Castaways - Adrift and Abandoned: Thrilling Tales of the Sea (vol.3)

By Graham Faiella

Seafaring before the twentieth century bristled with peril. The safe haven of your vessel might be destroyed by tempest or misadventure, your security scuttled. When you were cast away with only the resources of pluck, stamina, hope – and luck. Where you might end up on the expanse of endless sea facing the prospect of imminent dehydrated, starving death. Or on a safe but potentially forbidding – yet occasionally lush – outcrop of an isolated shore, amongst which perils abounded accounts of courage and companionship.

These are narratives of castaways abandoned to fend for themselves, and the ordeals they endured and survived and in remembrance of the seafarers who did not.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Apr 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9780750995399

Graham Faiella

GRAHAM FAIELLA was born and raised in Bermuda. He has sailed across the Atlantic twice. In 1973-74 he joined an eighteen-month voyage around the world on a 1,750-ton ex-hydrographic research ship. After graduating from Edinburgh University he became a professional editor and writer. His most recent works reflect his interest in the lives of seafarers and ships, especially in the era of the deep-sea wind-ships.

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Pictorial

PREFACE

On 30 January 1886, Elizabeth (Betty) Mouat, ‘the daughter of a shoemaker in the village of Levenwick on the lower mainland of Shetland’, embarked on ‘a sailing packet of twenty-one tons and fifty feet overall length’, the Columbine, at Grutness, two miles from her home, to sail to the Shetland capital of Lerwick 24 miles away. In poor health after a stroke the year before, Betty was going to Lerwick for medical attention. The skipper of Columbine, James Jamieson, was a family friend. The mate was Jeremiah Smith. Oliver Smith was deckhand.

Stormy weather, with winds sometimes reaching hurricane force, had battered Shetland for the previous five days. And Columbine, with 60-year-old Betty Mouat huddled below deck in ill health, set off into the teeth of that wintry North Sea maelstrom. Within half an hour the skipper and mate had been knocked overboard. The mate managed to haul himself back on board. The skipper drowned. Both mate and deckhand launched Columbine’s 12ft boat to try to save skipper Jamieson, and, when they realised they couldn’t, to pull to shore about 2 miles away. Before the crew abandoned her, Columbine’s sails had been set. And so it was impossible for mate Smith and deckhand Smith to catch up with the vessel, to get back on board her, in that tumultuous sea. So Betty Mouat, alone, seasick, and with just a bottle of milk and a few biscuits she had brought with her, sailed on.

Abandoned. Adrift. Alone.

Against all odds, however, Betty survived: a week later Columbine grounded on the coast of Norway where she was rescued by locals, including ‘Messrs. Bully and Spindler, two English gentlemen’. Seas had remained rough throughout her castaway voyage and ‘often washed down the hatchway, keeping her drenched to the skin’. For the last four days she ‘was altogether without food’. And ‘every moment she expected the boat to go to the bottom’.

Illustration

The Castaway Smack Columbine: Elizabeth Mouat Lashed to the Deck. (The Illustrated London News, 20 February 1886)

But Columbine, under double-reefed mainsail, with no one at her tiller except the hand of Fate, ‘drove along’. And so Betty Mouat survived. Indomitable. Tough. Lucky, perhaps. Battered, indeed, but alive to tell the tale of her ordeal. Many – if not probably most – castaways, adrift and abandoned to their fate by whatever assault upon their vessel, will perish into the silence of oblivion. But some do come back from the edge of the abyss. Some, like Betty Mouat, do survive.

These are some of the tales they have told about their salvation.

Illustration

The Castaway.

The most powerful imagination could but faintly conceive the horror of the situation suggested by the engraving above. Alone at sea, upon a frail raft constructed in a few hurried and desperate moments from such materials as could be gathered hastily together before the doomed vessel sank forever out of sight, the shipwrecked sailor trusts himself to the mercy of the waves. Against the chances of rescue from his terrible situation are opposed so many fearful possibilities. The slight provision he has been able to make for his needs in the way of food and water is already spent; exposure to the burning heat of the sun by day and chilling mist at night must soon exhaust his strength; and at any moment a storm may arise and his raft be dashed in pieces by the waves.

