Chapter 4

Not content with seeing the ocean, Balboa determined to visit it. Arriving, after much toil, at one of the bays on the coast, he called it St. Michael's Bay. Coming to a beach a mile or two long, "If this is a sea," said he, "it will soon be covered with water; let us wait and see if there be a tide." So he seated himself under a tree, and the water soon began to flow. He tasted it and found it salt; and then waded up to his knees in it, and took possession of it in the name of his king.

Balboa's heart was now so lifted up by success, and his whole nature so changed, that he was ready to fight and destroy every Indian tribe that opposed his progress. But he had not always the best of it. On one occasion he was lost, with one or two followers, and having been seized by some natives, carried immediately before their cazique, or chief. He was seated on a raised seat, covered with a panther's skin, and bore a single feather of the vulture upon his head. Beside him stood his slaves, to fan him, and screen his head from the sun, and around him warriors, with the sculls of their enemies fixed upon their spears: which made the whole scene very horrible.

Balboa humbled himself before the chief; and taking off his coat, profusely decorated, offered it as a peace offering. The cazique would not accept it, but said, "You are poor and desolate--I am rich and powerful. I will not hurt you, though you are my enemy." He then ordered him safe conduct through the forests; and Balboa regained his own people, the Spaniards, in safety. This escape softened Balboa's heart, and he never afterwards treated the Indians with the same severity.

After many victories, and many other singular escapes, he returned back to Coyba. But the sufferings of his men, in returning, were extreme, for want both of water and provisions. The streams were most of them dried up, and provisions could not be found. Gold they indeed had, almost as much as they could carry, and the Indians kept bringing them more; but this they could not eat or drink, and it would not buy what was not to be bought.

He arrived at Darien after about two months' absence, having lost nearly all his men, by war and sickness. His discovery made a great noise, and procured him much honor, but he did not live to enjoy it.

A new governor was appointed in his place, who, having a mortal hatred to Balboa, threw him into prison, and, after a mock trial, had him beheaded, in 1517, in his 48th year.

ADMIRAL KEPPEL AND THE DEY OF ALGIERS.

When Admiral Keppel was sent to the Dey of Algiers, to demand restitution of two ships which the pirates had taken, he sailed with his squadron into the Bay of Algiers, and cast anchor in front of the Dey's palace. He then landed, and, attended only by his captain and barge's crew, demanded an immediate audience of the Dey. This being granted, he claimed full satisfaction for the injuries done to the subjects of his Britannic Majesty. Surprised and enraged at the boldness of the admiral's remonstrance, the Dey exclaimed, "that he wondered at the English King's insolence in sending him a foolish, beardless boy." A well-timed reply from the admiral made the Dey forget the laws of all nations in respect to ambassadors, and he ordered his mutes to attend with the bow-string, at the same time telling the admiral he should pay for his audacity with his life. Unmoved by this menace, the admiral took the Dey to the window facing the bay, and showed him the English fleet riding at anchor, and told him that if he dared put him to death there were men enough in that fleet to make him a glorious funeral-pile. The Dey was wise enough to take the hint. The admiral obtained ample restitution, and came off in safety.

LOSS OF THE CATARAQUE.

The Cataraque, Captain C.W. Findlay, sailed from Liverpool, on the 20th of April, 1849, with three hundred and sixty emigrants, and a crew including two doctors, (brothers,) of forty-six souls. The emigrants were principally from Bedfordshire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire, and Northamptonshire. About one hundred and twenty of the passengers were married, with families, and in all seventy-three children.

On the 3d of August, at seven o'clock in the evening, the ship was hove to, and continued lying to until three A.M. of the 4th. At half past four, being quite dark, and raining hard, blowing a fearful gale, the ship struck on a reef, situated on the west coast of King's Island, at the entrance of Bass's Straights.

Immediately after the ship struck, she was sounded, and it was ascertained that there was four feet of water in the hold. An awful scene of confusion and misery ensued. All the passengers attempted to rush upon deck, and many succeeded in doing so, until the heaving of the vessel knocked down the ladders, when the shrieks from below, calling on those on deck to assist them were terrific. The crew were on deck the moment the ship struck, and were instantly employed in handing up the passengers. Up to the time the vessel began breaking up, the crew succeeded in getting upwards of three hundred passengers on deck. But a terrible fate awaited the greater part of them.

The day dawned. The stern of the vessel was found to be washed in, and numerous dead bodies were found floating round the ship; some clinging to the rocks which they had grasped in despair. About two hundred of the passengers and crew held on to the vessel, although the raging sea was breaking over her, and every wave washed some of them to a watery grave. In this manner, kindred were separated, while those who remained could only expect the same fate to reach them. Things continued in this condition until four in the afternoon, when the vessel parted amidships, at the fore part of the main rigging, and immediately between seventy and a hundred persons were thrown into the waves. Thus the insatiable ocean swallowed its prey piece-meal. About five, the wreck parted by the fore-rigging, and so many persons were thrown into the sea, that only seventy were left on the forecastle, they being lashed to the wreck. Even these were gradually diminished in number, some giving out from exhaustion, and others anticipating fate, by drowning themselves.

