148 TOYAGE OF THE SHIP PRESIDENT. 
ly high.* As the morning advanced there was some little 
diminution of the sea, or rather it became more regular, and 
therefore less uncomfortable, but no perceptible abatement of 
the gale. Under the scanty sail we could carry we of course 
made very little headway, while the drift to leeward was con- 
siderable. 
Sunday, November 27. — A light breeze sprang up from the 
eastward, accompanied with heavy and almost unremitted 
showers of rain. By nine o'clock it shifted to S. E. and began 
rapidly to grow fresher. About this hour there appeared a 
vessel on the larboard bow, which, from not showing a rag 
of sail, we concluded must be in some distress. The yards 
w^ere therefore braced up, and we bore toward her. It proved 
to be a small schooner, named the " Hitty Tom, of Duxbury," 
with her foremast and jib-boom carried away, and her sails 
in tattered plight, but otherwise apparently in sound condi- 
tion. The boat was gone, and the hatches snugly fastened 
down, proving evidently that she had been deliberately aban- 
doned, probably on the appearance of some ship to which 
her crew could betake themselves. She had probably become 
unmanageable from the loss of mast, spars, and sails, and was 
deserted in the hope of her being fallen in with and towed to 
port. The conditions of his insurance would not permit our 
captain to do this, and we therefore left her without delay. 
At eleven o'clock we had our usual services and a sermon 
preached by our clergyman of the presbyterian persuasion. 
From ten till four in the afternoon the w^ind continually in- 
creased, hauling gradually round, till at this la-st hour it reach- 
ed W. and soon after settled (blowing a furious gale) into N. 
W. About nightfall we passed a ship, which we supposed to 
be one of the packets, a little to leeward, lying to under very 
spare canvass, and since conjectured to have been either the 
Florida or Manchester. 
Monday, November 28. — After a hard blow all night there 
was a partial lull of the wind this morning, but at eleven 
o'clock it rose again into a gale, with a very heavy and un- 
pleasant sea. About this hour we observed what we supposed 
to be one of the Liverpool packets, from her having shown 
* When the above sea was shipped a larg« quantity of water went 
down the scuttle into the steerage, where there were ninety passengers. 
Some of the women, as they told one of the passengers (a clergyman) 
next day, thought for several minutes that the ship had foundered, and 
was rapidly sinking far down into the depths of the ocean. Great was 
the joy when one of their company, finding his way up through the 
scuttle, exclaimed;^ '' O thank God^ we are on the top yet." 
