SOUTHERN AFRICA. 275 
xvhere ships so driven out usually bring up. Here, too, ships 
intending to come into Table Bay generally wait the abate- 
ment of a south-east wind, if it should happen to blow too 
strong for their working up against it. This island is too 
small, and at too great a distance, to afford the least shelter to 
Table Bay in the north-west winds that blow in the winter 
months. 
The frequency, the strength, and the long duration of the 
south-east winds are attended with considerable disadvantage 
to commerce, it being sometiaies impracticable to ship or to 
land goods for many successive days. 
These winds are very uncertain in their duration, there being 
scarcely two years in which their periods do not vary. The 
Dutch used to bring their ships round about the beginning of 
September; but as Simon's Bay is safe, at all times of the 
year, for a few ships, the English protracted the time of en- 
tering Table Bay to the beginning of October, yet in the year 
17995 his Majesty's ship the Sceptre, with seven others, were 
driven on shore on the fifth of November. 
The loss of this ship was attended with many distressful cir- 
cumstances. At one o'clock she fired a feii-de-joie, in com- 
memoration of the anniversary of the Popish plot ; at ten the 
same evening scarcely a vestige was to be seen, but the frag- 
ments of the wreck scattered on the strand, in myriads of 
pieces, not a single plank remaining whole, nor two attached 
together. Captain Edwards, his son, with ten other officers, 
and near three hundred seamen and marines perished on this 