When day dawned, on the following morning, only about thirty persons were left alive, and these were almost exhausted. The sea was making a clean breach into the forecastle, the deck of which was rapidly breaking up. Parents and children, husbands and wives, were seen floating around the vessel, many in an embrace, which even the ocean's power could not sunder. The few who remained alive could only look up to heaven for a hope of safety. Soon after daylight, the vessel totally disappeared, and out of four hundred and twenty-three persons who had been on board the vessel, only nine were saved by being washed on shore, and these were nearly exhausted.

LOSS OF THE FRANCIS SPAIGHT.

On the morning of the 7th of January, 1848, the barque Francis Spaight, lying in Table Bay, at the Cape of Good Hope, parted her anchor, and in attempting to beat out, grounded, broadside on the beach. The gale at the time she struck was furious, and the surf tremendous, making a clean breach over the vessel, carrying away the bulwark, long boat, main hatch, and part of the deck, with one of the crew.

The shore was thronged with the inhabitants of Cape Town, anxious for the fate of the vessel. An attempt was made to send a rope from the land to the wreck, but the rope broke. Rockets were fired with lines attached, and one was thrown across the foremast stay, where none of the men could reach it, on account of the fearful rolling of the sea. After some extraordinary delay, a whale boat was brought from the town, and manned by six daring fellows, who dashed through the surf, and were soon alongside the vessel.

All except the carpenter, fifteen in number, got into the boat, and pushed off. At this moment a terrific sea upset the boat, and twenty-one persons were struggling in the surf for life. The people on the beach were horror-stricken; and men on horseback were seen plunging into the sea, risking their lives to save their fellow-creatures; but eighteen sunk to rise no more. The masts of the vessel fell with a tremendous crash, but the carpenter still clung to the wreck. At length a surf-boat, towed by a smaller one, proceeded towards the wreck. One of these boats was capsized, and two lives lost. But the carpenter was rescued. This man, (James Robertson,) and John McLeod, seaman, were all of the crew that reached the shore. The inhabitants of Cape Town were all anxiety in regard to the fate of the vessel; and those daring heroes who sacrificed themselves for the sake of their fellow men were worthy of a monument as lofty as those erected to the bravest warriors.

The place where the Francis Spaight went ashore had been, a short time previous, the scene of a far more terrible disaster. This was the wreck of the ship Waterloo, by which two hundred persons were lost, in spite of the most extraordinary and heroic exertions on the part of the inhabitants of Cape Town.

The bay is very much exposed to storms, and its shores are particulary dangerous, on account of their shelving character. The Francis Spaight had just put into the bay for the purpose of obtaining a supply of provisions, and it was intended that she should sail the next day. But the Ruler of the elements intended it otherwise. Her cargo was nearly a total loss.

LOSS OF THE GOLDEN RULE.

The ship Golden Rule, Captain Austin, sailed from Wiscasset, with a cargo of timber, September, 8, 1807.

On the 29th, she experienced a severe gale from the south-east; and at eight o'clock, A.M., they discovered that she had sprung a leak, and had four feet of water in her hold; at nine it had increased to eight feet, notwithstanding they had two pumps going, and were throwing her deck load overboard, which they were enabled to do very slowly, from the sea driving the planks about the deck, and wounding the crew.

About ten o'clock, the water had risen to twelve feet, and the gale had also evidently increased; the crew and all on board were quite exhausted; and on going into the cabin they found she was welling fast. The main and mizzen masts were now cut away, to prevent her upsetting, and she was quite clear of her deck load. At eleven o'clock she was full up to her main deck, and all her bulk heads were knocked away.

It now occurred to some of the crew, to endeavor to save some bread; and Mr. Boyd, the first mate, with great resolution, went into the cabin and gave out some bread, and two bottles of rum; but so rapidly did she fill, from the timber of her cargo shifting, that he was forced to break through the sky-light to save himself. Their small stock of provisions was now put into the binnacle, as a secure place. It had been there but a few minutes, when a tremendous sea struck them, and carried away the binnacle.

They had now little hope left--the wheel was broken, and they proceeded to secure themselves as well as they could, some in the fore-top, and the rest were lashing themselves to the taffrail; before they could accomplish the latter plan, another sea, if possible, more heavy than the former, hurried them all from their places, and washed two of the men overboard; they were seen swimming for the ship, a short time, when a wave hurried them from the sight of their lamenting comrades.

They now endeavored to keep the ship before the wind, which they were partially enabled to do through the night. The next day another man died from cold and hunger.

