Watery Grave

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If you would be so good as to put your mind to it, you might try to imagine a storm at sea. Yet perhaps, reader, I ask too much, for unless you are a veteran of many voyages and have endured consequent dangers of fierce weather on shipboard, you could not conceive of such a storm as this one, which many an experienced seaman claimed to be the worst he had known.

The sky in mid-afternoon is darkened by clouds so that it be as deep night. From those clouds pours a rain which, though constant, is unsteady, for it often comes in great rushes near drowning the sea itself, then slacks in intensity for minutes at a time, only to explode once again in vast inundations of wet. The waters of the sea rise and fall in mountain-sized swells so that a ship of good size, a frigate of the Royal Navy, is tossed up and down, to and fro, like some small button box with sails.

Aboard that frigate, those of the crew on deck struggle to do what they can to keep the ship afloat. It slides precipitously down to the bottom of wave after wave to crash at the bottom, often taking on water, laying about port and starboard in the trough and taking on more water still. Those of the crew below-decks pray, curse, and stay close to the ladders that they may not be last to the boats should the ship begin to break apart.

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