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From Entertaining Literary Curiosities, Consisting of Wonders of Nature and Art; Remarkable Characters; Fragments, Anecdotes, Letters, &c. &c. &c., by William Jefferson; London: Printed by J. G. Barnard, Snow Hill, for Crosby and Co. Stationers’ Court; 1808; pp. 1-2.


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Entertaining Literary Curiosities.

Part III
Survival Accounts


Copy of a Letter to Mr. Gorman.



Charlestown, South Carolina, Feb. 14, 1758.

SIR,

I ARRIVED here the 27th ult. From New Providence. The inclosed paper, to which I refer you, will give you an account of my misfortunes, which you will please to have published in your papers. My owners in Cork were Mr. John Shen, and Mess. Dominick Waters and Sons; the ship’s name, The Friendship. I have been missing since 22d of last June: My family think me dead.

I remain, with every respect, Sir,          
Your very humble servant,        
DOMINICK WATERS:






On the 13th of April, 1784, sailed from Port Royal, in Jamaica, for Black River, in the same island, in the ship Friendship, myself master. After taking in part of a cargo at Black River, for London, 23 the ship suddenly sprang a leak. — The goods were re-landed; and, in order to have the vessel repaired, it was necessary to return to Port-Royal, no shipwrights, or conveniences for heaving down, to be had at Black River. On our passage thither, we were overtaken by a storm from the East to the E. S. E. which brought us under courses, and drove us to leeward of Jamaica; the gale continuing, and the lake increasing.

In the evening the ship took the ground and turned on her side, being entirely full of water. All of us, twelve in number, got on the upper side, where we remained seven days without seeing any vessel or boat, or having the most distant prospect of relief. We made a raft of some spars, topmasts, yards, and planks, well bound, fraped and lashed together; and on Sunday the 4th July, the weather being moderate, embarked on it, with some provisions, determined to attempt getting ashore, the land then bearing N. by E. 16 or 18 leagues distant. On the night of the 5th it blew very hard from the N. E. attended with very heavy rain, thunder, and lightning, which drove us to the S. W. out of sight of land. The sea running vastly high, and the raft being too deep, we were obliged to throw overboard our provisions, chests, and clothing, and every thing else of value, reserving nothing but a quarter cask of Medeira wine. On the night of the 7th of July we lost five of our people overboard — the next day three more, one of whom we saw devoured by the sharks; two others grew delirious, and were drowned from the 8th to the 12th, when there remained only two, James Kelly (a sailor), and myself. We continued drifting before the wind, accompanied with vast numbers of brown sharks, which kept around us and followed 24 the raft from the time of our first losing the people, famine and death then staring us in the face, having nothing for our subsistence but the remains of the quarter cask of wine, three or four gallons, which served to keep life in us, by going to an allowance of a pint a day for each, till the 25th of July; when it pleased God to conduct us close in with the land, near a small creek, into which we immediately pushed our raft, and getting up to the head of it, we there found fresh water. We had not tasted a drop since leaving the wreck, then twenty-one days, and our wine was just then expended. After filling our wine cask, we pushed our raft along shore, close in, and at night made her fast to a tree. The country appeared to be quite under water, and was full of trees: in the evening, night, and morning we were tormented with vast swarms of sand-flies and musquitoes, which were a greater plague to us than the hunger we endured. The fresh water we soon found did not agree with us so well as the wine; it rendered us weak and languid, and increased our desire for food. Divine Providence interfering, the third day after leaving the creek, put land crabs in our way, which we caught, and very greedily ate raw, and thought them sweet and excellent food: — Such are the effects of hunger. We sometimes caught fish, which we also ate raw; our powder, fusees or musquets, and other conveniences for striking fire being rendered quite useless by the salt water. — In short, crabs, and sometimes wild fruit, were our only support all along the coast, till about the latter end of August; when with a deal of fatigue, labour, and trouble, we brought the raft to the mouth of a large river called Cur Joguatija, and remained there, in hopes of seeing some boats or vessels, till the 25 12th of September, exposed to every inclemency of the weather, such as continual rain, wind, thunder and lightning, it being the rainy season and hurricane times, destitute of every necessary of life but what uncultivated nature afforded; when, after a few days heavy rain, we observed quantities of lemons, limes, guavos, and other fruits, floating down the stream. This led us to imagine there must be settlements up the river, and determined us to proceed upwards with our raft, as soon as the freshes were past. We went nine or ten miles up the river, and landed the 15th September, at a place called Sanubardo, and fortunately met a man in the woods, who conducted us to the house of Don Francisco de la Cuiz, where we were most hospitably and kindly received; after being seventy-three days on the coast, and coming near 500 miles from the place where the ship took the ground, to the mouth of the above river, exposed to almost every possible hardship, danger, and difficulty. We got to Philipina the 25th of September, and staid to the 12th October; from whence we went to Lomuejua, where we remained till the 19th; when we sailed in the King’s schooner Isabella, and landed at the Havannah the 19th November. — From the Havannah, embarked on board a sloop bound to New Providence, the 11th December, and arrived the 19th; from thence sailed to this place.

