SANDWICH ISLANDS. 
239 
moral sense: we will, therefore, forbear to dwell on the far¬ 
ther particulars of this sad story. 
The patients all recovered; and with their bodily strength 
their human feelings returned. At first they had seemed 
insensible to the horror of their tale, and had told it without 
hesitation; but, as their powers returned, a strange revolu¬ 
tion took place; and they seemed not only horror-struck at 
the remembrance of what they had done, but at their own 
apathy in having told it too plainly : and surely such feelings 
are to be respected *. 
* The wreck of the Frances Mary had been seen by many vessels, and con¬ 
tinued to float in the place where His Majesty’s ship Blonde left it, until His 
Majesty’s ship Diamond, captain the right honourable Lord Napier, met with it 
on his passage from Brazil to Lisbon, in the summer of 1826. As his voyage 
did not admit of the delay necessary to tow her into port with the frigate, his 
Lordship placed some volunteers on board of her, with orders to take her to 
St. Mary’s in the Azores. This service was performed notwithstanding the 
extreme difficulty of managing any kind of vessel without a rudder*; and on 
His Majesty’s ship Diamond’s return from Lisbon, the Frances Mary was at 
St. Mary’s, under the protection of the English consul. That gentleman had 
taken upon himself to fit her sufficiently to perform the voyage to England, be¬ 
cause the Portuguese local government had claimed her and her load of timber 
as a sort of heriot, notwithstanding that there were British officers and seamen 
on board. It is possible the claim had been made on pretence that the vessel 
had no regular papers on board: a pretence that has been urged more thaw 
once for detaining vessels, although with a British officer on board, by some of 
the national ships of Brazil and Portugal, where slave prizes have been made, 
and which has befox-e now detained our officers in prison-ships, and oppressed 
our seamen. The Frances Mary was, however, so far refitted under Lord 
Napier’s orders, as to perform her voyage home with safety ; and thus most of 
her cargo was preserved. 
