Down to the Sea in Ships Read Online Free PDF

to try to shovel the coal back to the weather side, but the ship was too far over and they failed. The storm returned on the night of 11 August and the ship was pushed further over. By the morning of 12 August the ship was lying on her side. The sailors set to work to cut away the masts. On the high side, the port side, this was accomplished with hacksaws. The trouble was that the lee shrouds and stays – the wires retaining the masts on the starboard side – were quite deep under water. As the ship rolled the shrouds would emerge briefly, or at least be pulled closer to the surface. Lowering themselves on ropes, the crew fought to cut them loose. Captain Johnson divided the men into two gangs. While one battled to cut the iron fastenings with their hacksaws the other group continued to try to trim the coal, flinging spadefuls uphill in the hold. It is hard to picture the conditions below, the sliding mountains of coal lit by flickering lamps. It is only slightly easier to see the outside crew at work, dangling like spiders from the side of the ship, swinging against the near-vertical deck, tackling steel wires with saws as the waves rise and fall.
    A third heavy gale on 15 August broke a spare spar off the deck and water began entering the hold, rising to a depth of eight feet. The battle down there seemed hopeless, with coal rolling back down the incline faster than it could be shifted. Captain Johnson sent Simpson to assess the situation in the aft (rearmost) hold. Simpson reported that water was pouring in through the broken deck bolts and that the ship’s stern was leaking at every seam. Captain Johnson told him to say nothing of this to anyone.
    The crew sighted another ship and Captain Johnson ordered the carpenter to make repairs to the sole remaining lifeboat, which was badly damaged. Before the boat could be made seaworthy the other ship vanished. Orders were given to put the boat in the water, ready to take off all hands should the
Indian Empire
founder, which seemed likely at any minute.
    â€˜There now occurred a sequence of events which had almost a miraculous quality about them,’ Captain Clark writes. Seventeen of the crew, including Simpson, took to the boat, already half full of water despite the sailors’ baling. As more men attempted to board the order was given to let go and lie close by on the sea anchor. No sooner was this done than the lifeboat drifted away from the ship. There seemed no way of getting back to her in the wind and sea. As night came down the men in the lifeboat thought they saw the
Indian Empire
go down. They were barely afloat, through constant baling. They had a little biscuit and some tinned beef but just as they were being issued drinking water a sea swamped the rowing boat, and that was the end of the water. Only two oars remained. The men were in rags. That night it blew a gale with hail in the wind. They did all they could to keep the little boat’s nose to the sea.
    At daybreak the wind relented. Rising high with a wave under them they saw their fallen ship. Captain Clark writes: ‘Had she been anywhere but dead to leeward they could never have reached her with their two oars; and as it was, they were very apprehensive as to their reception, for more than one of those left aboard had gone out of their minds before the boat got adrift. However, a lifebuoy was thrown to them and they got back aboard. It is a good indication of the state of the boat that it was not considered worth keeping and was cast adrift.’
    Those men worked twenty hours a day at the pumps, at cutting spars loose, and at dumping coal into the sea. They worked for many days, eventually getting their ship upright and a tattered sail rigged. At three knots they worked their way north into the south-east trade winds. They had no sextant, chart, chronometer or compass; they did not even have a watch. Judging that if they made their way eastwards they must eventually meet South