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An Account of Alexander Selkirk, who was four years and four months by himself, on the island of Juan Fernandez. He was brought off the island by Captain Wood Rogers’s men, 2d February, 1709.

MR. ALEXANDER SELKIRK said he was a native 26 of Largo, in the County of Fife, in Scotland, and was bred a sailor from his youth; and, at the time he was left on the island, was master of a vessel called The Cinque-Port, Captain Stradling, commander. —— The reason of his being left on the island, was a difference between him and Captain Stradling, and the ship being leaky, made him at first willing to stay there rather than go with him, but afterwards he changed his mind, and would have gladly gone on board again, but the Captain would not receive him. He had with him his clothes and bedding; also a firelock, a pound of powder, some bullets, and tobacco; a hatchet, a kettle, a knife; a bible, some books of practical divinity, and his mathematical instruments and books.

For the first eight months he was extremely melancholy, and could hardly support the terror of being alone in such a desolate place.

He built himself two huts of pimento trees, covered with long grass, and lined with the skins of goats which he killed with his gun as long as his powder lasted. He got fire by rubbing two sticks of pimento wood together on his knee. In the smallest hut, which was some distance from the other, he dressed his victuals, and in the other he slept, and employed himself in reading, singing psalms, and praying; so that he said he was a better Christian while in this solitude, than he was before. When he was first left in this island, he ate nothing till mere hunger obliged him, partly from want of bread and salt, and partly from the excess of grief; nor did he go to bed till the want of sleep would not permit him to stay longer awake.

The pimento wood, which burnt very clear, served him both for fire and candle, and refreshed him with its fragrant smell. He could have procured 27 fish enough, but would not eat them for want of salt, except a sort of cray fish, which was extremely good, and as large as our lobsters; — these he sometimes broiled, and at other times boiled; as he also did the goat’s flesh, and made very good broth of it; for the taste of it is much more pleasant than that of the goats of England or Wales. — He kept an account of five hundred of these animals, which he had killed, and as many more which he caught, and having marked them on the ear let them go again. When his powder was gone, he took them by out-running them; for his way of living, and his continual exercise, walking and running, had so cleared his body of gross humours, that he ran, with wonderful swiftness, through the woods, and up the rocks and hills. He distanced and tired both the swiftest runners belonging to the ship, and a bulldog they had, in catching the goats, and bringing them on his back. He once pursued a goat with so much eagerness, that he caught hold of it on the brink of a precipice, of which he was not aware, as the bushes concealed it from his sight; so that he fell with the goat down the precipice, a prodigious height. He was so much hurt by the fall, that he lay insensible, as he imagined, about twenty-four hours; and when he came to himself, he found the goat dead under him. He was hardly able to crawl to his hut, about a mile distant; nor was he able to go abroad again for two days. He used to divert himself with cutting his name on the trees, together with the time of his being left and continuance there. He was at first much pestered with rats, which had bred, in great numbers, from some which had got on shore from ships which put in there for wood and water. The rats gnawed his feet and clothes while he slept, so that he was 28 obliged to cherish some cats, which had also bred from some that had got on shore from ships that had put in there; these he fed on goat’s flesh, by which many of them became so tame, that they would lie about him in hundreds, and soon delivered him from the rats. He likewise tamed some kids, and to divert himself, he would frequently sing and dance with them and his cats; so that by the favour of Providence, and the vigour of his youth, he being now only thirty years of age, he at length was enabled to conquer all the inconveniences of his solitude and became extremely easy. When his clothes were worn out, he made himself a coat and a cap of goat’s skin, which he sewed with little thongs of the same, cut with his knife. He had no other needle but a nail; and when his knife was worn out, he made others as well as he could of some iron hoops that were left ashore. Having some linen by him, he cut out some shirts, which he sewed with the worsted of some old stockings: he had his last shirt on when he was found. At his first going on board, he seemed much rejoiced; but had so far forgot his native language for want of use, that he could not speak plainly, only dropping a few words now and then, without much connection; but in two or three days he began to talk, and then told them that his silence was involuntary, for being so long without any person to converse with, he had forgot the use of his tongue. A dram was offered him, but he would not taste it, having drank nothing but water for so long a time; and it was some time before he could relish the victuals on board.

