FOREST AND STREAM. 
623 
Oct. 17, 1908.] 
Whitestone, to Wm. A. Kerr, New York city. 
1 Lawley 55ft., raised-deck cruiser, Nydia, sold 
by A. L. Kerker, New York city, to Bernhard 
Zahn, New York city. 
I Hollis Burgess reports: 
1: Gasolene launch North Star, sold by T. A. 
Magner, of Hingham, Mass., to Seth K. 
Humphrey, of Boston, Mass. 
The Loss of the Mayflower. 
Somewhere in the Atlantic, not many miles 
from Watling Island, what is left of the old cup 
defender, Mayflower, is drifting about, being 
buffeted by wind and sea, a derelict. She was 
abandoned by those who had started out to seek 
treasure in the West Indies on Sunday after¬ 
noon, Oct. 4. Watling Island is one of the 
Bahamas, and is also known as San Salvador. 
It was there that Columbus landed on Oct. 12, 
1492. For three days Mayflower was helpless 
in a cyclone and three steamers tried to rescue 
those who were on board. This rescue was 
finally effected by the Hippolyte Dumois, a 
fruiter, and the five soldiers of fortune and 
seven men in the crew were later landed at 
Baltimore. 
Mayflower sailed from New York equipped 
with everything necessary to recover sunken 
1 treasure. She was to find gold that had gone 
down with a Spanish galleon in the Caribbean 
Sea. Ralph A. Derby, Harvard ’05, who was 
i one of the party, has written a fine story of 
: the storm and wreck, which was published ex- 
j clusively in the New York Tribune on Thurs¬ 
day, Oct. 8. The story is well worth reading 
! and is as follows: 
The port watch were on deck at sunrise ad¬ 
miring its beauty. To them it was exquisite 
in colors and tint, but to the mate, Mr. Per- 
hatn, it was, as he expressed it, “the damndest 
' wild thing I ever saw.” The wind was squally 
and strong E. S. E., but the port watch was 
carrying sail to beat our records. I was awak¬ 
ened by a commotion on deck and the mate’s 
voice announcing that the windward topping 
lift had parted. All hands were immediately 
called on deck and ordered to lower away the 
sail. This we did, and set to work immediately 
repairing the topping lift with new wire. 
Toward noon the wind hauled to S.E. and 
; freshened. We hoisted the storm trysail and 
continued on the port tack till the barometer 
began falling by leaps and bounds. When it 
reached 29.6 inches we wore her around to the 
starboard tack, as we were unable to tack. The 
wind had freshened to a fifty-mile gale, squally 
and threatening. The mate stated that we were 
ini the close proximity of a severe hurricane. 
We took in first the storm trysail, then the 
jib and. about 5:30 P. M., single-reefed the fore¬ 
sail. All night the gale increased, the heavy 
rain squalls being more and more severe. I 
1 had never experienced such a frightful blast. 
We hung to the deck, seeking what shelter we 
1 could, shivering from the cold and wet. At 
i about 11 P. M. the foresail parted its sheet, and 
i with reports equalling those of a 3-inch gun 
blew itself to ribbons. Our foresail alone re¬ 
mained to help us weather the hurricane. At 
1 12:30 A. M. we noticed that the lashing on the 
gaff of the foresail had parted. It Could not 
i long stand the strain, and in half an hour it 
| blew off the spars, broke the gaff, and the large 
1 part of it went off to leeward. The glass had 
fallen to 28.7 inches, and the wind was blow¬ 
ing at least ninety miles an hour. 
There was but one thing left for us to do, and 
that was to run her off under bare poles. She 
1 turned down the wind and tore along at a rate 
I was unable to estimate. Nothing was visible 
but flying scud. There was but one dominating 
sound—the high, ominous shriek of the hurri¬ 
cane. The salt water scud cut our faces, and 
we were unable to breathe unless we covered 
our mouths with our hands. 
At daybreak she was running furiously and 
i making fair weather of it. During the night 
the binnacle lights and the side lights blew out, 
. and we were unable to keep them lighted; con- 
1 sequently we were unable to see that our 
course was constantly changing and we were 
running into the very center of the cyclone. At 
about 4:30 A. M. the rudder must have carried 
away, for she broached to and lay staggering 
in the trough of the mountainous seas. The 
severe blasts knocked her down time after time. 
It seemed inevitable she must capsize unless 
we cut away the spars. The captain refused to 
give the order, though the mate was standing 
by the main rigging with an ax. Three times 
she actually dipped her mastheads into the seas, 
the water coming up to her skylights. From 
none of these knockdowns did it seem that she 
would recover. •Finally we got one that, to all 
intents and purposes, was the last.of us. I 
was lying on deck to windward and my legs 
were afloat. When down so far that we gave 
her up, to the marvel of all she recovered. 
The captain then gave the much belated order 
to cut away. It was almost too late. 
The mate severed the main rigging to wind¬ 
ward and then began to hack away the mast. 
It seemed ages, and he made no apparent 
progress; the steel still held. Suddenly we got 
another knockdown—the most severe of all. 
Her mastheads buried, the water covered the 
hatches. Her decks were perpendicular. The 
mate laid down his ax and said, “It’s all up.” 
We prepared ourselves for death. When she 
seemed about to topple over, by some miracu¬ 
lous power she halted and then slowly righted. 
We gave a cheer and flew back at the work of 
hacking away the mast. 
All hands were on deck, but the cook, who 
was imprisoned below. Finally, to our intense 
delight, the mainmast cracked, tottered and 
finally fell to leeward, the broken foot going 
through the deck just by the lee rail. It still 
held aloft to the foremast by the spring stay. 
It was plain that the foremast must go, too. 
The mate cut away the forerigging to windward. 
