g the inevitable loss of his vessel, had ordered
the boats to be hoisted out, with the idea that they would be useful
in towing a raft, which he had caused to be constructed to leeward.
This raft would probably have been the means of preserving a great
many lives, had not the men in charge of the two jolly-boats pushed
off, and left their unhappy comrades to their fate. Unfortunately,
both the cutter and the barge, in hoisting out, were stove, and
immediately swamped, no less than thirty men perishing with them.
Several of the crew had been killed by the falling of the masts, and
others were severely injured. Two midshipmen were crushed to death
between the spanker boom and the bulwarks.

Brenton has thus described the horrible scene on board:--'Nothing was
to be heard but the shrieks of the drowning and the wailings of
despair. The man who would courageously meet death at the cannon's
mouth, or at the point of the bayonet, is frequently unnerved in such
a scene as this, where there is no other enemy to contend with than
the inexorable waves, and no hope of safety or relief but what may be
afforded by a floating plank or mast. The tremendous shocks as the
ship rose with the sea, and fell again on the rocks, deprived the
people of the power of exertion; while at every crash portions of the
shattered hull, loosened and disjointed, were scattered in dreadful
havoc among the breakers. Imagination can scarcely picture to itself
anything more appalling than the frantic screams of the women and
children, the darkness of the night, the irresistible fury of the
waves, which, at every moment, snatched away a victim, while the
tolling of the bell, occasioned by the violent motion of the wreck,
added a funereal solemnity to the horrors of the scene.'

The fate of the hapless crew seemed fast approaching to a termination.
When the vessel first struck, signal guns had been fired, in the hope
that some aid might be within reach, but none appeared; the guns were
soon rendered useless, and when the ship fell on her beam ends, the
wreck, with the exception of the poop, was entirely under water. Here
were collected all that remained of the ship's company, whose haggard
countenances and shivering forms were revealed to each other, from
time to time, by the glare of the blue lights, and by the fitful
moonbeams which streamed from beneath the dark clouds, and threw their
pale light upon the despairing group.

The sea-breached vessel c