1834.] Remarks on the Marine Barometer. 174 



was not a little aggravated by two of the twelve-pounders being 

 adrift at once on the gun-deck, causing the greatest consternation 

 lest some port should be stove by their means. Notwithstanding 

 the fore-mast, mizen-mast, main-top-mast, and bowsprit were,at the 

 peril of our lives, alternately cut away, at the close of the third day, 

 we were left with seven feet of water in the hold, and four fec4 in parts 

 of the gun-deck, frequently with three out of the four pumps choked 

 at a time, and without the slightest prospect of any abatement of 

 the storm. Heaven only knows whether the wonderful alteration 

 which soon took place after the close of this day in our desperate 

 situation, was owing to an especial interference of Providence ; but 

 if the elements by which this globe is governed, in its course, are 

 ever for a moment turned aside for the beneht of frail mortality, a 

 ^ scene was now ex'oibited which might have been deemed sufficiently 

 appalling by an All-merciful Being, to call forth such an inter- 

 position. 



I have been a witness to many a distressing scene, on the ocean 

 in the course of my practice, the recollection of which may in some 

 degree account for these serious reflections, and form some apology 

 for their intrusion here. I have seen a nmety-gun ship take fire, 

 burn nearly to the water's edge, and blow up. This noble ship, 

 which had twelve hundred people on board at the time, many of 

 whom perished m her, notwithstanding every possible exertion was 

 made, with the assistance of the engines of thirty sail of the line 

 and frigates to extinguish the flames, and to rescue the men from 

 destruction. I was once awoke out of my sleep by an explosion 

 which proved to arise from the blowing up of an India-man at no 

 great distance from the ship I was in, owing, as it was supposed 

 from the state of the weather, to a flash of lightning having entered 

 the magazine, where five hundred barrels of gunpowder were stowed, 

 destined for the Cape. I need scarcely add thaf the crew, one 

 hundred in number, were blown into the air, and that not a soul 

 survived to explain the cause, or to record the fact. 1 w.is once 

 myself in a ship that was struck by lightning, when some of the 

 masts were shivered into a thousand pieces ; and, had not the 

 lightning taken a diagonal direction at the critical moment of its 

 entrance into the body of the ship, the probability is that her 

 destruction would have followed. On another occasion 1 was in a 

 ship which took fire, when such a formidable volume of flame rushed 

 from the deck beneath, as to render every chance of quenching it 



