ADDRESS. 55 



The amount of suffering which imbitters the life of families 

 deprived by the perils of the sea of their ornaments and supports, 

 admits not of computation. The sum of misery would still remain 



eight, viz., Horace Holden and Benjamin H. Nute, who were soon reduced to such a 

 state of exhaustion that they could no longer labour, and were therefore refused even 

 the scanty allowance of food which had hitherto been reluctantly allowed them. 

 Finding them totally useless as working slaves, the natives finally consented to put 

 them on board an English ship, which happened to be passing the island on her way 

 to Canton, after a state of slavery of three years, duration, which, for privation and 

 suffering, beggars all description. At the time of their liberation, they were entirely 

 naked, under a broiling sun, not a hundred miles north of the equator, and so reduced 

 in health and strength, that a few more days of suffering must have terminated their 

 earthly existence. From Canton, they came home in an American vessel, and arrived 

 at New York on the 5th of May, 1835, after an absence of nearly five years. From 

 a short conversation with these two survivors of the Mentor's crew, the following par- 

 ticulars have been obtained. 



The ship Mentor, completely fitted and equipped for a whaling voyage to the South 

 Seas, sailed from New Bedford on the 20th of July, 1830. She had a complement 

 of twenty-two men, including officers, most of them young and enterprising, excited 

 with high and animating hopes of seeing distant regions, and bettering their fortunes 

 from the treasures of the deep. On her passage out, the Mentor touched at Fayal, 

 one of that group of islands distinguished by the name of Azores, or Western Islands, 

 lying in the Atlantic Ocean, between twenty-five and thirty degrees of west longitude, 

 and between the thirty-seventh and fortieth parallel of north latitude. After despatching 

 their business at Fayal, and surveying the scene of the unparalleled gallant defence 

 of the United States private armed vessel General Armstrong, during the last war, 

 the Mentor stretched to the south ; and, in due time, after experiencing a great variety 

 of weather, she doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and crossed the Indian Ocean, to the 

 Strait of Timor. From hence, it was the captain's intention to steer for the island of 

 Tinian, one of the Ladrone group, in the vicinity of which lay their contemplated 

 cruising ground. 



The time occupied in this extensive route had brought round the month of May, 

 1831, before she reached Amboyna, the Dutch metropolis of the Moluccas, or Spice 

 Islands. About the 15th of May, they began to encounter boisterous weather, and 

 for several days were unable to take any observation. On the 21st, the weather 

 became still worse, and finally increased to a most tremendous gale, which obliged 

 them to reduce their sails until nothing remained spread but a close reefed main-topsail 

 and a back topmast-staysail. The ship laboured severely until nearly midnight, 

 when she struck upon a coral reef, running out from the nearest of the Pelew Islands. 



As every one instantly perceived that the destruction of the ship was inevitable, 

 eleven of the crew attempted to save themselves in a boat, which they lowered for that 

 purpose, but were never afterwards heard of. The remaining eleven of the crew 

 clung by the ship, which now lay on her beam ends, a helpless mark for the fury of the 

 waves, and still exerted every endeavour to right her, by cutting away her masts, and 

 resorting to every other expedient to save her, until they found themselves compelled 

 to give up their useless efforts in despair, and to consult their own personal safety, by 



