave, surrounded by the fragments of her masts and yards, still clinging, by the tangled rigging, to the ruined hull. Peering anxiously towards the shore, in the grey light of the morning, we discerned a few fishermen's huts along the strand, and some six or eight solitary individuals seltering themselves from the storm behind the stumps of up-torn trees, and gazing at the wreck, but unable to render any assistance. Some large fishing-boats were hauled up on the beach, one or more of which we confidently expected would speedily be launched to our air; but seeing, after a while, that the poor habitants had evidently no intention of any thing of the kind, we immediately set them down either as a heartless and pusillanimous set, who dreaded the risk of a wetting, or as a party of banded wreckers, gloating on the prize so unexpectedly cast into their net, and waiting quietly for the elements to complete the work of destruction ere they greedily pounced upon their prey. But, as the dim and uncertain light of early dawn gave way to the clear light of day, we soon become aware of the fearful, almost impassable, barrier that lay between them and us - a tremendous and overwhelming surf, that, like the celebrated surf of the Coromandel coast, rolled, in three successive billows, on the strand. We could distinctly see these "combers" as sailors call them, rising like black and liquid walls, each succeeding one still higher than the other, bending, curling over, till the lengthening line bursts upon the beach with thundering sound, and gushes, in a sheet of snowwhite foam, far upon the shelving sand. |
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"The billows float in order to the shore; The wave behind rolls on the waves before." | ||
| G. R. Bossé©2001-03 | Page 21 | Chapter 1843 |
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