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THE WRECK OF THE ROTHSAY CASTLE.

Mr. Metcalf, occupied, at this period of my narrative, the same places on the wreck as when I last referred to them; namely, Mr. Martin was upon the plank which crossed the vessel, and Mr. Metcalf had hold of the iron rod under it: and the same may be said of the three men who had ascended the foremast; they were still there. Another seaman was on board, a passenger, named Owen Morris; but, although he was ultimately saved, I have been unable to procure any account respecting either where he was situated or the means by which his preservation was effected.

The rest of the particulars under this head are so minutely related by the survivors, in connexion with their individual sufferings, that I should but deduct from the great interest which is contained in the "Personal Narratives," if I entered into further description.—I may now apply to the wretched vessel, one of the general mottos prefixed to this work ;

"The wind hath broken thee; and all thy company fell into the midst of the sea in the day of thy ruin."

Nor will a repetition of the other, the sublime language of Job, be out of place ;—

"Lo, these are parts of his ways; but the thunder of His power who can understand?"

CHAPTER III.

THE MORNING AFTER THE WRECK.

Π

At last, from tenfold darkness born,

Forth issues o'er the wave the weeping morn.
***** The dismal prospect opens round,-

The wreck, the shores, the dying, and the drown'd."

FALCONER.

THE morning broke tempestuously, but still with cheering aspect to the few who had any hope of eventual preservation. Some, however, to whom the mercy of Providence was in the end wonderfully extended, were feebly struggling in blindness with the rushing seas, deeming that it was yet night, but with an awful consciousness superadded, that the darkness by which they were encompassed was deeper than that which morning could ever dissipate, and that it must be the shadow of death that was upon them.

The wreck now presented a sight truly dismal. Mr. John Duckworth, who had maintained the situation he Occupied when his unhappy wife was forced overboard, was yet standing upon the windlass, which enabled him to take firm hold of a semi-circular frame constituting the belfry; and by this he supported himself amidst the almost incessant bursts of heavy seas during many hours. The station thus described was situated a little before the foremast, which was still standing; and Mr. Duckworth, in

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looking towards the stern, could see nothing beyond the paddle-boxes, part of the frame-work of which yet remained. The vessel had separated thereabout, and the after-part had completely gone to pieces. Mr. Duckworth,* speaking of this period in his narrative, says—“ At daylight, about fifty people remained on board. On the plank which crossed the vessel from the paddle-boxes, and the tops of those boxes, there were about twenty persons; about ten were clinging to the shrouds; six or seven were at the bottom of the mast; and three were at the mast head, lashed fast to it." Mr. Forster's servant (Robert Mullett) had obtained footing upon the same place as Mr. Duckworth, together with an elderly man, whose name I could not learn; but the stature of Mr. Duckworth, which is above six feet, with a frame of no ordinary dimensions, gave him an advantage over these persons which would account in a great degree for his preservation and their destruction. The sea, when it overwhelmed them, would but slowly recede; and so little time was there to get breath, that the superior height of Mr. Duckworth frequently enabled him to respire for a moment, while his wretched comparions were yet under water; and perhaps another and another wave would roll in speedy succession over them, neither of which would subside in time for them to breathe before the next came. But Mr. Duckworth suffered much from their struggles. Each of them had a firm grasp of his clothes with one hand, while holding by

* It cannot be too clearly understood, that it is of Mr. John Duckworth I speak throughout this paragraph, and not of Mr. Lawrence Duckworth. The confusion of those names and persons has occasioned much obscurity in many of the accounts that have been published. Almost every degree of relationship has also been bestowed upon them; but no such ties existed at the time, though now they are remotely connected by marriage.

the belfry with the other, which of course called for more exertion on the part of Mr. Duckworth, and tended to hasten the approach of exhaustion. Poor Mullett appeared in an agony of despair. He groaned aloud, at the intervals which left him power to breathe; and Mr. Duckworth occasionally told him to keep his mouth shut, and that nothing could be hoped for if he did not assume more firmness; but he was either unable to follow the advice thus given, or was absorbed by weightier considerations. There was also a man immediately above the belfry, clinging to a rope which extended from the foremast to the bowsprit; and every time he was carried to leeward by the waves as far as the sweep of rope would admit, he swung back, his legs striking Mr. Duckworth (who was most exposed by being most elevated) with more or less force in proportion to the magnitude of the wave from which the rebound proceeded. But one by one died and dropped away. "The old man," "Mr. Duckworth says, 66 was bald-headed and of low stature, lower than Mr. Forster's servant; but he strove hard for life, and was firmly collected to the last." Mr. Duckworth had all the horror of witnessing their final struggles; and his ear grew so familiar with the awful indications of death under such circumstances, that he knew when the fatal moment was approaching. "There was," he observes, " a hissing sound made by their lengthened gasps, which became more and more laborious, and ended in a short convulsion. The body quickly became rigid, and the clutch of the hands was more unyielding than in life." The old man died first, and the waves took him off his feet, but his hold of the belfry and of Mr. Duckworth was as tenacious as ever. This threatened to involve Mr. Duckworth in the fate of the dead man, for the additional distress which such a burthen occasioned was very severe; and it was not without great difficulty that he at length shook him off; or rather, tore him away; for the

portion of Mr. Duckworth's clothes by which he held when living, was retained in his lifeless grasp. Mr. Forster's servant was the next victim, and Mr. Duckworth was reduced to the painful necessity of using similar means to disencumber himself of the body. The man above him, too, after a struggle of amazing duration, considering the ceaseless exertion which his trying situation required, died in the same horrible manner as the unhappy beings just described; and, as with them, his hands retained the grapple which had been strongly put forth in the pangs of death, and it was some time before the waves tore him from the rope, and freed Mr. Duckworth from the horror and danger of frequent and violent contact with the body. He has no doubt, however, but that he must have perished long before this period, from the rising of the tide, if Providence had not so ordered it that the fore-part of the vessel was forced correspondingly higher up the bank, while the stern was proportionally depressed. To this also he attributes the parting of the vessel in the centre; but, by the same means, the poop-deck was freed from its connexion with the wreck, where it must shortly have been dashed to pieces, and converted into a raft by which nine lives were preserved. He felt the heaving of the vessel upon the sands, and was from time to time relieved by the temporary elevation which it gave him above the water. He next remarks that "the people kept decreasing, until all were gone except myself and the three men at the top of the mast;" and, fearing that the rising tide would shortly overwhelm him, he called to them to throw him a rope, by which he might raise himself; but they refused, and in a few minutes an immense sea broke over the wreck, with a force which threatened at once to shatter it to atoms. On partially recovering from this terrible shock, Mr. Duckworth saw that the mast was gone; it had been swept away

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