Drake’s Voyages and Travels.

29

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An Account of eight Men, that wintered in Greenland. They went out in a ship called the Salutation..

THREE English ships being fitted out for Greenland in the year 1630, one of them being straightened for provisions, the captain set eight men ashore there to kill venison, leaving them a boat, and orders to follow the ship to Green Harbour, which lies a little to the Southward of the place where they went ashore. These men having killed 14 or 15 deer, proposed next day to have gone on board the ship, but a great quantity of ice driving towards the shore, obliged the ship to stand so far out to sea, that when they came to Green Harbour, she was out of sight. However the ship being to rendezvous in Bell Sound, and being to leave Greenland within three days, the poor creatures began to be very anxious lest the shipping should be gone from thence before they arrived: they thought it proper to fling the venison into the sea, in order to lighten the boat, and make the best of their way to Bell Sound, distant from thence about 16 leagues to the southward; but none of them knowing the coast very well, they over-shot the port above ten leagues; when, being sensible of their error, they returned to the northward, but one of the company being positive that Bell Sound lay further to the South, they sailed to the south again, till they were a second time convinced of their mistake, and then they turned their boat about to the north again, and at length arrived at Bell Sound, but had spent so much time in rowing backwards and forwards, that the ships had actually left the coast, and were gone for England, to their great astonishment, 30 being provided neither with clothes, food, firing, nor house to shelter themselves from the piercing cold they were to expect in so rigorous a climate. These unhappy wretches stood looking at one another as men amazed at the distress they were on a sudden reduced to; but their consternation being a little abated, they began to think of the properest means to keep themselves alive during the approaching winter, in a country within twelve degrees of the Pole, being the first that ever did inhabit it the year round, and may be the last that ever will; and perhaps there is no instance in history of a company of men in so exquisite a distress, that showed more courage and patience, or made a wiser provision for their preservation, than these poor men did. They agreed in the first place to go to Green Harbour, where they arrived in twelve hours, and having provided themselves with near twenty deer, and four bears, returned to Bell Sound. Here was a large booth which the coopers worked in at the fishing season, 80 feet long, and 50 broad, covered with Dutch tiles, and the sides well boarded; within this they built another, whose length was 20 feet, and the breadth 16 feet, and the height 10, and so contrived that no air can get in: they provided themselves also with wood, which they stowed between the beams and roof of the greatest booth. But taking a slight survey of their provisions, they found there was not half enough to serve them the whole winter, and therefore they stinted themselves to one meal a day, and agreed to keep Wednesdays and Fridays as fasting days; putting their confidence in Heaven, who alone could relieve them in their great distress, and redoubling their prayers for strength and patience to go through the dismal trial. By the 10th October, the nights were grown 31 long, the weather very cold, and all the sea frozen over: and having no business to divert their gloomy thoughts, they began more than ever to reflect on their miserable condition, but received great satisfaction from their fervent devotions. And now having more narrowly surveyed their provisions again, they agreed to have three meals a week of fritters, or greaves, which is a very loathsome food, being only the scraps of the fat of the whales flung away, after the oil is gotten out of them. And lest they should want firing hereafter to dress their meat, they thought it proper to roast more at a time, and stowed it up in hogsheads. It being now 14th of October, the sun then left the poor wretches, but they had the moon both day and night, though much obscured by the clouds and foul weather; there was also a glimmering kind of day-light for eight hours, the latter end of October, which shortened every day till the 1st of December, from which time to the 20th of the same month they could perceive no day-light at all, being one continual night. As for light within doors, they made themselves three lamps of some sheet lead they found upon one of the coolers, and there happened to be oil enough to supply them left in the cooper’s tent; for wicks they made use of rope yarns: and these lamps were a great comfort to them in those long, dismal nights. But still their misery was such, that they could not forbear sometimes uttering hasty speeches against the master of the ship, who had caused all this distress: at other times, reflecting on their former ill-spent lives, they looked upon this as a just punishment of their offences; and at other times they hoped they were reserved as a wonderful instance of God’s mercy in their deliverance, and continued constantly to fall down upon their knees two or 32 three times a day, and implore the protection of the Almighty.

