WRECK OF THE "WAGER." 51 



gentle descent, opened a prospect of the bay and the sliips at anchor. This lawn was 

 screened behind by a tall wood of myrtle sweeping round it, in the form of a theatre ; the 

 slope on which the wood stood rising with a much sharper ascent than the lawn itself, 

 though not so much but that the hills and precipices within-land towered up considerably 

 above the tops of the trees, and added to the grandeur of the view. There were besides 

 two streams of crystal water, which ran on the right and left of the tent within a hundred 

 yards' distance, and were shaded by the trees which skirted the lawn on either side, and 

 completed the symmetry of the whole." 



Meantime, the other vessels of the squadron did not put in an appearance. That two 

 of them, the Pearl and Severn, were not to be expected, we have already learned ; but 

 what had become of the Wager ? It was learned afterwards that while making the 

 passage to the island of Socoro, one of the rendezvous of the squadron, she had become 

 entangled among the rocks and grounded, soon becoming an utter wreck. The Honourable 

 John Byron, afterwards a commodore in his Majesty's service, but then a youngster on 

 board, has left an account of the disaster in his well-known work.* " In the morning, 

 about four o'clock/' says he, " the ship struck. The shock we received upon this occasion, 

 though very great, being not unlike a blow of a heavy sea, such as in the series of 

 preceding storms we had often experienced, was taken for the same; but we were soon 

 undeceived by her striking again more violently than before, which laid her upon her 

 beam-ends, the sea making a fair breach over her. Every person that now could stir was 

 presently upon the quarter-deck ; and many of those were alert upon this occasion that had 

 not showed their faces upon deck for above two months before ; several poor wretches, who 

 were in the last stage of the scurvy, and who could not get out of their hammocks, were 

 immediately drowned." Some seemed bereaved of their senses ; one man was seen stalking 

 about the deck flourishing a cutlass over his head, calling himself king of the country, 

 and striking everybody he came near, till he was knocked down by some of those he had 

 assaulted. " Some, reduced before by long sickness and the scurvy, became on this 

 occasion as it were petrified and bereaved of all sense, like inanimate logs, and were bandied 

 to and fro by the jerks and rolls of the ship, without exerting any efforts to help them- 

 selves. . . . The man at the helm, though both rudder and tiller were gone, kept 

 his station; and being asked by one of the officers if the ship would steer or not, first 

 took his time to make trial by the wheel, and then answered with as much respect and 

 coolness as if the ship had been in the greatest safety ; and immediately after applied 

 himself with his usual serenity to his duty, persuaded it did not become him to desert it 

 as long as the ship kept together." The captain, who had dislocated his shoulder by 

 a fall the day before, was coolness itself, and one of the mates did all in his power to inspire 

 them with the belief that they would not be lost so near land. This wrought a change 

 in many who but a few minutes before had been in despair, praying on their knees for 

 mercy. It was another illustration of 



"When the devil was sick," 



* " The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron, containing an Account of the Great Distresses suffered 

 by himself and his Companions on the Coast of Patagonia, from the year 1740 till their Arrival in England, 

 1746," &c. 



