r with a widowed
mother.

"I am, &c,

"Phil. Stephens, Esq."

"E. RIOU.

With the utmost difficulty the boats were launched. After they were got
afloat and had cleared the ship, with the exception of the launch they
were never afterwards heard of; the launch with nine survivors was
picked up by a passing vessel ten days after she left the wreck, her
people reduced to the last extremity for want of food and water.

Among the survivors was the parson mentioned by the boatswain. This was
the Rev. Mr. Crowther, who was on his way as a missionary to the penal
settlement. The Rev. John Newton, of Olney (poet Cowper's Newton), had
got Crowther the appointment, at "eight shillings per diem, of assistant
chaplain of the settlement," and Newton, writing to the Rev. R. Johnson,
chaplain of Sydney, tells how he heard of the loss of the Guardian, "and
the very next morning Mr. Crowther knocked at my door himself." Then Mr.
Newton writes a letter which shows that Mr. Crowther had had enough of
the sea. "It is not a service for mere flesh and blood to undertake. A
man without that apostolic spirit and peculiar call which the Lord alone
can give would hardly be able to maintain his ground. Mr. Crowther,
though a sincere, humble, good man, seems not to have had those
qualifications, and therefore he has been partly intimidated by what he
met with abroad, and partly influenced by nearer personal considerations
at home, to stay with us and sleep in a whole skin." But after his
experience it was not to be wondered at that he preferred to stay at
home and sleep in a whole skin.

Meanwhile Riou, in spite of a ship without a rudder, and with the water
in her up to the orlop deck, succeeded, as the boatswain's letter shows,
after a voyage of nine weeks, in bringing his command to the Cape. A
letter from Capetown, written on March 1, 1790, tells us she arrived
there "eight days ago in a situation not to be credited without ocular
proofs. She had, I think, nine feet of water in her when she anchored.
The lower gun-deck served as a second bottom; it was stowed with a very
great weight equally fore and aft. To this, and to the uncommon strength
of it, Captain Riou ascribes his safety. Seeing an English ship with a
signal of distress, four of us went on board, scarcely hoping but with
busy fancy still pointing her out to be the _Guardian_, and, to our
inexpressible joy, we found it was her. We stood in silent admiration