Immediately both spars tottered with a crash 
into the sea, and the schooner righted and lay 
in the trough of the howling gale on almost 
an even keel. Unfortunately, the mainsail, gaff 
and boom attached, carried away with it, leav¬ 
ing us merely the foreboom on deck, the bow¬ 
sprit and part of the storm trysail for jury rig. 
The work of clearing away the spars was 
now of the utmost urgency, as several of them 
were pounding under her bottom, with the pos¬ 
sibility of making a hole, which must inevitably 
sink her. Noyes and Bovlston did yeoman 
work, cutting away the bowsprit, filing off the 
bobstav and finally, with the assistance of the 
rest of the crew, clearing us of all the spars 
that were overboard. 
The scene below decks was gastly—a large 
part of the ballast to leeward was hurled from 
her bottom up on the' transoms; clothes, bag¬ 
gage and stores were messed together in one 
wet and tangled heap; the galley range was 
overset; under the starboard quarter a spar not 
yet cleared away pounded with every roll. 
Shortly after all was clear on deck, though 
the gale was raging with unabated fury, we 
gathered together in the cabin and discussed 
The situation. Seemingly, by the divine hand of 
Providence we had been snatched from the jaws 
of death and given what at the time we con¬ 
sidered an excellent chance for life. We lashed 
the wheel, as she was lying comparatively easy 
in the trough of the sea, rising like a duck and 
only ocasionally shipping a sea on her decks, 
and lay down to get as much rest as we could 
for the hard labors that we knew were be¬ 
fore us. 
It was impossible to get anything hot to eat, 
though Boylston made some tea over the cabin 
lamp. We had to be content with hardtack and 
jam. At about 8 A. M. our labors on deck 
were accomplished, and we took as much rest 
below as possible. The hurricane continued 
with unabated force, though the barometer rose 
steadily, indicating that the storm center had 
passed us. 
Our minds were kept in a state of unrest by 
a feature that bid fair, if it continued long- 
enough to be the end of us. The Mayflower’s 
long stern, none too strong in construction and 
weighted down by a full lazarette and three tons 
of dynamite in the after stateroom, which ad¬ 
joined the lazarette-, pounded incessantly on 
the heavy seas. East crash jarred her through 
out, and it seemed impossible that she could 
hold together. 
We slept all afternoon and night, keeping 
one man on deck for lookout. The gale abated 
during the late afternoon, but continued at a 
good forty-mile clip all night. In the early 
morning the lookout reported having seen the 
lights of one steamer during the night, which 
gave us to believe that we were on the route 
from Crooked Island Passage to the Northern 
A.tlantic coast cities. 
In order to get her head to the wind and pre¬ 
vent the severe pounding we rigged a make¬ 
shift sea anchor out of sornei long oars and 
planks, weighted with a couple of davits. It 
served its purpose poorly, so we then put over 
a coil of rope. Together they altered her posi¬ 
tion very little, making her lie in the trough of 
the sea, and if anything increasing the pounding. 
We then hauled in the coil of rope drag, cut 
away the oars and davits, rigged a jury sail 
on the foremast with a little of the remnant of 
the storm trysail for a foresail, a boat sail and 
sail cover for jib. We were unable, however, 
to run her dead off, on account of our lost 
rudder, and she wallowed along with the wind 
and sea on her quarter. 
About 6:30 A. M. a steamer headed north 
was sighted. We immediately nailed an Amer¬ 
ican ensign, upside down, to the stump of the 
foremast, and lived in hopes of her seeing us. 
The sea was running mountains high, so we 
knew, of course, that the most we could ex¬ 
pect of her was to lay by and wait till the sea 
got smoother. For that matter, our feeling of 
security had been so great until the pounding 
began to discourage us—that we thought we 
would be able to reach port with the assistance 
of the engine and a jury rig—taking it for 
granted that the weather was fair. We had 
considered getting a steamer to tow us, but 
the price would have been so great that, had the 
S. P. C. decided to quit operations we did not 
believe that the sale of the ship and cargo would 
cover it. Under the conditions, abandonment 
seemed the most reasonable course to follow, 
unless, of course, we could take her into port, 
which seemed unlikely, owing to the weakened 
condition of her stern. 
The steamer sighted us and slowed down 
some distance away, on our weather bows. She 
proved to be the Advance, of the Panama Line. 
Her decks were lined with passengers. She 
commenced to wigwag us, but nobody on board 
the Mayflower could understand. Then she 
hoisted two signals, which we were unable to 
read or answer, as we had neither code book 
nor signals on board. We thought it read 
“Will stand by.” 
He continued on to the northward, evidently 
trying to wear around, but the sea was too 
rough for this maneuver. Finally he hove to 
in the trough, some distance to windward of us. 
We saw him from time to time, apparently 
working around in a large circle to the south, 
he having, as we believed, determined our drift 
and calculated to pick us up again before dark, 
when, if it moderated, he could take us off. 
While waiting for him we decided to heave 
over our cargo of dynamite, on the double score 
that it might either be exploded by the hammer 
of a sea and blow us to kingdom come, or that 
its weight of three tons might—nay, would surely 
—hasten the destruction of the stern, which had 
already commenced to give away. 
Several of the men were sick from fatigue, 
especially one, John, who had given up almost 
completely. Bovlston, however, naked as the 
day he was born, carried every one of the 120 
boxes from the companionway to the stern and 
dropped them into the sea. At first we were 
confronted by the dilemma that the boxes 
floated. We had tried one the day before, and, 
though we had not actually seen it float away, 
the man who dropped it overboard reported 
that it had floated under the stern. This was 
hardly a pleasant thought. 
We found that a box did float until it be¬ 
came water-soaked. So in order to make them 
go down immediately, Richardson opened each 
as it came on deck. In an hour and a half all 
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