Then followed a series of gales, some of them reaching the severity of hurricanes. The ship was damaged considerably by the gales, and on two or three occasions it was thought she would founder and carry with her to the bottom of the ocean every one on board. At starting the Warwick had taken provisions and water for six months, expecting long before the end of that period to be safely anchored in the Thames.
She was blown far out of her course, water and provisions ran short, the crew were put on half rations, and afterwards on quarter rations, and on the day we sighted her not one of her party had drunk or eaten anything for nearly twenty-four hours. Starvation, or what is nearly as bad, cannibalism, stared the unfortunate mariners in the face; and Mr. Johnson, our second mate, was no doubt within bounds when he said that not one of the party could have survived forty-eight hours longer.
Several deaths had already occurred from lack of food and drink; the captain died a week before the encounter of the ships, and the second mate died on the same day. All the men had succumbed except those I have mentioned,--the four that Mr. Johnson found on deck, four in the forecastle, and the first mate in the captain's cabin.
It was plain that the crew of the Warwick, exhausted as they were by famine and death, would be unable to navigate the ship safely to port. When we met them they were drifting much more than sailing; the weather had been very mild for the past fortnight, so the Warwick's mate told us, and it was due to this circumstance, he added, that they were alive.
"If a gale had come up," said he, "we couldn't have done anything to meet it. We couldn't have stowed a sail or tautened a brace, and there isn't strength enough in all the crew together to put the ship's wheel hard over and hold it there. You'll have to take us into port, or else stay by us till we get strength enough to do it ourselves."
When Mr. Johnson came back and reported this our captain called his officers into the cabin and held a consultation. Exactly what was said I don't know; but when they came out on deck the captain gave orders for twenty barrels of beef, and a corresponding amount of other provisions, together with a good supply of water, to be put on board the Warwick. While this was going on, our mate went to the Warwick and had a talk with her mate; I suppose I ought to call him captain, as that is what he really was at the time. When he came back there was another conference, and then our second officer and six men were transferred to the other ship.