The brave ship that left the harbor so short a time ago with colors flying, a fair wind swelling her canvas, her decks crowded with merry sailors and light-hearted passengers, and a thousand good wishes wafted in her wake, is lying now a shapeless wreck somewhere in the depths of the ocean. Of all the souls that trusted themselves upon the waters, fancying themselves secure within the protection of the good ship’s powerful frame, but one alone survives, and he is drifting upon the treacherous waves with only his faithful dog for a companion in his peril, and a few frail boards between him and death. How long he may have floated there, at the capricious mercy of wind and wave, we can not know. What horrible scenes he must have witnessed as friends and comrades were swallowed up by the waves! what shrieks of agony must have fallen upon his ear as one by one gave up the struggle with the remorseless waters!

Alone on a raft in mid-ocean! The shipwrecked mariner has raised a tattered signal of distress, but there seems to be no wind to spread its folds. He hears the fragile raft creak and groan as the swelling waves strain the slender ropes that bind it together. The fierce sun pours down its blinding heat by day, and scorches the eyes that strain themselves so eagerly toward the horizon, longing to catch sight of an approaching sail. When at last the long day wears to an end, and the burning rays that seem to pierce into his very frame are withdrawn, then a yet more terrible sense of despair settles down upon his soul. He is conscious of relief from the torturing power of the sun’s fierce heat, but as the evening shadows gather he knows that the thick blackness of the night will soon be around him, and all possibility of rescue will be removed until another day shall dawn.

How wearily the painful hours drag themselves along! The waves plash with a low monotonous regularity against the sides of the raft, and torture the overstrung nerves with their ceaseless reiterated murmur. They sound in his ears like faint spirit voices, and chill his soul with dread, as

‘They tell of death and danger nigh, / Of slumbering with the dead to-morrow / In the cold deep, / Where pleasure’s throb or tears of sorrow / No more can wake the heart or eye, / But all must sleep.’

Great indeed are the ‘perils of the deep,’ and great is the danger incurred by those who ‘go down into the sea in ships.’ Our sailors lead arduous lives, and are hourly surrounded by danger. Yet they cheerfully endure the hardship and privation and incur the fearful risks, and learn to love the treacherous element whereon they spend their lives. America is poorly represented on the ocean in comparison with some other nations, and yet it has been estimated that between four and five hundred American vessels are annually lost at sea, and that in a single month merchandise and valuables to the amount of a million and a half of dollars on an average are swallowed up by the ocean. In one year it was estimated that the number of casualties occurring to vessels off the coasts of the British Islands was between fourteen and fifteen hundred. Of these a large proportion were total losses.

Often some horrible calamity at sea shocks the community with its terrible destruction of human life, and yet only shipwrecks of a very appalling character force themselves upon our notice. The smaller vessels that go out to sea never to return are only noted by those few who suffer through their loss. But when the day comes that the sea ‘shall give up her dead,’ then we shall know how many human forms have been swallowed up by the great deep, and how many bright hopes have ended beneath the waves. (Harper’s Weekly, 30 January 1875)

1

ADRIFT

A ship at sea is a floating islet of security, tenuous though it might be. It has a structure of command: government. It has piloting and navigation rules and regulations to guide it safely to its destination: laws and governance. It has a crew of sailors and sometimes passengers: a population. It has food and water for its population: sustenance. Most important, it has the stability of its design and construction to keep it afloat: buoyancy and survival – security from the chaos of the sea.

When a ship is destroyed by perils of the sea, so, too, are those safeguards manufactured for the survival of its souls on board. Where before protected by the ship’s structure, human life, when cast adrift upon the sea, immediately hangs by a thread, if it survives at all. A small boatload of castaways adrift becomes a microcosm of the ship, but without any guarantee of deliverance to safety. Hope, resourcefulness, patience, luck, courage and stamina are the castaways’ closest companions, spectres of their redemption.

The sea is not their enemy; the sea is as indifferent to their resurrection as it is indiscriminate in their damnation. Those cast adrift upon it must make the best of what it offers: the hope of a ship to rescue them; the hope of rain for water and sea life for sustenance; the hope of conquering despair; the faint and constantly fading hope of staying alive – of salvation from the abyss just beyond the boat’s gunwales or the raft’s edge.

The freedom to hope is the lifebuoy of castaways, for whom the security of everything else that sustained them has been without mercy torn from them.

