Norwich and Halesworth , 1785-1820. xvii 
carry boats enough to hold the number of souls on board. 
All attempts to subdue the fire were vain, when providentially 
a rescuer appeared on the horizon. This was the Orion with 
the irrepressible Jorgensen 1 on board, who, to enable that 
vessel to rejoin her consort, had insisted on being allowed 
to run her through a dangerous passage between the reefs and 
the mainland of Reikevik harbour, and who by thus saving 
a day saved the lives of all hands on the burning ship, whom 
he carried back to Reikevik. 
My father’s description 2 of the progress of the conflagration, 
as seen from the Orion , is graphic — of the flames seizing the 
sails and rigging, of the falling of the masts, of the discharge 
of the guns, and of the reduction of a ship of 5 00 tons 
burthen, worth £25,000, to a hull with cataracts of blazing 
oil and tallow pouring over its sides. 
Unfortunately the fire broke out in a part of the ship where 
his collections were stowed, and he lost everything but a few 
weeks of his journal, the clothes he stood in, and an Icelandic 
lady’s wedding dress 3 , which the ship’s steward flung into the 
boat as she shoved off from the burning wreck. 
The fire was proved to have been planned before leaving 
Reikevik by some of the Danish prisoners, two of whom 
had lit it in the previous night. A search in the bedding of 
the prisoners in the Orion resulted in finding combustible 
materials, no doubt secreted for the same object. 
On her return to Reikevik Captain Jones offered my 
father a passage home on board the Talbot, which he gladly 
accepted. The voyage was a tempestuous one of sixteen 
days’ duration, during which the Talbot lost her foremast. 
She arrived in Leith roads on September 20. 
1 Jorgensen had proved himself to be a first-rate seaman, with all the qualities of 
a commander, when serving under Captain Flinders ; and subsequently in 1807, as a 
captain in the Danish navy, when in a ship with eighty-three hands and twenty-eight 
guns, he engaged for three-quarters of an hour the British sloop Sappho , with 120 
men. On this occasion he was taken prisoner and put on parole, which he twice 
broke as stated above, in making this and a former visit to Iceland in the interests 
of Messrs. Phelps & Co. 
3 See Tour in Iceland, vol. i, pp. 362-4. 
3 Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. 