The deck was now blown up, and her side stove in, all hands had given themselves up, when, on the 30th at noon, they were roused by the cry of "a sail!" and they had the satisfaction to see her bear down for them. She was the brig George, of Portland; and Captain Wildridge sent his long-boat to take them from the wreck.

DANGERS OF WHALING SHIPS AMONG ICE BERGS.

The masses of ice by which the ocean is traversed assume a vast variety of shapes, but may be comprehended in two general classes. The first consists of sheets of ice, analogous to those which annually cover the the lakes and rivers of northern lands. They present a surface which is generally level, but here and there diversified by projections, called _hummocks_, which arise from the ice having been thrown up by some pressure or force to which it has been subject. Sheets of ice, which are so large that their whole extent of surface cannot be seen from the masthead of a vessel, are called _fields_. They have sometimes an area of more than a hundred square miles, and rise above the level of the sea from two to eight feet. When a piece of ice, though of a considerable size, can be distinguished in its extent, it is termed a _floe_. A number of sheets, large or small, joining each other, and stretching out in any particular direction, constitute a _stream_. Captain Cook found a stream extending across Behring's Straits, connecting eastern Asia with the western extremity of North America. Owing to the vast extent of some fields of ice, they would undoubtedly be conducted to a lower latitude in the Atlantic before their dissolution, under the influence of a warmer climate, but for the intervention of other causes. It frequently happens that two masses are propelled against each other, and are both shivered into fragments by the violence of the concussion. The ordinary swell of the ocean also acts with tremendous power upon a large tract, especially when it has been so thawed as to have become thin, and breaks it up into a thousand smaller pieces in a very short period. The danger of being entrapped between two ice-fields coming into contact with each other is one of the perils which the navigator has frequently to encounter in the northern seas; and fatal to his vessel and his life has the occurrence often been, while in a vast number of instances escape has seemed almost miraculous.

"At half-past six," says Captain Ross, relating to his first voyage of discovery, in the Isabella, to the arctic regions, with Captain Parry, in the Alexander, "the ice began to move, and, the wind increasing to a gale, the only chance left for us was to endeavor to force the ship through it to the north, where it partially opened; but the channel was so much obstructed by heavy fragments, that our utmost efforts were ineffectual; the ice closed in upon us, and at noon we felt its pressure most severely. A large floe, which lay on one side of the Isabella, appeared to be fixed; while, on the other side, another of considerable bulk was passing along with a rapid motion, assuming a somewhat circular direction, in consequence of one side having struck on the fixed field. The pressure continuing to increase, it became doubtful whether the ship would be able to sustain it; every support threatened to give way, the beams in the hold began to bend, and the iron tanks settled together.

"At this critical moment, when it seemed impossible for us to bear the accumulating pressure much longer, the hull rose several feet; while the ice, which was more than six feet thick, broke against the sides, curling back on itself. The great stress now fell upon our bow; and, after being again lifted up, we were carried with great violence towards the Alexander which had hitherto been, in a great measure, defended by the Isabella. Every effort to avoid their getting foul of each other failed; the ice-anchors and cables broke one after another; and the sterns of the two ships came so violently into contact, as to crush to pieces a boat that could not be removed in time. The collision was tremendous, the anchors and chain-plates being broken, and nothing less than the loss of the masts expected; but at this eventful instant, by the interposition of Providence, the force of the ice seemed exhausted; the two fields suddenly receded, and we passed the Alexander with comparatively little damage. A clear channel soon after opened, and we ran into a pool, thus escaping the immediate danger; but the fall of snow being very heavy, our situation still remained doubtful, nor could we conjecture whether we were yet in a place of safety. Neither the masters, the mates, nor those men who had been all their lives in the Greenland service, had ever experienced such imminent peril; and they declared, that a common whaler must have been crushed to atoms."

Captain Scoresby relates a similar narrow escape from destruction owing to the same cause. "In the year 1804," he observes, "I had an opportunity of witnessing the effects produced by the lesser masses in motion. Passing between two fields of ice newly formed, about a foot in thickness, they were observed rapidly to approach each other, and, before our ship could pass the strait, they met with a velocity of three or four miles per hour. The one overlaid the other, and presently covered many acres of surface. The ship proving an obstacle to the course of the ice, it squeezed up on both sides, shaking her in a dreadful manner, and producing a loud grinding or lengthened acute trembling noise, according as the degree of pressure was diminished or increased, until it had risen as high as the deck. After about two hours the motion ceased, and soon afterwards the two sheets of ice receded from each other nearly as rapidly as they had before advanced. The ship in this case did not receive any injury; but, had the ice only been half a foot thicker, she might have been wrecked." Other navigators have not been so fortunate; and the annual loss of whaling vessels in the polar seas is considerable, the Dutch having had as many as seventy-three sail of ships wrecked in one season. Between the years 1669 and 1778, both inclusive, or a period of one hundred and seven years, they sent to the Greenland fishery fourteen thousand one hundred and sixty-seven ships, of which five hundred and sixty-one, or about four in the hundred, were lost.

