.OF A VOYAGE M.U)E BV

THOMAfcLORD

IN i8iS.

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A CONCISE ACCOUNT

VOYAGE MADE BY

THOMAS LORD
OF NEW YORK
A PASSENGER IN THE SHIP MINERVA,
IN THE WINTER OF i8i8

WRITTEN BY HIM IN 1870, FROM RECOLLECTION
SOLEL Y

NEW YORK
1871

Press of E. P. DuTTON & Co., 113 Broadway, New York.

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ACCOMPANYING ACCOUNT

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COURSE oftheSHIP MINERVA

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G\'V\% C-B C«'!TcrcAC'\S r
a Concise Account
OF A VOYAGE IN iSi8, WRITTEN IN 1870, PROM
VIVID RECOLLECTION SOLELY, HAVING NO
MEMORANDA OR AID OF ANY KIND WHAT
EVER.
IN the winter of 1818, being at Liver
pool, England, I took passage for New
York in the good ship Minerva, Captain
Sketchly. At my suggestion, my friend
James Drabble, of Sheffield, also took pas
sage. Captain Sketchly, who was owner
as well as commander of the ship, agree
ing that he would not go north about.
We sailed from Liverpool on the tenth
of February ; and at ten o'clock, p. m., be
ing up with the Isle of Man, the captain
called my friend and myself on deck to
show us that it was impossible to get down
St. George's Channel, as the wind was blow
ing a gale dead ahead, and he offered such
plausible reasons for going out the north
channel, that we consented.

A Voyage made by Thomas Lord. 4
The night was splendid, and we cleared
the land before daylight; but before ten
o'clock the ship was hove to, and after
that, carried no canvas except what was
indispensable to keep her head to the wind,
and in that condition drifted, in some ten
or twelve days, to sixty north and twenty
west, where it was daylight only five or
five and a half hours.
The weather was of course intensely
cold, and the nights and darkness so
long and dreary, that my friend left his
stateroom and took the upper berth in
mine. The ship was so uneasy, that, as
a matter of precaution, I had an addi
tional combing twelve inches high rigged
to my berth, but that did not suffice.
The ship was a " pink stern," with two
large cabin windows. The cabin was
large, and the companion stairs were in
the centre of the ship, going down toward
the stern. Abreast of the companion,
there were two large state-rooms on each
wall of the ship. I occupied the after

A Voyage made by Thomas Lord, 5
state-room on the larboard side, and the
captain the one opposite.
About three o'clock one morning my
head suddenly struck the wall or door of
my room. I was thrown out of my berth
over the additional combing, and my mat
tress, and my friend and his mattress on
top of me. .
I shoved the sliding door of my state
room, looked up the companion-way, and
saw the foot of the mainmast swinging over
it. Both myself and friend were dressed in
less than two minutes. I shrieked to the
captain and besought him to gft his ship
before the wind, without a moment's delay,
to prevent her foundering upon the wreck.
That was done under the full consciousness
that the chances were about ninety to one
that she would be caught in the trough of
the sea, and go down bodily; but being
very buoyant, she shot ahead, and for five
or six days was driven one hundred miles
a day, plunging to the stump of the main
mast every sea she passed, and rolling ten

THE WRECK OF THE SHIP MINERVA.
(Copied from the p.iJiitlng vefened to in page ii.)

A Voyage made by Thomas Lord. 6
streaks of the deck under water all the
time. The sea that struck the ship, called a
" triple comber," was a square wall, break
ing like a mill-dam, ninety feet high, being
above the maintopsail yard. The mizzen-
mast was broken ofif, near the deck, the
mainmast some eight or ten feet above the
deck. The foreyard gone ; cutwater started a
foot from top to bottom; boats, caboose,
binnacle, mizzen skyliditl booby-lfttch and
light ; all the bulwarkslfn botksides ; on
the starboard side all the sta|tt|pis abaft
the windlass, broken ofTor tornwlit; plank-
sheer off some forty feet, — this was the
work of the first sea that rolled over
the ship. At about half-past nine a. m.,
another of those "triple combers" over
took the ship; stove the stern windows,
carried away the wheel, all the spars on
deck, and everything else, so that there
was nothing left on deck but the rudder-
head, capstan, and windlass. We had now