Loss of the Fleetwood, of Boston

On her voyage from Boston to the Polynesian Society Islands in 1859, the 663-ton Fleetwood was sunk by collision with an iceberg off Cape Horn on 4 May that year. Abandoning the sinking ship, the mate and four sailors took to one boat. Capt. Frank Dale, his wife (‘in a delicate situation’), their young child, and the rest of the crew totalling nineteen persons took to another. After five days adrift, the mate’s boatful of castaways were rescued by a British barque en route from Valparaiso, Chile, to Liverpool, and landed at Pernambuco (Recife), Brazil. The captain’s boat and occupants were never heard from again, presumed lost at sea.

Loss of Ship Fleetwood, of Boston – Rescue of the Mate and Four Seamen – Dreadful Sufferings from Exposure – The Captain, his Wife and Child, with Sixteen Sailors Missing

The schooner Kate Weston, Capt. Ellis, which arrived at this port yesterday from Pernambuco [Recife, Brazil], June 5, brought as passenger Mr. Babson, first officer of the ship Fleetwood of Boston, which he reports was lost off Cape Horn May 4, by coming in contact with an iceberg, causing the ship to sink in a short time, and obliging the officers and crew to escape in the boats.

Fleetwood’s Collision With Iceberg

The Fleetwood, Capt. Dale, sailed from Boston Feb. 9, with an assorted cargo for the Society Islands, having, among other things, twenty-five nests of boats, six in a nest. Nothing unusual happened until the ship arrived off Cape Horn, when in lat. 60° south, long. 71° west, while going twelve knots an hour, before a heavy northeast gale of wind, on the night of the 4th of May, the ship struck an iceberg which carried away her bowsprit, stove in her bows, starting [springing loose] all the wood ends forward, and leaving her in a sinking condition. The pumps were sounded, when she was found to be leaking very fast. The hatches were opened, and the cargo broken out forward and thrown overboard, with the hope of getting at the leak, as well as to lighten the vessel.

As it was found impossible to save the ship in this way, the captain ordered a portion of the crew to work at the pumps, while he with the rest cleared away the boats, and made preparations to leave the ship. The ship sank so fast there was little time for preparation, but Mr. Babson states that the boats were well supplied. He, Babson, launched his boat first but it had been partially stove, and only four of the crew, three men and a boy, whose names are not given, got into it with him. They then shoved off, at 3 o’clock in the morning, but remained in sight of the wreck.

Illustration

Cape Horn,Patagonia and the Falkland Islands.

Taking to the Boats

At daylight he returned to the ship, and found everything swept from off deck, the houses [deckhouses] and bulwarks gone, and the sea breaking over her. Mr. Babson supposed that the captain took one or more of the surfboats, of which they had several for the Missionaries at the Islands, and that he escaped safely from the ship. The Captain had with him his wife, in a delicate situation, and one child, there being also sixteen of the crew, besides the four in the mate’s boat.

If they all took to one boat they would have been dangerously crowded, but divided into two boats he thinks they had a chance to survive and be picked up, or to reach the land. The weather, however, was very cold, a ‘regular Cape Horn gale was blowing,’ and a heavy sea running. The mate’s boat had a sail, and all the provisions they required, excepting there was but a limited supply of water.

On the second or third day they saw a ship, and made every possible effort to attract their attention, but she went past them without seeing the boat. The sufferings of the crew were very great from the cold, ice making continually, and their hands and feet badly frost-bitten.

Rescued

After being five days in this situation they were fallen in with (May 10) by the British bark ---, Captain Williams, from Valparaiso, bound to Liverpool, and taken on board. Their wants were humanely attended to by Captain Williams, clothes and medicine were provided, and everything done to make them comfortable. They arrived at Pernambuco on the 3d of June. The men were received into the Hospital. The boy had a portion of both feet amputated, and should he survive, would be crippled. The others were doing well.

Captain Dale told Mr. Babson he should endeavor to reach the Falkland Islands. From the fact that they were in the track of vessels, he expresses the opinion that they may have been rescued, like themselves, by a passing vessel. Mr. Babson hurried off to Boston by the Sound steamer, and did not furnish the names of the persons saved in his boat, nor the name of the bark which picked him up. The Fleetwood was 663 tons register, classed A-1, built at Portsmouth, N.H., 1852, and was owned in Boston by F. Dale and others. (The New York Times, 30 June 1859)

The Dromahair – Dreadful Sufferings at Sea

The North Atlantic in winter is every bit as tempestuous and unforgiving as the southern bleakness of icy seas off Cape Horn. In November 1858 the British barque Dromahair loaded a cargo of timber at Quebec. On 20 November she sailed for Greenock, on the Clyde, Scotland, under the command of Capt. John Hutchinson, with thirteen crew. A month out, on 18 December, stormy weather assailed the vessel, sweeping her decks and threatening her and her crew’s lives.