On the 1st of January they found their day a little to increase, and with the new year the cold also increased to that degree, that it raised blisters on their flesh, as if they had been burnt; and the iron they touched stuck to their fingers. On the 3d February they were cheared again by the bright rays of the sun, which shone upon the tops of the snowy mountains, and which afforded them the most delightful scene that ever was beheld, after a night for many weeks and months. — As an addition to their joys, also the bears began to appear again, one of which they killed at their door, but the cold being so intense, they could not stay to slay her there, but dragged the beast into the tent, and they went to work cutting her into pieces — upon which they fed twenty days. Afterwards the bears came about their booth, to the number of forty or more, of which they killed seven, one of them being six foot high, roasting their flesh, and eating heartily two or three meals a-day, they found their strength increase very fast. It being now the 16th of March, and the days of a reasonable length, the fowls which in winter time fled to the southward, began to resort to Greenland again, in great abundance. The foxes, also, which had kept close in their holes under the rocks all winter, came abroad, of which they took fifty, and roasting them, found them to be good food. The weather beginning to grow warm, being the month of May, and the season for the arrival of the shipping coming on, they went some of them every day almost to the top of a mountain, to see if they could discern any ships; but on the 28th of this month, none of them happening to go abroad, and one of 33 being in the outward booth, heard somebody hail the tent, to which the man in the outward booth answered in seamen’s terms. — They were then just going to prayers, and only waited for their companion in the other tent to join with them. — The man who hailed them was one of the boat’s crew that belonged to an English ship just come from England; which the rest within no sooner understood, but they ran to meet their countrymen with such transports of joy as cannot be expressed. One of the ships which now arrived was commanded by the master which left these poor wretches ashore; who it seems, had left seven or eight men in Greenland two years before, and were never heard of afterwards. — But notwithstanding the barbarity of their own captain, the commanders and officers of the other ships took care they should be kindly used, and brought to England, where they received a gratuity from the generous and humane merchants, (the Russia Company) and were also well provided for by them.

Randall’s Geography.

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In the year 1633, seven Dutch sailors were left voluntarily. — They were furnished with medicines, and every thing requisite to preserve life; but every one perished by the effects of the scurvy. In the next year, seven other unhappy men devoted themselves; and died in the same manner. Of the first set, it appeared by their journal that the last was alive 30th April, 1634; second set, the life of the last survivor did not continue far beyond the 28th February, 1635. Thus British spirit braved a climate, which the phlegmatic constitution of a Dutchman could not exist.

Mr. Pennant.









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