Sixty men were assigned to the longboat, ten to the yawl, 

 twenty to the captain's barge, and 184 were crowded into 

 the captured sloop which Utting estimated to weigh "not 

 30 tuns." As a last precaution to prevent the Spanish from 

 salvaging the wrecked ships, the Captain ordered them 

 burned. As the survivors pulled away in their heavily 

 loaded craft, the Looe and her companion snow blazed up 

 in flames, This explained the charred and blackened tim- 

 bers which our party had found on the wreck. 



Captain Utting ordered the boats to head for New 

 Providence in the Bahamas, but by the next morning the 

 three small boats had outstripped the sloop, with its 

 astounding quota of passengers, and were no longer in 

 sight. Finding it impossible to hold the heavily laden 

 sloop on a course to the east against the prevailing wind, 

 the men aboard yielded to necessity and allowed the cur- 

 rent of the Gulf Stream to carry them northward toward 

 Port Royal. 



They arrived there on February thirteenth, five days 

 later, thanking God for their safe passage. No one knew 

 better than they that the overloaded vessel would have 

 capsized in the slightest weather. The other three boats 

 also reached their destination, New Providence, without 

 mishap. 



As Blue Heron glided along the ocean side of Looe 

 key in still, clear waters, I stood on the bow scanning the 

 bottom for signs of the wreck. I could feel the goose pim- 

 ples rise as I looked at the cruel fingers of coral reaching 

 seaward for new prey, for I saw that the reef was fash- 

 ioned with alternate sharp ridges and declivities that ex- 

 tended from the solid bank of the inner side. Although 

 this bank was now underwater, due to some past hurri- 

 cane which had stripped it of vegetation and soil, it was 



24 Sea Diver 