The men survived for a while on meagre rations of ship’s biscuit, salt pork and salt beef scavenged from the hold, and whatever rain they could catch for fresh water. Six men died, mostly going mad from the terrible conditions, before the ship Centurion, bound for New York from Glasgow, rescued the seven survivors of the Dromahair on 9 January 1859. The vessel’s mate, John Elliot, one of the survivors, recounted the Dromahair’s ordeal.

Dreadful Sufferings at Sea

The British bark Dromahair sailed from Quebec on the 20th of November, 1858, for Greenock, Scotland, loaded with lumber and manned by 13 persons, including the captain and mate. She carried no passengers. Her officers were: John Hutchinson, captain; John Elliott, first mate; and William Henderson, second mate. The following are the names of the rest of the crew:- Hector McNaughton, Hector Munroe, Dougald Campbell, James Henderson, Henry Frost, Samuel Cochran, George McIntosh, John Murray, James McGrail, and John McInnes. The bark was built in St. John’s, New Brunswick, and carried 350 tons.

Storm

On the 18th December the vessel was in about 50 degrees and 30 minutes north latitude, and 30 degrees west longitude. The captain ordered sail to be taken in and the deck cleared. At 3 o’clock the ship was hove to, but the winds ‘rushed roaring on’, tossing her like a feather on the foam. At 7 o’clock she shipped a sea, capsizing the long-boat and the life-boat, which was inside of it, forcing both from the lee-rail into the sea. The long-boat was stove to pieces, and had to be broken up still more to save the life-boat. The ship had already begun to make water, and all hands but three were put to the pumps.

Thus the night passed, occasional showers of hail being driven furiously down upon the bark. Between these showers the moon occasionally pierced the tissue of fleecy clouds, and tipped the crested foam of the raging billows with a wavy tremulous light.

About 5 o’clock on Sunday morning, the 19th of December, the little bark shipped another tremendous sea, which carried away the port bulwarks and stancheons, split the covering board [gunwale], carried away the cook house, tore the life-boat from the deck, where it had been lashed, carried away the companion [covering/hatch over the companionway] and the steerage [steering] wheel. Mr. George McIntosh, the pilot at the wheel [helmsman], was struck by the mountain billow. The little boat hanging at the starboard davits was also swept away, with a large portion of the standing and running rigging. Nearly all the sails were at this time blown from the yards.

At the time the wave struck all the men were at the pumps. They jumped for their lives, and when the water cleared off they found themselves jammed into corners about the deck. One man was high up in the rigging.

The waves swept as high as the maintop. The water ran into the cabin, stove the bulk-heads, and flowed into the bread-room, destroying nearly all the bread [hard-tack, ship’s biscuit] in it. They had one barrel of bread left after this calamity; it happened to be stowed away in a spare locker. The cabin stairs were carried away, and everything torn up that impeded the course of the maddened waves. Sea after sea swept over the labouring ship, the men seeking merely to cling to her, knowing that as she was loaded with lumber she could not go down. Whenever they could they worked at the pumps, trying to keep down the water as much as possible.

All day Sunday the storm continued but not quite so violently. At 8 o’clock Sunday night the pumps were utterly disabled by a sea. Then the storm began to moderate, but the water gained on us. At 1 o’clock on Monday morning there were 13 feet [of] water in the vessel. Seeing there was no hope but in the pump we commenced to repair it, and as the wind had somewhat abated, we got it to work, and the ship free from water by noon of Monday.

A Temporary Reprieve

We cleared away the wreck as [much as] possible, and tried to get some canvass on her to steady her. We made a tiller and got her to work pretty well; but at 8 o’clock on Monday night there arose a tremendous gale – a wind even more furious than we had heretofore had – dashing the sea over the ship fore and aft. The storm was so violent we could not remain at the pumps. The wind continued to blow all night fearfully. And at 6 o’clock on Tuesday morning the water was up over the cabin floor.

We were all obliged to save ourselves from being washed overboard, as the bulwarks had been torn away. But as sea after sea swept over us and filled the cabin, we were compelled to run from it and get into a small forecastle house on deck, built in with the rise of the keep, about three feet above the