A Voyage made by Thomas Lord. 7
lost the first ofificer, and two men, over
board; two were wounded and laid aside,
and all the others frozen. The spray, some
fifteen feet high, cut like hail, and scream
as loud as you could, a person four feet to
windward could not hear you. The cap
tain stood in the. companion-way some
eighteen hours conning his ship ; " Star
board a little; Lord have mercy on us ; port
a little." For five or six days we had no
fire, no water to drink, and next to no
sleep. Our numbers JMf so re,dflk;ed that
we had not strength JUpg^tqy^edu^ the
water in the ship by pumpifi^BJilw saRn
to eight feet. *%? ^-^3|^
I was the only person not -fro^^; but by
standing in Cold water my feet were chilled
and swollen, and the circulation nearly
ceased. The pain in them was as much
more severe than a toothache as a foot is
larger than a tooth. Immediately after
the ship was pooped, we rushed into the
cabin, got some bales of goods that were
in the after (temporary) cabin, on to the

A Voyage made by Thomas Lord. 8
transom, but as they were too large to go
between the timbers, we spiked mattresses
to fill up the space, put the bales against
them, and stanchioned them as strongly as
possible, one end of the stanchions resting
against the deck beams.
Two days later the ship was pooped
a second time, the stanchions above de
scribed broken, and the bales slewed round
so as to let the water in. As there was
no covering to the m^jJlik hatchway but
boards and a tarpau^^Jj|^j|p^^lose
as possible, every
several hogsheads of
was all the time several
the cabins ; the sofas, chairs, tables' etc.,
etc., were all loose, -and dashed about
swiftly by the motion of the ship.
In this condition of things I went to
work, and, with the aid of one black man,
broke through the bulkhead into the hold,
got some trunks of goods, and made a
wall on the transom entirely across the
ship, to hold the large bales in the win-

A Voyage made by Thomas Lord. 9
dows in their places, and to prevent th^ir
being slewed again.
As our only tools were a miserable ,old
handsaw, and a fourteen-pound sledge, —
all the other tools being lost, — the accom
plishment of this job was considered a
greafachievement, and Captain" Sketchly
assured me that for a sight of it " Lloyds "
would certainly give me ^200, or ^300;
they were on the eargb some ^70,000.
The day after the skip was dismasted, I
bored a large hole 'through -the deck in
each corner of my'stat^MAn.'had a board
spiked across the db'or, vl|| with a mop
wiped up the wafer, and Kept my room as,
dry as possible. Within three da.ysj9he
passenger^ were unable to eat except in my
room, on account of the bilge-water smell
all over the ship. For son^ days I kept
the retkoriitig on the wall oT my room ; I
took ehsfr^ of one watch on deck, put the
ship about, etc., etc.
; The first land we saw. was Bara, a rock'
6ne hundred miles from the Hebrides. We

A Voyage made by Thomas Lord. lo
went round those islands, intending to go
into Stornaway, in the largest of them,
" Lewis Island," but the wind headed, and
we ran up the Minch to Ullapool, a small
herring port in Loche Broom, where there
had never been but one vessel that ever
had more than one mast.
There the ship anchored on a gravelly
beach. The good people took us as near
as possible to shore in their boats, and
then stepped overboard, and carried us
ashore on their shoulders. The snow on
shore was from two to t\yc)*and a hal^ feet
deep, and the crew built ini^ll inclosing a
large space on the forecastle of the ship,
filled the space with sand, and built a fire
upon it, to cook by, and to keep them warm.
Not many days passed before the sand got
so heated as to set the deck on fire ; the
fire ran through the between decks, burn
ing some goods, defacing marks, etc., etc.
As there was no alternative, the ship was
scuttled and sunk, and that was the end of
the staunch, strong ship Minerva.

A Voyage made by Thomas Lord. 1 1
Mr. G. Augustus Ludlow, of West
Farms, a gentleman amateur artist, painted
the wreck of this ship, as I was at the
time informed, under the direction of Cap
tain Sketchly, and the picture was exhib
ited at the Academy of Design — accord
ing to my recollection in 1820; the present
owner thinks it was later. I tried to buy
it, but the owner declined to' part with it.
He died in 1838, and for a long period I
could not learn who had it. Recently,
through the kind interposition of E. H.
Ludlow, the present owner, R. H. Ludlow,
Esq., lent it to .my son, Henry Lord, who
in less than a week made a copy, which
I consider as good as the original ; and
while he was at work upon it, my son
Frank went to the herring jport in Loche
Broom, where I landed from this wreck
early in March, 181 8.

YALE UNIVERSITY I

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