206 
VOYAGE OF THE POTOMAC. 
[February^ 
repugnance to trade, and gave, without much apparent suspicion^ 
hcense for the captain to enter and trade in other ports. 
The ship Three Friends, Stewart master, made a voyage from 
Salem to Batavia in the year eighteen hundred and one. Bally 
Strait, situated between an island of the same name and the east 
end of Java, is about six leagues wide. On the sixteenth of Jan- 
uary, eighteen hundred and two, the Three Friends was accom- 
panied by a ship called the Margaret. The morning began with 
fresh contrary winds, while beating into the Strait of Bally. 
Having got part way in, the wind fell off, and the current being 
ahead, brought to an anchor in twenty fathoms sandy bottom, the 
Java shore distant half a mile. At half past six in the evening,, 
the current having shifted, weighed, and drove with the stream — 
light airs from the Java coast — and at dark lost sight of the Mar- 
garet. The wind being from the western quarter, carried quite 
over to the Bally side ; the current carrying the vessel around a 
point, and shortly afterward, within a cable's length of the shore, 
drove along for a few minutes, found soundings in thirty fathoms,, 
let go the sheet-anchor, and brought her up at about one hundred 
and fifty feet from the rocks, where she rode a few minutes. At 
nine P.M., light air came off the land ; a boat being ahead, the 
cable was cut, time not permitting to heave it up ; in a moment 
the wind died away, and the next, came right on shore, all sail 
being set, she took aback and struck ! The after-guns were im- 
mediately thrown overboard, water started, and the decks cleared 
of wood ; in short, every thing that could be done to lighten her, 
but all to no effect. The captain and officers supposing little on 
their part could be done, the current running five knots per hour, 
the wind, what there was, directly on shore, four men sick — 
minute-guns were fired, and fortunately answered by the Margaret, 
whose superiority in sailing had enabled her to gain safe anchorage 
in Palembang Bay on the Java shore : and answering minute- 
guns were now heard from the Dutch forts at Palembang. The 
situation of the captain and his crew was now deplorable. Driven 
on shore, on the savage and inhuman coast of Bally, the vessel ' 
on her beam-ends, four men sick, not able to work a single re- 
maining gun, the idea of losing the ship and cargo, and of being, 
themselves massacred by the savages, presented a picture gloomy 
enough ; when they were somewhat relieved by the appearance 