Every one will remember the intense and mournful interest occasioned by the loss of the President steamer which left New York in the year 1841 to cross the Atlantic, but perished in the passage, without leaving a survivor to tell the story of her fate. It has been deemed highly probable that this vessel got entangled in the ice, and was destroyed by collision with its masses; for during that year, in the month of April, the Great Western steamer encountered a field extending upwards of a hundred miles in one direction, surrounded with an immense number of floes and bergs, and had great difficulty in effecting its passage by this floating continent in safety.

Another form under which the ice appears in the ocean is that of bergs, which differ from the ice-fields in shape and origin. They are masses projecting to a great height above the surface of the water, and have the appearance of chalk or marble cliffs and mountains upon the deep. They have been seen with an elevation of two hundred feet--a circumference of two miles: and it has been shown by experiments on the buoyancy of ice floating in sea water, that the proportion above the surface is only about one-seventh of the thickness of the whole mass. During the first expedition of Ross, he found an ice berg in Baffin's Bay, at a distance of seven leagues from the land, which was measured by a party under Lieutenant Parry. Considerable difficulty was experienced in the attempt to land, as, in rowing round the berg, they found it perpendicular in every place but one. When they had ascended to the top, which was perfectly flat, they discovered a white bear in quiet possession of the mass, who plunged into the sea without hesitation, and effected his escape. The party found the ice berg to be four thousand one hundred and sixty-nine yards long, three thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine yards broad, and fifty-one feet high, being aground in sixty-one fathoms. Its appearance was like that of the back of the Isle of Wight, and the cliffs resembled those of the chalk range to the west of Dover. The weight of this mass was calculated to amount to one billion two hundred and ninety two millions three hundred and ninety seven thousand six hundred and seventy-three tons.

An ice berg examined by Captain Graah, on the east coast of Greenland, rose one hundred and twenty feet out of the water, had a circumference of four thousand feet at the base, and its solid contents were estimated to be upwards of nine hundred millions of cubic feet. When viewed at a distance, nothing can be more interesting than the appearance of a considerable number of these formations, exhibiting an infinite variety of shape, and requiring no stretch of imagination to convert them into a series of floating towers, castles, churches, obelisks, and pyramids, or a snowy range of Alpine heights. No pencil, an observer has remarked, has ever given any thing like the true effect of an ice berg. In a picture they are huge, uncouth masses, stuck in the sea; while their chief beauty and grandeur--their slow stately motion, the whirling of the snow about their summits, and the fearful crackling of their parts--they cannot give. The ice of the bergs is compact and solid, or of a fine green tint verging to blue; and large pieces may be frequently obtained, equal to the most beautiful crystal in transparency. It is stated by Scoresby, that with a portion of this ice, of by no means regular convexity, used as a burning lens, he has frequently burnt wood, fired gunpowder, melted lead, and lit the sailors' pipes, to their no small astonishment, the ice itself remaining in the mean while perfectly fixed and pellucid.

MASSACRE OF THE CREW OF THE ATAHUALPA.

The Atahualpa, of Boston, left that port in August, 1803, bound to the north-west coast of America, for the purpose of trading with the natives. She arrived on the coast in the month of January, 1804; and, after visiting the several islands, and purchasing skins, on the 5th of June, 1805, weighed anchor from Chockokee, on the north-west coast, and made sail. On the 8th, arrived at Millbank sound, and came to an anchor within musket-shot of the village. Soon after her arrival, the chief of the Indians, by the name of Keite, came off to the ship, with some of his tribe, and informed the captain that the Caroline, Captain Sturgess, had sailed from thence ten days before.

On the 11th, the chief came off again, with his tribe, and another tribe that was there, and traded very briskly till towards night, when becoming very insolent, they were all turned out of the ship.

On the 13th, Keite and his tribe came on board in the morning, and seemed much more desirous to trade than before, which Captain Porter was very glad to see. The chief mate and two of the ship's company, were then engaged in ripping the main-sail in pieces, on the quarter-deck; the second mate with two hands was repairing the top-sail; two on the starboard side of the main-deck, spinning spun yarn; two more on the forecastle, making sinnet; two more on the larboard side of the main-deck, running shot in the armorer's forge; the cooper was making tubs; the cook, and captain's steward in the galley, at their duty; and all hands, as usual, employed on the ship's duty; the armorer was in the steerage, and the boatswain in the cabin; Captain Porter, Mr. Ratstraw, his clerk, and Mr. Lyman Plummer, (nephew of Theodore Lyman, Esq. of Boston, ship owner,) were standing on the larboard side of the quarter-deck, abreast of the cabin hatchway.