THE STOKM IN THE THAMES. 



205 



or bay from Ratcliffe Cross to Limehouse Hole, for that the river winding about again 

 from thence towards the new dock at Deptford runs almost due south-west, so that the 

 wind blew down one reach and up another, and the ships must of necessity drive into 

 the bottom of the angle between both. 



"This was the case, and as the place is not large, and the number of ships very 

 great, the force of the wind had driven them so into one another, and laid them so upon one 

 another, as it were in heaps, that I think a man may safely defy all the world to do the like. 



" The author of this collection had the curiosity the next day to view the place, and 



THE WEST-INUIAMEN DRIVEN ASHORE AT TILBURY FORT. 



to observe the posture they lay in, which nevertheless it is impossible to describe; there 

 lay, by the best account he could take, few less than seven hundred sail of ships, some 

 very great ones, between Shadwell and Limehouse inclusive ; the posture is not to be 

 imagined but by them that saw it; some vessels lay heeling off with the bow of another 

 ship over her waist, and the stern of another upon her forecastle ; the boltsprits of some 

 drove into the cabin-windows of others; some lay with their sterns tossed up so high that 

 the tide flowed into their forecastles before they could come to rights ; some lay so leaning 

 upon others that the undermost vessels would sink before the other could float ; the 

 numbers of masts, boltsprits and yards split and broke, the staving the heads and sterns, 



